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Technology Billionaires Trying to Remake America's Schools

69 points by gk1 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pdog 9y ago
Meanwhile, the same tech billionaires influencing the public school system will follow a completely different curriculum—usually private, low tech, with limited screen and device time—for their own children. Do as I say, not as I do.
- liveoneggs 9y ago
  waldorf for everyone isn't going to sell many chromebooks now is it?
- jsolson 9y ago
  That low tech limited screen time curriculum requires well trained (aka expensive) staff. Yes, it might have better outcomes, but it can't scale without an absurd investment that, so far, society has been unwilling to make. If you can raise the general standard of education at the same cost by going digital, that's still positive sum, no?
  - Simulacra 9y ago
    Are we trying to make education cheaper, or better? To that end does technology make education better, cheaper, or easier? I am probably old fashioned at 36 but I'm with Cliff Stoll on this issue: Let's get technology out of the classroom.
    - pc86 9y ago
      I'll quote the part of the GP that I think you're ignoring: > it can't scale without an...investment that, so far, society has been unwilling to make Without making any judgment on what is proper or appropriate education funding, tax policy, or anything political like that, the GP is right. Getting tech out of the classroom 1) is not a 100% positive thing; 2) costs more than society, to date, has been willing to spend. > Are we trying to make education cheaper, or better? It's not a binary proposition and pretending it is is dishonest. I want to see the median increase. I want to do it cost-effectively. If the choice is raising the median 5 points by utilizing technology for a marginal change in overall cost, or raising the median 20 points by quintupling education funding, one is possible and one is not.
  - rhizome 9y ago
    Classic blinkered-technocrat perspective, why does "scale" matter in education? What is the endgame when education is scaled as much as possible, plugging kids into VR headsets and calling it a day?
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Because that's literally how civilization improves. You're able to code for a living because people before you figured out how to make agriculture scale. All humans have finite amount of time during the day, finite resources and finite lifespans. All of which is allocated pretty tightly. If you want to add value to the lives of people, your best bet is something that doesn't come at a great cost to them. Hence scale. A secondary benefit is that big things which don't scale are only attempted by few players with lots of resources; making things more scalable means more smaller players can compete on the market.
      - rhizome 9y ago
        How about we spend more effort creating more fairly-paid teachers than making more dormfart-website CEOs?
        TeMPOraL 9y ago
        1. "Dormfart-website CEOs" are not necessarily what's required to scale education. 2. How about we reduce the number of teachers (and have the remaining be paid fairly) by making education scale? See also my agriculture example.
        rhizome 9y ago
        "Dormfart-website CEOs" are not necessarily what's required to scale education. But they're consuming money and attention that could be redirected to solving real problems. I know, this is a perpetual complaint with someone in any crowd. How about we reduce the number of teachers (and have the remaining be paid fairly) by making education scale? Unless you have an innovation in mind that I haven't seen, I fall back to the copiously documented truism that you can't use technology to solve a people problem. See also my agriculture example. I don't concede that children can be educated within the same concepts that are used to harvest cows and cotton.
- karmicthreat 9y ago
  Could you even produce enough quality teachers across America to have that sort of outcome? NYC maybe, Lewiston NC probably not. If software can turn a mediocre education system into a good one then I think it's worth doing. Even if it isn't going to raise a mediocre system into an excellent one. People are attending and graduating from these schools now. It is far better that their outcome improves now rather than only work to some perfect solution.
  - thex10 9y ago
    > Could you even produce enough quality teachers across America to have that sort of outcome? Possibly, if we could actually pay all public school teachers decent salaries.
    - karmicthreat 9y ago
      I don't think so. We are talking about 3+ million teachers. They would decidedly have a bell curve of teacher skills. Not the upper 10% that teach at great private or public institutions. Which students deserve to be taught by the bottom 25% of teachers? Also if we wanted to move the mean skill of these teachers higher what would it take? 4 years? 10? I think software provides a faster benefit. And one that can hopefully have an outsized benefit to students who have the bottom 25% of instructors. Plus faster software iteration hopefully lets us find more optimal solutions faster for groups of students. This gives us some breathing room for fixing the long tail instructor issues.
      - thex10 9y ago
        > I don't think so. We are talking about 3+ million teachers. They would decidedly have a bell curve of teacher skills. Yes, there is a wide spectrum of competency/skill amongst all the practitioners of a profession; that's not a remotely novel insight. That's not an argument for underpaying them. > Which students deserve to be taught by the bottom 25% of teachers? Also if we wanted to move the mean skill of these teachers higher what would it take? 4 years? 10? I think software provides a faster benefit. Which students deserve to get taught by the bottom 25% of shitty, barely-tested software chugging algorithms designed on specious theories? Not your kids, I'd bet.
- sogen 9y ago
  And homeless teachers: https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/6aadft/math_teacher_at_sf_public_school_ends_up_homeless/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/6aadft/math_teache...
notadoc 9y ago
Entirely altruistic?
- corysama 9y ago
  Whenever someone rich gets in the news for being nice, people seem to love digging for some way that their motives are not "entirely altruistic". I understand that sometimes these deals are BS and don't actually benefit anyone but the rich person. But, I don't understand why people get so upset over the rich person benefiting in any way shape or form. I've seen such outrage as "He only gave away a $1,000,000 so that he could cut $350,000 off of his taxes!" :/ "The deal eventually, indirectly feeds some money back into the project in the long term making it self-sustaining!" :/ "It not anonymous, so he's only helping thousands of people to be famous for helping thousands of people!" :/ "He's rich, so giving away huge amounts of money is easy for him. Helping thousands of people should not be recognized unless it was hard!" :/ Then there's the classic "So, he's helping this part of the problem. But, why doesn't he help the rest of the overwhelmingly huge collection of tangentially-related problems?" :/ Sometimes it seems that the standard we hold people to is "Helping people must be anonymously self-immolating to avoid disparagement." Then we disparage the same people because, as far as we can tell, they are not helping enough.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Signalling games. The good thing about being a super rich person is that you can tell all the onlookers to shove their signalling games deep in their collective ass. IMO, the conclusions people jump to mostly tell about people doing the jumping. Also, https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth....
  - notadoc 9y ago
    Who is disparaging anyone? Or are you speaking from your own observations in your social circle?
    - corysama 9y ago
heymijo 9y ago
The main thing we can learn from history, is that we do not in fact learn from history. That's what I have taken from B.H. Liddell Hart's great little book "Why Don't We Learn From History?" and it is exactly what is happening here in education, again. Today on the HN homepage there was an article about how NJ was the innovation hub of American before the Valley, which generated a nice discussion. Akarnani recounted the story of Fred Terman's failed effort to make NJ more like the Valley. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497136 This historical anecdotes illustrates how even when many essential pieces are present (money, smart people, etc) it is a nearly Sisyphean task to change a system and a culture. The great management thinker W. Edwards Deming once said "a bad system will beat a good person every time" and that is the history of the past 60 years in education reform. I wrote about that in more detail here. https://medium.com/@m_pettyjohn/on-humans-hard-problems-and-complex-systems-8c2aa2d176a2 https://medium.com/@m_pettyjohn/on-humans-hard-problems-and-... This NYTimes article reaches out and touches nearly every broken aspect of education that makes improvement seem intractable. Zuckerberg wasted $100 million in Newark and seemingly came away learning the wrong lessons. Benioff, big hearted and charitable, has his heart in the right place, but long-term will have little impact. With that in mind it is almost inconsequential what the Silicon Valley billionaires do in education. There is massive potential in our teachers and students, but to unleash it we need to understand our history, take a systems view and approach, and genuinely understand the discipline of management, which even to the big successes in the Valley seems like an afterthought. If you're outside (or even inside!) education, reading The Case of Mrs. Oublier, a study of one California teacher during the state's massive 80's reform effort, can be enlightening to the challenges faced. https://393methods1.wikispaces.com/file/view/Cohen,+D.+K.+(1990).pdf https://393methods1.wikispaces.com/file/view/Cohen,+D.+K.+(1...
- devindotcom 9y ago
  Well said. And it's important to carefully investigate the limits of the system that is to be improved, as it almost certainly is larger and more complex than anyone thinks. More money is good, better tech is good, better pay for teachers is good, but these are hot spots on a huge network of systems and circumstances. "Holistic approach" is an overworked phrase but it's the thing we need here because education overlaps in so many ways with other aspects of society.
germinalphrase 9y ago
My father was a fine art printmaker by training. In the 1980's he was working in advertising doing (what was then called) desktop publishing. Physical photographs, knives, glue - old school image-making. Making art on the side, he became a very early adopter of digital image making tools and rode the wave as his entire industry was transformed. The tools available to the (what is now called) graphics designer changed completely - but the goals and underlying skills of the job did not. Designers became better designers. To extend the analogy, I have this feeling that we're putting a great deal of effort into "taking the designer out of the design" rather than making tools to augment the designer's abilities/speed/workflow. Yes - we can probably create a system that can spit out company logos just as "good" as a mediocre designer, but if our best designers are still making do with knives, glue and paint then the entire field is being held back. There are purpose-build tools for all kinds of professions, but teachers are largely making do with the same processes and tools that they did fifty years ago. They don't need a LogosmartAI to replace them; they just need Photoshop.
edtechstrats 9y ago
Unlike how other instructional materials are adopted by schools, educational software operates in secrecy - it remains essentially a black box to educators, parents, and students. There is no mechanism for independent reviews/audits of content or code, no insight into the instructional approach, checks for factual accuracy, or evaluations of potential bias. The money quote (for me): “That sounds like a low bar [that their apps did not harm students’ educational results],” Ms. Woolley-Wilson said. “But with the history of education technology, it is not.”
6stringmerc 9y ago
Mark my words: In 15 years time, the Salesforce.org meddling in Education will be a "Poster Child" study in Hubris outside of one's field of expertise. It will not work. Education is inherently time wasted by way of learning, and as a species, Humans are far too diverse for the grand dreams of utopian schooling. I mean, sure Utopian Schooling is possible but it's incredibly intrusive, Homogenized, and reductive - all of which projects like this try to pretend aren't fundamentally necessary. Do I have a better plan? I do. Research backed. Want a hint? Every child should have Music Instruction two times per week for at least one hour per session. That would do more than any stupid spreadsheet or Board Room review. I know, because Research backs it up. Not this..."venture" of sorts.
- alphonsegaston 9y ago
  The fact that we have proven, effective models for schooling in European countries that we explicitly ignore already demonstrates this. Same thing as with healthcare. But it's not hubris. Silicon Valley Utopianism is just a sales pitch for people to insert themselves as privatizers and middle-men using technology.
  - SirLJ 9y ago
    yep, absolutely!
- p1esk 9y ago
  You forgot a link to your Research.
- beambot 9y ago
  Wealthy individuals commit time, money, and effort to important problem. Screw those guys... am I right? I hate this attitude. Their overall vector is in the right direction; even if it's off slightly, at least they care and are doing something about it. You'll catch a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar... so perhaps you should try reaching out and volunteering your own resources (time & money) rather than just sounding off -- and not even linking to the research!
SirLJ 9y ago
I am not sure experimenting on someone else children is a good idea, what will happened with the kids attending the "failed experiment" schools?
- JayHLorne 9y ago
  We've been doing that experiment for decades... you are currently experiencing the results.
  - SirLJ 9y ago
    my schooling was done in Europe and I do see a difference indeed :-)
ccvannorman 9y ago
Why is it that billionaires from many industries subvert democratic process constantly, yet when they do it openly and for education, it's criticized? If anything, the biggest problem with education is that nobody has had any power at all to make a substantial difference at scale. For once, I applaud billionaires for subverting the democratic process. This is literally the first time I've read an article with a line similar to: “They have the power to change policy, but no corresponding check on that power,” said Megan Tompkins-Stange, “We should be asking a lot more questions about who is behind the curtain,” Ms. Davis said.
ChicagoBoy11 9y ago
I've worked in K-12 schools all my life and the answer is so incredibly clear, yet there is so much incentive riding in never saying it: Students and learning are secondary in the business of education. True, meaningful educational impact happens when you can deliver authentic instruction -- instruction that creates a really tight feedback loop between the learner, the instructor, and the subject. We have tried with technology to mimick that at scale. Khan Academy and online quizzes is not a new idea; B.F. Skinner had a device doing this since at least the 60s. It works to stuff CEOs' pockets with money, feed the ever-larger administrative behemoth that schools are becoming, etc. Results, not so much. There is no greater evidence than the fact that schools are probably the only sector which has literally gotten less efficient over the past decades; we literally spend more money per pupil for worse outcomes. The incentives in public education are absolutely abysmal, and we've seemingly done everything in the book to strip the voice of students and families in this sector. As schools, our feedback loop between our own quality is practically nonexistent. No wonder we don't do right by these kids. Lots of money to be made selling software, though.
- needsoul 9y ago
  Recently I read comments about "the art of learning" by child chess prodigy and expert in martial arts Josh Waitzkin about coaching and how to conquest excellence. My take on that is that if your family or society inspire on you the value of hard work and incremental improvement, you will obtain a strong motivation to get better in whatever you do and that will give you an enormous opportunity to succeed. Speaking from my own experience, in my high school our math teacher had a voice problem and on top of that he used to speak very quickly, hence it was really difficult to understand what he was saying, but that was not a problem for me, I learned all the math in a book and became the right hand of that teacher, my duty was to try to teach to other people in class. Another nice anecdote was how I discovered the multiplication table, I was a dumb body in my childhood, I repeated several years until I was nine or ten years. I didn't know what was 2 x 2, then someone told me that the multiplication table was written in our pencil and that to answer that you have to memorize that table, that was my start on math. It seems that all the ways to a solution are written somewhere. Anyway I wouldn't change any bit my wild education, I have really loving memories from my chilhood and school. I would never change that for a formal education, let nature teach you, something in the spirit of Mark Twain novels.
pasbesoin 9y ago
If I'd been allowed to work at my own pace; there's been some understanding for my environmental needs (I can do classroom/group, just fine, but I need peace and quiet when I'm working by myself); and I'd been provided some actual social oversight and guidance, instead of the "Lord of the Flies" dominance of the student peer group (staff were largely divorced from all but pedagogy, and my parents -- plopped down in front of the TV every night -- were no help at all). Well, I think I would have done a lot better. That is to say, you can throw all the money and toys and methods you want at it. What you need, is people actually paying attention. And paid to pay attention. So that they are not overwhelmed with workload nor how they are going to pay their own bills and take care of their own families. In other words, invest in the people providing the education. Choose them wisely, and empower them. The rest is just various forms of b.s.
csa 9y ago
While I appreciate the effort of the billionaires, I largely think that this type of "redesign" is more of a bandage than a cure. I think that there are some much greater fundamental systemic problems the go far beyond not "thinking bigger". My beliefs are somewhat extreme in this topic, but I will share anyway. In broad strokes: 1. One of the biggest problems is that education has come to be ruled by the administrators. They are not servant leaders, rather they are aristocrats. Their pawns are students, faculty, parents, and taxpayers. These stakeholders need more influence in the decision-making process. 2. Mandatory schooling (both explicit and implicit) could easily stop at 8th grade with the goal of basic numeracy and literacy as well as fundamental learning skills. These skills will provide enough education for the graduates to function in society as well as move forward in the education system if/when they choose to do so. Currently, most of high school (and middle school, frankly) is just very expensive and inefficient baby sitting. 3. That said, secondary, tertiary, and trade-based education should be widely available, of high quality, and low price -- probably subsidized heavily by the state -- throughout a person's life. Many people do not realize the value of education and learning until they are older, and our current system does a relatively poor job accommodating these people. 4. Overall curriculum design needs to focus on autonomous learning (touched on in the article). Note that this means that the learner takes responsibility for their learning, not someone else (e.g., teachers). Also note that this does not obviate teachers, rather it just makes them one of many sources of knowledge/learning. Anecdotally, I have seen this type of system pull off what many would consider to be miracles. 5. Learning in general should be much more contextualized and (when practicable) experiential. Many/most students do not see how the current curriculum content applies to them. The current content seems to be related to, and largely is a product of, the type of education upper middle class people want. Folks from other walks of life actually have a lot of curiosity and a high capacity to learn, but taking part in the current curriculum would turn them into an alien within their community (e.g., non-native English speaker being beaten/abused for speaking English well). Few people are willing to do this. 6. Assessment should lean much more heavily on portfolios than on standardized tests. Don't get me wrong, standardized tests have their place, but currently they are overused and are often times misused. This is an issue I very passionate about. Please let me know via a response here if you would like to discuss this more.
mcrad 9y ago
I mean let them do some R&D, then get public support and eventually maybe make a business out of it, not the other way around. This is the opposite of corporate social responsibility, yall. Do your freakin job, Benioff!

69 points by gk1 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

pdog 9y ago

Meanwhile, the same tech billionaires influencing the public school system will follow a completely different curriculum—usually private, low tech, with limited screen and device time—for their own children. Do as I say, not as I do.

liveoneggs 9y ago
waldorf for everyone isn't going to sell many chromebooks now is it?
jsolson 9y ago
That low tech limited screen time curriculum requires well trained (aka expensive) staff. Yes, it might have better outcomes, but it can't scale without an absurd investment that, so far, society has been unwilling to make. If you can raise the general standard of education at the same cost by going digital, that's still positive sum, no?
- Simulacra 9y ago
  Are we trying to make education cheaper, or better? To that end does technology make education better, cheaper, or easier? I am probably old fashioned at 36 but I'm with Cliff Stoll on this issue: Let's get technology out of the classroom.
  - pc86 9y ago
    I'll quote the part of the GP that I think you're ignoring: > it can't scale without an...investment that, so far, society has been unwilling to make Without making any judgment on what is proper or appropriate education funding, tax policy, or anything political like that, the GP is right. Getting tech out of the classroom 1) is not a 100% positive thing; 2) costs more than society, to date, has been willing to spend. > Are we trying to make education cheaper, or better? It's not a binary proposition and pretending it is is dishonest. I want to see the median increase. I want to do it cost-effectively. If the choice is raising the median 5 points by utilizing technology for a marginal change in overall cost, or raising the median 20 points by quintupling education funding, one is possible and one is not.
- rhizome 9y ago
  Classic blinkered-technocrat perspective, why does "scale" matter in education? What is the endgame when education is scaled as much as possible, plugging kids into VR headsets and calling it a day?
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Because that's literally how civilization improves. You're able to code for a living because people before you figured out how to make agriculture scale. All humans have finite amount of time during the day, finite resources and finite lifespans. All of which is allocated pretty tightly. If you want to add value to the lives of people, your best bet is something that doesn't come at a great cost to them. Hence scale. A secondary benefit is that big things which don't scale are only attempted by few players with lots of resources; making things more scalable means more smaller players can compete on the market.
    - rhizome 9y ago
      How about we spend more effort creating more fairly-paid teachers than making more dormfart-website CEOs?
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago
        1. "Dormfart-website CEOs" are not necessarily what's required to scale education. 2. How about we reduce the number of teachers (and have the remaining be paid fairly) by making education scale? See also my agriculture example.
        rhizome 9y ago
        "Dormfart-website CEOs" are not necessarily what's required to scale education. But they're consuming money and attention that could be redirected to solving real problems. I know, this is a perpetual complaint with someone in any crowd. How about we reduce the number of teachers (and have the remaining be paid fairly) by making education scale? Unless you have an innovation in mind that I haven't seen, I fall back to the copiously documented truism that you can't use technology to solve a people problem. See also my agriculture example. I don't concede that children can be educated within the same concepts that are used to harvest cows and cotton.
karmicthreat 9y ago
Could you even produce enough quality teachers across America to have that sort of outcome? NYC maybe, Lewiston NC probably not. If software can turn a mediocre education system into a good one then I think it's worth doing. Even if it isn't going to raise a mediocre system into an excellent one. People are attending and graduating from these schools now. It is far better that their outcome improves now rather than only work to some perfect solution.
- thex10 9y ago
  > Could you even produce enough quality teachers across America to have that sort of outcome? Possibly, if we could actually pay all public school teachers decent salaries.
  - karmicthreat 9y ago
    I don't think so. We are talking about 3+ million teachers. They would decidedly have a bell curve of teacher skills. Not the upper 10% that teach at great private or public institutions. Which students deserve to be taught by the bottom 25% of teachers? Also if we wanted to move the mean skill of these teachers higher what would it take? 4 years? 10? I think software provides a faster benefit. And one that can hopefully have an outsized benefit to students who have the bottom 25% of instructors. Plus faster software iteration hopefully lets us find more optimal solutions faster for groups of students. This gives us some breathing room for fixing the long tail instructor issues.
    - thex10 9y ago
      > I don't think so. We are talking about 3+ million teachers. They would decidedly have a bell curve of teacher skills. Yes, there is a wide spectrum of competency/skill amongst all the practitioners of a profession; that's not a remotely novel insight. That's not an argument for underpaying them. > Which students deserve to be taught by the bottom 25% of teachers? Also if we wanted to move the mean skill of these teachers higher what would it take? 4 years? 10? I think software provides a faster benefit. Which students deserve to get taught by the bottom 25% of shitty, barely-tested software chugging algorithms designed on specious theories? Not your kids, I'd bet.
sogen 9y ago
And homeless teachers: https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/6aadft/math_teacher_at_sf_public_school_ends_up_homeless/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/6aadft/math_teache...

notadoc 9y ago

Entirely altruistic?

corysama 9y ago
Whenever someone rich gets in the news for being nice, people seem to love digging for some way that their motives are not "entirely altruistic". I understand that sometimes these deals are BS and don't actually benefit anyone but the rich person. But, I don't understand why people get so upset over the rich person benefiting in any way shape or form. I've seen such outrage as "He only gave away a $1,000,000 so that he could cut $350,000 off of his taxes!" :/ "The deal eventually, indirectly feeds some money back into the project in the long term making it self-sustaining!" :/ "It not anonymous, so he's only helping thousands of people to be famous for helping thousands of people!" :/ "He's rich, so giving away huge amounts of money is easy for him. Helping thousands of people should not be recognized unless it was hard!" :/ Then there's the classic "So, he's helping this part of the problem. But, why doesn't he help the rest of the overwhelmingly huge collection of tangentially-related problems?" :/ Sometimes it seems that the standard we hold people to is "Helping people must be anonymously self-immolating to avoid disparagement." Then we disparage the same people because, as far as we can tell, they are not helping enough.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Signalling games. The good thing about being a super rich person is that you can tell all the onlookers to shove their signalling games deep in their collective ass. IMO, the conclusions people jump to mostly tell about people doing the jumping. Also, https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth....
- notadoc 9y ago
  Who is disparaging anyone? Or are you speaking from your own observations in your social circle?
  - corysama 9y ago

heymijo 9y ago

The main thing we can learn from history, is that we do not in fact learn from history. That's what I have taken from B.H. Liddell Hart's great little book "Why Don't We Learn From History?" and it is exactly what is happening here in education, again. Today on the HN homepage there was an article about how NJ was the innovation hub of American before the Valley, which generated a nice discussion. Akarnani recounted the story of Fred Terman's failed effort to make NJ more like the Valley. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497136 This historical anecdotes illustrates how even when many essential pieces are present (money, smart people, etc) it is a nearly Sisyphean task to change a system and a culture. The great management thinker W. Edwards Deming once said "a bad system will beat a good person every time" and that is the history of the past 60 years in education reform. I wrote about that in more detail here. https://medium.com/@m_pettyjohn/on-humans-hard-problems-and-complex-systems-8c2aa2d176a2 https://medium.com/@m_pettyjohn/on-humans-hard-problems-and-... This NYTimes article reaches out and touches nearly every broken aspect of education that makes improvement seem intractable. Zuckerberg wasted $100 million in Newark and seemingly came away learning the wrong lessons. Benioff, big hearted and charitable, has his heart in the right place, but long-term will have little impact. With that in mind it is almost inconsequential what the Silicon Valley billionaires do in education. There is massive potential in our teachers and students, but to unleash it we need to understand our history, take a systems view and approach, and genuinely understand the discipline of management, which even to the big successes in the Valley seems like an afterthought. If you're outside (or even inside!) education, reading The Case of Mrs. Oublier, a study of one California teacher during the state's massive 80's reform effort, can be enlightening to the challenges faced. https://393methods1.wikispaces.com/file/view/Cohen,+D.+K.+(1990).pdf https://393methods1.wikispaces.com/file/view/Cohen,+D.+K.+(1...

devindotcom 9y ago
Well said. And it's important to carefully investigate the limits of the system that is to be improved, as it almost certainly is larger and more complex than anyone thinks. More money is good, better tech is good, better pay for teachers is good, but these are hot spots on a huge network of systems and circumstances. "Holistic approach" is an overworked phrase but it's the thing we need here because education overlaps in so many ways with other aspects of society.

germinalphrase 9y ago

My father was a fine art printmaker by training. In the 1980's he was working in advertising doing (what was then called) desktop publishing. Physical photographs, knives, glue - old school image-making. Making art on the side, he became a very early adopter of digital image making tools and rode the wave as his entire industry was transformed. The tools available to the (what is now called) graphics designer changed completely - but the goals and underlying skills of the job did not. Designers became better designers. To extend the analogy, I have this feeling that we're putting a great deal of effort into "taking the designer out of the design" rather than making tools to augment the designer's abilities/speed/workflow. Yes - we can probably create a system that can spit out company logos just as "good" as a mediocre designer, but if our best designers are still making do with knives, glue and paint then the entire field is being held back. There are purpose-build tools for all kinds of professions, but teachers are largely making do with the same processes and tools that they did fifty years ago. They don't need a LogosmartAI to replace them; they just need Photoshop.

edtechstrats 9y ago

Unlike how other instructional materials are adopted by schools, educational software operates in secrecy - it remains essentially a black box to educators, parents, and students. There is no mechanism for independent reviews/audits of content or code, no insight into the instructional approach, checks for factual accuracy, or evaluations of potential bias. The money quote (for me): “That sounds like a low bar [that their apps did not harm students’ educational results],” Ms. Woolley-Wilson said. “But with the history of education technology, it is not.”

6stringmerc 9y ago

Mark my words: In 15 years time, the Salesforce.org meddling in Education will be a "Poster Child" study in Hubris outside of one's field of expertise. It will not work. Education is inherently time wasted by way of learning, and as a species, Humans are far too diverse for the grand dreams of utopian schooling. I mean, sure Utopian Schooling is possible but it's incredibly intrusive, Homogenized, and reductive - all of which projects like this try to pretend aren't fundamentally necessary. Do I have a better plan? I do. Research backed. Want a hint? Every child should have Music Instruction two times per week for at least one hour per session. That would do more than any stupid spreadsheet or Board Room review. I know, because Research backs it up. Not this..."venture" of sorts.

alphonsegaston 9y ago
The fact that we have proven, effective models for schooling in European countries that we explicitly ignore already demonstrates this. Same thing as with healthcare. But it's not hubris. Silicon Valley Utopianism is just a sales pitch for people to insert themselves as privatizers and middle-men using technology.
- SirLJ 9y ago
  yep, absolutely!
p1esk 9y ago
You forgot a link to your Research.
beambot 9y ago
Wealthy individuals commit time, money, and effort to important problem. Screw those guys... am I right? I hate this attitude. Their overall vector is in the right direction; even if it's off slightly, at least they care and are doing something about it. You'll catch a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar... so perhaps you should try reaching out and volunteering your own resources (time & money) rather than just sounding off -- and not even linking to the research!

SirLJ 9y ago

I am not sure experimenting on someone else children is a good idea, what will happened with the kids attending the "failed experiment" schools?

JayHLorne 9y ago
We've been doing that experiment for decades... you are currently experiencing the results.
- SirLJ 9y ago
  my schooling was done in Europe and I do see a difference indeed :-)

ccvannorman 9y ago

Why is it that billionaires from many industries subvert democratic process constantly, yet when they do it openly and for education, it's criticized? If anything, the biggest problem with education is that nobody has had any power at all to make a substantial difference at scale. For once, I applaud billionaires for subverting the democratic process. This is literally the first time I've read an article with a line similar to: “They have the power to change policy, but no corresponding check on that power,” said Megan Tompkins-Stange, “We should be asking a lot more questions about who is behind the curtain,” Ms. Davis said.

ChicagoBoy11 9y ago

I've worked in K-12 schools all my life and the answer is so incredibly clear, yet there is so much incentive riding in never saying it: Students and learning are secondary in the business of education. True, meaningful educational impact happens when you can deliver authentic instruction -- instruction that creates a really tight feedback loop between the learner, the instructor, and the subject. We have tried with technology to mimick that at scale. Khan Academy and online quizzes is not a new idea; B.F. Skinner had a device doing this since at least the 60s. It works to stuff CEOs' pockets with money, feed the ever-larger administrative behemoth that schools are becoming, etc. Results, not so much. There is no greater evidence than the fact that schools are probably the only sector which has literally gotten less efficient over the past decades; we literally spend more money per pupil for worse outcomes. The incentives in public education are absolutely abysmal, and we've seemingly done everything in the book to strip the voice of students and families in this sector. As schools, our feedback loop between our own quality is practically nonexistent. No wonder we don't do right by these kids. Lots of money to be made selling software, though.

needsoul 9y ago
Recently I read comments about "the art of learning" by child chess prodigy and expert in martial arts Josh Waitzkin about coaching and how to conquest excellence. My take on that is that if your family or society inspire on you the value of hard work and incremental improvement, you will obtain a strong motivation to get better in whatever you do and that will give you an enormous opportunity to succeed. Speaking from my own experience, in my high school our math teacher had a voice problem and on top of that he used to speak very quickly, hence it was really difficult to understand what he was saying, but that was not a problem for me, I learned all the math in a book and became the right hand of that teacher, my duty was to try to teach to other people in class. Another nice anecdote was how I discovered the multiplication table, I was a dumb body in my childhood, I repeated several years until I was nine or ten years. I didn't know what was 2 x 2, then someone told me that the multiplication table was written in our pencil and that to answer that you have to memorize that table, that was my start on math. It seems that all the ways to a solution are written somewhere. Anyway I wouldn't change any bit my wild education, I have really loving memories from my chilhood and school. I would never change that for a formal education, let nature teach you, something in the spirit of Mark Twain novels.

pasbesoin 9y ago

If I'd been allowed to work at my own pace; there's been some understanding for my environmental needs (I can do classroom/group, just fine, but I need peace and quiet when I'm working by myself); and I'd been provided some actual social oversight and guidance, instead of the "Lord of the Flies" dominance of the student peer group (staff were largely divorced from all but pedagogy, and my parents -- plopped down in front of the TV every night -- were no help at all). Well, I think I would have done a lot better. That is to say, you can throw all the money and toys and methods you want at it. What you need, is people actually paying attention. And paid to pay attention. So that they are not overwhelmed with workload nor how they are going to pay their own bills and take care of their own families. In other words, invest in the people providing the education. Choose them wisely, and empower them. The rest is just various forms of b.s.

csa 9y ago

While I appreciate the effort of the billionaires, I largely think that this type of "redesign" is more of a bandage than a cure. I think that there are some much greater fundamental systemic problems the go far beyond not "thinking bigger". My beliefs are somewhat extreme in this topic, but I will share anyway. In broad strokes: 1. One of the biggest problems is that education has come to be ruled by the administrators. They are not servant leaders, rather they are aristocrats. Their pawns are students, faculty, parents, and taxpayers. These stakeholders need more influence in the decision-making process. 2. Mandatory schooling (both explicit and implicit) could easily stop at 8th grade with the goal of basic numeracy and literacy as well as fundamental learning skills. These skills will provide enough education for the graduates to function in society as well as move forward in the education system if/when they choose to do so. Currently, most of high school (and middle school, frankly) is just very expensive and inefficient baby sitting. 3. That said, secondary, tertiary, and trade-based education should be widely available, of high quality, and low price -- probably subsidized heavily by the state -- throughout a person's life. Many people do not realize the value of education and learning until they are older, and our current system does a relatively poor job accommodating these people. 4. Overall curriculum design needs to focus on autonomous learning (touched on in the article). Note that this means that the learner takes responsibility for their learning, not someone else (e.g., teachers). Also note that this does not obviate teachers, rather it just makes them one of many sources of knowledge/learning. Anecdotally, I have seen this type of system pull off what many would consider to be miracles. 5. Learning in general should be much more contextualized and (when practicable) experiential. Many/most students do not see how the current curriculum content applies to them. The current content seems to be related to, and largely is a product of, the type of education upper middle class people want. Folks from other walks of life actually have a lot of curiosity and a high capacity to learn, but taking part in the current curriculum would turn them into an alien within their community (e.g., non-native English speaker being beaten/abused for speaking English well). Few people are willing to do this. 6. Assessment should lean much more heavily on portfolios than on standardized tests. Don't get me wrong, standardized tests have their place, but currently they are overused and are often times misused. This is an issue I very passionate about. Please let me know via a response here if you would like to discuss this more.

mcrad 9y ago

I mean let them do some R&D, then get public support and eventually maybe make a business out of it, not the other way around. This is the opposite of corporate social responsibility, yall. Do your freakin job, Benioff!