Doing some research on for-profit virtual schools, I come across study after study about their poor performance, high attrition rates, and low graduation rates.
But then I discovered a document produced by Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellent Education and Bob Wise’s Alliance for Excellent Education. It is called “the Ten Elements of Digital Learning” and it is a rallying cry for deregulation and proliferation of every manner of virtual education, including for-profit virtual charters.
Among other recommendations, it says that teachers should not be certified, as that would hamper innovation and diminish quality. It claims that digital learning will transform education, close the achievement gaps, and narrow the income divide in American society. It promises the world, in short. Digital learning is the magic bullet, so it says.
It does not take note of the studies that say that digital schools underperform brick-and-mortar schools.
The report was funded by–no surprise–the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the Walton Foundation.
Maybe it is the Magna Carta of virtual schooling. But the gap between promise and reality is a giant canyon.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
An excerpt from the report:
“Digital learning is a proven method. For more than a decade, corporations, the military and higher education have used multiple modes of instruction to create a rapid and efficient path to mastery.”
Disseminating knowledge is one thing, but schools are training people to think. The one thing that the three groups mentioned above have in common is: They all are talking about “people” groups above the age of 18. Kids need interaction–they thrive on it. It is how they naturally communicate.
This is the “evidence” of Bush and Wise (and Gates, and Broad, etc.) on the success of digital learning in the public school environment? These folks could not be more out-of-touch.
I hope you don’t mind me correcting this statement “Disseminating FACTOIDS is one thing, but schools SHOULD BE ABOUT TEACHING people to think.”
Teaching and learning to help students acquire skills and knowledge hopefully leading to wisdom is what the day to day, face to face, human to human interactions in the class are about.
Training and testing is what the “digital” classroom is about. Notice the nice change of wording from computer training to “digital learning”. Training and testing is for animals and paid professional killers, aka, the military.
Thank you, as always. I do not mind at all.
The “should be” part is indeed very important. In my original statement, I was referring to the dissemination of knowledge from online “workshops” designed as a way to give out professional information on the corporate level without having to actually have an instructor interact with anyone.
My district has engaged in the online course-module kind of professional development training for its affirmative action, suicide prevention, and drug/alcohol awareness PD since the information is very factual in regard to the law. There is very little room for interpretive learning here. This method is incredibly boring and anti-human in its approach, and the “quizzes” a participant has to take at the end in order to get the certificates are insulting in their simplicity and patronizing tone. Standardized quizzes, perhaps?
We as adults take this type of online “babysitting” for what it is, but I cannot see how this method of “instruction” would be a good thing for children and adolescents who require more personalized interaction and a live instructor who can monitor, modify and adjust the lesson on the spot.
Teaching is a living interaction. Teaching a lesson isn’t as simple as conducting an open-ended survey where you get re-directed to a different page depending on the answers. It does not matter how many algorithms you have in a program, no digital “instruction program” can make the hundreds of decisions a teacher must make during any given lesson.
Teaching requires a real-time insight into the human interactions between student and teacher. The type of learning that results is what one of my mentors calls “experiential knowledge in situ.” Anyone who has any experience with children knows that the comfort of a good relationship experience during the learning process helps the child process and solidify the learning. Human interactions are what these experiences are all about.
Teaching is an action that is dynamic and fluid built upon so many other actions and reactions and still more actions in a circular construct that spirals up to higher levels of thinking–one experience building upon another. Digital “instruction” simply cannot replace a person and the learning experiences that the student and the teacher have together.
WOW thank you LG. You just summed up the reason why I refuse to jump on the “computer is the teacher” bandwagon.
IF I want the computer to teach my kids, it’s simple, I’ll keep them home and home-school them. I can find plenty of programs myself that can educate my kids.
I choose to pay tuition to a school where a good teacher teaches my kids.
I choose this because I want the expertise the teacher has in the subject to help guide them to mastery.
I want that exchange between teacher and student because you are right, a teacher can often times detect when the students are confused or need that extra input.
I’ve tutored students before, but I’ve never worked as a teacher in a classroom. There are times when I could read the confusion on their face. Or I could sense that my explanation somehow confused them and could revisit the concept to make sure they understood it.
There is no way a computer can do this.
Food for thought, MOM–for sure. As well, a computer will never get better over time as a human teacher would.
A really striking thing about this “magic bullet” Ten Elements document – and I write as an advocate of technology-supported learning – is its silence on the practical and evidence-supported “how” of making on-line learning effective. Compare this, for example: http://www.webcitation.org/69jgRccCk. Producing something on those lines relating to on-line learning would be a worthwhile endeavour. It would need those who are involved at the sharp end of technology supported learning research and practice to produce it. And my guess is that it would also serve to expose the ineffectiveness of the practice in typical virtual schools.
As a career educator, last night was a sad evening for me when I witnessed my first television commercial specifically extolling the virtues of online K-12 schools! With a significant portion of children now living in poverty–both in our urban areas and throughout the nation–how are these youngsters to access the training, software and hardware necessary to progress academically without a classroom teacher? And how is the teacher to determine that it is indeed the actual student himself who is completing the assignment or test rather than a parent or peer? And what is to happen to those students left in challenged public schools–left with diminished funding that has followed their classmates to private online corporations? They have neither the resources nor, often, the political awareness to realize that they are the true “children left behind!”
Don’t worry, these children are prime targets for recruitment by for-profit online academies. They will get a free computer, Internet access, and lots of workbooks and materials. Their parent will be their learning coach. The company will collect $6,000-10,000 for each child they sign up. The child will learn little and will probably drop out in a year.
I decided to try the Martha Steward Living channel on Sirius XM yesterday. During the first commercial break, I heard a commercial advertisement for K12 Schools.
It started out with an “example” of what “your child’s school” is like: A teacher was asking for the capitals of each of the fifty states by droning on naming the state and the students were responding in chorus. This process kept repeating and repeating AS IF this is how teachers teach as a matter of course. My blood began to boil hearing this propaganda.
Then the ad went on to say that “your child” will receive a “personalized curriculum” of instruction that meets “his needs.”
I changed the channel but quick, and I have not returned to it. Besides, who has time to re-pot orchids or make a new kind of tomato sauce when there are education reform battles to be fought?
Maybe I’m behind here but does Bush stand to make money off of these virtual schools??
We have VLACS and because our schools have dumbed down education, parents are actually liking the option.
I have a family member that was bullied and ended up finishing up high school at home using the State virtual school. It worked well for her.
My concern about turning the schools into computer labs has been, if the schools are choosing lousy text books (and they are) what makes anyone think they’ll choose quality software?
On the flip side, I do know that it has worked for some people.?
Jeb Bush has gone around the country promoting virtual schooling. Evidently, you have missed some of Diane’s blogs and digital learning articles and his lobbying efforts in state legislatures. K12, Inc is a financial contributor to his education reform efforts . Do you not think he’s getting no return for his relentless efforts?
http://bobsidlethoughtsandmusings.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/jeb-bush-k12-inc-the-digital-learning-council-and-florida-virtual-school/
When all else fails…follow the money.
Kathy1, I’m relatively new to the blog so I was not sure about the financial reward Bush would receive.
LG, you are right…ALWAYS follow the money 🙂
FL passed a new law this year requiring access within their public school to on line computer education for all students K – 12 who qualify for ‘acceleration’ While I completely support providing accelerated curriculum for students who need it, I am having a hard time picturing what that will look like for a KG or first grade child. Somehow I think those talented and gifted kids deserve more than ‘here, sit at this computer and accelerate your education’. Not sure the FL legislature really cares, as long as the K-12 Virtual Schools get the money.