How Data Analytics In Education Could Create a New Class of Haves and Have-nots 268
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.'"
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss... (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. Compare 1st world educations to 3rd world educations. Actually I love the idea of making kids smarter and having individualized education. What's the problem with smarter people?
Conformity (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
I think I see the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:One size does not fit all... (Score:4, Insightful)
Great, so someone laments the fact that some people may end up more educated than others.
No, what they object to is that how well educated you are may depend mostly on how much money your parents' have. It's already like that to a large extent. Welcome back to the old, and reviled, British class system. I thought we were Americans.
Most people believe in a meritocracy to a large extent, but the merit should be based on your abilities, not your parents' income.
Re:One size does not fit all... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is important to distinguish between equality in opportunity versus equality in accomplishment.
Re:Conformity (Score:2, Insightful)
You are missing the point totally.
The spirit of this "fairness" mindset is not to make sure no one person can excel - but to ensure everyone has a fair chance to succeed by placing them on the same *starting line*, to make sure success later in life has more correlation to individual intelligence and diligence than how much money their parents have.
Oh No! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss... (Score:3, Insightful)
So lets keep everything equally dumb, right? Typical leftist mentality... Lets share the misery!
Typical rightist mentality - never publicly fund a means of people bettering themselves. Otherwise we might have a true meritocracy, rather than a self-reinforcing class system. Bonus points if you can repeal the part of the Constitution prohibiting the government from granting titles of nobility.
Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
What's the author's point? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Conformity (Score:4, Insightful)
So if we can't afford it for every student, let's give it to every N'th student. The lucky students can be picked via a lottery. That's just as reasonable of a way of providing this to only a portion of the students as choosing only rich kids. Still can't afford it? Just tax the parents of the rich kids. Be careful though - this might create a meritocracy instead of a class system. Wealthy parents are often concerned that their little darlings wouldn't excel if they actually had to compete on an equal basis with the riffraff.
Re:Only if we market extra learning courses as ext (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is not "compassion", if the poor and the sick are provided for by the government. No, it is not. You can not claim to be compassionate, if you are spending (voting to spend) somebody else's money — however just and noble the cause.
If it really is just and noble, then you should have no problem persuading people to donate to charity(ies) meant to address it.
And if you can not persuade the selfish pricks (your fellow countrymen) to support a particular cause, forcing them to do it at gun-point (via the IRS) is not "compassionate"... It is patently dishonest.
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss... (Score:4, Insightful)
Before it became "public" it was somebody's — someone was forced (at the implied gun-point) to pay taxes. In other words, public money is someone else's and your attempts to make a distinction are in error.
Yeah, perhaps. The point was to stop the name-calling — and the grandstanding. Unless one spends his own money, one is not compassionate. Similarly, one not wanting to spend public money on somebody else's foo shall not be called a villain, who wants to take foo away from others.
When two wolves and a sheep vote on what's for dinner, the sheep does get to call wolves murderers...