Citation: Baines, L. A. (2013). Then, let them eat screens. Teachers College Record. ID NUMBER: 17112.
Then, Let Them Eat Screens
by Lawrence Baines — May 03, 2013
The "flipped classroom" is indicative of the American penchant for turning to technology to solve the problems of k-12 public education. The essay addresses the extent to which expenditures on technology provide viable solutions.
American K-12 schools spent over 10 billion dollars on technology in 2012 and they plan to spend over 10 billion dollars on technology again in 2013. This large expenditure aligns well with the consensus among educational policy-makers that knowledge of digital technologies is essential for students, irrespective of their eventual careers. At the press conference for the unveiling of the National Education Technology Plan in 2010, Secretary of Education Duncan proclaimed, “Just as technology has increased productivity in the business world, it is an essential tool to help boost educational productivity.”
In the past few years, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have proliferated, offering anyone the opportunity to take courses for free over the Internet. The Khan Academy sports over three thousand MOOCs and has had millions of visitors to its website. Coursera, a free online collection of college-level courses has had over seven million course enrollments while EdX, Udacity, Udemy, and a host of other course-based websites continue to ramp up their online offerings. One of my absolute favorite Internet sites, Ted.org, features over 1400 lectures and has accommodated more than a billion Internet visits since its debut.
All this intellectual activity on the Internet has led pundits, such as the commentators on the television news program 60 Minutes, to declare that the “flipped classroom” is the “future of education.” For those still unfamiliar with the term, a classroom is flipped when a teacher assigns a video to watch after school hours, then discusses the video with students in class the next day. In days of yore, making such a request of students might have been referred to by the term homework, but now the technique is known as a technologically-mediated, value-added, instructional strategy.
Some skeptics might have difficulty conceptualizing how forcing a kid to sit on his butt for an extra hour per night so that he can watch an amateurishly-produced lecture “transforms the learning process,” but that is the claim. One might also note that adding another hour of viewing to the three hours of television that most students watch every day might seem counter to the goal of stimulating the intellect. Nevertheless, flipped instruction is the educational reform du jour and organizations such as Khan Academy have amassed millions of dollars in support from large donors, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, and Reed Hastings.
Any teacher will tell you that the students most likely to actually keep up their end of the “flipped classroom” bargain are those already at the top end of the achievement scale—those in Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate courses. Who, other than the most motivated, are going to scour the Internet looking for a filmed lecture on fractions at 10 at night?
Students in advanced classes, the upper 25% of students, already score quite well on standardized exams. In fact, the top 25% of students in American schools outscore students from all other countries in the world on international tests, such as PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) and TIMSS (Trends in International Math and Science Study). The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) finds that American students in the top 25% are “proficient” or “advanced” readers and writers.
It is the bottom 75% who are struggling. Included in this 75% are large numbers of students from poor and middle class families who are financially stressed, often with parents who work extra-long hours or who have taken on second jobs to try and make ends meet. Students in the bottom 75% score significantly below the world mean on international tests. Their scores on the NAEP assessments in reading and writing indicate that they are not “proficient,” but are considered “basic” or “below basic.” According to data from the U.S. government’s annual report Indicators of School Crime and Safety, the bottom 75% of students are more likely to feel bored, frustrated, and insecure at school perhaps because they are more likely to be threatened, assaulted, and injured while at school. More than half of the Hispanic and African-American men in the bottom 75% who are seniors will not graduate from high school this spring.
The problems of the bottom 75% cannot be solved by buying more whiteboards, acquiring additional laptop carts, or assigning instructional videos for homework. These students need well-run, safe schools, and the guidance of talented, dedicated, humane teachers who genuinely care about them and will work ferociously on their behalf.
Perhaps in 2014, some of the 10 billion dollars designated for technology or the millions of philanthropic dollars given to organizations to produce online instructional videos can be redirected to the bottom 75% of students and the teachers who teach them.