Cheap Teachers

Most major universities have some level of online course instruction and there are specific online colleges and universities where most of their instruction is on the Web. And today, there are about one million high school students taking courses from the Web. As public school teachers are laid off in droves to meet rising budget deficits, as average class size appears to be ballooning upwards, it would only seem natural for these school systems to opt into online learning. Some public school systems – like the one in Memphis, Tennessee – even require their students to take at least one online course (at a cost to the school district of $164) to graduate. Idaho is considering pushing a requirement for four such online courses as a condition to graduation.

But there’s a catch… a big catch. Quality. Does a child actually learn when he or she is asked a question and responds by cutting and pasting a Google search result as a response? Or rampages through an online English course, not by reading the books, but by providing online biographical information about the author and storyline summaries instead of reading the assigned material? Virtual classrooms are sprouting up like weeds: “Nationwide, an estimated 1.03 million students at the K-12 level took an online course in 2007-8, up 47 percent from two years earlier, according to the Sloan Consortium, an advocacy group for online education. About 200,000 students attend online schools full time, often charter schools that appeal to home-schooling families, according to another report.” New York Times, April 5^th.

For students in isolated communities, traditionally where multiple grades may be forced into a signal classroom, virtual education can sometimes be more than a computer-controlled system of learning; students may be in an actual and live course of instruction, with full interactivity, a real teacher and real time student participation, linked by modern video conferencing technology. Or the tools available to school districts may be sufficient for tailored course creation, from basic studies to advanced placement. Global Virtual Classroom (virtualclassroom.org) is one of the non-profits leading the way in providing such educational resources to schools seeking alternatives: “The Global Virtual Classroom (GVC) project is a collection of free, on-line educational activities and resources. It aims to complement the efforts of governments and education departments around the world to integrate technology into their classrooms and curricula and to link their schools to the information superhighway.”

Edutopia (edutopia.org) is supported by George Lucas’ foundation; it has been behind quality “programmed learning” and online education for years: “Edutopia.org contains a deep archive of continually updated best practices, from classroom tips to recommendations for district-wide change. Allied with a dedicated audience that actively contributes success stories from the field, our mission relies on input and participation from schools and communities… Edutopia.org [is a]n in-depth and interactive resource, Edutopia.org offers practical, hands-on advice, real-world examples, lively contributions from practitioners, and invaluable tips and tools.”

The struggle is how to take the reality of passing standardized tests to graduate and combine it with true one-on-one interactive learning. That students learn at different rates and often need to reach material in their own way create opportunities to allow this individuality electronically without otherwise impeding the flow of normal classroom instruction. Or one can look at such virtual instruction as a placeholder for good schooling, providing technical compliance and an ability to pass a standardized test without learning much of anything: “Administrators say they have never calculated an apples-to-apples comparison for the cost of online vs. in-person education, but around the country skeptics say online courses are a stealthy way to cut corners. ‘It’s a cheap education, not because it benefits the students,’ said Karen Aronowitz, president of the teachers’ union in Miami, where 7,000 high school students were assigned to study online in computer labs this year because there were not enough teachers to comply with state class-size caps… ‘This is being proposed for even your youngest students,’ Ms. Aronowitz said. ‘Because it’s good for the kids? No. This is all about cheap.’” NY Times.

But quality control is exceptionally difficult in a nation where there are over 15,000 separate school districts; the United States is one of the few countries in the world where schooling is entirely determined at a local, and not a national, level. I’ll leave you with this excerpt from the March 20^th Newsweek given to me by my friend Dennis Duitch: “Of 1,000 citizens [yeah, they were already Americans] who recently agreed to take the Official U.S. Citizenship Test, 38% failed outright; 29% couldn’t name the Vice President; 42% didn’t know who the Taliban are; 44% couldn’t define the Bill of Rights; 6% weren’t even able to “circle Independence Day on a calendar.” The reasons Americans are so uninformed are broad, including, primarily, “a lot of very poor people without access to good education, and a huge immigrant population that doesn’t care to speak English,” as well as our decentralized education system run by individual states and religious organizations, each beholden to political, religious and/or moral issues constantly changing.” How do you create viable and quality virtual education in a nation where moral and religious prerogatives often trump educational standards? We damned well better figure this one out… the educational systems of so many other nat ions are creating very competitive workers!

I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s hard to believe that Americans still believe in true competition as the best system when they are actually eroding the very educational system that has made the U.S. competitive!