The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

I think people, and society in general, need to be a lot more careful about buying into hype, and prematurely adopting hyped tech.

Would you buy (or fly in) a "revolutionary" new jet, that (by the way) hasn't been tested, but it's makers are really hopeful it will be safe and perform better than other jets?

IMHO, changes in education need to be studied for at least ten years, then rolled out slowly with much more skeptical study. First you've got "balanced reading" that de-emphasized phonics and reduced literacy (but I'm sure resulted in massive textbook sales and prestige for a few education academics), and now you've got EdTech screens that have hurt students' learning (but probably made some VCs rich). Implementation's got to slow down until we actually are sure the shit actually works better.

> need to be studied for at least ten years, then rolled out slowly with much more skeptical study.

If you have ever been involved with education students doing studies you know that methodology here is the pretty lacking, and it’s hard to consider what could be done better (other than stop pretending these surveys mean anything).

I think we need to stop pretending that there is some magic technique that’s going to 5x performance.

>> need to be studied for at least ten years, then rolled out slowly with much more skeptical study.

> If you have ever been involved with education students doing studies you know that methodology here is the pretty lacking, and it’s hard to consider what could be done better (other than stop pretending these surveys mean anything).

I don't know exactly what you mean by "surveys," but I thinking the decision should be a default no, and whatever "innovation" is being pushed should get rolled out slowly enough that public debate can nip bad ideas in the bud. I'm specifically thinking of an article I read awhile back where a parent (who knew she was a bad reader) was flabbergasted that her kid was actually being explicitly taught the same bad reading strategies she used as part of a "balanced" reading curriculum.

I under if you had no more than 10% of schools using something like "balanced reading" for 20 years, before it could be rolled out. I'm hoping their underperformance and criticism from parents and dissenting educators could get the idea scrapped before it became the mainstream, saving the students in the other 90% of schools from being harmed by it.

> I think we need to stop pretending that there is some magic technique that’s going to 5x performance.

Yeah, and I think we also need to stop pretending new is better. The idea that kids being subjected to "innovation" may be getting harmed more than they're being helped, needs to be made prominent in these debates.