Tag Archives: education

education

Teacher evaluation and moral hazard

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Following New York’s recent release of teacher rankings, the chatter in the education community has once again focused upon an old question: is it wise to evaluate teachers based on student performance on standardized tests?

For us, the answer seems quite obvious. No!

Simplistic political demagoguery aside, teacher accountability is actually a complex issue. Children in different areas and of different backgrounds are subject to different circumstances, capabilities, and opportunities. Mandating one-size-fits-all standards to an endlessly diverse body of students and educators is great at making politicians seem tough, but very bad at improving the quality of education.

The entrenched standardized evaluation system also creates the phenomenon of “teaching to the test” – that is, educators focusing all their efforts on ensuring that students are able to answer formulaic test questions rather than learn in a meaningful and permanent way. The incentives created by standardized testing are all wrong: teaching students how to fill in circles with a number 2 pencil is rewarded (a la Monday’s comic), while showing them how to think critically, be creative, and learn with real depth is discouraged. This is, by the way, to say nothing of the rampant teacher cheating that the system invites.

Sadly, the stories of the machine’s latest victims – New York City’s teachers and students – seem unlikely to meaningfully diminish the bureaucrats’ heavy-handed influence on education.

The fact that local school boards and the DOE continue to defend rigid educator evaluation based on standardized testing shows that today’s educational bureaucracies are totally out of touch with reality (at best).

For years, it has been plainly obvious that standardized tests are a dreadfully inadequate way of measuring how much students have actually learned. It should follow, then, that using them to measure teacher performance is downright stupid.

Why on earth are we still doing this?

Things to consider

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If you’ve been following our latest series here at the Rukuku blog (or even if you just happen to be a living, breathing person), you probably know that the cost of education is too high.

But think about this:

  • What if educators and students didn’t have to worry about meeting at a location and wasting time getting there?
  • What if teachers and learners didn’t have to worry about acquiring the necessary teaching and learning materials?
  • What if the amount of students that an educator can meaningfully interact with wasn’t limited by the physical constraints of a classroom?
  • What if we currently have the potential to dramatically lower the cost of learning while greatly improving its quality?

If these questions sound hypothetical to you, they shouldn’t.

To learn more, please sign up for a chance at our exclusive, invitation-only launch. It’s coming on April Fools’ Day, but it’s no joke.

Raking in the dough

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Why is the real cost of higher education so much higher for today’s students than it was for their parents or grandparents? Why does it continue to skyrocket, far outpacing official inflation figures?

Demand. These days, it seems you can’t get anywhere without higher education. Inexplicably, many jobs that do not use the skill set provided by a college education still require a bachelor’s degree. For this and many other reasons, demand for higher education is at an all-time high. The supply, on the other hand, has not kept pace. This translates to rising prices. As selectivity goes up due to an ever-broader pool of qualified applicants, costs go up.

Student loans and federal aid. It may be odd to hear, but federal student aid has been shown to drive up tuition fees. Universities feel much more comfortable charging exorbitant fees when the government is willing to guarantee that students will pay them (and then spend half a lifetime paying off the debt). The extent to which this is a factor is a topic of heated debate, but the paradoxical fact remains: before student loans came into existence, it was possible for most people to afford college without them.

Rising spending by institutions. This may be a consequence of higher revenue rather than a cause, but it’s worth mentioning nonetheless. Universities are paying their professors and staff more than ever before, and they’re also hiring more people than ever before. They’re also spending record amounts of money on their real estate: nice gyms, activity centers, recreational facilities, and so on.

Resistance to change. There are many cost-cutting measures available to universities. For example, York College in Pennsylvania has proven that, with minor adjustments in administrative culture and smarter allocation of resources, it’s possible to provide students with a private, four-year education for about half the cost of its competitors. This being a tech blog, it’s also meaningful to point out that there are many ways in which technology can help institutions to cut costs and lower their prices. The problem is that most universities are quite happy with what they have. And who can blame them when they’re rolling in cash?

What do you think about the exorbitant costs of college education? Leave us your thoughts in the comments section, and check back in a few days for an overview of some exciting technological solutions to the cost problem.

Why is higher education so expensive?

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So, you want to go to college. I don’t blame you: college is basically four years of fun (with a side of class for about three hours a day), and when you’re done, you get a big, lavishly framed, magical piece of paper that helps you make money. It’s like there are no downsides!

Well, actually, there is one. The average cost of a college education in the United States is currently about $140,000 for a private institution and $56,000 for a public one. This is quite a hefty price tag for a four year party and a piece of paper – and that’s before you pile on a generous smattering of extra tens of thousands for room, board, and books. Given that the median American household earns just under $45,000 per year, these numbers are very perplexing.

When I talk to people who attended college 40 or 50 years ago, I notice a common theme: many were able to pay for it themselves with part-time side jobs, like working at a restaurant or delivering newspapers. In 2012, the income from such employment would barely be enough to buy books for the semester, let alone cover tuition. The vast majority of today’s students are unable to pay for any kind of college education without sinking into the abyssal chasm of student loan debt.

What changed? Somehow, I doubt that part-time waiters in the old days got the 2012 equivalent of $30,000 a year. The culprit must be tuition.

Why is education so expensive, and how can technology help bring that cost down? This week we’ll be discussing this topic in depth and attempting to find some answers. Stay tuned, Rukuku readers!

Online learning woes

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As of 2008, over four million US students in postsecondary education – that’s 20.4% – were taking online distance learning classes. Are today’s distance-learning platforms adequately addressing the needs of online learners?

In this post I’d like to focus on the 800-pound gorilla of the market: that is, of course, Blackboard.

Very recently, I took an online course on Blackboard. I found the interface to be wonderfully interactive and conducive to learning. As soon as I logged on, I was smitten by its user-friendliness, humbled by the profound student-professor rapport it establishes, and downright awestruck at its productive learning process.

Wait a second. No I wasn’t.

The actual experience was more like this.

The interface on Blackboard looks a bit like it was designed by someone constantly referencing their “Intro to C++” textbook. Actually, that explains a lot: the interactivity level of the site closely resembles a textbook as well. The way a course is organized on Blackboard lacks any direction or purpose. With tabs on top, tabs on the right, boxes here and there, and a pervasively gloomy brown-ness throughout (you’ll find more cheer in a Franz Kafka novel), the user experience is far from easy. Not to be outdone, the actual performance of the program is fantastically… mediocre.

Maybe this is harsh. After all, there’s nothing wrong with Blackboard. The problem is that there’s nothing right with it either. It doesn’t engage, it doesn’t excite, and it doesn’t inspire. It’s as interesting and sophisticated as, well, a blackboard.

Shouldn’t a learning platform make me want to learn something?

Solutions

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In the previous installment, I discussed a selection of hurdles faced by the education world in the viability, effectiveness and adoption of new technologies. Here at Rukuku, though, we’re optimists. To us, that doesn’t mean crossing our fingers and hoping everything turns out okay. Instead, we recognize that for every problem, there exists an array of intelligent, creative, and occasionally, downright awesome solutions. As it pertains to tech and learning, a few examples follow. Some are uncontroversial, others are mutually exclusive, and many are subject to lively, opinionated discussion based on one’s political or social viewpoint.

Policy solutions. In our political discourse, the primary rhetorical tools have recently become beating each other over the head with vapid talking points and just generally yelling at everything. That is quite unfortunate, because there is a serious, level-headed discussion to be had on the subject of technology and our (failing) education system. A sober discussion on the topic might go something like this. Those favoring robust federal involvement in our schools and universities may say that more funding is needed, technology should be introduced into resistant systems with incentives and pressure, the system should be made more efficient and equitable (perhaps through subsidies for disadvantaged students and locales), and accountability should be increased. Deficit hawks and decentralists might retort that the right solutions are to give localities and institutions more leeway, stop constraining them with one-size-fits-all federal standards, and diminish what they believe to be the entrenched, change-resistant behemoth of an educational bureaucracy that we have created over the last couple of decades.

Natural market processes and innovation. Whatever your views on policy happen to be, anyone who has taken an introductory Economics class probably knows that peaceful, lawful competition among innovative producers results in ever-improving products and services at ever-lower prices. If you are a child of the era when the personal computer was an exorbitantly expensive, fantastically slow, nauseatingly beige, boxy monstrosity, you know this very well. The computers of today are enormously better, faster, and more functional than their counterparts of ten or 15 years ago. Despite that, the average price of personal computer equipment fell an astounding ninety percent between 1998 and 2009. The introduction of the tech revolution into education will be no different. In the last post, we placed special emphasis on socioeconomic factors causing disparities in the quality of learning. To be sure, this problem exists, and is serious. But in the face of the unrelenting innovation machine, it’s also temporary. Technologies are very rapidly becoming more accessible and more equitable for people of all backgrounds. If the demand exists (and it sure does), the innovators will always respond. To end with a small but shameless plug: Rukuku strives to be among those innovators.

There are so many reasons to look forward to solving the educational problems of the modern age.

Who’s aboard?

Source for stats.