I just read that Indianapolis has okayed the opening of 19 new charter schools based on the concept of “blended learning.” The schools will lean heavily on technology to reduce the teaching staff and save money while promising higher test scores.
Embedded in this approach is the belief that computers do a better job of teaching basic skills than live teachers. Or that vast sums of money can be saved by dividing instruction between computers and teachers.
The article includes claims about test score gains that resulted from blended learning. Was there more or better test prep? Do the students have the knowledge and skills to think critically, to read thoughtfully, or just to pick the right bubble? It will take a while longer before we know.
But in the meanwhile, there was a major study of technology in education by the federal government that has been almost completely ignored. The bottom line: There is no evidence for blended learning as a superior approach to education. Maybe there will be some day, but there in none right now.
My old-fashioned brain says that what matters most in a classroom is a teacher who engages in a deeply human way with students: to encourage them, enlighten them, inspire them, teach them. There is a place in every classroom for technology. I use it every day. And certainly students can use their computers to do research and writing and explore.
But in the current environment of high-stakes testing, computers are geared to passing the tests.
And that’s not teaching. That’s testing. The end of education is not to pass tests, not even to get higher scores.
The goal of education is to lead us out from our ignorance; to develop our humanity; to give us the tools to take control of our life.
For that, a teacher is still the best of all technologies.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Oh, that belief in technology!
In the 1950s and early 1960s, there was a strong movement towards ‘programmed instruction’ and the use of ‘teaching machines.’ By the end of the 1960s, however, almost everyone involved in the movement had turned back to the classroom, trying to improve the teaching and learning there by use of all tools, including ‘teaching machines,’ yes, but recognizing that the prime force (and prime motivator) in effective learning is the teacher and student/teacher interaction. They had concluded just what you have, just what you write of above… and that was almost fifty years ago.
Why do we so consistently insist on refusing to learn from experience?
As we head blindly towards blended learning, a step that will inevitably lead to less and less time students interact as a group being instructed by a “real” teacher, we forget or we just don’t realize that success in the world is much more than a test score. Think about the many people we have all met who seemed to be plenty smart enough, but whose people skills were abysmal. These are the people who think they know everything, who refuse to take direction, who undercut others, who criticize the organization, who find every excuse to avoid responsibilities, etc….The list is endless. These people rarely last very long. In the article below, it is made clear that the kinds of experiences students receive through participation in performing arts prepares them for all kinds of interactions and responsibilities they will most certainly face once they get beyond high school.
http://www.nyspta.org/publications/keynote_parkinson_convention_2012.cfm
I will never forget listening to one of my students who continued on with music in high school. She complained that she didn’t like her section leader, who was a senior with years of high school band experience. I didn’t like hearing this, but realized that one of the best experiences she could have would be to learn how to take direction and how to cooperate as a member of a team.
Without these skills, we will be sending our students out into the world woefully unprepared. As computers take over more and more of a child’s education, and with the arts and sports cut or eliminated, we are crafting an education system that will deny a large segment of our student population the opportunity to develop skills they need in order to fully function in a more and more competitive society.
Diane
Thank you for your advocacy on behalf of teachers. I appreciate that you are willing to go everywhere to advocate for public education and as a voice against the current methods of school “reform”. No one really seems to want to listen to teachers let alone their unions.
The way I read the blended learning study from ED.gov is opposite of your statement “The bottom line: There is no evidence for blended learning as a superior approach to education.” I read the conclusions and key findings of the study as saying the opposite
The study summarizes as follows, “In recent experimental and quasi-experimental studies contrasting blends of online and face-to face instruction with conventional face-to-face classes, blended instruction has been more effective, providing a rationale for the effort required to design and implement blended approaches. When used by itself, online learning appears to be as effective as conventional classroom instruction, but not more so.”
This is not likely conclusive as there are very few studies done on this topic and many of them are for older learners and not K-12.
I don’t disagree with your larger thesis in this post: education is an inherently human endeavor and that the interaction between humans is an essential element of teaching children. I am also suspicious of the implementation in Indianapolis – the advocates of these types of programs look at them from a cost cutting mass production perspective rather from the standpoint of improving quality. In short, their way seems to be informed by the philosophy that if it costs less with similar outcomes, as measured by standardized testing, then why not?
The federal study says there are very few studies that compare blended learning with face-to-face interactions, and that more research is needed before we plunge into blended learning. At the end of the report, it summarizes the implications for K-12 education:
“The impetus for this meta-analysis of recent empirical studies of online learning was the need to develop research-based insights into online learning practices for K–12 students. The research team realized at the outset that a look at online learning studies in a broader set of fields would be necessary to assemble sufficient empirical research for meta-analysis. As it happened, the initial search of the literature published between 1996 and 2006 found no studies contrasting K– 12 online learning with face-to-face instruction that met methodological quality criteria. By performing a second literature search with an expanded time frame (through July 2008), the team was able to greatly expand the corpus of studies with controlled designs and to identify five controlled studies of K–12 online learning with seven contrasts between online and face-to-face conditions. This expanded corpus still comprises a very small number of studies, especially considering the extent to which secondary schools are using online courses and the rapid growth of online instruction in K–12 education as a whole. Educators making decisions about online learning need rigorous research examining the effectiveness of online learning for different types of students and subject matter as well as studies of the relative effectiveness of different online learning practices.”
Hi Diane, your top link is incorrect, it goes to the USDOE report, not the Indianapolis article.
I agree that there isn’t much evidence that blended learning regularly leads to higher scores on anything, although there is emerging evidence that in some subjects, online instruction can be as effective as face to face instruction. (See here for one discussion: http://radioboston.wbur.org/2012/05/24/online-classrooms). We should protect what teachers are best at, but we should also explore the possibilities of what technology is good. Lots of people, in the real world, teach themselves to do all kinds of interesting things online.
It would be awesome if we could use technology to teach what can be learned by self-paced, computer-based instruction and then let teachers focus on more sophisticated learning tasks (with or without technology). It would be terrible if we use technology advances to fire teachers, permit a reduced investment in education, and turn schools from learning communities into rows of individual workstations.
Thank you, I fixed the link.
Justin Reich: I noticed the study you cited, which claims that online learning is effective, was conducted by you, as an educational consultant, and a policy fellow at the Brookings Institute.
Do you profit from online learning?
Diane: Do you think this is an impartial study? You know much more about these matters than I do. What do you think?
I am not familiar with the study and have not had time to read it.
Whatever this study says, the reality is that there is very little research to date on the efficacy of online learning. We use computers all the time, so I say this not to disparage the value of computers as learning devices. My concern is that the new movement is to replace teachers with online instruction. How much of that online instruction will be rote drill? How much will be teach-to-the-test? It is a big problem that our only measure of efficacy is test scores when we know that kids can get higher scores while remaining poorly educated.
Diane
Well, it turns out Mr. Reich, (assuming it’s the same Justin Reich) wasn’t a co-author, but is an ed-tech consultant, and was a guest on the radio program. I still wonder what Mr. Reich’s relationship with online learning is, in the interest of full disclosure.
Indeed an interesting research into technology learning and the use of technology in more aspects of learning. Yet It seems that Mr Rich either is not familiar with this blog or with the research he has pointed out for us. The fine research’s title is: ‘Interactive Learning Online at Public Universities’. That is correct UNIVERSITIES, or institutions that deal with adults. People who have been developed almost to the full, socialized, have sort an identity, and expected to have self discipline and curiosity. College students have chosen to attend school, know – in most cases – how to make friends and date, Developmentally speaking have a better understanding of abstract concepts and long term consequences. In short it is utterly irrelevant for children and adolescence. Children – according to any human developmental related research – do need to learn by an example, a person – real one not fictitious like a corporate person – an adult who guides, one a child can imitate or even a teenager rebel against or be helped with new issues of development which even a computer can not answer truthfully. In addition, children and teenagers already spend tremendous amount of time in front of a computers, mostly social networking. Excessive time spent in front of a computer might lead to future weight problem and in some case as a recent study found – mostly in regard to facebook – might increase chances of depression.
Mr Reich it seems also to have an interest in the matter as the “Founder of EdTechTeacher–a professional development firm” – profits. He is conveniently ignores the great difference between children in schools and “Lots of people, in the real world, teach themselves to do all kinds of interesting things online”. As an expert he sound astonishingly vague saying: “use technology to teach what can be learned by self-paced”. As I pointed out – and other blogger did the same – Mr Reich is in the business of ‘consulting’ euphemism in American education for scores of parasitical no bid corporations who are being payed by the government mainly to produce shiny but empty packages to “help” educators. His organization – and I recommend visiting their site – uses the right amount of corporate buzz words. It is a world where everything is ‘great’ or involved “change” the “21st century” and there is plenty of “leadership” .
I probably missed the part of democracy.
There is no law that forbid us from replacing administrators with computers. In case of charter schools it might save the school plenty of money that could be invested in real education rather then on high paid CEO’s. Technologically speaking it might be easier to design a computer that manage then to teach, but I will leave it to the professionals like Mr Reich to come up with the system
It’s a good idea to put this into historical context. According to the Todd Oppenheimer’s The Flickering Mind, many thought television would inevitably replace teachers. That didn’t happen.
Film clips can be an invaluable instructional tool, but few would argue that TV should replace flesh and blood teachers. Oppenheimer’s argument is that new technology is always seductive, and has often been embraced as the “silver bullet,” which would make more expensive teachers obsolete.
So yes — the internet and software programs can be effective tools (when teacher-created — I often find pre-packaged programs canned and mediocre, at best). Evidence shows that online learning does not yield good results. We need full-time teachers, who can create meaningful projects with, and without computers.
Yes, over the years, many expected that other technologies would replace teachers and they didn’t. But this time it is different: There are schools that have one teacher for every 50 or 100 or even 200 students. They are called online academies, virtual schools, where the student sits at home in front of a computer and interacts with the computer, not a teacher. This is touted by some as the solution to education’s fiscal crisis. Lay off veteran teachers, who are expensive, and encourage students to enroll in low-cost virtual schools. Fire teachers, save money. Bad for society, good for the bottom line.
As a technology professional, I guarantee that technology is not a way to save money in education.
I do think it can be a way to improve instruction in some subjects, and to allow kids more options if they are willing to self-direct and take responsibility for their own learning. For example, an ambitious kid who wants to learn Mandarin in a school with no Mandarin teacher and no other students who want to learn Mandarin could do so online, on school time, using school resources, while guided by a non-Mandarin speaking teacher. I wholly support this. This is far different from expecting that you could put 100 or even 40 random students in a room and expect that by the end of the year they will all be able to communicate in basic Mandarin.
People think that technology (unlike teachers) doesn’t eat; that is, that it has an initial purchase price and then you don’t have to keep paying for it. Ask yourself how many private organizations of 200 or 2000 people do so without a large in-house technology staff. Ask yourself how many schools have enough amperage in their electrical systems – let alone outlets – to handle all those computers, and the inevitable air conditioning that follows. Ask yourself how much new batteries cost and how often they’ll have to be replaced. Ask yourself what will happen at this school on the days the internet is down.
And these ridiculous ratios of students to teachers online miss other important realities. If students are going to write essays, they have to be graded by humans. 200 essays is a lot to grade whether you are in the same room during the day or not. I suppose we could save money for a decade or two by outsourcing the grading of our english essays to India… would be quite interesting to see how our use of written idiom changes as a result!
To add to your argument, a very important point that people usually overlook is the speed at which technology advance. An iPad that is 2 years old can barely load and process today’s app. The processing power is just not there. That would mean teachers and students wasting time troubleshooting or just simply waiting for computers/software to load. That means school districts will have to pay more to update not only the software but the hardware as well. Not to mention the money going into maintaining the equipment, training the teachers and students. And then you have situations in which technology is not being utilize and use to its full functionality. The class I am observing right now have a Smartboard and the teacher never uses it. She uses the Smartboard as regular whiteboard to write and that’s it.
While I do agree with you on the fact that it is necessary to have a human touch to education, incorporating technology into the classroom to deepen the understanding is not a bad idea. Imagine all the individualization and differentiation you can do in the class, especially for ELL students and special needs students. Something simple as GoogleTranslate could make all the difference for an ELL student.
I think that now more than ever we need to talk about the real experience of a teacher, as two problems are occurring. One is that teaching is becoming automated in the form of on-line learning and scripted teaching, where what the teacher says to his or her students is set by someone else.
The second is young people’s increasing lack of person to person communication, which is being outsourced to cell phones and “social networking.” This seems the most dangerous, the place where we are most unsure of where we are headed. The idea of removing yet another person to person contact in the form of a teacher seems totally nightmarish to me.
It’s worth noting that well-off technology experts are not choosing large classes of blended learning for their own kids. They tend to choose schools that deemphasize computers and have very low student to teacher ratios.
I’ve yet to come across someone mention that they’ve just moved their child to an exciting new $15k/year school that has 40 kids per classroom with all the kids on computers all day.
When first coming across the education jargon “blended learning”, I had no idea what it meant. IMO, a teacher brings into his/her classroom everything possible to help teach. If a computer is one, great. Use it, by all means. Think about cooking. Often times the directions will say “blend all the ingredients together”. To just say a computer is the only thing to provide the learning experience and outcome one is seeking is foolish. Many ingredients are necessary but the “blending” of teacher and student interaction on a daily basis is a key.
Blended Learning, Technology Integration – call it what you will, but the fact remains that even the very BEST technology is useless without proper training and TIME to work out the bugs by the teacher before it is presented to students. I have sat through so many one hour ‘trainings’ about clickers, interwrite boards, iPads, etc etc etc …… but without the access to the equipment and the TIME to figure out how it would best work with my students – the investment in the technology and the training is wasted.
I have a family member who works for Discovery Channel in the ITT Department – he’s pretty high up in all the “Tech Stuff”. We had a discussion where I was complaining that I didn’t have a SmartBoard or other new “gadgets”. He answered me this way “What do you want it for? Do you have a grand plan to use it daily? If the answer is no – don’t waste the money. Sometimes, low-tech is best.”
It’s like everything teachers do – we have to KNOW what we’re doing and WHY!! Just because it’s the newest gadgety thing, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be an effective way to deliver instruction.
In teaching HUMANS – there is NO SILVER BULLET!!
All this controversy on Diane’s blog has forced me to pull some of my old research books. I have many still packed away in the garage. About the best I can recommend to all concerned citizens is “The People Shapers” by Vance Packard, A Bantam Book, published by arrangement with Little, Brown & Company, Published first June 1977. ISBN G-553-12037-9. First edition. I don’t know if this book has been republished since the second edition…Jan. 1979, but I’m going to try and find through old books and order as many copies as possible.
If you are still undecided about what is happening in the USA, then I recommend B. F. Skinner’s “Beyond Freedom and Dignity”. What we are looking at is Skinner’s old programmed learning and his “box”. The computer is the box. Children are isolated, and lock-stepped through every small isolated part of instruction. For example: d – say d; o say short o; g say ending g. After several timed steps, the child then takes the timed test. Individual difference, regarding learning rate, is never considered. “Every child will be Reading at grade level by __________”. Every American can relate to this by now. The snake-oil peddlers continue with large foundation grants, government grants, and who knows where all the money is filtering in from at this point to destroy all schools, and this includes religious, private and all public schools if they take the money from the state or federal government. Now back to the method:
There is one great problem with this type of programmed learning; it does not transfer! If lock stepped and timed with a stop-watch, and children are forced to respond to a word in one second, this can actually by-pass the brain. Those that don’t respond in this sick time limit have failed the test, and must start all over again. Some children have become seriously ill from this type of government experimental program.
The corporations and no-nothings see this as a means of making a profit. “They have no shame!” I know because I was exposed to one such program and refused to use it on children. My experience would fill a book on what happened to me after my refusal. I can relate to good educators who are standing tall and often alone.
The United States Department of Education stated willful untruths about one program to me;they denied the method and denied that children were timed with stop-watches. I sent them the proof and still they lied. It is a corrupt, worthless orgnaization as is most of our state departments of education, in my experienced opinion. They turn a deaf ear to any concerned citizen as do our state legislators. Most take their orders from ALEX or the Heritage Foundation or now the Council for Foreign Relations.
According to Vance Packard, in the above book, almost all of our citizens have been exposed to operant conditioning and this was several decades ago. Such methods certainly will enhance training young children for the global work force, and insure a profit for the multi national corporations who are involved in this educational hoax. They will no longer have to outscore and pay union wages because they are busy destroying unions and above all “due process” which most Americans have always assumed was a Constitutional right!
They have already destroyed the most local community organization for democratic principles as outlined in our Constitution…local school boards. Who’s next?
As someone who is involved in the development of online education for K-12 (including blended learning), I want to add my two cents. There are so many different models for blended learning (see as an example: http://www.innosightinstitute.org/innosight/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Classifying-K-12-blended-learning2.pdf) that it is difficult to generalize about what works and what does not work. For instance: blended learning can mean specialized classes and small discussion groups, while rote exercises are done on the computer. It can also mean a model in which a teacher teaches remotely with synchronous sessions done over a web conferencing platform.
That said, any educator worth his salt knows that the human touch is crucial to effective K-12 education. Ask a student to tell you what courses he remembers years after he took them. The inevitable answer will be the ones whose teacher spent time presenting information in an engaging way, who responded in a caring and detailed way to his concerns (and assignments), and who impassioned the class to care about the subject matter at hand. This is true for both traditional classes and for online classes. The teacher is always the heart of the course. The whole point of blended learning is to reach the golden mean where the students have the best of both worlds: face-to-face/synchronous interaction from a teacher and role model, and interactive, but independent learning using online platforms.
You are right that the teacher and the teacher’s humanity are what shape student attitudes. In years to come, students will remember their teachers, not their computer program. I am all for using online instruction wisely, thoughtfully, purposefully. I am opposed to using the computer to replace teachers, as is now the guiding star in the online industry. I was in many a conference room in the past where I heard economists and conservative ideologues predicting that the spread of online instruction would make it possible to have one teacher for every 250 students. They saw that as a panacea. I saw it as a nightmare.
Nightmare is an understatement 🙂
At least you are honest and admit you have a vested interest. Where is the research to support what you are doing? What is the cost to taxpayers to replace good teachers? What is the cost to destroy “due process”? What is the cost to our nation to destroy local representative government i. e. school boards? Surely, you must have figured out by now that this is a radical political movement, and not an educational movement.
Have you seen the workforce skills designed to train young children for the planned global ecomony? (SCANS) Your online platform, in my opinon, is the Skinner box. Blended learning means the poor programmed students meet ocassionaly with the other programmed students. I see only four models left for blended learning…down from six. What corporation are you associated with?
I work for a small non-profit that deals exclusively with the independent school market. We receive no government funding. Our courses cannot be implemented on a mass scale because they are too expensive. Our starting point is effective education, not whatever is popular for the moment, and that generally means that the development and implementation is costly – ie small teacher-student ratio, lots of small group sessions, etc. I am always suspicious if the reason to adopt a new technology – whether it be a blackboard or a television set or an ipad – is based soley on the price tag. Do that and you may be creating long-term societal costs (ie illiterate students, etc) that don’t show up in a budget line.
i think Blended Learning, Technology Integration – and we can call it what we will, but the fact remains that even the very BEST technology is useless without proper training and TIME to work out the bugs by the teacher before it is presented to students. I have sat through so many one hour ‘trainings’ about clickers, interwrite boards, iPads, etc etc etc …… but Ican do enything without the access to the equipment and the TIME to figure out how it would best work with my students – the investment in the technology and the training is wasted.
I like everything teachers do – we have to KNOW what we’re doing and WHY!! Just because it’s the newest gadgety thing, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be an effective way to deliver instruction.
In teaching HUMANS – there is NO SILVER BULLET!!
We must be careful about how we use the term blended learning, there are many uses and models, not all bad. It helped me serve my students much better. t.co/oIKg6SeU
I can see your point, Diane. However implementing a blended learning model is NOT about replacing teachers. How can teachers be the best technology when it’s the children who know more about technological advances than we do? Blended learning is all about making the best or your time. Technology tools are here to help, not hinder. You just need to know how to use them, and how to teach them. Otherwise, your students won’t develop the skills they need to thrive in a globally competitive market.