What's The Matter With Kansas, Tech And Education Edition
April 22, 2019 7:56 AM Subscribe
With school budgets stripped thanks to mismanagement at the state level and test scores dropping, Kansas schools saw an online education system by Summit Learning as a potential way forward, allowing students to learn at their own pace while not needing as much support as traditional models. But soon after implementing the Summit system - developed by Facebook engineers and backed with Facebook money - problems with both the system and the education it was providing cropped up, and soon lead to a grassroots revolt against the system, with students and parents rejecting Summit. (SLNew York Times)
I read this article yesterday and wound up agreeing with several commenters that it was weirdly short on details. I'm an instructional technologist, I teach teachers how to (among many, many other things) personalize educational pathways using technology, and I want to know how exactly this system was working (or not working as is obviously the case). I mean, the few details they give sound pretty dire. Never in a trillion bazillion years would I define "personalized education" as "everyone does their own thing on a computer and teachers sometimes pop in and ask how it's going." I mean, I have my suspicions based on priors that both I and my husband have in the industry (the poorly-chosen live weblinks standing in for actual course content especially rang the "I've seen this before from scam artists who thought ~ed tech~ would be their path to a new BMW" bells) but I would have liked some specifics.
This half-assed nonsense is common... from half-assed two-bit fail-upward people you've never heard of selling criminally overpriced vaporware to school districts. What is described in the article 1000% does not require 5 Facebook engineers and a pile of Zuckbucks to execute, so there's a bit of a disconnect there for me.
Also not talked about enough (or at all, really) in the article: the reason Kansas decided to jump on board. The state is broke, bankrupted by Brownback's tax cuts, they can't afford teachers, they can't afford schools, they can't afford to properly educate children, and there's still a terrifying number of people in the state government who feel that this is a desirable outcome.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:16 AM on April 22, 2019 [61 favorites]
This half-assed nonsense is common... from half-assed two-bit fail-upward people you've never heard of selling criminally overpriced vaporware to school districts. What is described in the article 1000% does not require 5 Facebook engineers and a pile of Zuckbucks to execute, so there's a bit of a disconnect there for me.
Also not talked about enough (or at all, really) in the article: the reason Kansas decided to jump on board. The state is broke, bankrupted by Brownback's tax cuts, they can't afford teachers, they can't afford schools, they can't afford to properly educate children, and there's still a terrifying number of people in the state government who feel that this is a desirable outcome.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:16 AM on April 22, 2019 [61 favorites]
This half-assed nonsense is common... from half-assed two-bit fail-upward people you've never heard of selling criminally overpriced vaporware to school districts. What is described in the article 1000% does not require 5 Facebook engineers and a pile of Zuckbucks to execute, so there's a bit of a disconnect there for me.
It's the "smartest guy in the room" mentality again that drove this. There is a scarily prevalent idea in Silicon Valley that their being "smart" (read: getting lucky and hitting on a success) in one area makes them universal experts. It doesn't surprise me in the least that this is what Facebook funding would result in.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:23 AM on April 22, 2019 [9 favorites]
It's the "smartest guy in the room" mentality again that drove this. There is a scarily prevalent idea in Silicon Valley that their being "smart" (read: getting lucky and hitting on a success) in one area makes them universal experts. It doesn't surprise me in the least that this is what Facebook funding would result in.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:23 AM on April 22, 2019 [9 favorites]
It's completely obvious that education can be improved, but it should also be obvious that there are plenty of promising ideas that will fail. Thus, evaluation and all that.
Summit Learning declined to be studied, then cited collaboration with Harvard researchers anyway is pretty damning:
"Summit’s founder Diane Tavenner said the organization had a number of reasons for not moving forward with the proposed study ... Tavenner says she is skeptical of the usefulness of large-scale research of the sort the Harvard team proposed ... 'I’m not willing to give up what’s best for kids...,' Tavenner told Chalkbeat last month. ...An ideal study might have randomly assigned schools or students to use the learning platform, creating two groups that could be compared. That was a non-starter for Tavenner, as it would limit schools’ access to the platform."
Well, yes, it would be awful to limit access to a program that you just know will work. [sound of forehead smashing into keyboard]
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:27 AM on April 22, 2019 [19 favorites]
Summit Learning declined to be studied, then cited collaboration with Harvard researchers anyway is pretty damning:
"Summit’s founder Diane Tavenner said the organization had a number of reasons for not moving forward with the proposed study ... Tavenner says she is skeptical of the usefulness of large-scale research of the sort the Harvard team proposed ... 'I’m not willing to give up what’s best for kids...,' Tavenner told Chalkbeat last month. ...An ideal study might have randomly assigned schools or students to use the learning platform, creating two groups that could be compared. That was a non-starter for Tavenner, as it would limit schools’ access to the platform."
Well, yes, it would be awful to limit access to a program that you just know will work. [sound of forehead smashing into keyboard]
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:27 AM on April 22, 2019 [19 favorites]
The state is broke, bankrupted by Brownback's tax cuts, they can't afford teachers, they can't afford schools, they can't afford to properly educate children, and there's still a terrifying number of people in the state government who feel that this is a desirable outcome.
I was about to say that a school system where students teach themselves on laptops sounds like it would appeal to those who don't want to pay teachers.
posted by skymt at 8:28 AM on April 22, 2019 [8 favorites]
I was about to say that a school system where students teach themselves on laptops sounds like it would appeal to those who don't want to pay teachers.
posted by skymt at 8:28 AM on April 22, 2019 [8 favorites]
What is described in the article 1000% does not require 5 Facebook engineers and a pile of Zuckbucks to execute
Yeah, I'm confused by this too. It sounds like Summit's "system" is just a bullshit death-by-Powerpoint slides-n-quizzes thing. That should barely require actual software engineering to put together; there are a half-dozen companies with turnkey (crap) "e-learning platforms" that you'd just need to load content into. And the content largely already exists as part of Common Core, and in thousands of teachers' lesson plans and other artifacts—no secret sauce there, either.
It just seems strange because it ought to be fairly easy to do at least a mediocre job, on par with shitty corporate training, and yet they somehow did... a worse job than that?
Where're the truckloads of Facebook's filthy lucre going?
I've got an idea it's to lobbyists and to take local education officials on sales junkets, and other petit corruption—it'd be interesting for someone to dig more into that side of the operation.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:29 AM on April 22, 2019 [4 favorites]
Yeah, I'm confused by this too. It sounds like Summit's "system" is just a bullshit death-by-Powerpoint slides-n-quizzes thing. That should barely require actual software engineering to put together; there are a half-dozen companies with turnkey (crap) "e-learning platforms" that you'd just need to load content into. And the content largely already exists as part of Common Core, and in thousands of teachers' lesson plans and other artifacts—no secret sauce there, either.
It just seems strange because it ought to be fairly easy to do at least a mediocre job, on par with shitty corporate training, and yet they somehow did... a worse job than that?
Where're the truckloads of Facebook's filthy lucre going?
I've got an idea it's to lobbyists and to take local education officials on sales junkets, and other petit corruption—it'd be interesting for someone to dig more into that side of the operation.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:29 AM on April 22, 2019 [4 favorites]
“We’re not Catholic,” Mrs. Koenig said. “But we just felt like it would be a lot easier to have a discussion over dinner about something that they might have heard in a religion class than Summit.”
Nearly 40 more families plan on taking their children out of public school by this summer, Mr. Dodds said.
For certain stakeholders in this debacle I think that this is mission accomplished. 'Education Reform' making learning worse and sowing mistrust in public education in general is like Norquist pushing more complex tax law to make people hate the very concept of taxation.
posted by codacorolla at 8:39 AM on April 22, 2019 [41 favorites]
Nearly 40 more families plan on taking their children out of public school by this summer, Mr. Dodds said.
For certain stakeholders in this debacle I think that this is mission accomplished. 'Education Reform' making learning worse and sowing mistrust in public education in general is like Norquist pushing more complex tax law to make people hate the very concept of taxation.
posted by codacorolla at 8:39 AM on April 22, 2019 [41 favorites]
I went through a low-tech program like this during the 5th grade when my class ended up with a long term-sub after my teacher was put on bedrest during a difficult pregnancy. It was specifically for reading comprehension. We all had an assigned reading level and each had a big accordion folder with assorted readings and matching questions that you could choose from. If you liked space or cars or cooking there were readings to match your interest.
The readings themselves weren't so bad, but the questions were laborious and often not well connected to the readings themselves, so it was frustrating to write out the answers when then questions themselves didn't quite make sense for the context. Since everyone was working on a different reading it was impossible to talk to classmates for insight. I never saw the grading rubric, but it seemed like the sub was following set answers without knowing what she was grading. After a while it was clear that longer answers got more points than shorter ones, and making the exercise even more tedious and frustrating.
I was generally the kind of student who loved to work at my own pace and was fairly self-motivated. But after a few weeks of these lessons that we not very well crafted my interest waned and so did all of my classmates'. Luckily, my teacher came back after a few months and we were given real lessons with actual books again.
posted by Alison at 8:46 AM on April 22, 2019 [8 favorites]
The readings themselves weren't so bad, but the questions were laborious and often not well connected to the readings themselves, so it was frustrating to write out the answers when then questions themselves didn't quite make sense for the context. Since everyone was working on a different reading it was impossible to talk to classmates for insight. I never saw the grading rubric, but it seemed like the sub was following set answers without knowing what she was grading. After a while it was clear that longer answers got more points than shorter ones, and making the exercise even more tedious and frustrating.
I was generally the kind of student who loved to work at my own pace and was fairly self-motivated. But after a few weeks of these lessons that we not very well crafted my interest waned and so did all of my classmates'. Luckily, my teacher came back after a few months and we were given real lessons with actual books again.
posted by Alison at 8:46 AM on April 22, 2019 [8 favorites]
I'm with codacorolla: this is mission accomplished for the people pushing this. The public school system is further undermined, a class of educated and somewhat independent adults are reduced or eliminated from the communities in question, vulnerable children are locked further into the underclass with fewer tools for revolt, and a handful of particularly lucky and self-motivated children escape to provide the small number of future engineers Silicon Valley thinks it needs. This is the system working as designed.
posted by tavella at 9:03 AM on April 22, 2019 [17 favorites]
posted by tavella at 9:03 AM on April 22, 2019 [17 favorites]
You'd need to be a pretty diligent student to spend the whole day clicking around links and taking quizzes.. and what about the students who don't have the reading comprehension to understand the content in the first place?
My gut on personalized learning is it's a great way for students to practice skills they've already learned but it's not a great way to teach skills in the first place, unless the students are really motivated to use the program which doesn't sound like it's the case here.
posted by subdee at 9:08 AM on April 22, 2019 [4 favorites]
My gut on personalized learning is it's a great way for students to practice skills they've already learned but it's not a great way to teach skills in the first place, unless the students are really motivated to use the program which doesn't sound like it's the case here.
posted by subdee at 9:08 AM on April 22, 2019 [4 favorites]
This reminds me of above the API / below the API jobs, except for education. These students are getting below-the-API education.
posted by clawsoon at 9:15 AM on April 22, 2019 [31 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 9:15 AM on April 22, 2019 [31 favorites]
Ah yes, personalized learning. It's like personalized lunch, where you just throw all the raw ingredients on the ground for all the kids and every once in a while you ask, "how's that lunch coming?"
posted by runcibleshaw at 9:17 AM on April 22, 2019 [12 favorites]
posted by runcibleshaw at 9:17 AM on April 22, 2019 [12 favorites]
"This reminds me of above the API / below the API jobs, except for education."
Daaaamn, that's prescient.
posted by Damienmce at 9:18 AM on April 22, 2019 [9 favorites]
Daaaamn, that's prescient.
posted by Damienmce at 9:18 AM on April 22, 2019 [9 favorites]
I remember in 11th grade when the teacher was out unexpectedly for a few days, but was "so behind" in her lesson plans that she decided that we should go over her notes, discuss the material between ourselves as if she was there, and record the whole thing on a tape recorder so she would know that we had done the work. (There were only six in the class, which made it a little easier.) Our attitude at the time was like, WTF? You're the teacher. You're supposed to teach us. If you don't care enough about us and the material to be here, then why should we? We're just kids. Without adults in the room, we're just going to do what we want. We made a half-assed effort, stating off the tape recorder that we really had no idea what she wanted (it was a literature class, which was subjective), and hopefully she wouldn't get mad. (She didn't, I think she realized that it wasn't a good idea.)
A few years later at church, I saw the music director say to the youth choir, "I'm too busy to warm you guys up, so warm up yourselves using the scales on the tape recorder, then I'll come in at the last minute to [yell at you for not being totally warmed up and] rush through your piece." The kids didn't care for that either, and the numbers went down.
Kids need to know that adults are in their corner. Human encouragement matters. Yes, there's a lot of tech in our lives now so perhaps they're more used to it, but they are also old enough to ask, why should I care about this thing? How does it improve my life? Why am I being yelled at?
Also, this article goes well with the recent WaPo article, Capitalism in crisis: U.S. billionaires worry about the survival of the system that made them rich. It's a good thought piece about what's going to happen next in capitalism; the Silicone Valley billionaires say "hey, wait a minute. I made a fortune in tech, but what'll happen when everything is so tech-ified that there's no one left?"
posted by Melismata at 9:26 AM on April 22, 2019 [14 favorites]
A few years later at church, I saw the music director say to the youth choir, "I'm too busy to warm you guys up, so warm up yourselves using the scales on the tape recorder, then I'll come in at the last minute to [yell at you for not being totally warmed up and] rush through your piece." The kids didn't care for that either, and the numbers went down.
Kids need to know that adults are in their corner. Human encouragement matters. Yes, there's a lot of tech in our lives now so perhaps they're more used to it, but they are also old enough to ask, why should I care about this thing? How does it improve my life? Why am I being yelled at?
Also, this article goes well with the recent WaPo article, Capitalism in crisis: U.S. billionaires worry about the survival of the system that made them rich. It's a good thought piece about what's going to happen next in capitalism; the Silicone Valley billionaires say "hey, wait a minute. I made a fortune in tech, but what'll happen when everything is so tech-ified that there's no one left?"
posted by Melismata at 9:26 AM on April 22, 2019 [14 favorites]
The best online classes I've taken have been ones with digital communities and strong teacher involvement. The worst have been go away your own pace click and learn. Obviously everyone's mileage is going to vary, but having somebody push me (be it a teacher or fellow engaged students) results in me learning and retaining more. This system truly does sound like it's specifically designed to turn kids off to education.
posted by Joey Michaels at 9:33 AM on April 22, 2019
posted by Joey Michaels at 9:33 AM on April 22, 2019
Melismata: Kids need to know that adults are in their corner. Human encouragement matters.
So much this. We are - especially as kids - highly tuned into whether an adult cares about what we are doing. We are drawn to what makes an adult proud of us. And if no adults care about anything we do, if no adults are proud of anything we do, it can have a devastating effect.
I like this quote from the API article: "Compassionate social connections don’t pierce the software layer."
posted by clawsoon at 9:36 AM on April 22, 2019 [10 favorites]
So much this. We are - especially as kids - highly tuned into whether an adult cares about what we are doing. We are drawn to what makes an adult proud of us. And if no adults care about anything we do, if no adults are proud of anything we do, it can have a devastating effect.
I like this quote from the API article: "Compassionate social connections don’t pierce the software layer."
posted by clawsoon at 9:36 AM on April 22, 2019 [10 favorites]
I went through something like this in the mid-70s for 9th grade except it was printed booklets, not a computer program. Also, it was developed by right-wing Christians, so we didn't learn about evolution. [PACE for those who are interested.]
As someone who was identified as "gifted" in early elementary school, I was thrilled to be able to learn at my own "pace". But, I ran into trouble when I tried to learn geometry. I thought the goal was to memorize proofs and was flummoxed when the test would have new proofs that I hadn't memorized. My "teacher" was someone with a master's degree in religious studies, and I don't think he knew any more geometry than I did. Fortunately, the next year I went to a regular high school with a regular teacher who started geometry class with basic logic (if A->B and B->C, then A->C). The light bulb went on and I continued on to getting a degree in electrical engineering (which required a lot of math).
I personally like learning this way, but I realize many people are not like me. In addition, you need access to true educators, not random people who may or may not know how to teach a given subject. Finally, I don't know how you handle lab classes like chemistry, biology, and physics with this type of approach.
posted by elmay at 10:16 AM on April 22, 2019 [10 favorites]
As someone who was identified as "gifted" in early elementary school, I was thrilled to be able to learn at my own "pace". But, I ran into trouble when I tried to learn geometry. I thought the goal was to memorize proofs and was flummoxed when the test would have new proofs that I hadn't memorized. My "teacher" was someone with a master's degree in religious studies, and I don't think he knew any more geometry than I did. Fortunately, the next year I went to a regular high school with a regular teacher who started geometry class with basic logic (if A->B and B->C, then A->C). The light bulb went on and I continued on to getting a degree in electrical engineering (which required a lot of math).
I personally like learning this way, but I realize many people are not like me. In addition, you need access to true educators, not random people who may or may not know how to teach a given subject. Finally, I don't know how you handle lab classes like chemistry, biology, and physics with this type of approach.
posted by elmay at 10:16 AM on April 22, 2019 [10 favorites]
I just went and looked at their website. Oh my god, you guys. It's such clear nonsense.
There's nods to science science science but a distinct lack of actual scientists, or citations. There's a white paper apparently, but it's not freely available you have to request it.
posted by soren_lorensen at 10:22 AM on April 22, 2019 [12 favorites]
Outcomes for StudentsNormally under a header such as this, one would find some evaluation data. "93% of our graduates are accepted to college" or "83% of 4th graders score proficient or above on $test". The lack of these kind of stats is already a big bzuh? (The standard stats themselves are problematic but the absence of them without any kind of comment is an even more giant howling red flag). And then the second bit is just... If you really want to turn on the marketing charm, you can say you'll prepare students to achieve some of those things (you're going to give all students what they need for physical health? Are you people for fucking real?) but who wrote this ridiculous garbage?
We strive to reach every student and ensure they leave high school with the skills, knowledge, and habits they need to succeed. And, we are dedicated to giving every student what they need to lead a fulfilled life; one with purposeful work, financial security, fulfilling personal relationships, engagement in the community, and the physical health to engage in daily life.
There's nods to science science science but a distinct lack of actual scientists, or citations. There's a white paper apparently, but it's not freely available you have to request it.
Proven Methods Backed by ScienceBlah blah blah none of this means anything. It's like saying "we're going to teach students by teaching them." Yes, congratulations.... how, exactly?
The Summit Learning instructional approach is based on more than 100 years of leading learning science, psychology, and workforce development research. A personalized approach to teaching and learning, Summit Learning is inspired by our vision to equip every student to live a fulfilled life. To reach that goal, we translated the science of learning and our own experience as educators into the intentional design of our schools to achieve student success in three outcomes: Cognitive Skills, Content Knowledge, and Habits of Success.
posted by soren_lorensen at 10:22 AM on April 22, 2019 [12 favorites]
Also, for people who wonder why there's criticism of Zuckerberg's philanthropic agenda - this article is Exhibit A for why it exists. I am willing to bet that Summit's Facebook ties opened doors for them.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:30 AM on April 22, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:30 AM on April 22, 2019 [1 favorite]
More opportunities for for-profit companies to skim tax dollars.
When I was in grade school, we had these SRS kits - read a story, answer questions. I loved it because it meant I got to just read. I don't think I learned a ton. Educating is not easy and really important. I appreciate teachers so much, but I've seen a ton of absolute crap from Uni Depts of Education. There should be more evidence-based approaches to how to teach. It really is brain science. My kid got a crappy education because lots of boys don't do well in classrooms. In the Army, they managed to teach him how to take apart and re-assemble helicopters, a task that, if you do it wrong, makes a mess.
Kansas seems pretty close to Ground Central for truly fucked up Capitalist/ Far Right/ Christian Fundamentalist everything. I'd feel pretty bad for Kansans, except they vote for all this crap.
posted by theora55 at 10:34 AM on April 22, 2019 [6 favorites]
When I was in grade school, we had these SRS kits - read a story, answer questions. I loved it because it meant I got to just read. I don't think I learned a ton. Educating is not easy and really important. I appreciate teachers so much, but I've seen a ton of absolute crap from Uni Depts of Education. There should be more evidence-based approaches to how to teach. It really is brain science. My kid got a crappy education because lots of boys don't do well in classrooms. In the Army, they managed to teach him how to take apart and re-assemble helicopters, a task that, if you do it wrong, makes a mess.
Kansas seems pretty close to Ground Central for truly fucked up Capitalist/ Far Right/ Christian Fundamentalist everything. I'd feel pretty bad for Kansans, except they vote for all this crap.
posted by theora55 at 10:34 AM on April 22, 2019 [6 favorites]
Actually, not only did Zuckerberg's philanthropy open doors, it protected Summit from scrutiny:
Summit chose not to be part of a study after paying the Harvard Center for Education Policy Research to design one in 2016. Tom Kane, the Harvard professor preparing that assessment, said he was wary of speaking out against Summit because many education projects receive funding from Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan’s philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.posted by NoxAeternum at 10:43 AM on April 22, 2019 [6 favorites]
I went to a religious primary school that used PACE for core subjects. We had study carrels instead of regular desks, and a good chunk of the school day was silent. If you needed help from the teacher, you put a little American flag in a hole at the top of your carrel and waited for them to come around. (If you needed anything else, like permission to go to the bathroom, you put up a little Christian flag.)
Working alone was a good fit for me, and I blew through a ton of material (tested 3-4 grades ahead in every subject when I started public school at the intermediate level). But there were important study/learning skills I missed out on developing, that caused problems for me later on
(At the primary level, the deficiencies in the science curriculum that elmay noted weren't really an issue.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:47 AM on April 22, 2019 [2 favorites]
Working alone was a good fit for me, and I blew through a ton of material (tested 3-4 grades ahead in every subject when I started public school at the intermediate level). But there were important study/learning skills I missed out on developing, that caused problems for me later on
(At the primary level, the deficiencies in the science curriculum that elmay noted weren't really an issue.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:47 AM on April 22, 2019 [2 favorites]
The Gates Foundation spent hundreds of millions of dollars on an attempt to improve teacher effectiveness. The project failed. How do we know? From a RAND evaluation report commissioned by ... wait for it ... the Gates Foundation. So they've got that going for them.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 10:51 AM on April 22, 2019 [14 favorites]
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 10:51 AM on April 22, 2019 [14 favorites]
The Gates Foundation story is pretty fantastic. It's super rare for the big budget philanthropies to be A. rigorous around whether their interventions work at scale (all sorts of things work at smaller scales) and B. very public about negative results.
posted by feckless at 11:07 AM on April 22, 2019 [15 favorites]
posted by feckless at 11:07 AM on April 22, 2019 [15 favorites]
B. very public about negative results
Yes, especially when the negative results are filled with "um, yeah, we could have told you that at the beginning." (The comments in the WaPo article explain it all.)
posted by Melismata at 11:31 AM on April 22, 2019
Yes, especially when the negative results are filled with "um, yeah, we could have told you that at the beginning." (The comments in the WaPo article explain it all.)
posted by Melismata at 11:31 AM on April 22, 2019
I've seen that criticism a lot, and I think it's bogus (if understandable). Good research is necessary, and sometimes ends up agreeing with common sense / majority opinion.
posted by feckless at 11:41 AM on April 22, 2019 [9 favorites]
posted by feckless at 11:41 AM on April 22, 2019 [9 favorites]
I guess just giving public education the money it needs just never occurred to them.
posted by prepmonkey at 11:58 AM on April 22, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by prepmonkey at 11:58 AM on April 22, 2019 [7 favorites]
Grew up and attended high school in Kansas back in the 80s...
Appalling what has transpired since I got the hell out of there.
And, more appalling that this is what the majority of the people actually will vote for.
There's a reason native Kansans move to Washington state. Remember, back before the Cival War when the Kansans were the good guys?
posted by Windopaene at 12:06 PM on April 22, 2019
Appalling what has transpired since I got the hell out of there.
And, more appalling that this is what the majority of the people actually will vote for.
There's a reason native Kansans move to Washington state. Remember, back before the Cival War when the Kansans were the good guys?
posted by Windopaene at 12:06 PM on April 22, 2019
Remember, back before the Cival War when the Kansans were the good guys?
Are you talking about the guys with the broadswords, or the other guys?
posted by Huffy Puffy at 12:13 PM on April 22, 2019
Are you talking about the guys with the broadswords, or the other guys?
posted by Huffy Puffy at 12:13 PM on April 22, 2019
> If you needed help from the teacher, you put a little American flag in a hole at the top of your carrel and waited for them to come around. (If you needed anything else, like permission to go to the bathroom, you put up a little Christian flag.)
Ah yes, the separation of church and state.
posted by smelendez at 12:28 PM on April 22, 2019 [9 favorites]
Ah yes, the separation of church and state.
posted by smelendez at 12:28 PM on April 22, 2019 [9 favorites]
Appalling what has transpired since I got the hell out of there.
I'm of the opinion that rendering Kansas uninhabitable and driving ordinary people out is the whole point. There are two ways to improve your unemployment rate. The hard one is to create jobs. The easy one is to eliminate people.
posted by SPrintF at 12:56 PM on April 22, 2019 [3 favorites]
I'm of the opinion that rendering Kansas uninhabitable and driving ordinary people out is the whole point. There are two ways to improve your unemployment rate. The hard one is to create jobs. The easy one is to eliminate people.
posted by SPrintF at 12:56 PM on April 22, 2019 [3 favorites]
It's the reverse of the libertarian Free State Project. Instead of controlling the state by having like-minded individuals move there, you control the state by having anyone with a brain or sense of empathy leave.
posted by benzenedream at 1:01 PM on April 22, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by benzenedream at 1:01 PM on April 22, 2019 [4 favorites]
I remember feeling nervous when Lynda.com (online training for various apps/software suites) was bought by LinkedIn a few years back, especially after reading about LinkedIn's explicit master plan to be the HR department for the entire world. Then Microsoft bought LinkedIn in 2017 and I really started to get nervous.
It seems to me that Microsoft's aim is to capture entire 'pipelines' from classroom to factory/office, and they have a decent shot at it in the US (especially as public schools continue to be drained of resources). Microsoft has advanced AR/VR tech, ubiquitous software, huge footholds in every sector of most of the world's educational and economic systems and now a network built to educate/evaluate/rank potential employees (LinkedIn/Lynda).
Of course they face competition (Chromebooks and iPads and whatever this Facebook funded thing is, for the obvious examples of user facing educational tools) but from my armchair perspective I think that right now Microsoft is best positioned here. I'm keeping an eye out for who will grab entities like EDx or Coursera as an indication of who is going to try to really go toe to toe with Microsoft in this space.
That the Gates Foundation is spending millions to explore new models of education and being open about negative results is encouraging in some ways, but I think should be understood in the context of a massive corporation conducting tax-free research using our public education system with the ultimate goal of replacing it or at least supplanting a large portion of it (specifically in the 'skills based' areas).
I freely admit that I'm a total amateur here and might be totally wrong in this evaluation, would love to hear from experts if they have different views on this, but it's something I've been worried about for quite some time.
posted by soy bean at 1:32 PM on April 22, 2019 [2 favorites]
It seems to me that Microsoft's aim is to capture entire 'pipelines' from classroom to factory/office, and they have a decent shot at it in the US (especially as public schools continue to be drained of resources). Microsoft has advanced AR/VR tech, ubiquitous software, huge footholds in every sector of most of the world's educational and economic systems and now a network built to educate/evaluate/rank potential employees (LinkedIn/Lynda).
Of course they face competition (Chromebooks and iPads and whatever this Facebook funded thing is, for the obvious examples of user facing educational tools) but from my armchair perspective I think that right now Microsoft is best positioned here. I'm keeping an eye out for who will grab entities like EDx or Coursera as an indication of who is going to try to really go toe to toe with Microsoft in this space.
That the Gates Foundation is spending millions to explore new models of education and being open about negative results is encouraging in some ways, but I think should be understood in the context of a massive corporation conducting tax-free research using our public education system with the ultimate goal of replacing it or at least supplanting a large portion of it (specifically in the 'skills based' areas).
I freely admit that I'm a total amateur here and might be totally wrong in this evaluation, would love to hear from experts if they have different views on this, but it's something I've been worried about for quite some time.
posted by soy bean at 1:32 PM on April 22, 2019 [2 favorites]
I keep going back to this and thinking that it's not some sort of new Zuckerberg-driven techno-dystopia as some people seem to see it, but just a modern form of "we bought a big old canned curriculum for the whole school and everyone sits down, shuts up, and does workbooks all day." At the extreme end, that's the worst of Accelerated Christian Education. Which, yes, can be an awful way to run a school, what with basic issues like the whole humans needing social interaction thing and the need to actually teach students to work collaboratively, but this doesn't seem awful in a unique new way to me; it seems roughly awful in the same way that broke crappy schools can be awful, but with cheap laptops.
The somewhat unusual part is students and parents firmly demanding better. It all reminds me a little of the literal riots over the Gary Plan's "platoon schools" in 1917.
posted by zachlipton at 2:00 PM on April 22, 2019 [6 favorites]
The somewhat unusual part is students and parents firmly demanding better. It all reminds me a little of the literal riots over the Gary Plan's "platoon schools" in 1917.
posted by zachlipton at 2:00 PM on April 22, 2019 [6 favorites]
Often lost in this conversation is the fact that many -- I would venture to say the vast majority of -- students just want a flesh-and-blood teacher who isn't overburdened and has a few moments to communicate with them like the human beings that they are. I have never heard my son or his classmates say that they want more time in front of a screen. I'd venture to say that every single one of them would like more positive interactions with their teacher.
posted by vverse23 at 2:10 PM on April 22, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by vverse23 at 2:10 PM on April 22, 2019 [10 favorites]
> Also not talked about enough (or at all, really) in the article: the reason Kansas decided to jump on board
Well, 'Kansas' didn't decide to jump ship. McPhearson, a small farming community, did. This is one of those towns where your football team tryouts is about trying to fit all twenty-five boys fit into pads and helmets you have on hand. These schools are small enough that it's quite hard to keep headcount ratios up while providing any kind of personalization. I can totally see why the administration would want to find some solution that lets students specialize in subjects that would otherwise have maybe 3 or 4 students. I can also imagine McPhearson administration maybe not being the greatest at picking contracts, considering that time different small Kansan farming community managed to hire a principal who listed a fake degree from a fake university on her resume.
Funding is tricky; even before the most recent Brownbackian funding crisis, school funding had been a controversial subject. Suburban communities often supplement their schools with sales and property tax levies. McPhearson, on the other hand, is a county that voted 26 percent for Perot, and 67 percent for Trump. It seems unlikely they'd vote to fund schools, even if they had a tax base from which to do so.
posted by pwnguin at 2:14 PM on April 22, 2019 [2 favorites]
Well, 'Kansas' didn't decide to jump ship. McPhearson, a small farming community, did. This is one of those towns where your football team tryouts is about trying to fit all twenty-five boys fit into pads and helmets you have on hand. These schools are small enough that it's quite hard to keep headcount ratios up while providing any kind of personalization. I can totally see why the administration would want to find some solution that lets students specialize in subjects that would otherwise have maybe 3 or 4 students. I can also imagine McPhearson administration maybe not being the greatest at picking contracts, considering that time different small Kansan farming community managed to hire a principal who listed a fake degree from a fake university on her resume.
Funding is tricky; even before the most recent Brownbackian funding crisis, school funding had been a controversial subject. Suburban communities often supplement their schools with sales and property tax levies. McPhearson, on the other hand, is a county that voted 26 percent for Perot, and 67 percent for Trump. It seems unlikely they'd vote to fund schools, even if they had a tax base from which to do so.
posted by pwnguin at 2:14 PM on April 22, 2019 [2 favorites]
This is basically factory farming with students and watered down stale information in place of animals and noisome metered feed.
posted by jamjam at 4:12 PM on April 22, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by jamjam at 4:12 PM on April 22, 2019 [3 favorites]
They're using this platform in the largest middle school in my city (Providence, RI, a district with extremely high child poverty rates and whose public school system is nearly a third English language learners, a need which the district is woefully under resourced to meet). Zuckerburg actually came to tour the school last spring.
posted by geegollygosh at 5:06 PM on April 22, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by geegollygosh at 5:06 PM on April 22, 2019 [1 favorite]
→ we had these SRS kits - read a story, answer questions
Weren't they SRA? I loved 'em, either way.
If my nephew is to be believed, much of the effort in a Chromebook-based classroom from the students goes into playing networked games without being caught.
posted by scruss at 5:54 PM on April 22, 2019 [2 favorites]
Weren't they SRA? I loved 'em, either way.
If my nephew is to be believed, much of the effort in a Chromebook-based classroom from the students goes into playing networked games without being caught.
posted by scruss at 5:54 PM on April 22, 2019 [2 favorites]
If my nephew is to be believed, much of the effort in a Chromebook-based classroom from the students goes into playing networked games without being caught.
As a dad who helped out last year in the classroom with reading, I can attest that this is 100% true. Games and YouTube videos. I was incensed that IT didn't have a better content filtering system in place.
posted by vverse23 at 7:54 PM on April 22, 2019 [2 favorites]
As a dad who helped out last year in the classroom with reading, I can attest that this is 100% true. Games and YouTube videos. I was incensed that IT didn't have a better content filtering system in place.
posted by vverse23 at 7:54 PM on April 22, 2019 [2 favorites]
Trying to filter that stuff is like whack a mole. You can't just block YouTube because a lot of educational content that teachers want to use is on YouTube. There's 18 trillion games out there and if you blacklist one, there's bazillions more. There's no thing about a game website that makes an automated filter be able to distinguish it from, say, a virtual chemistry lab.
I used to do research in a one-to-one laptop school and our research required that students be able to access our website (hosted at a major local university) and they just randomly... couldn't. Ports were closed that we needed to be open in order for the students to interact with our research instrument. And yet every time I was in those classrooms, kids were finding ways to play games.
What's needed is a way for teachers to monitor all screens from their own device. It's either that or spend a lot of time teaching kids how to deal with the distractions on the internet, digital literacy, accountability, metacognition, positive habits of mind, etc etc etc.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:13 PM on April 22, 2019 [7 favorites]
I used to do research in a one-to-one laptop school and our research required that students be able to access our website (hosted at a major local university) and they just randomly... couldn't. Ports were closed that we needed to be open in order for the students to interact with our research instrument. And yet every time I was in those classrooms, kids were finding ways to play games.
What's needed is a way for teachers to monitor all screens from their own device. It's either that or spend a lot of time teaching kids how to deal with the distractions on the internet, digital literacy, accountability, metacognition, positive habits of mind, etc etc etc.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:13 PM on April 22, 2019 [7 favorites]
To correct some geography in TFA, McPherson and Wellington are not "nearby" each other. They are 90 miles (145 km) apart, which is 1 hour, 32 minutes in driving time. McPherson could be said to be in "central Kansas," but Wellington isn't far from the Oklahoma state line. Map
The protests at the schools have been interesting to watch. And while I think there's tremendous room for improvement in how schools prepare the next generation (especially here in recovering Brownbackistan), my gut tells me Zuckerberg and Chan and Summit aren't at the forefront of the next revolution.
Also, not all Kansans. Too damn many, but not all.
posted by bryon at 9:52 PM on April 22, 2019
The protests at the schools have been interesting to watch. And while I think there's tremendous room for improvement in how schools prepare the next generation (especially here in recovering Brownbackistan), my gut tells me Zuckerberg and Chan and Summit aren't at the forefront of the next revolution.
Also, not all Kansans. Too damn many, but not all.
posted by bryon at 9:52 PM on April 22, 2019
"Pepsi?"
"Partial credit!"
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:58 PM on April 22, 2019 [1 favorite]
"Partial credit!"
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:58 PM on April 22, 2019 [1 favorite]
It's the "smartest guy in the room" mentality again that drove this. There is a scarily prevalent idea in Silicon Valley that their being "smart" (read: getting lucky and hitting on a success) in one area makes them universal experts. It doesn't surprise me in the least that this is what Facebook funding would result in.
The Silicon Valley mentality comes about because software engineering is mostly easy. I don't mean it's easy for the people doing it - clever, driven people will systematically push the boundaries of whatever they're doing until they reach the limits of their individual and group abilities - I mean that the input/output curve is a nice yummy upwards one, and quite a steep one. Within the possible space of software problems it is often possible for small numbers of people with limited resources apart from their own time and a few computers to make nearly monotonic progress. They may often develop a working technical product that nobody wants, but it is rarely the case in software (as it often is in drug development for instance) that tens of thousands of cumulative years of highly skilled work is just thrown in the garbage as fundamentally not working.
The shape of that curve creates a constant dopamine rush, which is why people who love developing software *really* love developing software, and it also creates a sense of omnipotence that incorrectly extends to other areas which don't have the same input/output curve. It's also true that many people in SV are:
a) non-neurotypical in ways that make them overly optimistic of the success of self-paced learnings (I don't mean NNT in the sense that they have anything diagnosable, just on the edges of a few distributions)
b) Mis-remembering their own childhoods the way everyone does. Looking back on my school-days I'm sometimes tempted to think that if I'd just got to do what I wanted, I would have been teaching myself Homeric Greek. Despite the fact that I just spent a four day weekend laying in my garden re-reading The Secret History. Nothing wrong with that, but had I been allowed to do what I wanted that is definitely also what I would have done when I was 14.
Yes, especially when the negative results are filled with "um, yeah, we could have told you that at the beginning." (The comments in the WaPo article explain it all.)
Fundamentally, I think it is a good thing that people are trying to crack Bloom's "two sigma problem" including using technology. The 2s problem is this: Bloom showed that 1-1 tuition using mastery based learning shifted the average achievement so that 90% of the 1-1 group achieved at the level achieved by 20% of the control. The average was shifted by two standard deviations. Obviously this presents a problem: No society can afford 1-1 tuition for everyone by people who are themselves experts1 but how close can we get to that result doing other things that may themselves be expensive but less so? A lot of people hoped that using electronic systems together with teachers could get us a lot of the way there. I still hope that it might be possible but as far as I can see all the attempts to date to actually do this have been pathetic.
(1) If you assume a flat demographic structure with a working age from 20 to 70, and that you need the constant 1-1 education for 10 years per kid you'd be putting 20% of your working age population into teaching, and they'd probably have to be at least in the top 50% of that population themselves in terms of educational achievement themselves. For comparison, 1.4% of the UK working population are teachers. This is metafilter, so we obviously all love education, but a fourteenfold increase in the share of the working pop. in teaching is something we can probably agree is a bit much.
posted by atrazine at 4:27 AM on April 23, 2019 [9 favorites]
The Silicon Valley mentality comes about because software engineering is mostly easy. I don't mean it's easy for the people doing it - clever, driven people will systematically push the boundaries of whatever they're doing until they reach the limits of their individual and group abilities - I mean that the input/output curve is a nice yummy upwards one, and quite a steep one. Within the possible space of software problems it is often possible for small numbers of people with limited resources apart from their own time and a few computers to make nearly monotonic progress. They may often develop a working technical product that nobody wants, but it is rarely the case in software (as it often is in drug development for instance) that tens of thousands of cumulative years of highly skilled work is just thrown in the garbage as fundamentally not working.
The shape of that curve creates a constant dopamine rush, which is why people who love developing software *really* love developing software, and it also creates a sense of omnipotence that incorrectly extends to other areas which don't have the same input/output curve. It's also true that many people in SV are:
a) non-neurotypical in ways that make them overly optimistic of the success of self-paced learnings (I don't mean NNT in the sense that they have anything diagnosable, just on the edges of a few distributions)
b) Mis-remembering their own childhoods the way everyone does. Looking back on my school-days I'm sometimes tempted to think that if I'd just got to do what I wanted, I would have been teaching myself Homeric Greek. Despite the fact that I just spent a four day weekend laying in my garden re-reading The Secret History. Nothing wrong with that, but had I been allowed to do what I wanted that is definitely also what I would have done when I was 14.
Yes, especially when the negative results are filled with "um, yeah, we could have told you that at the beginning." (The comments in the WaPo article explain it all.)
Fundamentally, I think it is a good thing that people are trying to crack Bloom's "two sigma problem" including using technology. The 2s problem is this: Bloom showed that 1-1 tuition using mastery based learning shifted the average achievement so that 90% of the 1-1 group achieved at the level achieved by 20% of the control. The average was shifted by two standard deviations. Obviously this presents a problem: No society can afford 1-1 tuition for everyone by people who are themselves experts1 but how close can we get to that result doing other things that may themselves be expensive but less so? A lot of people hoped that using electronic systems together with teachers could get us a lot of the way there. I still hope that it might be possible but as far as I can see all the attempts to date to actually do this have been pathetic.
(1) If you assume a flat demographic structure with a working age from 20 to 70, and that you need the constant 1-1 education for 10 years per kid you'd be putting 20% of your working age population into teaching, and they'd probably have to be at least in the top 50% of that population themselves in terms of educational achievement themselves. For comparison, 1.4% of the UK working population are teachers. This is metafilter, so we obviously all love education, but a fourteenfold increase in the share of the working pop. in teaching is something we can probably agree is a bit much.
posted by atrazine at 4:27 AM on April 23, 2019 [9 favorites]
If you needed anything else, like permission to go to the bathroom, you put up a little Christian flag
Render unto Ceasar what is pee-pee....Hang on, that's not it.
Private companies suck at education platforms. In my town, the first year of the program for laptops, Pearson provided the content. It turned out that the contract called for (IIRC) only 40% of the final stuff -- articles, quizzes, videos, whatever -- to be ready right away, and God help the child or teacher who tried to sail past the edge of the map.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:34 PM on April 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
Render unto Ceasar what is pee-pee....Hang on, that's not it.
Private companies suck at education platforms. In my town, the first year of the program for laptops, Pearson provided the content. It turned out that the contract called for (IIRC) only 40% of the final stuff -- articles, quizzes, videos, whatever -- to be ready right away, and God help the child or teacher who tried to sail past the edge of the map.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:34 PM on April 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
It's frustrating that the Gates Foundation tried to demonstrate the efficacy of stuff we mostly expected doesn't work, but the Gates Foundation's metric-driven approach to philanthropy at least proved that charter schools were a dead end, no matter how you do it. It's not surprising that the Gates Foundation would commission an independent study to determine the effectiveness of their intervention; it's part of their process (and should be part of every NGO's process, and the fact that it isn't is a huge waste of aid money).
A cudgel we can use to drive off everyone else who proposes charter schools as the solution to education in America is an okay consolation prize.
posted by Merus at 5:19 PM on April 23, 2019 [1 favorite]
A cudgel we can use to drive off everyone else who proposes charter schools as the solution to education in America is an okay consolation prize.
posted by Merus at 5:19 PM on April 23, 2019 [1 favorite]
I still hope that it might be possible but as far as I can see all the attempts to date to actually do this have been pathetic.
This is the research I used to be involved in. It's haaaaaaaard. We were trying to take a single tiny, teeny, but kinda fundamental science process skill and create an intelligent tutoring system that could supplement in person teaching and allow teachers to more quickly move beyond the concept into the application (which is much more fun for your average 5th grader). We worked on this for 6 years. Just this one thing. Now, as academic cognitive science researchers we were also focused on the pure theory, outside of just the "does this thing work?" of it, but still. Six years.
Every time a kid is wrong, they're wrong in a new and different way. Two kids who 100% do not get the concept sitting right next to each other do not get it for completely different reasons. It's incredibly difficult to predict these misconceptions. Intelligent tutoring systems can do okay for certain quantitative algorithm-heavy topics where there's a constrained number of ways to be wrong, but trying to do that same sort of thing for, like, anything else? You have to be able to predict dozens of different misconceptions leading to error, and then be able to accurately predict what remediation will work on what misconception. Human tutors do this by questioning ("Why did you say X and not Y? Explain your thinking here. Can you describe another situation in which Z would be true? What if I replaced this with that, would you still give the same answer? Why?"). Trying to program a computer to do that and then to select remediations based off the student responses? Real real hard.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:00 PM on April 23, 2019 [12 favorites]
This is the research I used to be involved in. It's haaaaaaaard. We were trying to take a single tiny, teeny, but kinda fundamental science process skill and create an intelligent tutoring system that could supplement in person teaching and allow teachers to more quickly move beyond the concept into the application (which is much more fun for your average 5th grader). We worked on this for 6 years. Just this one thing. Now, as academic cognitive science researchers we were also focused on the pure theory, outside of just the "does this thing work?" of it, but still. Six years.
Every time a kid is wrong, they're wrong in a new and different way. Two kids who 100% do not get the concept sitting right next to each other do not get it for completely different reasons. It's incredibly difficult to predict these misconceptions. Intelligent tutoring systems can do okay for certain quantitative algorithm-heavy topics where there's a constrained number of ways to be wrong, but trying to do that same sort of thing for, like, anything else? You have to be able to predict dozens of different misconceptions leading to error, and then be able to accurately predict what remediation will work on what misconception. Human tutors do this by questioning ("Why did you say X and not Y? Explain your thinking here. Can you describe another situation in which Z would be true? What if I replaced this with that, would you still give the same answer? Why?"). Trying to program a computer to do that and then to select remediations based off the student responses? Real real hard.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:00 PM on April 23, 2019 [12 favorites]
soren_lorensen: Every time a kid is wrong, they're wrong in a new and different way. Two kids who 100% do not get the concept sitting right next to each other do not get it for completely different reasons. It's incredibly difficult to predict these misconceptions.
This is a great point. How do you get AI to teach a student when the AI is dumber than the student and has no theory of mind?
posted by clawsoon at 5:18 AM on April 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
This is a great point. How do you get AI to teach a student when the AI is dumber than the student and has no theory of mind?
posted by clawsoon at 5:18 AM on April 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
Yeah, it's really hard. I worked on something that did this for arithmetic and I think we got it quite well figured out for multi-digit multiplication and division, essentially you can break those problems down into their steps quite easily with an algorithm and then "break" each step in a series of ways. The final answer given by the learner will then indicate if they've forgotten to carry a digit etc. Especially over many problems you can get decent results spotting if learners have habitual error types that you can target.
The problem is that it's not really an approach that is generalisable to anything where learners aren't carrying out an algorithm without having basically an artificial general intelligence.
posted by atrazine at 7:25 AM on April 24, 2019
The problem is that it's not really an approach that is generalisable to anything where learners aren't carrying out an algorithm without having basically an artificial general intelligence.
posted by atrazine at 7:25 AM on April 24, 2019
For the record: "Correction: April 25, 2019: An earlier version of this article mistakenly linked a recurrence of Megan Jackson’s epileptic seizures to her middle school’s using the Summit Learning platform. Although Megan’s screen time in school has increased as a result of the school using some of the same web-based tools used by Summit, the school is not on the Summit platform. The error was repeated in a picture caption." If this is the only error in the article, it doesn't really change the overall substance.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 1:07 PM on April 26, 2019
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 1:07 PM on April 26, 2019
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It's the same reason why YouTube videos haven't replaced classes. Some people learn best when watching something at their own pace in a self-directed way, and others need a real live person in the room with them to spot them.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:02 AM on April 22, 2019 [14 favorites]