The answer to this question, says this reader, is no. Libertarians and folks on the right believe that technology will make it possible to replace teachers with machines. Machines don’t need health care or pensions. And their salaries don’t go up in a step schedule. When the machines get obsolete, you junk them. With teachers, you can’t just toss them aside, unless your state passed a law banning seniority and tenure.
This is the reader’s comment:
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!
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
[…] year they will all be able to communicate in basic Mandarin. … Originally posted here: Will Technology Cut the Budget? « Diane Ravitch's blog ← Best Courses in Michigan . | Real […]
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Let’s let schools experiment with technology and see what happens. It’s interesting to speculate, but I hope we don’t advocate for the reduction of reasonable experimentation, especially by schools with a track record of success.
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There already is experimentation, done by teachers, who integrate technology in holistic ways that don’t succumb to gimmicks. We’ve been barraged with clickers and gimmicky software that doesn’t accomplish much; online learning yields poor results.
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Clickers are quite cool for the right sort of thing, but math and writing and isn’t it. 🙂
Give the kids a clicker and a mouse and some materials for a maze instead.
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I’m flattered that Diane chose to highlight my comment.
I think experimenting with technology is amazing and has huge potential. Google brings so much to us. The power of $300 animation software running on ordinary computers takes my breath away with the possibilities for kids to write and perform. Lego Mindstorms – wow! A California school that sent an instrumentation package into the stratosphere for $4000 worth of materials! The chance to have a written or skype chat live in a foreign language with students on the other side of the globe!
My daughter had to write her first research paper this year. When I wrote research papers, we had to get the three books on the subject from the library, and cobble together enough facts to fill the paper. Your topic could not be too narrow; the library probably wouldn’t have enough sources to support it.
For her paper, we could do something far more interesting and educational: I helped her by asking questions. What do you want to know about this topic? What do you think your friends want to know? I want to know X. And then we could find information to ask those questions, not just “how old are these monuments” but “Why do they think it’s that age?” Checking multiple sources to find agreement or controversy. Being able to build a profile of what people think and sift through it to find a most satisfying answer. We discovered several things that I never would have thought to ask and were not covered in the ordinary textbook type materials.
But none of these ideas will be successful with higher student-to-teacher ratios or by relying on a harried teacher who doesn’t know or really care about the 200 kids assigned to her. The kids who make a connection to her might do all right… but if you’re worried about kids being Left Behind, you need real live people looking out for them every day in the same room… especially the kids with poor written communication skills or the kids who prefer not to speak up.
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I think the unanswered question or the elephant in the room is, “What about training?” Teachers need enough working knowledge, not expertise necessarily, to provide guidance for their students. What is the best tool at this moment? I like to be able help my students answer that question. Some days it is the pen or pencil.
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