Digital technology has transformed the way we read, bank, shop, keep in touch with one another, and do business. Can it shake up the nation’s sluggish public schools? Perhaps – but only if we don’t expect tomorrow’s schools to be managed like yesterday’s.
Consider that, according to the Michigan Department of Education, one of every of four students who enters the ninth grade does not graduate on time – if at all.
Consider also that on the U.S. Department of Education’s Nation Report Card, only one-third of Michigan’s fourth-grade students can read at grade level – a number that gets worse as students go through the system.
Even if you discount the importance of standardized tests, it’s clear that there are problems. Michigan schools serve some students, but not all of them – including those who have found help at the W-A-Y Program, an online school that reaches at-risk kids.
But dinosaurs like the Michigan Education Association feel threatened by online learning. In an op-ed published in the Detroit News, MEA president Steven Cook impugns online learning.
Some of his claims are at best questionable – at worst, wrong. For example, he claims that “some school districts, home-schooling advocates and private corporations across the country. . . are advocating for full-time online learning as a substitute for traditional neighborhood schools.”
But religious and secular homeschoolers are anything but advocates for turning public schools into online schools. They want to be left in peace, and many of them see district and state online offerings as a Trojan Horse offered by the public school establishment that lures in their children and destroys what is unique about homeschooling.
Cook’s warning that online students don’t get “vital social skills” ignores the fact that of the 4 million students in online programs nationwide, only 5 percent spend all their days in front of a computer screen. The other 95 percent spend a significant amount of time in a classroom.
They may, for example, use one or two online classes as a supplement to traditional classes. They may also have a school that includes using the same teachers to lead both computer-based classes and traditional ones. And what of those 5 percent who take all their classes online – at home? They’re using a number of tools to communicate electronically, which is what every kid does these days, and they’re taking part in field trips, dances, and other face-to-face events. Online students are hardly zombies living in the basement.
Cook asserts that “Advocates for full-time virtual learning are more interested in increasing their profits than investing in our children.”
In case he hasn’t noticed, students are already failing—in government-run schools where profit is not a concern. Ironically, public schooling is already a huge business, with building contractors, textbook publishers, psychologists, therapists, test developers, administrators, and so forth. Teachers – as well as the employees of the MEA – do not work for free. So the charge that seeking financial gain is somehow new in education doesn’t wash. Pot. Kettle. Black.
Are online schools effective? Some are, some aren’t.
Cook says they aren’t, but the most thorough study of online learning – conducted for the U.S. Department of Education – concludes that “[o]n average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”
Cook says that research by the Great Lakes Center supports his views. Since I work for groups often accused of being in the pocket of the Koch Brothers, I’ll point out that the Great Lakes Center is an entity of the NEA and its state affiliates, including the MEA. Do you think that teacher unions have any self-interest? Yep. But I think an argument rises and falls on its merits. Still, it’s ironic that Cook sees self-interest in others while pretending that he has none.
Online learning is not a cure-all for everything that ails public schools. But online learning opportunities make all the difference for some kids. Michigan should embrace, not fear, the possibilities.
From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20111028/MIVIEW/110280399/LaPlante–Union-dinosaurs-vs.-online-learning#ixzz1c5J4GQDv