Tom Liam Lynch :: New Literacies, New Literatures

Michael Horn recently wrote about the value of for-profit educational companies in improving education.  His lead-in sets the stage:

If President Obama wants to achieve his goal of returning the United States to its former place atop all countries in higher education attainment by 2020, he is going to need the help of for-profit universities like the University of Phoenix, Kaplan, Corinthian and DeVry, as his own Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, said recently.

He goes on to argue that those in education who would exclude for-profit companies from informing education reform are missing something. Yes, he says, there are good and “bad actors” in the for-profit sector; the same is true in the non-profit sector.  (I agree completely.)  He then cautions the reader that we must take the opportunity to learn from these organizations about what it means to teach and to learn innovatively.  (I agree again. Proponents of Pure Public Schooling like Alfie Kohn or the recently 180′d Diane Ravitch might well get uncomfortable the moment we allow schools and businesses to get too close…)

One main point Horn makes is that online learning opportunities “allow [students] to learn anytime and anywhere, many of these students would have no alternative to gain a formal education given the demands of work and family.”  He says this in response to critics who say that online learning is a poor substitute for the “real” kind of learning that happens in schools.

Horn’s defense is a problematic line of thought, I think.  It lauds the convenience of taking courses online without even so much as winking at other very crucial questions: especially the quality of the courses online.  Convenience for convenience’s sake is hardly a hardy argument for education reform.  What good is being able to take courses anywhere, anytime, if the course quality is shite?

This is not to say that all online courses are of poor quality.  Far from it.  It is to say, however, that to defend for-profit online educational companies on the grounds that are convenient–without equal attention to the quality of content that is conveniently accessed– is a weak defense indeed.  Convenience without quality is not compelling.

Horn could, for example, have discussed how some for-profit companies go to great lengths to ensure rigorous content.  Or, how some companies craft questions that challenge learners to go well beyond the simple multiple-choice blotting that naysayers claim makes up non-brick-and-mortar schooling.  Doing so, Horn could have then launched into a highly defensible tirade about the shaky quality of many “real thing” curricula.  How many teachers, he might have asked, fail to assess their students’ learning with a frequency that even comes close to online courses, which are constantly giving formative assessments?  Or, how many schools have purchased out-of-the-box curricula that denies teachers the opportunity to design curriculum and forces entire classrooms of students to move in step?

These questions aren’t asked.  It was a missed opportunity.  I myself can’t buy in to the idea that for-profit educational companies are good because they are convenient for students.  It is itself an all too convenient argument that avoids a crucial discussion we ought to be having: Are students getting quality courses at their convenience?

Powered by ScribeFire.

I was in the hospital with my new son one night a few weeks when I saw that one of the authors of Disrupting Class, Michael Horn, replied to my previous blog posting.  My son is three weeks today; his father finally has a chance to reply to Horn.  Horn wrote a comment to my posting that begins:

While I appreciated the kudos, a “good catch” does not adequately respond to my point.  Even Horn’s later series of rebuttals do nothing more than dodge the core of the critique.  At the heart of the posting is the concern that the authors of Disrupting Class knowingly misrepresent and dismiss research and scholarship in the field of education.  As a result, the Disruption Theory they create is inherently groundless.  Though it is compelling–no one would argue that the book has had great effects on education policy and reform–it neglects to seriously consider what is going on in actual schools with actual students, and it doesn’t consider what experts in education have to say about those realities.

I agree with Horn that much of educational research doesn’t prove causal relationships (if you do X students will ace their exams).  But that doesn’t mean you disregard it completely.  The weakness of Disrupting Class‘s stance toward educational research is that it finds value only in the answers to questions, not the questions themselves.  What questions would have been raised in their book if the authors had seriously considered educational research? What questions, then, would policy-makers and educational leadership have asked?  Questions, after all, are far more disruptive. 

Here’s an example.  One of the gaps I point out is that the authors make “the hasty assumption that adolescents’ use of technology means they can simply learn from it.”  Horn replied to this critique (which was the third in a list) that “we pointedly don’t rely on point #3 that you cite. Others write about this, but we ourselves don’t hinge our argument on this point.”  I’m sorry, but Horn and his colleagues pointedly do rely on students’ use of technology to learn.  If you remove students-using-technology-to-learn from Disrupting Class there is no book.  Who uses the online courses they speak of?  How do the authors imagine students sharing content they create?  And let’s not ignore the fact that not all students learn well in online courses; not all students have any interest or natural skill in posting materials for classmates to learn from. 

If the authors had consulted–just as one example–Donald Leu’s study in which he compares students’ offline and online literacy skills they might have disclaimed that research shows students’ offline and online literacy abilities have no direct relationship.  Great online readers might be shoddy offline readers.  And vice versa.  If they had considered even just studies that compare students online and offline lives, they might have explored certain realities of applying their theory to a school system: not all students are digitally literate; students’ social digital literacies don’t simply apply to online schoolwork; not all traditionally successful students’ talents translate to the online world; not all students even have equitable access to online worlds and therefore to those crucial online skills. 

The above response, I might add, says nothing about the authors’ disregard for the roles of teachers in student-learning.  While they do compliment educators for their hard work, they don’t seriously consider what it means, for instance, to disrupt teacher education using their framework.  Nor do they consider the setbacks and advances being made in the professional development of educators.  Their solution is to take a master teacher like Jaime Escalante and broadcast him to as many students as possible.  I wonder what kind of relationship Escalante would form with his students in such a scenario.  After all, wasn’t it his ability to connect with his classes that made his success possible? 

In sum, we need a real series of exchanges in which the educational research community dialogues with the authors of Disrupting Class.  Ideally, there would be a think tank in which some organization (a university, consulting group, a city) would invite the book’s authors and an array of educational scholars to the same table to talk about ways to ground so influential a book.  The authors of the book might dismiss educational research, but researchers are also quick to categorically dismiss the book.  Disrupting Class has been incredibly influential and is shaping education reform around the world.  Scholars who ignore that simple truth are too tangled in their own academic robes to see that real principals, teachers, students, and parents are and will be affected by this book.  Time to disrobe, if need be, and to seriously consider what it means to disrupt.

NB: There are other critiques of the book as well. One especially thoughtful review is by John Sener.