Distance Learning's Downfall: The rush to embrace expensive technology is best understood as a political response to deeply rooted educational problems

Disasters, it is said, often have silver linings, and in the case of COVID-19 pandemic, this might be a widening access to computerized learning. Now, it is alleged, as a result of school closings, thousands of youngsters, disproportionately poor and members of minority groups, will finally possess advantages of their more affluent schoolmates. In California, for example, thanks to Google’s generosity, some 4000 students will enjoy free Chromebooks while 100,000 rural households will have no-cost Internet access for three months. Moreover, the LA schoolboard had previously allocated an emergency $100 million to provide free laptops while partnering with Verizon for free Internet. According to Linda Darling-Hammond, the California State Board of Education president, Google’s (and similar corporate) generosity will double the number of students with Internet access to help close the digital gap all the while also instructing teachers and parents how to master distance learning.

All sounds terrific, of course and, perhaps the race-related (and income) achievement gap will finally close, or at least narrow. Alas, don’t bet on it. Formidable obstacles will impede these good intentions and, most notably, distance learning may well exacerbate achievement gaps, the very opposite of what is intended.

Recall another Los Angeles’ venture to overcome dreadful academic achievement levels via a computer-for-everyone initiative. In 2013 the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) decided to give every student a tablet computer loaded with a digital curriculum. 21^st century here we come! The plan was to buy some 650,000 Apple iPads (only 43,261 were actually acquired) along with the necessary networking equipment, labs and the software from Pearson, a major education publisher. Total cost, financed by school bonds, was nearly $1.3 billion. The district’s superintendent John Deasy predictably foresaw the initiative as helping to close the race-and ethnic-related achievement gap.

HERE’s THE END RESULT:

Unfortunately, within two years disaster struck, and the city’s lawyers were exploring lawsuits against Apple and Education Giant, Pearson, the FBI and the Security and Exchange Commission were probing possible fraud, and Deasy resigned. Leaving aside the criminality that may be inescapable with lavish contracts, the 2013 debacle should warn today’s high-minded miracle workers.

Technical glitches were endemic — Internet connections were spotty and mismatched to tablet/software requirements. The whole system was poorly attuned to a multilingual school system. Students were often befuddled by computer lingo, let alone standard English. The need for extensive coordination among thousands of semi-computer literate teachers and administrators was underestimated.

Not all teachers welcomed the time-consuming demands to learn the technology and many doubted the entire endeavor. Opportunity costs abounded — absorbing software detracted from traditional instruction in much needed basics, particularly for English learners. Many students quickly disabled security features and “education” deteriorated into surfing the net for who knows what.

My teen son is thriving under Washington Connections Academy aka WACA.

https://www.connectionsacademy.com/washington-online-school

WACA is part of a national online digital school known as Connections Academy:

https://www.connectionsacademy.com

which has chapters in every state.

In general, the technology and operation does work once an adequate system and a trained faculty are established. In the case of WACA, they make it easy to get set up and involved. All that is needed is an internet connection and they even help with this for parents that are unfamiliar with internet equipment.

The incidents described in this commentary by Robert Weissberg appear to reflect a learning curve of problems.

I would not conclude as Robert Weissberg has apparently done but certainly he draws attention to the fact that online schools are not all the same.

Like any new class of business, there are going to be failures and successes.

Connections Academy is a big success. See the links above if you are interested in having your child attend.

This seems like an appropriate time to plug my new book, “All Thumbs: How Our Obsession with Phones and Devices is Damaging Our Children and Restructuring Our Lives.”

It will be available only on-line at www.wildworldofhistory.com as part of a subscription to the VIP service, probably as of Monday.

I look at some of these e-learning programs. Many came with people who had strong financial interests in getting e-books, laptops, etc. into the schools.

BTW, the largest distance learning/on-line learning university in the country now is not the University of Phoenix, but Liberty University, with over 100,000 students enrolled, many of them in the armed forces. They move too much to say in one place for a Ph.D.

perhaps the race-related (and income) achievement gap will finally close, or at least narrow. Alas, don’t bet on it.

I think the biggest problem in inner-city schools is behavioral. A percentage of the classroom will behave in a disruptive manner. The teacher may want to teach. Some students may want to learn. But neither of those things happen because a small number of students want to ruin everything.

So send everybody home. Solve the "problems" of distance learning. Kids in the inner-city who want to learn will thrive like never before. Kids who don't want to learn will get in trouble like they always did. But they won't disrupt the kids who want to learn.

School choice and homeschooling is the way to fix inner-city schools. Which is to say: shut down the government schools and find alternative means. Solving the technical problems is hardly an insurmountable problem and is no excuse to keep doing what we've been doing.

Just another govenment boondoggle to put money in the hands of contractors and government bureaucrats.

Cheap, nearly free education is available online, if you are willing to use it.

What is not so easily available is the credentials which show you are educated, which customers and employers would accept.

It is the system of credentials which need the reformation.

The current bureaucrats resist it because it is how they keep and maintain their power.

Credentials should return to a merit based, testing system. Mostly, let the customers decide!

One of my ex wives is an elementary school teacher in Las Vegas.

She says the unspoken (anywhere) fact is that “kids of color” are not as smart as white and Asian kids. And their parents are dumb too.

Not uneducated, but actually dumb. Lacking the cognitive tools to acquire and process information and turn it into knowledge and skill. A kid with a 71 IQ is never going to be able to understand a tech manual, and a kid with an 84 IQ will never learn Algebra.

Just like their parents.

And there’s not a damn thing anyone on this planet can do about it.

RE: She says the unspoken (anywhere) fact is that “kids of color” are not as smart as white and Asian kids.

How about the other possibility — that the black community does not have the CULTURE that values education and the hard work that is needed to succeed the way Asians kids have.

I have seen lots of black kids succeed in a charter school environment, some even going on to enter prestigious colleges ON MERIT ( e.g. good SAT scores ), not affirmative action.

“How about the other possibility”

It’s a non starter for honest teachers.

While cultural aspects are a problem TOO, the culture is an outcome of the lack of base processor power.

We have 10s of millions of people in this country running on a Commodore 64 processor...in an Intel Core i9 world.

It’s been this way for millennia. Likely longer.

Obviously, there are exceptions. I am speaking about averages.

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