Well .. to some extent that’s true.. but the problem is that the teachers don’t know nearly enough. With the integration of the Internet into the fabric of the information/data delivery systems of the “real world”, where are students going to learn about the electronic infrastructure of the emerging “new world”? Certainly parents have a role here, but given the low marks that parents get for parenting, it’s not likely that they are the best source of this information.

It seems to me that information technology needs to be added to the curricula that public schools offer, just like science and math. The Internet is not that complicated to understand, although it by no means is the best design of how networks work. It seems a bad idea to wait until the second or third year of undergraduate school to begin to teach people what a “router” is.

We don’t teach kids about cars, or architecture, or finance, or government in public schools at the moment. Maybe it’s time to realize that whatever we are teaching them isn’t very interesting to them and not helping them much once they leave the public school system.

So? Where’s that leave us in terms of the reason school
boards purchase education software?

I listen to a Washington, DC radio station over the Internet a lot. Last week there was a news report about problems that nearby Loudoun County was having hiring teachers, stating that they were looking outside the county, and even outside the country for teachers to satisfy their needs:

http://cmsweb1.loudoun.k12.va.us/50972510153138/site/default.asp?50972510153138Nav=%7C&NodeID=1045&50910526142945130Nav=%7C2102%7C&NodeID=2102&50972510152846Nav=%7C2037%7C&NodeID=2037

Certainly being able to purchase software, or instruction packages (on-line, distance learning) would provide districts with options for the incredibly costly task for education delivery. While there may be effective resistance for another decade or two about computer-based education from teachers’ unions and “old-school” teaching professionals, it’s clear from the results that CBE (Combuter-based Education) works, is growing in application, and will become more effective over time.

School Districts have a vested interest in providing uniformity in the education product. Having variances in test scores which can be attributed to failures in teaching staff is simply not acceptable. Parents are not uniformly uninformed about quality issue, or innumerate as so many education professionals seem to be.

Many teachers complain about putting in 55 hours a week (or more), yet never provide time cards, or activity reports for outside audit in order to determine what these teachers are doing with their time. Having on-line grade books, with access to each student’s weekly performance by parents, and alerts for notification by email or telephone contact removes a clear burden from teachers to monitor all of her/his students for performance dips. Certainly teachers will not be relieved totally from this aspect of their job, but having the computer flag those students likely to fail via an email to the teacher and parent will make their lives a lot easier, time wise. Teachers are always asking for more money, claiming that they are tasked with off-campus work. To some extent, this is true. But the more the school districts can do to reduce these off-campus burdens will have a payback in terms of the school district’s not being so easily bludgeoned by work-related claims of unions which previously could not be proven, one way or the other.

As mentioned many times, instructional materials run a certain percentage of the cost-of-education of each student. Having instructional materials on-line increases access, and reduces cost. Moreover, print-on-demand technologies allow schools to use both on-line and printed materials at reduced costs from purchasing directing from a text-book vendor.

For rural districts, the lack of teaching personnel clearly reduces the options for students. Having access to on-line teaching sources, as well as CBE-software increases the options for students which could never be fulfilled by live teachers, who are not willing to live in remote areas. Over time, it’s quite possible that rural schools could provide a educational experience that is more-or-less equal to any top-flight urban school system.

Of course, one needs to construct a “big picture” and then create a set of metrics that provide educational and financial impacts, in a before-and-after framework. This is not impossible to do, but no small school district would ever be able perform this analysis adequately. This is the sort of project that the US DoE should sign up for, and once completed, provide to all the school districts in the US—at the executable and source level. Why the US DoE hasn’t seen fit to do something like this is an open question, but it’s clear that education professionals are not “systems people”, and are not likely to go down such a path on their own. Perhaps Congress, driven by demands from parents and voters, might one day task them to provide this tool to US schools.

I could go on, but this should be enough to answer the “Why” question posed earlier.

Now, what’s the analogous, and similarly compelling, reason for a school board to buy education software? Productivity? Defined how? Improved quality? Again, define “how” with the addition of “measured how”?

To teach the kids about computers? Come on, the kids probably know more about most computer-related topics then the teachers.

More then likely they’ve downloaded plenty of music, located via search engines using p2p, distributed-index, torrent-based software and transferred it via USB to their DMP (digital music player for the acronymically challenged). They’ve got a MyFace account and with their bar mitzvah money they bought a camcorder which they hook up via firewire to their laptop to FTP, or stream, videos to their MyFace account. And, they know what all of the foregoing means, in detail.

So? Where’s that leave us in terms of the reason school boards purchase education software?

About nowhere I’d say but I could be wrong. Just give me a decent reason to think so.

Seems like one of those “trick” questions, to me.

So, why do school districts purchase education software, anyway?

Is it because the software will increase the number of kids marching out of the school just stuffed to bursting with critical thinking skills?

Will the software increase teacher efficacy enough to preclude the hiring of additional staff? The laying-off of superfluous teachers? A rapid rise in AYP?

Just why do school districts purchase education software?

A lot of money and talent goes into designing ads because it’s so expensive to buy the media time and/or space. Despite that, plenty of ad campaigns flop. If the advertiser doesn’t see results, the ad campaign is changed — and often the ad company is dumped.

I do remember early studies showing that introducing technology doesn’t improve workplace productivity. As Wayne writes, that changed over time as technology changed and researchers learned what to measure. I think some uses of technology — quick-feedback tests, for example — will prove very effective in supporting teaching. Some teaching programs may pan out too, though I suspect only the kids who are capable of teaching themselves from books will prove able to teach themselves via computer and books.

It wasn’t too much later that the World Wide Web (WWW) was created, and by 1993 (a little over 15 years after the introduction of the first microcomputers around 1976) the PC has established its worth in business, and the WEB introduced the 2nd generation of value-added functionality that PCs brought with them. Industrial control, which is also PC-based, didn’t seem to be studied in the same light that office PCs were, but have had incredible impact on manufacturing environments during this same period of time.

Schools were the hardest of the sectors to introduce PC hardware/software in the early ‘80s. Public schools were almost impossible. Teaching professionals in universities/colleges who were over 50 were almost not open to converting from typewriters to PC-based word-processors. Over time, this group retired, and the younger teachers who were not so blind to the possibilities of change took over and the world is a different place today—only twenty-five years later.

As to education-based studies about PC software, these need to be read suspiciously I fear. My experience in the business sector was that there were no metrics in place to measure productivity prior to PCs, and it took almost a decade before people began to see how to actually see productivity improvements that were measurable. Once the “low hanging fruit” of these sorts of studies has been identified, subsequent studies become convoluted in “theory” or introspection that might not be relevant to the process as a whole.

For instance—many schools complain about not having books enough for every student. E-books/On-line distribution of materials provides a way for every student (with access to a PC) to have access to the materials required by the course. How many current education delivery studies include “access to required materials” as a variable in their assessment of a given study situation? And then there matters like “read all of the assigned material”. In a paper-based environment, there would be no way to evaluate this sort of thing, other than by asking each student—who may, or may not, tell you the truth. In a well-designed on-line system, counters for each page of required material could be established, so that teachers (and researchers) would be able to determine the student’s engagement with the classroom assignments.

There might be a cottage industry out there for a small group of people to study these studies and help schools understand which ones are good, and which ones and not very well designed and executed.