Classrooms, Customized by Computer.

August 20, 2010 1:52 PM

A Warm Hug from a Cold Algorithm: Ta-Nehisi Coates checks out an inner-city school where every student takes a diagnostic test daily, and then is assigned individual work and tutelage based on a computer's nightly re-assessment.
posted by darth_tedious (29 comments total)

While Mr. Coates is a splendid author, this whole article is 40-50% autobiographical, and has damn near nothing to do with the school, the program, or its results.
posted by The Giant Squid at 2:03 PM on August 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

I for one enjoyed the autobiographical framing, but I read Coates often and consider myself a fan so maybe I am biased. I find the program itself fascinating.
posted by joe lisboa at 2:07 PM on August 20, 2010

Going to this school would be my personal hell. I don't believe in tests to begin with. DAILY fucking tests? No thanks.
posted by grumblebee at 2:14 PM on August 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

It's the Atlantic, not the New York Times.
posted by muddgirl at 2:17 PM on August 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

We cannot standardize education until we are willing to standardize the student.
posted by Electrius at 2:17 PM on August 20, 2010 [3 favorites]

I, on the other hand would love it. If I took some daily fucking tests, maybe someone would fucking believe me that I know the fucking material without doing my fucking homework.

Nope, not bitter. Not bitter at all.
posted by Madamina at 2:32 PM on August 20, 2010 [12 favorites]

> this whole article is 40-50% autobiographical, and has damn near nothing to do with the school, the program, or its results

Good point.

Here's a NYTimes article and podcast that digs in deeper.
posted by darth_tedious at 2:34 PM on August 20, 2010

Agree with Madamina... I refused to do all the crappy busy-work in school, made A's on all the tests, and the teachers still flunked me. WTF? I think they were secretly jealous... or they thought I was cheating. Bah. Besides, every day is a test... of life. Oh, so yeah, I'm deep...
posted by shoppingforsanity at 2:49 PM on August 20, 2010

and I love the concept of this school - hoping I can find something like this for my son when he's ready to enter the ranks...
posted by shoppingforsanity at 2:52 PM on August 20, 2010

Little did we know that we had all secretly begun living in a Ray Bradbury short story.
posted by Azazel Fel at 3:00 PM on August 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

I really don't think that this sort of software is a good idea. My third-grade teacher had something like this that she and her husband built. It was a cruel, remorseless, and merciless piece of software (much like the developers themselves, but that's another story). Apparently they're still working on it.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 3:18 PM on August 20, 2010

I think a lot of kids who learned faster than school progressed fantasized about somehow streamlining the process. I made a serious attempt to talk my parents into letting me quit school and learn in the local library instead, dropping by the schoolhouse a few times a year to ace the tests and prove that I wasn't just slacking off. They argued that I would be missing out on important socialization and so on. Little did they know that I would spend most of my adult life on the internet!
posted by No-sword at 3:25 PM on August 20, 2010 [4 favorites]

I spent a very long time as a tutor. I can say this: once a quarter reports to parents, or even quarter and mid-quarter reports, are woefully inadequate, especially for students who have compliance problems. Those students will squirrel away large wads of homework, in varying stages of completeness, until it becomes less a body of unfinished work and more something to nest in. Students lose worksheets, they half-finish assignments. Some do the assignment and just fail to turn it in.

I cannot tell you how many times I have seen this happen, whole quarters and semesters and years destroyed and students held back because of it. Children with avoidant behaviors absolutely wither on the vine due to this one thing. I had kids who knew the material, could whip out the math I threw at them, could do their stoichiometry well, but when it came to that cycle of "assignment, work, handoff," they failed.

We certainly hope solid behaviors are present in our college freshmen, but our highschoolers? Our sixth graders? Not so much. Yes, the fourteen year old has nobody but himself to blame, typically, for not handing in something he's already done, but parents are there to reinforce good behavior, not allow kids to fall by the wayside; they cannot stand guard if they cannot see the wayside itself.

If the feedback loop between teachers and parents is not tight, students can fall behind without parents knowing. Dad wasn't in class that period, he has no idea that an essay was just assigned. Mom didn't see the writing on the chalkboard: "read chapters three and four." Neither of them saw the worksheet get crammed behind half an inch of notes, forgotten.

I think the automated approach would work much less well with subjects that do not have definitive, clear answers that can be easily computed. So, math it is, at least for measuring comprehension. Maybe vocabulary. Higher math, say trig, would be harder — so many paths to take — but at the fraction level, where so very many kids lose it and never quite get their groove back, this would be handy.

I tried any number of strategies to build that hoped-for feedback loop. Self-addressed, envelopes for the teachers with nothing more complex than checking boxes like "Little Ricky has a test next week" and "Little Tina is missing some homework," stamped at my own expense. Arranging for parents to call teachers, one teacher a day. Elaborate systems of folders where homework moved down the assembly line from assigned all the way to "ready to hand in," (as opposed to a big pocket with H I S T O R Y scrawled upon it). They ultimately broke down because either parents or teachers were "just too busy" to manage these things. I was mostly there to patch students up.

More schools are buying systems that allow parents to see that assignments are missing, that tests are coming, and so forth. That is far more precious than evaluation, to me. Teacher compliance with these systems is still an issue, but at least the tool is present. Making the gradebook itself visible online, along with a syllabus, that's so very valuable.

Supplementary material? Perhaps. Software does have a place in schools, but not as a way to replace teachers.
posted by adipocere at 3:27 PM on August 20, 2010 [9 favorites]

Going to this school would be my personal hell. I don't believe in tests to begin with. DAILY fucking tests? No thanks.

Really depends on the personality, I would have done way better under a system like this. Avoidant personality like adipocere mentioned.

The automation can save time on figuring out what the class and individual students need to focus on, and let parents know where to focus their energies since they are the only ones with any real one on one time.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 3:50 PM on August 20, 2010

I mean I can understand people who hate tests, but why wait till the test is over and you are supposed to be on new material to find out no one had any idea what you were talking about the past week? Homework and quizzes have been performing that function, so taking it daily isn't much of a change.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 3:53 PM on August 20, 2010

I work for the company referenced in this article, and it makes me feel a bit better to hear a person who's not a school administrator and whose opinion I respect saying nice things about the stuff we're doing. I worry sometimes too about the emphasis on testing in the latest wave of educational philosophy, but I feel like if we're using testing to provide feedback and guide instruction instead of making passing the test the point of education, we might be on the right track.
posted by teferi at 3:53 PM on August 20, 2010 [4 favorites]

Perhaps most important, he took a rudimentary stab at personalizing education by grouping his teachers into teams assigned to the same students, enabling them to compare notes and design specific strategies for kids who were faltering.

This throwaway comment from TOP is, I think, much closer to the nail (than the rather vaguely described techno-teaching revolution that's the main point) on what's most needed to promote best achievement for all in education - namely effective management of the staffroom before the classroom is even considered.

More power to this principal who appears to realise that the role of individual classroom teacher as sole and final arbiter of a pupil's progress (or discreet element thereof) is a dinosaur ripe for either extinction or evolution . . .
posted by protorp at 5:11 PM on August 20, 2010

I think that daily tests wouldn't feel like tests. Part of the reason tests seem so scary is because usually they're fairly high-stakes.
posted by madcaptenor at 5:19 PM on August 20, 2010 [2 favorites]

I missed this episode of Star Trek.
posted by fuq at 5:32 PM on August 20, 2010

I don't believe in tests to begin with.

My BFA from RISD did not entail taking a single test, other than a one page essay about a projected slide of a painting in an Art History class.
posted by StickyCarpet at 6:22 PM on August 20, 2010

In college I had a TA that taught me Calc 2 who did away with homework, but we had a 1-question quiz everyday (in addition to the midterm and final). He would always provide a suggested list of problems to do if people wanted practice or needed the homework. I never studied in that class, and got an A. It was one of my favorite classes. In fact I sought him out for Calc 3 the following semester and did the same thing.

He knew that the busy work didn't matter... whether we understood the concepts mattered. Some people didn't need 2 hours of homework a night to get the material. I was one of the lucky ones who didn't need to study. Other students who cared about their grade but who couldn't get away with doing no homework did some of the suggested problems. People quickly figured out how much they needed to do to understand the topics covered.

That teaching style melded so well with where I was as a student at the time... it's now over a dozen years later and I haven't forgotten it, and probably never will.
posted by hambone at 8:44 PM on August 20, 2010 [3 favorites]

Some districts are paying a lot of attention to this program and considering using it.

I'm a special education teacher, and the superintendent of schools for my district is sending me and a few other teachers to go check it out.

Maybe it'll end up becoming the next hardcore best teaching practice hoohah; it'll get played up for 5 years then everyone will dismiss it as a failure. (Remember phonics reading instruction only?)

I'd be happy if my classroom just had internet access with one working computer and some books. Pencils, too.
posted by dzaz at 4:53 AM on August 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Going to this school would be my personal hell. I don't believe in tests to begin with. DAILY fucking tests? No thanks.

I was too glib. I didn't mean I'd prefer to go to a school with tons of homework and no tests. I am against tests AND homework. You know that a school is failing when they have kids for EIGHT HOURS a day and still think that's not enough time to teach them. They poor kids are expected to do more schoolwork when they get home.
posted by grumblebee at 8:11 AM on August 21, 2010

It begins from the culture -- change it to something where more kids understand the power of education, the pleasures of a inquisitive streak, etc. and the rest follows.
posted by skepticallypleased at 8:47 AM on August 21, 2010

He knew that the busy work didn't matter... whether we understood the concepts mattered. Some people didn't need 2 hours of homework a night to get the material.

The problem is that there are a lot of kids who think they'll be smart enough to ace the test without doing any homework, or who really mean to do some non-required practice problems, but somehow things don't work out according to those plans. And I say that as someone who really did find homework to be busywork most of the time. I know that I wouldn't have learned the material if none of the homework was required, not because I wasn't smart enough but because I didn't have the willpower or interest to make myself sit down and study if there wasn't an imminent reason to do it. I did awesome at things I could cram for the night before, but if your grade depends on a midterm and a final (like many college courses that we're trying to prepare students for), you can't learn all that material in one evening.

I kind of think teachers should assign a weekly, open-book, take-home quiz. One that you're supposed to learn from while you work on it. That would make it feel more like a favor (quizzes are open book??? Sweet!) instead of a curse, even though it's just homework by another name.
posted by vytae at 11:06 AM on August 21, 2010

If this can customize the educational program for each kid, why is that a problem? What's the value in holding smart kids back, or being unintelligible to kids who have fallen behind.

I've always thought that education will become more computerized and customized to the student, so I see this kind of thing as being good.

It seems like 90% of people are just opposed to having kids be educated in a way that is different from how they learned. I suppose it's an instinctive thing, an inbuilt way of preserving culture. But it's really annoying, and really holds back education.

I don't believe in tests to begin with. DAILY fucking tests? No thanks.

It's school. It's not something you necessarily need to like. If I had my way I never would have gone and played Nintendo all day instead.
posted by delmoi at 8:56 PM on August 21, 2010

It's school. It's not something you necessarily need to like. If I had my way I never would have gone and played Nintendo all day instead.

We will probably never agree about this, but learning should be fun. Learning IS fun when we're small children. When we're babies, learning is FASCINATING. Then something kills this fascination for many people. I would argue that "something" is school -- traditional school (with homework, tests and requirements) as it exists in America and many other countries.

I would also argue that school needn't kill the joy of learning (and that the fact that it does so, for so many people, is extremely damaging to mental development). It sickens me when people tread school as a Force of Nature: "Whatcha gonna do. That's just the way it is."

I understand (and sympathize) with this feeling, because it's how most of us experience school. It's certainly IS something that "just happens" to us. Everyone we know goes through it; Our parents went through it; our children went through it. It seems like a natural part of life, like teething and going through puberty. But it's worth remembering that this is an illusion. Whether you agree with me or not that school sucks, it's not natural -- it's a human construction.

When a ritual becomes this embedded in culture, it stops being open to debate for most people. Good or bad, it becomes a rite of passage. And questioning school is dangerous. If there's something fucked up in our upbringing -- in years and years and years of it -- that means, on some level, our parents abused us (generally unwittingly), and who wants to think of their parents that way? It means we're abusing our kids. And who wants to think of ourselves that way? I probably damage my own point by even suggesting that or using the words abuse. But fuck it. Stunting someone's mental development; making them spend twelve years of their life in a crappy environment ... I don't know what else to call it.

Well, I could call it "just school" or "that's how it is" or "I went through it all I turned out okay." All the platitudes that usually tumble out...

When something is embedded in our culture, it also tends to make us very unimaginative -- at least when it comes to that thing. You can't change a rock or a tree. They are the way they are. Same with school, right? Institutions are institutions because they are institutions. The Post Office may be fucked up -- but it's the Post Office!

Please argue with me and tell me what school is fine (or the best we can expect it to be) and that it does little damage to people. Or that it's great and it helps people. But BEFORE you do that, please read everything you can about education (including the hundred-years-worth of literature on alternatives to what we do now), as I've tried to do over the last 30 years. And please spend 20 years in the classroom as an active thinking, as I have done. During that 20 years, make sure you question the institutional defaults EVERY DAY. Don't (necessarily) reject them; QUESTION them. Isn't that what you're teaching your students to do -- to question?

Read Vivian Paley's books; read "How Children Fail." Read about Summerhill in England. Read reports of adults who went through non-traditional schools and see how they fared in life and how they look back on their school experiences. Do all that, and then, using logic, reject those books and experiences. I'll be waiting and I'm open to be convinced.
posted by grumblebee at 10:32 AM on August 22, 2010

Here's where this idea lost me completely:

Next year, in the three pilot schools, the after-school program will be expanded to replace the current math curricula.

The kids are, right now, getting an extra one to two hours of math instruction. Maybe this program works really well, maybe it's only as good as regular instruction would be. The bottom line is that they're getting two extra hours.

What does the word "expand" mean, here? Does it mean that they're going to do the after school, and replace the current math curriculum with School of One? Or does it mean that they're going to do this during the school day, and not have the after-school? I bet you I know which one, because I know which one will cost less.

Grumblebee: I've been reading literature on science education for the past three years, studying the history of ideas and different kinds of curriculum. So, granted, not the last thirty, but I'm getting into it. I'm not quite sure what exactly it is you're concerned with, but I think I have an idea about what would ameliorate it: Smaller class sizes. Better paid teachers. We can get as clever as we want with curriculum and instruction tools, but nothing is going to solve these problems the way that money, time, and space will.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 10:31 PM on September 5, 2010

But BEFORE you do that, please read everything you can about education (including the hundred-years-worth of literature on alternatives to what we do now), as I've tried to do over the last 30 years. And please spend 20 years in the classroom as an active thinking, as I have done. During that 20 years, make sure you question the institutional defaults EVERY DAY. Don't (necessarily) reject them; QUESTION them.

I don't think that this thread is going to be open for 20 years, so you seem to have crowned yourself undisputed king of not disputing.

But let me point out some problems with your critique anyway. There's no complaint about school as such. You can't get any response because (other than requiring a 20-year waiting period) the only distinction between traditional and non-traditional school in your critique is that traditional is bad and non-traditional is good. "Traditional school" abuses kids by stunting their mental development and non-traditional school...doesn't. You throw in a complaint about homework, but that doesn't seem to be a distinguishing feature of traditional school because many non-traditional schools incorporate homework. So we're left with "Bad school is bad; good school is good."

That doesn't work because there are lot of schools that we plausibly view as non-traditional that are abusive and stunting of mental growth -- creationist homeschools are an easy example, but if you want to fill out the category more, I would add the "career path" charter schools insofar as they fail to provide anything beyond valuable (but insufficient) vocational-technical education. It's not all flowers and Montessori, after all.

Similarly, there is great diversity among schools we might plausibly imagine as "traditional." The scripted teaching programs Johnathan Kozol decries would seem to fit, but they are a world away from, say, the International Baccalaureate program offered at many (wealthy) public schools. I am told that there's even a mandatory epistemology course in IB. My public, non-magnet high school didn't have IB, but I did get to publish a newspaper, write a short play, sculpt, act, and work on a stage crew.

The upshot of all of this is that whatever it is you mean by traditional school, you must have in mind some more particular flaws that would allow us to separate bad alternative schools from good ones, and bad traditional schools from good ones. And if traditional school (whatever they are) are necessarily bad, then we'd know what essential aspect of the category makes them so.

But we don't know any of that, so no one can respond, at all. I predict that once you start making a critique, though, it will come to a head that the problem with U.S. public education has much less to do with stultifying methods/cultures/curricula and more to do with providing a lot of resources for some children and very little for others.
posted by Marty Marx at 11:36 PM on September 5, 2010