8 ms·

Education Startups Court Brand-Name Teachers, Raising Ethics Issues

57 points by SirLJ 9y ago

yazan94 9y ago
I see the argument for potential conflicts of interest, but in an age where teachers are underpaid, most school districts are under-funded, and traditional teaching styles are outdated, I do applaud these moves as ways to introduce innovation in a field that still hasn't fully embraced newer technology nor newer studies on effective teaching methods. But the question that should be posed is how does a school district or a Dept. of Ed. maneuver to not stem this innovation but also reduce the likelihood of a lawsuit/illegal bribe/unethical behavior by teachers?
- lotsofpulp 9y ago
  Teachers and school districts are under funded in order to create exactly this situation. Some people don't believe in providing all children with the same opportunities, or at least a decent minimum standard, and/or gutting taxpayer funded education makes it easier to push certain religious, economic, environmental, political views. It's a damn shame my country (USA) can't provide adequate and quality food and schooling to its children, yet is so proud of itself.
  - exelius 9y ago
    Ehh, it's more of "I don't use that service, so why should I pay for it?" We as a society have stopped looking at our tax dollars as an investment in the future. Public education is one of the best investments we can make, but you're right; it tends to be viewed as "liberal indoctrination" (because you know, the truth has a liberal bias). Modern conservatives look at a problem and see the answer as "free market economics, let those who want it pay for it!" Hence the tragedy of the commons situation we're rushing headlong into. Modern conservatism is morally and intellectually bankrupt; and as a result 2017 will be known as the year that China assumed leadership of the world.
    - deepnotderp 9y ago
      Oh noes, did you just say the fwee mah-ket is bad? Socialist! Incendiary comments aside, I have to agree with you, a lot, the mindset in the United States towards free markets has become something of a religion. While free markets are definitely useful as a general heuristic, markets Can be inefficient.
    - cobookman 9y ago
      I think it's not I don't use it. And more of a is the money better placed elsewhere. Education is a large percentage of the budget today. We can also spend all the money in the world and we might not have any better of an education system. Just look at Mark's Zuckerbergs millions he gave to schools with no results.
      - HarryHirsch 9y ago
        Just look at Mark's Zuckerbergs millions he gave to schools with no results. Anyone who genuinely wants to make an impact in any field first surveys the literature to see what has been done before. Why didn't he consult with experts [1] before dropping millions at the Newark Public School system? Zuckerberg isn't exactly known for righteousness. There's his other initiative where he wants to arm people with tablets to provide the schoolchildren in a certain impoverished African country (forgot which, was it Sierra Leone?) with an education, instead of funding teacher training. One thing would improve the infrastructure in the country, the other would funnel money to online education companies. What if the same goals were at work here? [1] It's easy to point fingers at Schools of Education because many are bad. Not all of them are, tough.
        exelius 9y ago
        That's kind of indicative of another American value; namely "my money trumps your knowledge".
  - bsenftner 9y ago
    It is also a good number of people fear the indoctrination that takes place in public schools, hating the 'generally progressive ideas' in education. So they create their own home schools, bereft of standards and slanted towards whatever political flavor has captured the parents that moment. I've encountered and worked in 2 such home schooled, Fundamentalist raised tech developers. Both were smart developers; one is a genius whose home schooling enabled him to reach phd levels of knowledge in encryption and compression theory as a teen; while the other was a damn smart guy but so emotionally and emphatically crippled, he was nearly dangerous in social interactions. The gutting of education has negative tendrils we'll be dealing with for generations.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - poof131 9y ago
    But is this true, is US public education underfunded? These articles depict the US as one of if not the top spender per student [1, 2]. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-glob... [2] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp
    - rpiguy 9y ago
      I agree and posted about this myself. Most of the comments on this topic offer little in analysis beyond "more funding good, less funding bad" and casting aspersions on those who disagree with you.
    - lotsofpulp 9y ago
      Perhaps I should have written underfunded teachers. Teaching isn't a desirable profession, and that combined with high student:teacher ratios, plus the terrible food they give kids tells me that there are vast improvements that can be made in the system, if we are really incentivized to provide a good education. Also, the whole local taxes pay for local schools model is obviously not working. Things used to be more distributed, but now it's so easy to optimize for all the best schools and best neighborhoods that it creates a huge class system. Which was always there, but as the divide grows larger and the consequences life long, I don't see how it helps to cultivate a feeling of "country". Providing equal footing to kids (and I know the home situation is most of the problem) could help alleviate a little bit of the problem.
      - purple-again 9y ago
        Are it's teachers underfunded compared to other countries or underfunded compared to your ideal of their worth?
        lotsofpulp 9y ago
        I am claiming that a significant number of people who would make great teachers probably don't want to be one because pay and quality of life is much greater in other lines of work. If we, as a society, want the best teachers, then we have to make that a viable option for the best people. An uncertain school budget, beaurocratic school administration and myriad legal and funding issues don't make for a good working environment. I haven't heard any parent proudly claim or want their children to become teachers. of course, maybe I'm wrong about increasing quality of teachers will increase quality education, but I think it's a good place to start.
  - yazan94 9y ago
    My personal opinion is that an overhauled education system[1] that brings us more up to par with other countries (China, Russia, etc.) will give the US a better economic advantage because, lets be honest, the US as an economic powerhouse is not going to change in the near future. But other non-super-friendly countries like China, Russia, etc are not irrelevant on the world geopolitical stage where soft power is huge. A better nationwide education system/standard could also help us beyond some of these social/societal issues we have (racism, social gender stigmas, economic inequality (have you ever attended an 'inner city school'? I spent a few months in one, teaching standards were ludicrous. Thankfully I transferred out asap.), etc.). If just a fraction of the money we send overseas was rerouted to use in our education system, it would pay dividends for years to come. Much more than buying some other fickle countries loyalty for the year. [1] http://www.oecd.org/pisa/ http://www.oecd.org/pisa/ (check out the Math world map for a humbling view)
    - apetresc 9y ago
      Do you find "I want a completely overhauled education system with higher standards nationwide" and "I thankfully got myself transferred out of teaching at a bad school immediately" to be at all at odds with each other?
      - erubin 9y ago
        I think the other poster implied they were a student at the school.
  - rpiguy 9y ago
    The United States spends more per pupil than all but four other countries in the world! Most schools are not underfunded. http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/apr/21/jeb-bush/does-united-states-spend-more-student-most-countri/ http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/apr/21/jeb... Much like healthcare the U.S. spends a lot of money per pupil on public education, but it is a wildly inefficient system. Our return per dollar is poor. Furthermore, there are a lot of factors contributing to this inefficiency. - Schools are locally controlled and budgeted, but have to deal with federal and state regulations and initiatives. - Wildly different systems for school funding, property tax, school tax, etc. that all have their drawbacks and favor middle and upper class neighborhoods. - In the US we expect a lot of services from the school that are not provided in other countries (sports and band are prime examples that in other countries would be programs staffed by volunteers and not paid out of the school budget). - Litigation, helicopter parents... - Intellectually bankrupt unions opposing reform Outside of the discussion around funding, the larger problem is cultural. You could gold plate the toilets in Detroit or Baltimore or Appalachia and buy every student a MacBook Pro and pay the teachers 50% more and it won't make students want to learn. If you want to increase the "quality of eduction" you need to fix the culture first. I am not denying that there are some deplorable public schools out there and those should be fixed, but they are a small minority of schools. The problems are larger and societal.
    - dv_dt 9y ago
      On it's surface that spending looks terrible, but it really needs to be broken down at least urban vs rural and adjusted for very regional costs of living. When you compare against European nations, I would strongly suspect there is much more variation among district or even individual school funding in the US because we base our funding on local taxes and their funding models are more national. There is a lot to fix, and part of it is that for all the money we spend, to little filters down to teacher salaries.
    - jancsika 9y ago
      > You could gold plate the toilets in Detroit or Baltimore or Appalachia and buy every student a MacBook Pro and pay the teachers 50% more and it won't make students want to learn. Average elementary teacher salary in North Carolina in 2013 was $45,947 times 0.5 is $22,973.50 plus $45,947 equals $68,920.50 For that kind of salary I'd go teach arithmetic at Nantahala School in the middle of the Western NC woods. Like a lot of schools in remote locations of "Appalachia" it is small-- a K-12 school with something around 100-200 students total. 200 divided by 13 would equal a pretty manageable class size. For that kind of average salary I'd bet there'd be a nice mix of similarly chipper new teachers also happy to get paid handsomely for their efforts. I'd also bet that the students would respond to a sudden influx of interest and funding in a place that otherwise looks like it was frozen in the year 1973. First lesson plan would be titled: "Math: The Details matter."
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- losteverything 9y ago
  /s??? "but in an age where teachers are underpaid" Underpaid is a word not to be used with teachers salaries. Just look at any district here http://php.app.com/agent/ http://php.app.com/agent/
  - kharms 9y ago
    Those salaries don't look unreasonable to me, but suppose one finds them high - according to this[0] study, NJ has the second best public schools in the nation. This support the theory that higher teacher salaries lead to better outcomes. [0] https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-best-schools/5335/ https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-best-schools/5335/
  - germinalphrase 9y ago
    They are significantly higher than public schools in the Midwest. Anecdotally, I'm aware that charter school teachers in Milwaukee start at around 25k. Mid to high 30's is typical in Madison/Minneapolis/etc. topping out in the 70's.
- replicatorblog 9y ago
  "The United States spent $15,171 on each young person in the system — more than any other nation covered in the report." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-glob...
  - Pulcinella 9y ago
    That $15000 includes college. The report states ~$11000 for elementary and ~$12000 for high school.
lobotryas 9y ago
Don't know about others, but I was caught off guard by the first photo of the article (she's teaching 3rd graders to tweet and post on IG). I'm under the impression that you must be 13 or older to agree to a TOS and most 3rd graders are 8-9 years old. Does this also mean that all of these kids have their own smart phone? So many questions... While I'm not a teacher I have no idea how this (IG and Twitter) is beneficial to learning at the slightest. I definitely know that I would delay giving my kid any smart device for as long as absolutely possible so they can get as much of their childhood away from staring at the screen as they can.
- mcculley 9y ago
  There are words attached to the article below the photo: "She teaches them to post daily on the class Twitter and Instagram accounts she set up."
  - lobotryas 9y ago
    Yeah, that's what I'm referring to.
- patja 9y ago
  I teach at the middle school level and I can tell you very few teachers have any awareness of COPPA. They see kids using these apps and services and just assume it is normal. Parents are checked out or overly-permissive about telling their kids to lie about their birthdate in order to get on FB, Twitter, and Instagram. When I explain and ask "is it OK to misrepresent yourself in order to deceive someone to give you something that otherwise they would reject as an illegal act" I get blank stares.
  - slavik81 9y ago
    Perhaps it's been implicitly ingrained in them that the answer to your question is "yes." They lie about their age because if they tell the truth, they are discriminated against and marginalized.
  - cm2012 9y ago
rb808 9y ago
I was thinking about how many of us get free products (and T-Shirts) from big tech companies. I was thinking teachers are probably OK with this too. Its likely the most motivated ones are most onboard.
gnicholas 9y ago
As a founder working in edtech, I'm glad to see a light shined on these practices, which are surprisingly pervasive. My company has received mass emails from teacher-bloggers asking if we want to submit our products for reviews or find out about sponsored posts. When I replied to inquire about product reviews, they responded with information about how I could sponsor a post. As it turns out, their entire site is a bunch of sponsored posts, masquerading as an unbiased source of information and reviews. I'm not saying this doesn't happen in other industries. But it is frustrating to see so much of it in education — to the point where I have asked myself: is this just how all the successful companies became successful? Is this just the way the game is played? Hopefully articles like this one will help set a trend toward better behavior. It sounds like teachers could get in a bit of trouble, both ethically and legally, if they're promoting products without appropriate disclosure. But they probably just figure that anything that companies ask them to do is ok for them to do. Now parties on both sides are on notice that much of what is going on is not legal. For anyone interested in reading more about the dark-ish underbelly of edtech, check out http://www.hackeducation.com http://www.hackeducation.com. No affiliation — just a fan.
bllguo 9y ago
Can we learn from other countries that achieve greater outcomes without fancy technologies, before introducing unproven fads like Instagram to the classroom? US education is just depressingly terrible in so many ways. If I had a kid, I feel like sending him/her to public school would be borderline unethical.

57 points by SirLJ 9y ago

I see the argument for potential conflicts of interest, but in an age where teachers are underpaid, most school districts are under-funded, and traditional teaching styles are outdated, I do applaud these moves as ways to introduce innovation in a field that still hasn't fully embraced newer technology nor newer studies on effective teaching methods. But the question that should be posed is how does a school district or a Dept. of Ed. maneuver to not stem this innovation but also reduce the likelihood of a lawsuit/illegal bribe/unethical behavior by teachers?

lotsofpulp 9y ago
Teachers and school districts are under funded in order to create exactly this situation. Some people don't believe in providing all children with the same opportunities, or at least a decent minimum standard, and/or gutting taxpayer funded education makes it easier to push certain religious, economic, environmental, political views. It's a damn shame my country (USA) can't provide adequate and quality food and schooling to its children, yet is so proud of itself.
- exelius 9y ago
  Ehh, it's more of "I don't use that service, so why should I pay for it?" We as a society have stopped looking at our tax dollars as an investment in the future. Public education is one of the best investments we can make, but you're right; it tends to be viewed as "liberal indoctrination" (because you know, the truth has a liberal bias). Modern conservatives look at a problem and see the answer as "free market economics, let those who want it pay for it!" Hence the tragedy of the commons situation we're rushing headlong into. Modern conservatism is morally and intellectually bankrupt; and as a result 2017 will be known as the year that China assumed leadership of the world.
  - deepnotderp 9y ago
    Oh noes, did you just say the fwee mah-ket is bad? Socialist! Incendiary comments aside, I have to agree with you, a lot, the mindset in the United States towards free markets has become something of a religion. While free markets are definitely useful as a general heuristic, markets Can be inefficient.
  - cobookman 9y ago
    I think it's not I don't use it. And more of a is the money better placed elsewhere. Education is a large percentage of the budget today. We can also spend all the money in the world and we might not have any better of an education system. Just look at Mark's Zuckerbergs millions he gave to schools with no results.
    - HarryHirsch 9y ago
      Just look at Mark's Zuckerbergs millions he gave to schools with no results. Anyone who genuinely wants to make an impact in any field first surveys the literature to see what has been done before. Why didn't he consult with experts [1] before dropping millions at the Newark Public School system? Zuckerberg isn't exactly known for righteousness. There's his other initiative where he wants to arm people with tablets to provide the schoolchildren in a certain impoverished African country (forgot which, was it Sierra Leone?) with an education, instead of funding teacher training. One thing would improve the infrastructure in the country, the other would funnel money to online education companies. What if the same goals were at work here? [1] It's easy to point fingers at Schools of Education because many are bad. Not all of them are, tough.
      - exelius 9y ago
        That's kind of indicative of another American value; namely "my money trumps your knowledge".
- bsenftner 9y ago
  It is also a good number of people fear the indoctrination that takes place in public schools, hating the 'generally progressive ideas' in education. So they create their own home schools, bereft of standards and slanted towards whatever political flavor has captured the parents that moment. I've encountered and worked in 2 such home schooled, Fundamentalist raised tech developers. Both were smart developers; one is a genius whose home schooling enabled him to reach phd levels of knowledge in encryption and compression theory as a teen; while the other was a damn smart guy but so emotionally and emphatically crippled, he was nearly dangerous in social interactions. The gutting of education has negative tendrils we'll be dealing with for generations.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- poof131 9y ago
  But is this true, is US public education underfunded? These articles depict the US as one of if not the top spender per student [1, 2]. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-glob... [2] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp
  - rpiguy 9y ago
    I agree and posted about this myself. Most of the comments on this topic offer little in analysis beyond "more funding good, less funding bad" and casting aspersions on those who disagree with you.
  - lotsofpulp 9y ago
    Perhaps I should have written underfunded teachers. Teaching isn't a desirable profession, and that combined with high student:teacher ratios, plus the terrible food they give kids tells me that there are vast improvements that can be made in the system, if we are really incentivized to provide a good education. Also, the whole local taxes pay for local schools model is obviously not working. Things used to be more distributed, but now it's so easy to optimize for all the best schools and best neighborhoods that it creates a huge class system. Which was always there, but as the divide grows larger and the consequences life long, I don't see how it helps to cultivate a feeling of "country". Providing equal footing to kids (and I know the home situation is most of the problem) could help alleviate a little bit of the problem.
    - purple-again 9y ago
      Are it's teachers underfunded compared to other countries or underfunded compared to your ideal of their worth?
      - lotsofpulp 9y ago
        I am claiming that a significant number of people who would make great teachers probably don't want to be one because pay and quality of life is much greater in other lines of work. If we, as a society, want the best teachers, then we have to make that a viable option for the best people. An uncertain school budget, beaurocratic school administration and myriad legal and funding issues don't make for a good working environment. I haven't heard any parent proudly claim or want their children to become teachers. of course, maybe I'm wrong about increasing quality of teachers will increase quality education, but I think it's a good place to start.
- yazan94 9y ago
  My personal opinion is that an overhauled education system[1] that brings us more up to par with other countries (China, Russia, etc.) will give the US a better economic advantage because, lets be honest, the US as an economic powerhouse is not going to change in the near future. But other non-super-friendly countries like China, Russia, etc are not irrelevant on the world geopolitical stage where soft power is huge. A better nationwide education system/standard could also help us beyond some of these social/societal issues we have (racism, social gender stigmas, economic inequality (have you ever attended an 'inner city school'? I spent a few months in one, teaching standards were ludicrous. Thankfully I transferred out asap.), etc.). If just a fraction of the money we send overseas was rerouted to use in our education system, it would pay dividends for years to come. Much more than buying some other fickle countries loyalty for the year. [1] http://www.oecd.org/pisa/ http://www.oecd.org/pisa/ (check out the Math world map for a humbling view)
  - apetresc 9y ago
    Do you find "I want a completely overhauled education system with higher standards nationwide" and "I thankfully got myself transferred out of teaching at a bad school immediately" to be at all at odds with each other?
    - erubin 9y ago
      I think the other poster implied they were a student at the school.
- rpiguy 9y ago
  The United States spends more per pupil than all but four other countries in the world! Most schools are not underfunded. http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/apr/21/jeb-bush/does-united-states-spend-more-student-most-countri/ http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/apr/21/jeb... Much like healthcare the U.S. spends a lot of money per pupil on public education, but it is a wildly inefficient system. Our return per dollar is poor. Furthermore, there are a lot of factors contributing to this inefficiency. - Schools are locally controlled and budgeted, but have to deal with federal and state regulations and initiatives. - Wildly different systems for school funding, property tax, school tax, etc. that all have their drawbacks and favor middle and upper class neighborhoods. - In the US we expect a lot of services from the school that are not provided in other countries (sports and band are prime examples that in other countries would be programs staffed by volunteers and not paid out of the school budget). - Litigation, helicopter parents... - Intellectually bankrupt unions opposing reform Outside of the discussion around funding, the larger problem is cultural. You could gold plate the toilets in Detroit or Baltimore or Appalachia and buy every student a MacBook Pro and pay the teachers 50% more and it won't make students want to learn. If you want to increase the "quality of eduction" you need to fix the culture first. I am not denying that there are some deplorable public schools out there and those should be fixed, but they are a small minority of schools. The problems are larger and societal.
  - dv_dt 9y ago
    On it's surface that spending looks terrible, but it really needs to be broken down at least urban vs rural and adjusted for very regional costs of living. When you compare against European nations, I would strongly suspect there is much more variation among district or even individual school funding in the US because we base our funding on local taxes and their funding models are more national. There is a lot to fix, and part of it is that for all the money we spend, to little filters down to teacher salaries.
  - jancsika 9y ago
    > You could gold plate the toilets in Detroit or Baltimore or Appalachia and buy every student a MacBook Pro and pay the teachers 50% more and it won't make students want to learn. Average elementary teacher salary in North Carolina in 2013 was $45,947 times 0.5 is $22,973.50 plus $45,947 equals $68,920.50 For that kind of salary I'd go teach arithmetic at Nantahala School in the middle of the Western NC woods. Like a lot of schools in remote locations of "Appalachia" it is small-- a K-12 school with something around 100-200 students total. 200 divided by 13 would equal a pretty manageable class size. For that kind of average salary I'd bet there'd be a nice mix of similarly chipper new teachers also happy to get paid handsomely for their efforts. I'd also bet that the students would respond to a sudden influx of interest and funding in a place that otherwise looks like it was frozen in the year 1973. First lesson plan would be titled: "Math: The Details matter."
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
losteverything 9y ago
/s??? "but in an age where teachers are underpaid" Underpaid is a word not to be used with teachers salaries. Just look at any district here http://php.app.com/agent/ http://php.app.com/agent/
- kharms 9y ago
  Those salaries don't look unreasonable to me, but suppose one finds them high - according to this[0] study, NJ has the second best public schools in the nation. This support the theory that higher teacher salaries lead to better outcomes. [0] https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-best-schools/5335/ https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-best-schools/5335/
- germinalphrase 9y ago
  They are significantly higher than public schools in the Midwest. Anecdotally, I'm aware that charter school teachers in Milwaukee start at around 25k. Mid to high 30's is typical in Madison/Minneapolis/etc. topping out in the 70's.
replicatorblog 9y ago
"The United States spent $15,171 on each young person in the system — more than any other nation covered in the report." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-glob...
- Pulcinella 9y ago
  That $15000 includes college. The report states ~$11000 for elementary and ~$12000 for high school.

lobotryas 9y ago

Don't know about others, but I was caught off guard by the first photo of the article (she's teaching 3rd graders to tweet and post on IG). I'm under the impression that you must be 13 or older to agree to a TOS and most 3rd graders are 8-9 years old. Does this also mean that all of these kids have their own smart phone? So many questions... While I'm not a teacher I have no idea how this (IG and Twitter) is beneficial to learning at the slightest. I definitely know that I would delay giving my kid any smart device for as long as absolutely possible so they can get as much of their childhood away from staring at the screen as they can.

mcculley 9y ago
There are words attached to the article below the photo: "She teaches them to post daily on the class Twitter and Instagram accounts she set up."
- lobotryas 9y ago
  Yeah, that's what I'm referring to.
patja 9y ago
I teach at the middle school level and I can tell you very few teachers have any awareness of COPPA. They see kids using these apps and services and just assume it is normal. Parents are checked out or overly-permissive about telling their kids to lie about their birthdate in order to get on FB, Twitter, and Instagram. When I explain and ask "is it OK to misrepresent yourself in order to deceive someone to give you something that otherwise they would reject as an illegal act" I get blank stares.
- slavik81 9y ago
  Perhaps it's been implicitly ingrained in them that the answer to your question is "yes." They lie about their age because if they tell the truth, they are discriminated against and marginalized.
- cm2012 9y ago

rb808 9y ago

I was thinking about how many of us get free products (and T-Shirts) from big tech companies. I was thinking teachers are probably OK with this too. Its likely the most motivated ones are most onboard.

gnicholas 9y ago

As a founder working in edtech, I'm glad to see a light shined on these practices, which are surprisingly pervasive. My company has received mass emails from teacher-bloggers asking if we want to submit our products for reviews or find out about sponsored posts. When I replied to inquire about product reviews, they responded with information about how I could sponsor a post. As it turns out, their entire site is a bunch of sponsored posts, masquerading as an unbiased source of information and reviews. I'm not saying this doesn't happen in other industries. But it is frustrating to see so much of it in education — to the point where I have asked myself: is this just how all the successful companies became successful? Is this just the way the game is played? Hopefully articles like this one will help set a trend toward better behavior. It sounds like teachers could get in a bit of trouble, both ethically and legally, if they're promoting products without appropriate disclosure. But they probably just figure that anything that companies ask them to do is ok for them to do. Now parties on both sides are on notice that much of what is going on is not legal. For anyone interested in reading more about the dark-ish underbelly of edtech, check out http://www.hackeducation.com http://www.hackeducation.com. No affiliation — just a fan.

bllguo 9y ago

Can we learn from other countries that achieve greater outcomes without fancy technologies, before introducing unproven fads like Instagram to the classroom? US education is just depressingly terrible in so many ways. If I had a kid, I feel like sending him/her to public school would be borderline unethical.