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How Data Analytics In Education Could Create a New Class of Haves and Have-nots
mattydread23 writes "Every student learns differently. Some educators are starting to use data analytics to figure out how to tailor teaching techniques to individual students, rather than using the 'one size fits all' approach. But Alec Ross, a senior advisor on innovation at the U.S. State Department, worries this would create a new class of haves and have-nots. Speaking at the Schools for Tomorrow conference last week, Ross said, 'A lot of what I see is the ability to productize and commercialize very intensive assessments of individual limits. So what I imagine is parents getting their kids essentially a $30,000 educational checkup where they extract enormous amounts of data about the kinds of learners their children are, the kinds of education deficits they have.'"
In other words, the parents that already are able to blow large sums of money on the education of their children will have yet another way to do so in future.
So nothing changes really.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Great, so someone laments the fact that some people may end up more educated than others. Wouldn't it be better if we taught everyone to their potential instead of holding back the more gifted students so everyone is equal? Lowest common denominator is "lowest" for a reason.
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Ve must make sure that no one person can excel above anyone else, no matter what the cost!
You, Citizen, are not allowed to show deviation from the norm. Intelligence is deviation. Non-Conformity is deviation. Beliefs not held by your leaders is deviation.
Carry on (without deviation).
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So let me get this straight... the "senior advisor on innovation" thinks that data analytics will pinpoint successful systems for an individual, and do so accurately enough that parents would pay $30,000 a piece for it. I think I see the problem.
Data analytics can't predict the future. It can, however, give a good indication of statistical probabilities, such that the average effect over many individuals will be predictable. This is much more suited to evaluating new general techniques, rather than specific curricula. Evaluate a few tens of thousands of students, analyze what worked and what didn't, and try that as a program for everybody. On a widespread basis, you'll get good results.
For individual good results, the old way still works best: Encourage students and teachers to work together to understand each other, and take the time to understand what the student wants or needs to learn effectively. While the teacher can create a good learning environment in the classroom, the parents should continue that at home. If you're looking for a way to ensure your kid has a successful education, $30,000 of specialized data analysis won't help, but an hour of parent-teacher conferences just might. Then take the extra $30,000 and add it to teachers' salaries.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
It's increasingly becoming the case, especially in the US. Investment returns compared to work returns have skyrocketed, top marginal tax rates(and particular capital gains) have dropped absurdly, and mobility supporting institutions have been increasingly privatized, disestablished, or defunded.
I disagree. What is happening is that labor is just not as valuable as it used to be in the developed world, that is, your little corner of reality. That's the spur for all these imaginary problems. The rest of the world is benefiting just fine.
No, it is deeper than that. Some kids lean better using the whole word method â" others by using phonics or some other technique. Figure out what method the kid is better at and the kid can sprint ahead by 1 or 2 grade levels. Pick the wrong method and the kid will lag behind by 1 or 2 grade levels.
I am going to give myself and my sister-in-laws as examples.
When I was in middle school my parents paid for a expensive independent clinic. The examination took a full week, involved multiple specialist. I was diagnosed with dyslexia, dysgraphia, borderline ADD. From that my family and teachers were able to put together a plan. Writing papers were a issue for me but I learned how to compensate â" for example that after writing a paper I need to put it away for at least a day so I can revisit it with fresh eyes. I will never be a natural writer but I have mastered techniques so I am not at a disadvantage. My math and logic skills where high so efforts were made so I could focus on these areas.
My sister-in-law was struggling in high school so the school did some testing over 2 days by a teacher (i.e. no specialized training, no advance degrees) where she was diagnosed as having a generic learning disability. What was that disability? Donâ(TM)t know. What is the best tactics to compensate for that disability? Donâ(TM)t know. She struggled both in high school and college.
$30k? Pshaw, that's nothing. You can blow that in a month-long summer camp that characterizes your kids individual learning traits and tailors a specific program for each type of learning they do. Heck, that's barely 120 hours of evaluation by a top professional - you'll probably get an assistant for most of the time at a lower rate, and then conference with the behavioral and learning expert maybe an hour a day to make sure progress is being made. Add in the facility charges, activity and learning material fees, final report and conference fees and $30k seems like it would barely cover it.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
He is worried that the assessments themselves will be very expensive. It is not the specialized classes that would cost extra, but the assessment that determines which classes to take make be more thorough if you can spend money for private testing. I am not commenting on whether I agree with him, but that is his contention.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
But Alec Ross, a senior advisor on innovation at the U.S. State Department, worries this would create a new class of haves and have-nots.
Please fire this advisor without delay. He apparently doesn't understand process optimization. This is nothing new; Educators have been aware for decades that everyone has their own learning style, and therefore curriculum is tailored to try and use as many of those methods as possible for mass education. However, it is highly inefficient -- someone who learns best from hands-on is sitting bored out of their skull while the teacher asks everyone to copy what's on the blackboard into their notebooks to help the people who learn best by doing that. And both groups are bored to tears during the Q&A where you invariably get those two people that need to talk their way through the material to understand it.
By tailoring curriculum individually and/or grouping students by learning style, the teacher wastes less time, the students remain more engaged and retain more of the material, and the overall program costs go down as the grouped students are able to learn faster. It's a dirty little secret that most of public education is busywork... homework doesn't work for many people, but because it helps "enough" people, everyone gets it.
So you have students being forced to learn in a way that is unnatural and awkward -- it's like forcing a left handed person to write right handed. Schools do this, and it causes neurosis and MRI scans of these people's brains a few years after being forced to use the wrong hand shows clear and unique changes to their brain. Now imagine we're doing that to everyone and it quickly becomes clear just how toxic our public education system is with its "one size fits all" approach.
Customized curriculum is a win for everyone. There are no losers in this; Everyone has a learning style, they're well documented, and we know what the percentages of each in the general population they exist in. Schools can plan for this. It's all statistics... and the larger the school, the more efficient it becomes, unlike the current model. Everyone talks about ratios of teachers to students, but that's the wrong model. We need to be thinking of ratios of types of students.
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For each pupil you've got $10,000 to service capital debt, maintain facilities, procure and maintain learning tools and resources, provide transportation, and hire educators and management. Direct contact with the instructor shall not be less than 1000 hours per year.
Go - tell me how you create and implement a personalized learning plan and provide full-time, tailored individual instruction for every student. You've got almost $10/hour to do it, I'm sure you can make it work.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Just like private universities can offer a lower priced education than public universities.
You might be able to teach someone to learn to learn, and how to best compensate for their weaknesses. Generally, learning to learn is not the result of having difficulty learning so much as it is learning. The more you learn, the more you learn how to learn to learn.
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The author's arguing against finding effective teaching models for individual students because there's a cost involved in doing so. Yes, there's always a cost for new technologies. Over time, we find efficient ways to deliver technology and the cost comes down.
There's no set cost currently for applying data analytics in education anyway; if costs end up low, the author's point may be altogether moot.
Here in NY we've given Pearson $4 million to give overly difficult tests to our kids. The result? 30% passing rate. To which the governor threatened to shut down schools who don't raise their scores. (He actually called it a "death penalty for schools.")
The quirk here is that charter schools and private schools are exempt from the testing. So if public schools are closed for not meeting ridiculous standards, more charter schools will be opened. Charter schools are run by businesses and - although they take public money - act more like private schools in that they can decide who attends. If your kids has ANY special needs at all, they can find themselves kicked out or rejected. So you'll wind up with the "haves" (students whose parents can afford private schools or who get into charter schools) and the "have nots" (students with special needs who are herded into the poorly funded remains of the public school system).
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Much of the reason the cost of education goes up is the reaction to government-guaranteed student loans. If banks and others who gave out student loans had to depend on them being paid back in the same way as other loans, they would not be willing to loan huge amounts (especially for classes that don't provide marketable skills) and the colleges would not have raised their tuition to the sky in order to capture those large amounts.
I work for a company that does (among other things) online assessments and data analytics. We're all about the data and how we can use that to help teachers help their kids. How is this a bad thing? The more you know about how the kids are doing, the more you can help them. I don't know how they are getting this idea of something equivalent to an expensive full body physical scan that most people cant afford (besides the fact that over time such scans will get cheaper and cheaper...).
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Safe investments are rather limited. If it's actually safe, the return will be less than inflation...unless you are depending on inside information. And wrapping your life around it.
The system is broken and sick. It's not (or wasn't a few years ago) extremely broken, to the point where some minor adjustments wouldn't fix it. But the people in charge have made changes in the opposite direction.
OTOH, a violent revolution rarely makes things better, even eventually. It tends to bring violently psychotic sociopaths to the top rather then the rather bland sociopaths that the US currently has. Answer? I keep hoping for a technological fix, because I sure don't see how to implement a political one. (And the technological fix is going to require a lot of luck as several key points that are years to decades in the future. It could be a robot judge that actually enfoces equality before the law. Or something unforeseen. But it could just as easily, or even easier, be robot (or obedient) soldiers that wouldn't hesitate to kill whoever they are told to kill, even their friends and relatives. Which would solve it in a very different and unpleasant way.
P.S.: Have you noticed how much effort the US is putting into robotic soldiers? (I know that they aren't really robots, but their controllers can be kept under strict watch to ensure that they remain obedient, so it's similar.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
There was time, when a watercloset was a luxury only available to the rich. Or a personal automobile. Or air-travel. Or a telephone (first wired and then cellular). Or a personal computer...
If government blocks adoption of foo until even the poorest can afford it, we'll never have it at all. Fortunately, with all of the items I listed, the government was not really in a position to block adoption.
Unfortunately, with innovative education methods it is...
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I remember in middle school there was a special 'gifted talent' class for the bright kids and a special ed class for the slow kids. I mentally kept track of who was who and as the years went by many of the slow kids went on to excel academically simply because the extra time they needed on the basics was taken and the class was always small so they received a lot individual attention. Many went on to graduate with honors and most went on to college. A lot of the so called gifted kids went on to become academically mediocre and most did not go to college and in some cases dropped out. I assure you it was not a matter of 'they were so smart they were board' - it was a mystery how some of those kids made it into the gifted class in the first place. In fact I later found out that the gifted class was self-learning with no structure at all so they basically learned nothing. Personally, I started college at 16 (didn't finish like an idiot) but was considered by the public school system to be mediocre in all subjects but science.
No opinion here, I'm just saying is all. Make of it what you will.
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You might be able to teach someone to learn to learn, and how to best compensate for their weaknesses. Generally, learning to learn is not the result of having difficulty learning so much as it is learning. The more you learn, the more you learn how to learn to learn.
STACK OVERFLOW ERROR
Please review your code for open-ended recursive functions, potentially causing an infinite loop condition.
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"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
My wife handles a lot of the data analysis at a UK school. She essentially is there to track students and the schools progress throughout the year against the various national standards, so the school can intervene when something is going wrong.
From a schools point of view, it is primarily about the "value added". A student arrives at the school, with an education achievement history that sets a bar of expectation of achievement. The goal of the school is to improve the grades for the students as they progress and eventually leave the school.
When it is applied well, this approach works. Underachieving students get identified and intervention can take place. Coasting students are also identified and pushed. If you doing well, well than keep it up :) About the only real issue is that the national standards are a arbitrary, and keep getting changed by Michael Gove.
But this data is built up over months and years of internal and external assessments.
Fortunately, with all of the items I listed, the government was not really in a position to block adoption. Unfortunately, with innovative education methods it is...
Private schools and home schoolers can do pretty much whatever they want, so long as they provide a decent education somewhere in there. Rich parents take advantage of this fact to ensure that their little angel goes to a top-tier prep school rather than a public school.
The government only has the power to adopt a particular technique or tool in public schools, which has everything to do with the fact that they write the checks in public schools. And even then, the local government usually has wide discretion in what they do, so you don't have to convince Congress, you have to convince 7 people at a local school board meeting just down the street from where you live.
So government doesn't prevent a method from being adopted at all. It only prevents a method from being adopted on somebody else's nickel.
I am officially gone from
The infrastructure for plumbing was paid for by the gov't. So where the roads that made cars more than interesting toys. And telephone lines. Most of the research that made the personal computer possible was done on the public dime. And then there's that whole "Internet" thing (please, no Al Gore jokes).
/.ers. If it wasn't, there's be no 'rich' because if everyone was rich the word wouldn't mean anything...
I think the problem we have with the $30,000 bill is that it's so high that the only way it'll ever be more than a toy and a curiosity is if the gov't steps in to fund it, and the rich have a long, long history of getting the gov't to fund their lifestyles and not everyone else's.
Also, let's not underestimate the amount of work that those $30,000 of tests represent. If research is focused on a few rich kids, it's being directed away from somewhere else. Supply siders like to point out that resources are limited until it no longer fits their world view. Then they trot out the old: "Economy's not Zero Sum" and call it a day.
Basically, instead of a vast amount of society's wealth and resources going to make a few rich kid's lives better, I'd like to see the focus on research that benefits the most number of people. Why? Because I'm not rich, and probably never will be. Statistically the same is true for all
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More like "can" and "cannots". The question of how to handle the "cannots" doesn't go away just because you refuse to identify them.