As educators shift their duties from being teachers of children to analysts of data, we have become a nation of schools obsessed with test scores. As a result, whenever a technology initiative comes along, such as one that puts a computer or iPad in every kid’s hand, we tend to look at standardized test scores more than anecdotal evidence.
That’s probably a mistake. Test scores may not measure students’ progress on achieving certain learning standards, such as those in the Common Core. They certainly don’t wholly address teacher or school quality or the effectiveness of a one-to-one technology program. It would be good for schools to stop looking for answers about program or teacher effectiveness in those test scores.
When we consider test scores, we get results like one recent study in Charleston, S.C., which found that the use of iPads in three schools resulted in no gains in standardized test scores, as was hoped, but garnered positive feedback and other anecdotal evidence, the Post and Courier reports.
“I don’t see a downside to iPads,” the paper quoted Travis Benintendo, principal at a middle school that has a one-to-one iPad program, as saying. “It’s just another tool to deliver the curriculum. We want kids to be engaged, and iPads allow us to do that.”
So the results aren’t “mixed” at all—no downside as long as money is available.
Kids are going to use technology. If schools want to make the playing field even in a way that doesn’t give kids from affluent neighborhoods a technology advantage, they must address poverty. The main goal of technology programs, like the one in Charleston described above or in Baltimore County, announced last week, is to narrow the “educational opportunity gap” that exists between rich and poor kids in schools.
School officials in Charleston did report test score gains for certain groups of students: reading scores went up for fifth- and eighth-grade Hispanic students and those learning to speak English; math scores went up for eighth graders, as well as students who were black, Hispanic, and English language learners. And they expect larger gains down the road as teachers become more comfortable incorporating the apps into their teaching curricula.
But the real evidence for the program’s effectiveness comes from students.
“It makes it easier and quicker to get things done,” the Post and Courier quoted one fifth grader as saying. “It makes it more interesting instead of just writing things down. We figured out way more than the teacher told us.”
There’s the benefit: kids have more fun learning, because their part of the job is easier and quicker to accomplish with short attention spans and a mode of learning known as “broadcast learning” that all but requires them to jump from one source of information—the teacher—to another—a textbook, iPad, or anything that’s not the first source.
The iPads, partly funded by a Race to the Top grant to the Charleston school district, elevate the level of engagement students experience, turning teachers into part-time lecturers and part-time facilitators of learning as kids do their own research.
One-to-one programs provide an equal opportunity for rich kids and poor kids. We conclude, therefore, that programs like this do address poverty, which many critics of standardized testing say is the biggest problem facing schools.
The programs don’t address poverty completely—feeding kids would do that, as Valerie Strauss pointed out in a recent blog post in the Washington Post—but they address one part of the poverty problem. Still, it’s a good move on the part of the US Department of Education to provide funding for initiatives like this, and our hats are off to them.
Now, if we could just breed more equality because people are people, rather than making it some kind of competition where some people are more worthy of equal opportunity than others, that would make everybody happy.