John Merrow here recounts the sad story of how Baltimore County got snookered by the tech industry, sinking hundreds of millions into a soon-to-be obsolete tech tablet while ignoring the basic needs of the sistrict’s schools.
He writes:
“It’s a breathtaking story of greed, but what’s only hinted at around the edges in the Times story is the harsh truth that this would never happen if educators, politicians and policy makers were not worshipping at the altar of standardized test scores. Tech is selling–and educators are willing buyers–a fantasy: “Buy our fancy software and hardware packages, and your test scores will soar.”
“The reporters use Baltimore County (MD) public schools as their poster child, and surely (now former) Superintendent Darryl Dance has a lot of ‘splaining to do, given the coziness of his relationship with HP and other providers. Under Dance’s leadership, his system signed a $200 MILLION contract with HP in 2014 and was also on the hook for many millions more in related contracts. In the district’s own evaluations, the HP device scored third out of the four devices tested, with only 27 points out of a possible 46, but the County signed with HP anyway.
“(The device, the Elitebook Revolve, has been plagued with problems and has been discontinued by HP, and Superintendent Dance abruptly resigned in April, no reason cited.)
“While the reporters for The Times do not come right out and call the public school people in Baltimore County and elsewhere ‘crooks’ or ‘prostitutes,’ they come pretty close…
“Sadly, this isn’t a new story. Apple sold an expensive bill of goods to Los Angeles County Public Schools years ago, and Joel Klein’s Amplify signed some lucrative contracts, deals that went south when some of the machines burst into flames. I write about those deals and other stupidities in my new book, “Addicted to Reform: A 12-Step Program to Rescue Public Education.” (The New Press, 2017)”
Dallas Dance has moved on. Baltimore County is out nearly $300 Million in total for Dance’s tech deals. The County has obsolete hardware.
Where is the accountability.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I recently taught in a school with four media labs and two mobile tablet carts, none of which were typically available because they were almost always being used for testing or for practice testing. So, if one wanted to have students use these for a legitimate purpose–doing research for a research paper or preparing a debate brief–well, fat chance of that happening. Two whole months of the school year were given over to computerized testing and had special testing schedules. We were required by the district to use extraordinarily poorly designed, invalid and unreliable computerized end-of-semester tests from Pearson that forced all students and teachers into a depersonalized Procrustean box. Several large-scale experiments with online prep products were utter failures–what the students thought of these is not printable on this blog.
Here’s the thing. Computers have some superb educational uses. Examples of those:
simplified editing of writing
easy sharing of work with others
creation and display of presentation materials
easy access to large numbers of texts
practice to mastery of low-level skills
easy grading of objective-format quizzes and tests
What they aren’t good at, at all, is primary delivery of instructional material. And though various online gamelike products are now widely being used for review purposes, and though the kids seem to enjoy these, the quality of the review using these products tends to be very, very low.
In general, almost everything done using tech is done better the old-fashioned way. When people proofread on paper, they catch more. When they read or review on paper, they remember more.
Almost all the current ed tech products are at root a bunch of worksheets on a screen with some pretesting to place students on some predetermined invariant track. To that programmed learning is added a veneer of graphic glitz that impresses the kids, after the first half hour, NOT AT ALL. Calling such crap “Personalized Learning” is Orwellean New Speak.
Right on comments, Bob. “Orwellian New Speak” … good one.
What you say here rings a bell for me, Bob: “In general, almost everything done using tech is done better the old-fashioned way. When people proofread on paper, they catch more. When they read or review on paper, they remember more.”
It’s not just paper, it’s HANDWRITING. Tactile and visual neural processes are engaged by handwriting in ways not engaged by touchscreen writing. Thoughts are slowed by the handwriting process, which encourages deeper thought/ awareness/ self-criticism. And the act of penning thoughts to paper in this slower way engages memory. [I’m thinking: there must be more than just me who find that writing down a note helps commit it to memory. I used to memorize thousands of for-lang vocab words simply by writing the Eng opp the Fr[Sp], then fold the paper & translate the Fr[Sp] to Eng, fold the ppr again etc]
There is a progression: folks accustomed to handwriting will transit successfully to typing then touchscreen-writing & can retain the neural benefits of handwriting. But the transition is– I think– necessary. [And there are those– 2 of my 3 sons incl– for whom LD’s make handwriting a tortuous process; touchscreen writing was like letting a bird out of a cage.]
But on the whole, tech is sold as some kind of shortcut to learning. It’s just a tool, like pencil/ paper. It’s faster than pencil/paper, so it should be introduced later on in ed, when one’s thoughts have been formed & tamed & sculpted, & are starting to come faster than pencil/paper can accommodate.
All I’ve said is about ELA. For the life of me, I can’t see how tech improves the learning of Math!! My understanding of math (which is rudimentary) would have been greatly improved in K-6 w/the use of abacus & other manipulables. Those in the know, do school me.
“What they are not good at, at all, is primary delivery of instruct al material…” I really can’t add to that because that says it all.
It is unbelievable what districts spend on tech while ignoring basics that do help.
Too many school districts have viewed technology like “keeping up with the Jones,” with some districts too eager to appear competitive with other districts, Like many regular families, these school districts are living beyond their means. I think it is much more prudent to take a more reasoned approach to new adoptions including technology. Districts should do a pilot that is evaluated before a making major purchase. As Bob said, computers are useful tools, but look critically before sinking your district into debt. A lot of tech gadgets are smoke and mirrors, and they have a limited shelf life.
Again, right on, retired teacher. Agree. True about: keeping up with the jones.
How true this is, retired teacher, & could be said about nearly every gimmick coming down the ed pipeline for 60 yrs. When I look back on all the ‘new’ pedagogies which I as a student or teacher or Mom was exposed to, there are very few I can attest to as improvements.
So here they are: (a)starting for-lang-learning well before 6th grade, (b)the TPRS method of lang-learning [hasn’t caught on much outside of CA/ SW, but my youngest benefited from a relatively-new ‘Conversational Spanish’ course for those whose IEPs meant they got no for-lang until 10th-gr], & (c) some innovative ways of teaching mult & div of large nos – ‘lattice method’ et al – great for primary-grades visual/spatial learners.
Hope you will notice I’m leaving out a host of gimmicks ’60’s-present, including whole-language, phonics, new math, ETC!
Don’t be lumping all educators into this mess, John Merrow. There are a lot of us out there that have been screaming warning signals about this technology deception for years.
Most of the time, it seems that administrators and district people are really the ones who want all of this tech stuff.
Truer words never spoken– By ‘district people’ I assume you mean the general public (mostly those w/o kids in school). I cannot count the no of armchair critics on ed-article comment threads who buy into tech for tots, clearly w/o the remotest concept of ed or kids & learning on the ground, & mostly buying into some fantasy that tech-ed = big $ jobs: these folks don’t even read the news.
But admins should be closer to the ground & aren’t, why not? You are much closer to this than I am, so do tell. All I can figure is they must be young Ed/MBA types w/ little or no teaching experience, who apparently can’t & don’t connect to their teaching force.
The aim of the tech industry is to get one computer, laptop, or mobile device into the hands of every student and have “education service providers” offer credits, badges, credentials for tasks that students undertake and complete, aided by that device. Bob is correct. Much of the content and the many of the skills required for “personalized learning” are not different those in text assignments and workbooks.
One of the most influential marketers of technology as a panacea for all problems in education is KnowledgeWorks.org, This non-profit churns out scenarios in position papers that market tech as a solution to everything because “we live in a new era of CODE.”
In a recent scenario for the Pittsburgh region, KnowledgeWorks says, in effect, that the broad purposes of education should be determined by economic realities and career possibilities. The major advocates for the needed “revolution” in education must be students and parents who demand access to learning experiences, resources, and supports according to their needs, interests, and goals. Students and parents should be able to choose when, how, and what to learn.
The report says there are multiple “providers of education” within the Pittsburg region and that they must respond to imperatives of the new era of CODE with partnerships that offer effective guidance and options for choice. These “partners in CODE” must also work to eliminate or minimize services that exacerbate socioeconomic inequities. The whole narrative of revolution is free of any discussion of who pays for “education services” and how providers set their charges.
The examples in the report include fee-based and free programs in libraries, museums, arts institutions, recreation centers, maker spaces, online ventures, and the like. Brick and mortar schools are destined to be relics. Some may be re-purposed for use by service providers who succeed in operating in a tech enabled and gig economy.
Breathless rhetoric about the new era of code is here. http://www.knowledgeworks.org/sites/default/files/u1/future-learning-pittsburgh.pdf
This was my response at the John Merrow post:
My favorite cite from your post: “Children swimming in a sea of information need to learn how to sift through the flood so they can distinguish truths from half-truths and fiction. Learning how to formulate tough questions and search for answers should be central to their curriculum, not absorbing and regurgitating facts.” You just described “critical thinking”– an art which is neither prized in CCSS [& its myriad other-name twins, i.e., state tweaking-re-branding], nor taught by following its bite-sized skills agenda, nor tested in its aligned assessments.
I was so fortunate to have been taught critical thinking 7th-12th & college [’60-’70]: I am a lifelong student & autodidact, filling in gaps in my formal ed, informing my teaching/ personal finance/ civic activity– all done on internet today w/healthy skepticism, seeking out multiple inputs & synthesizing.
My children [K12 ’92-2010] were thankfully schooled the same way, pre-CCSS/ annual testing. Early in digital era we shepherded them around video games via home network/ ed games. As internet developed, they instinctively used it as a tool rather than an authority. They were there at the inception, & the critical skills ingrained in pubsch made them very aware of the incursion of adv/ PR warp on content, the advent of ‘viral’ opinions, etc. – young adults now, they were onto Russian-sold fakenews FB pp before I was.
I wholeheartedly support everything you say & imply about too-early intro of tech into pubschlg, & worse, pre-packaged software geared to ‘raise scores.’ Just injecting a positive note here: as a free-lance “special” [for-langs], I make the rounds of every kind of PreK/ daycare in central NJ. I can report that the great majority, from chi-chi privates to commercial chains to the govt-subsidized eschew internet completely, & minimize any sort of ‘screen-time’.
More ritual denunciation of absorbing facts. Is transmitting knowledge so contemptible? We speak of it as if it’s so stupid, easy and worthless that it should be beneath the dignity of a good teacher to engage in it. I disagree. I believe the effective transmission of knowledge is a difficult art, and a critical one. It’s honest teaching. So much of the vague skills we tell parents we’re imparting to kids is humbug –charlatanry. They had the skills –of analysis, synthesis, discernment, linguistic aptitude –when they came to us, and we claim credit for it. What they didn’t have was the knowledge we gave them; that we can honestly claim credit for.
Where did that come from, Ponderosa? Denunciation of absorbing facts? The education I’m describing consisted mainly of absorbing facts (and literature). And no question that transmission of facts is a if not the most difficult and demanding art of teaching. But class discussions and compositions asked us to observe trends, form hypotheses, find themes, draw conclusions– prove/ disprove, support, defend. The habit of questioning teaches us to seek more facts, read more carefully, absorb more. I take your point that critical thinking skills are innate: classroom discussion and thoughtful assignments help us hone those skills by exposing us to the viewpoints of classmates, teachers, historians, philosophers, etc.
My sense is that the stds-assessment/ accountability movement has intruded on class & hw time needed to think about/ discuss/ write about the facts we’re absorbing.
Oops Ponderosa I see where you got that from– Merrow’s “Learning how to formulate tough questions and search for answers should be central to their curriculum, not absorbing and regurgitating facts”– part of my ‘fave’ takeaway!
Having thought through & responded to your comment, I have to admit I now have mixed feelings about that cite. On first reading, I was thinking of “children swimming in a sea of information” entirely in the context of the flood of info available on the internet, & the necessity of teaching kids how to “sift through the flood so they can distinguish truths from half-truths and fiction”– research skills. Wasn’t thinking in terms of “transmitting knowledge” in the classroom & through reading assnts. The art of knowledge transmission includes already much sifting, selection, discernment. And I do not share Merrow’s conviction that questioning is more important than fact absorption [& ‘regurgitation’ via assnts & assessments] — the two go hand in hand as I tried to express above.
In response to your closing question, “Where is the accountability?”… I think it is worth noting that Baltimore County has not had an elected school board until legislation passed in 2014 created a “hybrid” board that has 7 elected members, four appointed by the governor (who formerly appointed all members), and one student member. It might be interesting to contrast the oversight of ELECTED Boards as compared to APPOINTED boards— be they appointed by a Governor or Mayor. The elected Boards I worked for during my 29 year career as a Superintendent monitored spending closely and were especially concerned about multi-year contracts for any acquisition. Demorcacy works!