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The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

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Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#171

Post by csa »

Retric wrote: post #133
csa wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What, specifically, is an example of an exam not measuring proficiency Not op, but a few examples: 1. Test structures that reward good time management. The paper SAT is a good example of this. The early items in a section are (were?) easy, the middle items were medium difficulty, and the toughest items were towards the end. A good test take would manage their time so that they spent the most amount of time on quest…

I think test prep allowing people to increase SAT scores is actually a useful feature not a bug. If you’re the kind of person who’s going to put extra effort to add a few points to your results, you are also the kind of person more likely to do well in collage classes.

I agree in general with what your idea, but this sort of assumes a few things that aren’t always true:

1. Examinee is aware of test prep and its potential benefits. Definitely not always true in low socioeconomic status (SES) families, especially ones with no family members who have been to college.

2. Examinee can afford said test prep courses and/or materials. Library and online are “free” options, but we are back to assuming that the examinee has easy access to a library and/or the internet and knows how to find said materials.

There are many, many students who would do well in college if they had some insight on how to do college. The US has a lot of wasted potential due to our public school focus on bringing up the low achievers to the exclusion of developing those with high achiever potential.

Some private schools and most public schools in “good” neighborhoods have programs and cultures that cater to those with high potential, but these schools only address a relatively small portion of the student population with high potential, imho.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#172

Post by gspencley »

tombert wrote: post #44
donatj wrote: post #10

I work in EdTech, I have for a very long time now, and the problem I have seen is no one in education is willing to ACTUALLY let kids learn at their own level. The promise of EdTech was that kids could learn where they are. A kid who's behind can actually continue to learn rather than being left behind. A kid who's ahead can be nurtured. We had this. It worked well, in my opinion at least, and the number of complaint…

A bit tangential but related. I dropped out of college in 2012 and was one of the very lucky few who managed to find software engineering work almost immediately [1]. I had a bit of a complex about not having a degree, and a few times I tried going back only to drop out again because I would get bored; by the time I had gone back, I already knew enough stuff to be qualified as an engineer, and as such I didn't feel l…

I had a similar experience but I dropped out of high school.

For years the social stigma about being a high-school dropout got to me, and I was determined to enter University as an adult student and get my CS degree.

The problem was that I already had steady work as a software developer. And the entire reason I wanted to go to school in the first place was to level up those skills. It didn't help that, in my late teens / early 20s, I was working for a dot-com startup and we had coop students from the local University, and they weren't being taught anything that I didn't already know or understand.

Eventually I came to the opinion that, at least for me (not necessarily for others), formal education institutions amount to little more than institutional child abuse. For hyper-independent and high IQ students, particularly those with aspergers (I've never been diagnosed, but even my mother says it would put my childhood into perspective), class rooms are not a positive experience.

And I can't honestly look back at my time in public school and identify a single subject that I learned in class, as opposed to independently. According to my parents I was literate before entering kindergarten and I taught myself maths and history as an adult because school taught me to hate both (I don't hate either now, but the way they were taught in school divorced them from our day to day lives, created busy work and the impression that what we were being taught was irrelevant and unnecessary).

I tried online learning for a little bit in order to get my GED but I abandoned that as well because it still felt like boring busy work.

EdTech seems like it might offer the solution to younger children with my personality type. But honestly, I personally learn best by reading books, experimenting (hands on learning) and having goals that I actually care about and can relate to. If school had taught us to prepare a tax return, balance a household budget, that history gives us predictive "power" by examining how humans dealt with certain situations historically, if English class focused on effective communication rather than trying to guess at metaphors and hidden messages in the writings of dead authors who can't be asked to comment on that conjecture... maybe I wouldn't have loathed the experience so much and felt like I was just in a prison for children.

In other words, my personal experiences with EdTech has seen these trying to take a standard public school curriculum and package it in a digital "work at your own pace" format. Whereas my issue with school was at least in large part the curriculum itself. The pace was a factor too ... just not the only one by far.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#173

Post by soarerz »

fny wrote: post #143
basilgohar wrote: post #68

As someone who's worked in EdTech for around two decades, I know why people think this. It's what a lot people here have already said. Education is what is failing, EdTech didn't magically solve this. Just like money, you can't just throw tech at education and expect it to solve anything. There are too many profitable incentives to poor education that are conspiring to perpetuate it. An ill-educated populace is easie…

> An ill-educated populace is easier to manipulate, gravitate towards consumerism, and won't hold their leaders as accountable. This is a reactionary take. Math, science, and basic language skills do not lead to political upheaval, and are incredibly valuable skills to the capital class. Leadership would be more apt to propagandize social studies and suppress dissent. China easily comes to mind as a counter argument.…

> China easily comes to mind as a counter argument.

I mean, cultural revolution was still going on 50 years ago lol

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#174

Post by robertlagrant »

dpkirchner wrote: post #134
sixo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equity really isn't the ideology doing this, except in a few cases, it's something else. I'd speculate the dominant effect is that people tend to dislike and resist what they have a hard time imagining: there's a strong bias towards easily-administrated uniformity, and ppl tend to enforce what they know and what they were brought up in themselves

Agreed, and that strong bias is likely driven by cost, not the equity boogeyman that causes many a jerked knee.

Not really. Equity is a philosophy (of many; none perfect) that describes how to spend money.

Do you spend money (mostly) on bringing kids up to average, and any kid average or above average basically stays where they are, as far as the school's efforts are concerned?

Do you spend equally per child, aiming to uplift each of them by the same amount?

...

Many options. Equity is the first one.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#175

Post by deanCommie »

michaelrpeskin wrote: post #58
donatj wrote: post #10

I work in EdTech, I have for a very long time now, and the problem I have seen is no one in education is willing to ACTUALLY let kids learn at their own level. The promise of EdTech was that kids could learn where they are. A kid who's behind can actually continue to learn rather than being left behind. A kid who's ahead can be nurtured. We had this. It worked well, in my opinion at least, and the number of complaint…

That's "equity" for you. We can't be unfair and give someone something that makes them better. It's easier to keep the top kids down than it is to lift the bottom kids up.

There are many good reasons to criticize equity.

But one should understand what that term means before doing so.

This seems quite the opposite - promoting mandatory equality (equality of outputs in fact) rather than equity (which would explicitly account for giving students different paces to learn at, and grade accordingly)

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#176

Post by insane_dreamer »

michaelrpeskin wrote: post #58
donatj wrote: post #10

I work in EdTech, I have for a very long time now, and the problem I have seen is no one in education is willing to ACTUALLY let kids learn at their own level. The promise of EdTech was that kids could learn where they are. A kid who's behind can actually continue to learn rather than being left behind. A kid who's ahead can be nurtured. We had this. It worked well, in my opinion at least, and the number of complaint…

That's "equity" for you. We can't be unfair and give someone something that makes them better. It's easier to keep the top kids down than it is to lift the bottom kids up.

Nonsense. Equity is not to blame. Finland has arguably the most equitable education system in the world and it's ahead of the US.

There are plenty of problems with the US education system -- among them this typically SV $$$-eyed idea that "tech solves everything" -- but investments to raise up the educational standards of low-income or underserved communities is not one of them.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#177

Post by chongli »

Afton wrote: post #106
michaelrpeskin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's "equity" for you. We can't be unfair and give someone something that makes them better. It's easier to keep the top kids down than it is to lift the bottom kids up.

To be fair, it is less about "keeping top kids down" and more about "let's use our very scarce resources helping the bottom kids". Put that way it seems less malicious, and more like probably the right thing to do over all, while still being extremely frustrating if you are, or are the parent of, a 'top kid'. I know that in Seattle, I've been very frustrated with all the talk and promise of our school to provide enri…

and more like probably the right thing to do over all

It’s only the right thing if you assume equity as a starting position though. We already know, rather robustly, that the weakest and most disruptive students can consume far more than their share of limited resources and produce correspondingly limited outcomes.

Another theory goes that we should provide more resources to the best and brightest students so that they go on to become great leaders and experts in their fields and then improve society for everyone. This may be called the “rising tide lifts all boats” theory. It was the predominant one in the US for much of the 20th century and earlier, and it arguably led to the US’s position as a global leader in science, technology, and industry.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#178

Post by johndhi »

donatj wrote: post #10

I work in EdTech, I have for a very long time now, and the problem I have seen is no one in education is willing to ACTUALLY let kids learn at their own level. The promise of EdTech was that kids could learn where they are. A kid who's behind can actually continue to learn rather than being left behind. A kid who's ahead can be nurtured. We had this. It worked well, in my opinion at least, and the number of complaint…

can you give an example of someone being upset and what the thing they'd learned that they "shouldn't?"

as a parent I find it confusing that I'd consider getting upset if my kid was learning 6th grade history as a 3rd grader (or 2nd grade art as a 3rd grader). what actual examples are there?

the only examples of parents being upset about learning I'm aware of lately is, like, critical theory and marxism

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#179

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

Afton wrote: post #106
michaelrpeskin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's "equity" for you. We can't be unfair and give someone something that makes them better. It's easier to keep the top kids down than it is to lift the bottom kids up.

To be fair, it is less about "keeping top kids down" and more about "let's use our very scarce resources helping the bottom kids". Put that way it seems less malicious, and more like probably the right thing to do over all, while still being extremely frustrating if you are, or are the parent of, a 'top kid'. I know that in Seattle, I've been very frustrated with all the talk and promise of our school to provide enri…

One unfortunate consequence is that underchallenged "top kids" can quickly turn into "bottom kids" themselves. (Especially, but not only, if they are bullied by their peers for appearing too engaged with their studies). This is a devastating loss.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#180

Post by fearmerchant »

sixo wrote: post #114
michaelrpeskin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's "equity" for you. We can't be unfair and give someone something that makes them better. It's easier to keep the top kids down than it is to lift the bottom kids up.

Equity really isn't the ideology doing this, except in a few cases, it's something else. I'd speculate the dominant effect is that people tend to dislike and resist what they have a hard time imagining: there's a strong bias towards easily-administrated uniformity, and ppl tend to enforce what they know and what they were brought up in themselves

I work in education and you're probably right that it's not THE thing, but it does enter the conversation. Teachers are supposed to provide what's called differential instruction but the quality and fidelity really depends on the teacher.
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