Thoughts on SB 1113

A computer for every student in Idaho – what’s not to like?

I taught English. I regarded a major responsibility to be teaching writing, and to this end, I assigned my students to write as many essays as I could read and critique, and a few more besides. A perennial problem was lack of routine computer access for my students, without which I did not feel I could require all essays to be typed. Computer access at school was a variable thing. Many of my students did not have a computer at home, or at best, the whole family had to share the same machine. To require all essays to be typed would amount to grading students on their families’ incomes. If every student had his own dedicated computer, that bottleneck would disappear. Furthermore, students could submit essays digitally, and I could grade them and return them digitally, just like in college. I could filter everything through EVE or some similar anti-plagiarism software. Would I be able to process more students? I doubt it. Could I do things better and do things not practical before? Certainly!

I have always felt there must be better ways to teach mathematics, if only because as a student, I was wondrously thick when it came to math. Some forty years ago, a colleague invented the better “math mousetrap.” The “Grosdidier Method” was highly individualized, with students in the same class doing many different levels of math – calculus side-by-side with pre-algebra. It was self-paced. A course was complete when the last test was passed, whether that took one semester or three. It was as interactive as anything that existed on paper could be. More students were completing more math than ever before. The problem? It was impossibly labor-intensive. Existing textbooks were ill-suited to such an enterprise. Materials had to be adapted or written from scratch one jump ahead of where all those various students were at the time. The record keeping presented its own problems. It was just too much, and after a few years Herb burned out on it and abandoned it. It was an idea ahead of its time. But if today’s technology had existed then, if each student could have worked independently on his own computer, and if the proper interactive software had been available, the world may well have beaten a path to The Grosdidier System’s door.

On-line courses could be a valuable tool under a number of particular circumstances. They would be a great boon to home-schooling families. Students could take courses not available at small schools, could make up lost credits, could satisfy requirements to free up time for involvement in activities such as music or advanced courses, and could even satisfy the requirements for early graduation (which I still have reservations about).

Could these computers replace textbooks as technology boosters boast? That would depend on the subject and the textbooks it would be replacing. For example, I can’t imagine trying to read an entire novel on a screen (I don’t even own an e-book reader) nor would I expect my students to do so.

But there are considerations that give me pause. I believe it is possible to do the right thing for the wrong reason, possible to misapply a good idea and thereby doom it to failure.

I do not believe that this scheme will save any money, nor should that be its purpose. As valuable an instructional tool as a computer for every student could be, I especially do not believe that it will make it possible to reduce the number of teachers. Attempting to put these computers to such use will ultimately do more harm than good.

Equipping students with such technology on such an ambitious scale and maintaining it over the years to come cannot help being extremely expensive. I fear that Superintendent Luna and the legislature have greatly underestimated the true cost, or they are not being up front about it. Will it be sustainable? I have observed over the years that such ambitious initiatives are better undertaken and have a better chance of succeeding in a fat year than a lean one.

I have enthused about some useful classroom applications, and there must be many others. But I do not sense that they are what SB 1113 is about. I am not sure that such uses would be encouraged or even provided for. To require that every student take a certain number of credits on-line is artificial and arbitrary, a one-size-fits-all solution that does not address any real instructional need. I sense that the needs it satisfies are more political and ideological than instructional.

We teachers are often accused of being a fickle bunch, embracing every new idea that comes along, only to cast it aside to pick up on the next big thing: “flavor of the month;” “a mile wide and an inch deep.” To the contrary, I have observed these rapid and erratic changes are usually driven not by teachers, but by administrators and legislators jockeying to make career and political points. And when we teachers ask “What is this for?” and “Will it work?” and “Is it sustainable?” we are accused of unwillingness to change and of being against progress. When an administration changes, or when the political winds change, what was in is suddenly out. There are too many good things in SB 1113 to see them end up on the scrap-heap of good ideas that didn’t quite work out, in this case because of the package they came in. The right thing for the wrong reason. A good idea misapplied.

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