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?
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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.
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The very principle over which the left is based is that people should receive based on their needs not their abilities or value. That everybody is "equally valuable". That is completely incompatible with anything that rewards merit or even accepts it in any way.
But that truth is too much to people like you, you need convenient excuses like "self-reinforcing class system" to make the world fit in your delusions.
Thomas Sowe
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Horseshit.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 [nytimes.com]
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And why exactly welfare spending has steadily raised since then to more than the double of the expenditure per capita?
My parents first home was $20,000 the same house today is over $100,000. Gasoline was 0.36 cents a gallon. Today its $4.00. A dozen eggs was $0.62, today its $2.00
You are claiming welfare spending has only doubled per capita?
The price of everything else has increased 4 fold to 10 fold, while the welfare has only doubled.
What exactly are you complaining about? That's a substantial reduction,
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How so? Social Security is what, 80 years old? Medicaid is from the 60s (though both Bush and Obama did expand it significantly). But the last major socialization was in the 80s when Reagan signed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act in 1986. Obamacare does rejigger things, but doesn't do anything nearly as sweeping as requiring everyone be treated regardless of ability to pay.
Anyway, I don't see how expanding programs from 30+ years ago really qualifies as becoming a leftist state. To make
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I was curious so I looked into some of your examples.
Emirates: The UAE is an odd bird in that only 13% of its population are natives - most are foreigners just working there. It seems that if you are one of the natives, you are covered by government-paid health insurance, and if you are a foreigner you are forced into a mandatory insurance system, like Obamacare. According to this article [bloomberg.com], it is far more socialist than the US: all citizens get free healthcare, free education, subsidized utilities, free land
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Children should be fed (and educated), there is no one, who opposes that.
The debate is, whether or not tax-monies — the funds collected at gun-point — should be spent on it.
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Because no one has ever lost their job or had a medical cost they could not afford.
I hope that one day this happens to you. So you can learn some compassion. Sadly I doubt you would. I have an uncle who says this crap, now his lifestyle caught up with him and he lives only on the generosity of the state. He says well he paid for those programs he should get to use them, without realizing so did the folks he used to hate.
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Even worse the huge costs of the health care that would break the poor unlucky guy in your example and difficulty to find new jobs would be the directly results of your welfare state. So basically you and your policies create the problem you accuse me of not wanting to solve.
What you guys are unable to understand is that there is no perfect soluti
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Because no one has ever lost their job or had a medical cost they could not afford.
I cannot agree with you more. The post you responded to definitely has a narrow view of the world.
How about a sad story: A professional woman who ran a sales organization has a great career with good money and a husband who works as well. Nice home and is raising 6 children with good moral character even though one has a learning disability and another some anger management issues.
Fast forward 6 years: After two bouts with cancer and some chronic pain after surgery this woman is now on permanent disabili
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.
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Oh lets stop the melodramatic crap.
Agreed! Let's start by having trolls like you stop spouting nonsense like:
US is slowly but surely becoming a Leftist Welfare State
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss... (Score:4)
Husband and other men in her life are gone because men suck at living up to responsibility
Aaaaand I stopped caring about what you had to say.
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How very fortunate, then, that you can't vote to spend somebody else's money. You can only vote on how to spend public money. As is your right, living in a democratic society and all, which of course gives you you duties as well - such as paying your taxes.
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...
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Raising a child is a major expense [cnn.com]. With modern contraception methods it is rather irresponsible for people, who can't afford it, to have children.
Wanting them to not do it is not "keeping the poor down" — it is dissuading the poor from making a mistake. There is nothing wrong with it — especially for those, who will, likely, end up paying the poor's bill...
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One size does not fit all... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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, Interesting)
Most people believe all kinds of lies. We have never been a meritocracy. We have always had a rather class based system. A great example was Romney speaking of being in a bad spot financially so he had to sell some stock one time. That was his idea of a financial struggle and of those like him. He advised students to borrow money from their parents to start a business. He was not being a bad person he just has no idea about reality for 99% of people. Just like you have no idea what it is like to live like those people. To him spending ~$80k a year on a dancing horse is normal. To us that would be lunacy.
We like to all pretend we are middle class for some reason, when this is clearly not the case.
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Most people believe all kinds of lies.
Most people believe in a meritocracy as an ideal to be striven for.
We have never been a meritocracy. We have always had a rather class based system.
Don't be Manichean. The degree of one vs. the other has changed over the years, and we're now headed in the wrong direction.
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He was not being a bad person he just has no idea about reality for 99% of people.
Attempting to lead people, while having no idea what reality is for 99% of those people is being a bad person.
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Re:One size does not fit all... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is important to distinguish between equality in opportunity versus equality in accomplishment.
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No, he laments that the dumbest rich kid will likely get a better education than the smartest poor kid.
Fair has nothing to do with it (Score:3)
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.
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Your logic is not quite correct. Historically, education never focused on the slowest or fastest learners, it focused on the middle. That is what public education is supposed to do. If you compare the number of truly gifted people to the number of true idiots, the numbers favor the idiots. So historically, schools were in the right game and _should_ be targeting the middle. Not the upper, and not the lower ends. A real intelligent kid can still get an accelerated education. If a person is too smart,
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No one gets rich designing rocket engines. Those folks are still poor compared to the actual rich.
Buy yourself future money(even more!) (Score:2, Flamebait)
It's increasingly becoming the case, especially in the US, that the only real way to make money is to have money. 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.
Due to broken and even anti-democratic electoral processes, I can't actually see that trend reversing normally. It's not revolution-worthy yet, but it couldn
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It's not revolution-worthy yet, but it couldn't hurt to start planning a guillotine.
Way too French for America (with the possible exception of New Orleans). American style would be a firing squad.
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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.
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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.
So in the Gilded age labor was even less valuable than today, but then in the first half of the 20th century it became more valuable? Please explain why.
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In WWI the US lost 125k people out of a population of 75M. In the Civil War we lost over 600k out of a population of 30M. Ergo the price of labor should have increased even more after the Civil War, yet that was the beginning of the Gilded Age.
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"Overpriced crap on tv" == "Food, shelter, and healthcare" once translated from entitled dick language.
Here's a hint: I'm not poor. I didn't have poor parents. That's why I have time to debate this with idiots like you. A person working minimum wage literally every single second(with overtime even), would make substantially less per year than me, mostly due to investment in my education that others wouldn't have been able to afford.
Keep defending the ultra-rich non-working class, I'm sure they'll totall
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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 s
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).
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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.
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No, he's not missing the point. The only reason you bring up a point like that is to ensure that the initiative gets squished, because only the rich will be able to afford it. That's a kiss-of-death statement in committee, made in such a way that it's deniable - which is exactly what Ross did in his statement.
"I don't think it's a bad idea, it's just that we're just going to make rich, achieving students richer and more achieving. I'm not saying that's bad - I'm just saying what about everyone else?"
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.
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What the hell costs $30k? (Score:2)
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.'"
What the hell costs $30k? And if it can be done cost effectively, why not do it in public schools?
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$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
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Maybe they're including the cost of treatment for all the new "learning disorders" that will be invented.
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As a likely successful program, the GOP will feel honor bound to sandbag it in order to 'prove' their rants about privatization.
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Licensing the patent.
Common core? (Score:2)
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I think the two can coexist.
After all, the individual-based teaching is about how student A learns best, how student B learns best, and letting them learn Subject Y in whichever way they are better able to process it.
Moving cross country while you are in 4th grade and learning all the states and capitols? Have current school document how you are learning for next school.
"Yeah, Johnny? He does the route memorization moving thru the states in a grid like pattern, but his sister Jane does better trying to sin
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Sadly, Common Core is being implemented here in New York in a horrible way. First, they paid Pearson $4 million to run these extremely difficult exams. Then, the results same in: Only 30% of students passed. (Some of the failing students were kids who did very well on previous tests. It was almost designed to make students look horrible.) They called it a "benchmark" but also began calling for the "death penalty" for public schools who don't raise their test scores.
How do you raise your test scores?
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Tests are easy to measure and make a nice private company rich. Making the administrations lives easier and enriching their friends is the point of public education. If you disagree with that someone will be along shortly to call you a Marxist or worse.
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And if you need help raising the test scores, the private company can sell you textbooks, and sessions for teachers, and sessions for kids, and sessions for administrators, and test-prep materials, etc. Thus the big business gets richer as do the politicians that get lobbied by the big business to focus more education on testing.
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.
Better: use common sense (Score:2)
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Unfortunately classical geometry will only get you so far. Also, it's already taught as a standard subject.
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Have you TAKEN classical geometry? Yes, it's taught, or it used to be taught. It's a series of statements, logical processes, and permitted rules of inference ABOUT squares, triangles, etc. You are not permitted to actually use the figures in the proof, they are only to allow you to visualize what the proof is about. (Yes, you need to draw construction lines, etc., but those aren't actually a part of the proof. They are just aides to visualization.)
N.B.: If this weren't true, then it would, indeed, be
$30,000 (Score:2)
Just to put $30K in the perspective of education: it's approximately the cost of one year of tuition private school in my area (Boston), or 1.5 times the public expenditure for a year of public school.
Oh No! (Score:2, Insightful)
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Some people might be smarter than others??? That completely conflicts with the Democratic party ideal of equality for everyone.
Some of the riffraff's kids might be smarter than the 1%'ers kids? That completely conflicts with the Republican party ideal of a self-reinforcing class system.
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.
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Here! Here!
Right now there's a big push for "analytics" in the form of testing, testing, and more testing. We "need" the tests (they say) to make sure students are performing up to par. Then, to make sure teachers have an incentive to raise scores, the teachers' jobs or salaries are put on the line. (If you don't raise your scores consistently, bye-bye! No, we don't care that you teach special ed and your kids don't do well on tests.) All this does is heap piles of anxiety on students, make teachers te
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Here! Here!
Right now there's a big push for "analytics" in the form of testing, testing, and more testing. We "need" the tests (they say) to make sure students are performing up to par. Then, to make sure teachers have an incentive to raise scores, the teachers' jobs or salaries are put on the line. (If you don't raise your scores consistently, bye-bye! No, we don't care that you teach special ed and your kids don't do well on tests.) All this does is heap piles of anxiety on students, make teachers teach to the test, drive good teachers from the profession, and decrease the quality of education all around.
But at least we'll have metrics for analyzing performance.
What you are describing is a sure way to make sure that teachers teach to the test instead of imparting knowledge. The two are not synonymous. It is far less important to know that the War of 1812 was in 1812 than to know what it was about. Distilling what it was about to a few multiple choice questions is a great thing if you are into revisionist histories, but doesn't measure if a student has grasped what was going on. Then again, maybe the standardized test won't even ask about that.
In the US, there are
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Sadly, teaching to the test means that students will know neither. History isn't high on the list of tested subjects. English and math are. So they push English and math and ignore everything else. At best, they claim to teach those other subjects by working them into the occasional an English/math question.
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What people object to is the fact that it only applies to students with rich parents who are able to afford the $30000 analysis, irrespective of the student's own ability or potential.
It doesn't cost $30,000 to do a psych test. Hell, it doesn't cost more than $5 for pencil and paper to take a test on this. Learning styles aren't rocket science.
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.
They don't even have to be that low. (Score:2)
They don't even have to be all that low. Thousands of dollars per student would be an acceptable expense for a public school system if it meant students could graduate several years earlier than they otherwise would. It makes even more sense when you consider an individuals whole life, since the students who would normally slip through the cracks and end up in jail or on welfare would have a better shot at being accepted into society.
Analytics Ruining NY Schools (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
The more things change.... (Score:2)
The more the stay the same. Using analytics to tailor education isn't new. In th 1950s and 60s, the analytics used were called IQ tests. Kids with high IQs were pushed into math and science, the rest took shop or home ec. Many countries, particularly in SE Asia still do this. So, the only thing that has changed is that today, we have more sophisticated analytics than before.
WTF are they talking about? (Score:4, Interesting)
Forget standardized tests (Score:2)
Forget standardized tests, they don't measure anything meaningful. The metric society should be looking at is of the graduating high school seniors who go on to a college or university, how many graduate with a degree withing five years? And for those who do not go on to college or university, how many are gainfully employed five years out?
If schools are turning out students that can get degrees or keep jobs, then they are a successful school. OTOH, if they aren't able to do that, then they aren't a success
A little slow vs. gifted (Score:3)
No opinion here, I'm just saying is all. Make of it what you will.
The Age of Three (Score:2)
The brain at births is not equal in all babies. The home is not equal for the first three years for all babies. After the age of three the outcome is already determined. Those born with ability and nurtured in a really good home will tend to do well and those that have a child that are not so great or an environment that is not so good will tend to fail no matter what. The only known programs that do well with the lesser children involve removal from the home and put in a very advanced learning env
Will they be an tech school / apprenticeship track (Score:2)
Will they be an tech school / apprenticeship track as in some cases can be that on both sides they are a better fit to learn some skills.
Article gets the wrong idea. (Score:3)
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.
Haves and have nots? (Score:3)
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Or be born wealthy, that seems to inure you to most of this kind of thing, even if you're a terrible person.
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all of these people were kids of fairly educated and well off at the time parents who could afford an education
not like some poor farm boy in the 1500's could grow up to be a painter or inventor when the chances of him not learning to read were close to 100%
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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 w
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There's the minor matter of the cost of the evaluation in the first place. Those with an extra $30K get evaluated and get a tailored education, the rest get a one size fits all education.
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...
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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 discreti
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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 h
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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.
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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.
Yes, and he is worried that there will spring up an entire industry, whose focused on keeping these assessments proprietary, and expensive, when exactly the opposite is called for.
The assessments should be generalized and packaged so that they can be administered by teachers, evaluated by computer, with follow up by counselors.
Perhaps some retraining of school counselors, and teachers, is going to be necessary, but that is far cheaper than $30k evaluation sessions per child.
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Desparate.
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So?
Hitler ate breakfast! He breathed air too!
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Re: (Score:3)
Just like private universities can offer a lower priced education than public universities.
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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
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Part of learning is learning to adapt (Score:4, Funny)
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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Please review your code for open-ended recursive functions, potentially causing an infinite loop condition.
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