It starts with the most basic principle of the free market: you get what you pay for. If you pay good salaries and put money into the school infrastructure, you will get better results.
Just like all those employers who have been whining during the pandemic about “nobody wants to work anymore”. No, that’s not quite it - nobody wants to work at the wages you’re offering, because with the explosion of virtual employment options for workers, what you’re offering isn’t enough.
I’ve never used them either, but in all the ad reads, it seemed as though it they do have most of those things. Less mandatory, obviously, but there is “homework” to practice skills, tests to assess how much you learned, and remedial courses to help out in areas where you are having difficulties. I’ve seen that some (many, most, I don’t know) lectures have contextual links that will take you to a prior lecture that covers material that you may need clarification on.
As far as no stakes, I count that as a feature. Always having the pressure of, “Do well on this math test, or you won’t get into college and be stuck in a dead end job the rest of your life.” was actually counterproductive to many of my peers, myself included.
Now, I’m not saying just sign up all the schoolkids with Brilliant and call it a day, but I do think that there is at least something to look at in that model to assist in education.
I think that there is still a fair amount of busywork that can be eliminated by these kinds of technology, giving teachers more time to spend with the students, allowing a smaller teacher student ratio.
I would think that such assistance would help in those areas.
Now, I do think that we should pay teachers quite a bit more than we do, and I am willing to pay the property taxes to do so, but education does make up about two-thirds of my property taxes, so giving raises enough to entice more teachers, as well as hiring a bunch of teachers at that rate would be asking property owners to dig quite a bit deeper into their pockets. It’s hard enough around here to pass just continuation levies, one that may increase your property taxes by 50-100%, that’s gonna be a hard sell.
And just like those employers have to pass those increased labor costs onto their customers, the money to pay teachers doesn’t come from thin air, the cost is passed onto the taxpayers, who get a vote on it.
Yep, that’s right. You get what you pay for. You don’t want to pay for it, don’t whinge that the schools aren’t working well.
You misunderstand me. I’m not talking about “pass this test or you won’t get into college.” I’m talking about “teach this student effectively or fail them individually and society collectively.”
I’m certainly all for paying teachers well, and in some areas they certainly aren’t being paid enough. But what I’ve heard from actual teachers (including some here in this thread, but also elsewhere) who have left or are thinking of leaving teaching is that it’s much more about the working conditions than about the pay.
From my, admittedly outside, perspective this is a pretty big problem even at the well-funded public school my kids go to. We are desirable enough that it is never that hard to fill teaching positions (although it is getting harder). But the number one complaint from the teachers and aids I’ve talked to, and from my own children, is that disruptive children are pretty much just accepted and worked around.
There have been rules put in place not to remove them from the classroom, or send them to the principal, or whatever. All issues have to be dealt with in the classroom through group discussion, etc. So for the student that hates the work of school but loves the attention of being the subject of a classroom circle there is very little disincentive to disrupt the class.
Basically the only way it ever works is for the teacher or an aide to constantly provide Johnny the attention he craves so the rest of the class can work independently and maybe make some progress. And yes, Johnny’s parents never seem to think there is a problem except possibly with the mean teacher that blames Johnny for everything.
And the other students realize quickly that “tattling” on Johnny when he hits them or pulls their hair just gets them pulled out too for a “discussion” about what happened so they just shut up and take it, hoping he picks on somebody else today.
The technology I have seen is great for broadening the options for those students that are already doing well. It gives them additional things to work on, videos to watch, etc. My son is using it this year for an accelerated math course.
But it is pretty hopeless in dealing with disinterested or misbehaving kids. Or stupid ones, to be frank. Because while a teacher can at least make sure Johnny is paying attention while they teach the lesson, a digitized instructor can’t do that. So Johnny fails the quiz and now the classroom teacher has to step in and teach it anyway. Because if Johnny fails it won’t be the technology that is blamed, and it certainly won’t be Johnny or his parents - it will be the teacher.
Working conditions are also related to funding. Scrimp on training, scrimp on admin support, scrimp on resources for kids who are having trouble, and working conditions will be bad.
I thought I made it clear that I didn’t have a problem paying for it. However, many of my fellow homeowners feel differently, as shown by how difficult it is to pass just a continuing operations levy, much less an increase. I don’t control the other taxpayers or how they vote
Just like the customer that goes to McDonalds and complains about the quality of service isn’t willing to actually pay more in order for the employees to be paid more, the taxpayers who complain about the schools are also not willing to fork out more.
Meanwhile, I’m willing to pay more for a Big Mac in order to have it prepared by someone making an actual living wage, I’m in the minority, and outvoted, exactly the same as I am with school levies.
Then there is the fact that the schools that need the most help tend to be the ones in poorer areas, and those taxpayers cannot afford the levy increases.
Now, there certainly are those of means who can pay to send their kids to private school, but they will obviously be voting against tax levies that don’t benefit their kids. It’s really the people who are at the lowest end of the economic spectrum that are getting what people are willing to pay for.
The biggest complainers about the school system are generally the ones who can afford to not use it, just as the biggest complainers about the service at McDonalds are generally the ones who can afford better.
So, “just throw more money at it” is rarely a useful solution, and it completely ignores the question of where, exactly, that money will come from.
I did misunderstand you. But, this is putting that pressure on the teachers, which, IMHO, would make the job less appealing and survivable.
Those will always be the stakes, no matter the funding or support they receive.
Can they? I’ve never really seen it. Especially when Johnny never is paying attention, and it’s not worth wasting the entire class’s time in order to lecture Johnny into paying attention when he just really doesn’t want to.
At least a computer can track eye movements, and can much more objectively tell if Johnny is paying attention, though I don’t see what either has to offer to incentivize a student who just isn’t interested in what is being taught.
And that tangents into another topic on the very nature of how we teach school. We expect kids to sit down, be quiet, and study this boring stuff for 6-8 hours a day. We don’t ask them what subjects they are interested in, and focus on those, or what methods of teaching may work best for them, we instead teach every single student in that class of 30-40 students exactly the same thing, at the same speed in the same way. And then, when the bell rings every forty-five minutes to an hour, we expect them to now transition to a completely different topic, one that they may not find any more interesting.
Kids who can’t adapt to this rigorous and ridiculous regime are then drugged up or kicked out.
It’s the teacher who is blamed now, that won’t change. So why not give the teacher some tools to help them out?
Now, personally, I believe that education begins at home, and if you don’t have a supportive situation for learning going on at home, there’s very little a teacher can do to overcome that.
I guess I am misunderstanding your underlying point more than your objection.
Sure, Brilliant doesn’t have those stakes. If I sign up for it and fail to learn General Relativity, then they didn’t fail me or society.
But I’d also argue that the fact that Johnny won’t learn his times tables doesn’t mean that the teacher has failed them individually or society collectively.
In any case, I would see this as a tool to assist learning, not something that replaces teachers, but something that improves a teacher’s effectiveness. Then, the teacher and the tool both share those stakes. I don’t see it any differently from a textbook publisher in that regard, just more interactive and potentially useful.
If a kid is autistic and an aural learner, this is literally the worst way you can figure out if they are paying attention.
And that’s the thing about computers - they’re really hard to adapt - for the classroom teacher - to the individual situations of schoolkids. But they have to be part of a one-size-fits-all system.
Yes, if you treat each and every child exactly the same, you would have a point. But that was not what I said. If someone has learning difficulties, there are other avenues to address that, and a teacher in a classroom with 30 other students isn’t going to improve the situation.
The context of that statement to which you objected is that a teacher would be able to tell, in a class of 30, some of whom are aural learners or on the autistic spectrum that a student isn’t paying attention in class.
I’d argue that having that data would go much further towards diagnosing that student with a learning disability than the teacher complaining that they never pay attention in class.
Why is that? Computers have tremendous flexibility, more flexibility than most teachers. Kids have different ways of learning, and teachers have different ways of teaching, and sometimes those line up, and sometimes they don’t. A computer can be loaded with a learning program that is intended for certain types of learning far better than a teacher can change the way they teach.
Do you claim that since everyone has the same textbook, they are part of a one-size-fits-all system? A computer would be a tool to assist in education, not a replacement for teachers.
I can see this argument having merit back in the 80’s when computers were as inflexible as you are claiming they currently are, but we do know better now.
In my day, if you got kicked out of school your parent(s) would have to find another school. If no other schools would take the kid, there was ‘reform schoo’, which you really didn’t want to go to. They were run with military discipline, students had to have short hair cuts (big deal in the 70s), and they were worked hard. Schools encouraged this fear by telling us horror stories of what awaited if you faced ‘reform school’.
But the other punishment for misbehaviour was to be held back a grade if you didn’t get adequate grades, and that was humiliating to the students. Nothing like seeing your grade 8 bully still in grade 8 when his victims move on. Fear of being held back a grade drove a lot of marginal students to study harder.
How commoj is it now for students to be held back a grade?
I agree that online schooling only works well for those who would also do well in a class setting. They are generally in decent homes, with parental involvement in their educcations or they are highly self-motivated. The data from the pandemic shows that it was the marginal students that were really harmed from the lockdowns and remote learning.
Brilliant and the like are really sites for adult learning. For school age kids, I would highly suggest Khan Academy. My kid used it, and swears by it. They have a completely different philosophy of education - teach for mastery, not for a minimum grade. Particularly in math, I think this is critically important.
We pass kids to the next grade who didn’t understand the material they were taught in the previous one, and their lack of prerequisite knowledge makes the next math class even harder. They squeak through that, and we do it again. Kids that ‘barely passed’ math get to high school with so many holes in their knowledge that they struggle mightily. Khan academy is good for plugging those holes.
Yeah, and there’s a reason why people leave the system traumatized and damaged, it’s basically prison for people who did nothing but be young. And if they actually act like a young person, they are further punished. Throw in racial disparities in those punishments, and what you are nostalgic for starts to look like a horror show to the rest of us.
Of course, now you have someone who should be, agewise, 9th grade, who is now bullying people in 8th grade. I don’t see how that improves the situation.
It still happens, but yeah, there are reasons why we don’t want 15 year olds in class with 10 year olds. I think those reasons are pretty valid.
Part of the point of a “punishment” is that someone has to actually care. If I don’t care that I’m held back a grade, then you are only punishing the people who have to put up with me by doing so, not me. Especially if you are not doing so for academic reasons, but for behavioral.
It is true that education starts at home. So a home environment where education is nurtured is going to be a reasonable environment for home schooling. If you look forward to going to school in order to get out of the home environment, due to abuse or neglect, then online home schooling is not going to be a good fit.
I suggested Brilliant as a general model as it’s what I hear all the time from science communicators, but I specifically said I wouldn’t just sign up the students for Brilliant and call it a day. I was talking more about their approach to education, with modules rather than whole semesters, so if you “fail” a module, you just need a refresher on that module, rather than having to repeat an entire semester over a little bit that you didn’t understand. Or, even worse, IMHO, going on to the next semester in a class without understanding the prerequisites needed to succeed in that next section.
I know next to nothing about Khan Academy beside the name. If they have a modular and flexible curriculum that, as you say teaches for mastery not a grade, then that seems like it would work well.
Right, but the alternative is to have them repeat the entire year or at least semester in order to fill in those holes. I mean, my freshman year, I got really sick and missed a week of school. Most of my classes were easy to catch up on, but I was taking honor’s geometry, and that week was when we covered a fairly integral part that everything else build upon. I read the book and I talked to other students, but that didn’t really do it for me, and the teacher refused to “repeat herself”, so I didn’t do all that well, and ended up dropping out of the honors math program because it took me long enough to get caught up that I never really did.
A modular system that would have allowed me to just retake that week or maybe month would have done wonders for my academic career.
I’ve known students who pester the teacher because they don’t understand something. They aren’t trying to be difficult, but they want to understand and learn, and maybe it’s the teacher and their methods, maybe it’s the student, but eventually, the teacher has to say, “We are moving on.” and anyone left behind is left behind. A computer learning system doesn’t get impatient, and may have several lectures from different teachers with different approaches to a subject. You can repeat a module as many times as it takes to master a subject before it is arbitrarily decided that it is time to move on.
Teachers are pretty savvy about learning disabilities. They can’t diagnose them, but they can recommend to parents about getting their kids evaluated for such and they also have the flexibility to follow an IEP/504 that might have some very kid-specific provisions about teaching. Unless your software can follow a 504 and reprogram itself to follow it, or can be easily reprogrammed to do so, it’s going to be useless for the purpose.
Computers have a great deal of flexibility. The software on the computer is the issue.
We know better, but we do not do better. The kind of investment for the kind of software you’re advocating - endlessly protean, perhaps learning from the student’s learning style and tailoring itself to it - unfortunately is not going to happen any time soon. Teachers don’t have the time and expertise to adapt software for their students; administrators don’t want the headache of plugging multiple learning programs into their setups; the edsoft companies are undercapitalized and taking the easiest route to what gets them to check a feature box rather than doing the very hard work of making the kind of software that you’re describing.
I think it would be great if it happened, but it’s not happening now and it’s not really moving towards the outcome you’re advocating.
I’d love to see your evidence of this. What I’ve seen is exactly the opposite: holding students back a grade is linked with students dropping out of school. Granted, I’m not a good enough statistician to tell whether these studies are well-constructed, or whether they’re confusing correlation (students who struggle academically tend both to be held back and to drop out) with causation (holding a student back increases the likelihood of their dropping out). But I’ve never seen any evidence of holding students back serving as a credible and effective threat to other students and persuading them to “study harder.” Is this something that you’ve seen evidence for, or are you just assuming it works that way?
As for tech-enabled learning: it’s really easy to foget that we’re all just a bunch of hairless primates in clothes doing the best we can in the world. And children are a lot closer to the primate than adults are, given the fewer years they’ve spent being enculturated. We primates like social contact. Teachers say it all the time, but we say it because it’s true: kids need a relationship with their teachers in order to learn. They need to know that there’s a person there who cares about them and cares about their safety and well-being and who holds them to high standards and expects great things of them. If they don’t have that–if what they have is a burnt-out teacher or an asshole teacher or a computer screen–they’re going to have a real hard time getting their primate brains motivated to learn, no matter how important the subject.
Eh, I’ve met some who are. I’ve met a whole lot who are not. Those kids with learning disabilities are the kids that get held back and go to reform school.
And a computer that has been observing intently this student will have far more data to give to councilors in making a diagnosis.
Some teachers do, many don’t. They say that IEP’s are just helicopter parents trying to get special treatment for their kids. They complain that they have 30 students, and 15 of them are supposed to have their own personal education program, provided by that teacher. Computers can actually follow a customized Individual Education Program without prejudice against a student, and instead of expecting a single teacher to remember the individual educational needs of a dozen students, each computer program can much more easily “remember” where every student is in their progress.
You say that like you don’t really understand how a computer works. It would not have to “reprogram itself” it would just be programed. I really don’t think that the objection that you are raising here has any merit, as it’s pretty easy to get a computer to do what you want it to do, much easier than a teacher, in fact.
I really don’t get your point here. Software is what makes a computer flexible.
I don’t think we need to go anywhere near that far. The computer is a tool, nothing more, nothing less.
I don’t see any reason why they would need to.
Not sure what exactly you think such a thing would entail, but that’s actually what administrators are supposed to be there for, to administrate the education environment.
I really don’t think that you in any way understand the kind of software that I’m describing, as the software that I’m describing is based on software that currently exists and is used by literally tens of millions of people.
As @Sam_Stone mentioned, there’s Khan Academy, which I couldn’t remember the name of (sounds a bit ominous, actually), which is something more geared towards school age learning than Brilliant, and it had over 70 million users before the pandemic. Apparently it’s well regarded for boosting math performance and SAT scores.
You know what is not happening now, or ever? Higher pay and better work conditions for teachers. We can all want it, and we will get it right after we get that pony we wished for. At least offloading some of the work that we expect teachers to do onto computer learning software will make their conditions more survivable.
I’m not saying we replace teachers with computers, I’ve never said anything like that, and your objections only make sense if that is what you are assuming. They are a tool, and every objection that you have given over computers in the classroom could be said for textbooks as well.
Well, many times, they are going to get that burnt-out or asshole teacher, I’ve had a few. At least a computer screen doesn’t judge, get impatient, or straight up mock their students, as teachers sometimes do.
And if a computer lessens the workload of the teacher, then they will be less burnt out, and less inclined towards assholeness.
There’s a disconnect between your pessimism around higher pay and better work conditions and your optimism around how school management treats learning software. To take Khan academy as an example. It can help a lot of students who are struggling in math. It offers clear lessons that you can play over and over again. It paces a student based on their ability to pass tests on the understanding so far. It covers most subjects from elementary to college.
But! A teacher can’t just offload a student to Khan Academy. They now have to monitor one or more students in a second learning environment. They have to know details about how Khan Academy teaches specific topics and whether tests and other assessments have to be adapted to deal with differences. They lose some flexibility in dealing with the distractions that computers bring to the classroom. This also adds in classroom management and discipline issues with students who would rather do Khan Academy because then they get to have their computer open.
And even if, by miracle, these tools actually reduced a teacher’s workload after they had spent the extra time figuring out how to teach in multiple different ways at the same time, there is no way school management would just go “Great! Now that your workload is less we don’t have to raise your pay!” Instead they’d go “Great! Now we don’t have to raise your pay, and you can take on more responsibilities so we don’t have to hire as many teachers/aides.”