Morning Shots

Recently Utah schools have been given an F for technology use in the classroom (or lack thereof).  This is one area I hope Utah continues to fail in.  Technology has been touted as a fabulous tool for teaching math and other subjects, but it’s not.  Technology teaches technology; you still have to learn math separately if you want to know math too.

The misconception that technology can be part of learning math stems from the fact that there are calculators that can produce the same numerical result as mathematical calculations.  Sadly, calculator use does not produce the same cognitive result as actually learning math.  Just because a student can produce the answer to 23+56 on a spreadsheet does not mean he has mastered double-digit addition, any more than the ability to microwave a TV dinner constitutes knowledge of cookery.  Too many curricula nowadays conflate the ability to get answers with the knowledge of how the mathematics works.  And too many teachers fall back on technology use as a crutch, to help them “teach” students who for whatever reason are having trouble grasping mathematical concepts.  I’d be rich if I had a dollar for every student who’s been in his college professor’s office, trembling with fear of failure at remedial algebra, for no better reason than that he can’t add fractions to save his life and is now being asked to add rational expressions using the same method as fractions.  Only, the rational expressions won’t go into his calculator, see.

If all we want is the ability to get answers fast, then by all means let’s train our kids to be calculator or spreadsheet jockeys.  Let’s give prizes to the one who can push the buttons the fastest or has the lowest error rate.  But if we

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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution confusingly reports that Georgia’s Clayton school district’s change to Direct Instruction (DI) this year is to blame for its substantial loss of teachers. Yet a few paragraphs down we learn that the teacher loss has been ongoing for at least three years.

Clayton County had the highest turnover rate for regular teachers among metro school districts between the 2003 and 2005 school years, statistics show.

How does a change in curriculum this year cause losses in previous years? Perhaps something else is causing the losses? We’ll never know because the article jumps right to a disgruntled teacher who claims to be leaving because DI is “too scripted” and that she “no longer uses her expertise to assess students individually and tailor lessons to their weaknesses.”

Our intrepid reporter fails to catch the inconsitency in the teacher’s claim. The “teaching expertise” the teacher is referring to was resulting in a large number of students who were failing academically. That’s why the district changed to DI. Ironically enough, considering she hates scripts so much, this teacher appears to be following the same script we get from other critics of DI.

According to Zig Engelmann, the creator of DI, “The main complaints are that the programs require teachers to follow a script, which supposedly limits their creativity, and that the programs are boring.” But, these claims have not been substantiated by research. “Good teachers become superior DI teachers. Although the program may be boring for some teachers, it is not for the students. The rate of misbehavior is a lot lower during the structured DI periods than it is during less structured times of the school day.”

And, there are many good reasons why DI uses scripts instead of allowing teachers to teach in the same manner which previously

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Despite a relatively unregulated private school sector in the U.S., opportunities for innovation in education are constrained by the dominance of the government school educational standard. The matrix of curriculum, textbooks, standardized testing, and teacher training and certification form a standard, analogous to a computer operating system standard, which is essentially designed to the specifications dictated by government-run schools. Just as a dominant operating system is preferred by most consumers because of the ease of transferring data within a known system and the greater availability of software for the dominant system, so too consumers will prefer an educational approach with a known interface to existing educational institutions. Entrepreneurial educators will find it more economical to start new schools that are consistent with the dominant system in order to take advantage of available curricula, textbooks, tests, and teacher training, experience, and certification.

Because entrepreneurs who establish a new operating system have an opportunity to create their own businesses, Microsoft will constantly face challenges to its standard (the transition from DOS to Windows was due to the challenge presented by Apple; Java and the web represent a different challenge). By contrast, the government school educational standard possesses a larger market dominance than does Microsoft; depending on how it is defined, one could argue that more than 96% of students are educated at schools that adhere to the dominant standard. Moreover, unlike Microsoft’s dominance, the government school standard is enforced by law in dozens of ways, including property tax support for government school funding, state-sanctioned teacher credentialing systems, federal financial aid for those enrolled in state-certification programs, and obstacles to for-profit management of education. Bright engineers can identify a niche for a new operating system (e.g. hand-held devices) and obtain venture capital funding. Although for-profit educational ventures exist, such as the Edison

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