Educational Technology and Change Journal

I have always considered Judah L. Schwartz a true pioneer in the field of learning technologies. He had the ability to look at the world through the new and different lens of the computer. He looked at the ethical and philosophical issues arising from the use of technology in education. His research interests include the use of the digital world to improve the teaching and learning of math and science. He designed the Geometric Supposer series of software and What Do You Do with a Broken Calculator? and other alternative software programs.

He is currently Professor of the Practice and Research Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Tufts University; he is also Emeritus Professor of Engineering Science and Education at MIT and Emeritus Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Judah L. Schwartz

He is a remarkable pioneer in our field because he saw technology as a way of looking at mathematics in very new and alternative ways. His software asks the learner to think over and over again, “What if?” What if I change this value. What happens? The computer allows for infinite changes and explorations of these alternative operations. He likes to say the Ptolemy observations of the solar system were accurate. There was just one thing wrong with them and that was they were basically incorrect. Continue reading →

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By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

There’s only one major trend in education, and that’s digital. The digital meter is all that really matters, and it’s running faster every second. The increments are in degrees of digitization. This process is transforming not only the classroom but the business of schooling. Paper and file cabinets are disappearing, just as books, bookshelves, and printers are. Increasingly, information is created, stored, and shared digitally. Landlines and faxes are being replaced by digital communications via computers and the internet.

Increasingly, offices are becoming dead zones. Educators are communicating more than ever before, but they’re no longer doing it from their offices. For example, students and colleagues are communicating with them via email and social media, and the interactions are no longer limited to weekdays, 8-to-4, in offices. The office is simply no match for 24-7, anytime, anywhere communications.

This digital sea change is not an isolated trend. It’s pervasive, happening everywhere on this planet, all at once. There’s no denying that there are and will be pockets that remain analog, like the payphone booth you sometimes see in an old neighborhood or out of the way location or an IBM selectric typewriter in a forgotten workroom or, even more rare, a desktop computer with disc drives and CRT monitor, connected to a printer with fanfold paper. Newspapers and TV news are going digital, too, just as books, movies, music, and sports are. Continue reading →

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“If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.” -Jesse Jackson

In the late 1980s when I worked for the US Department of Education, I dreamed of an interactive, participatory multimedia television series. It would be a weekly series that established a problem the first four days of the week and then viewers would submit solutions on Friday. This was before YouTube or Facebook. If I were writing the proposal today, I would have many more exciting technology-based possibilities.

A segment of the series might focus on establishing a Mars habitat. Major problems to be solved are (1) developing protection against radiation, (2) creating an adequate water supply, (3) growing food, (4) disposing waste, (5) learning to live together for long periods in a confined space, and (6) supplying ample energy for the habitat.

The first four days, the program would provide a storyline that gives the learners background information about the possible solutions. Students using a package of visuals, including avatars, would develop a video for their solution. Each class can then place it on YouTube for others to view. Other learners can provide comments and advice on Facebook. Continue reading →

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Andrew was a loner who lived in his own world with very little interactions with other children in either the dormitory or the classroom. He was a tall, skinny, awkward kid. He had a talent for drawing. He created a whole world of his own in his drawings. In fact, his most expressive communication came through his drawings.

When he was about twelve or thirteen he began drawing elaborate cartoons including his own language. His most elaborate efforts were of a semi-Roman type of society. He spent hours drawing these detailed cartoons of his imaginary world. He had observed the mechanical aspect of the buildings that made up the school campus, and in some of his drawings he had elaborate electrical and plumbing systems.

Andrew was not a good student, but he did like words. He was not an athletic or outdoors fellow. He did not like to go to the Boy Scout camp. One camping trip I heard him conjugating verbs. I am not going to camp, I will not got to camp, I shall not go to camp, etc. in the back of the bus on the way to camp. We were a little late getting to the campsite and pitching our tents. Consequently, it was dark by the time the boys started their fires and began cooking their meals. I was excited because Andrew was one of the first to sit down and start eating. However, when I approached him I realized he had not been able to start his campfire and was eating his food raw. Continue reading →

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By Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues
ETCJ Associate Administrator

Vernier is providing 30 grants to ten elementary or middle schools, ten high schools, and ten college or university departments to honor the important work science educators do every day. Each grant awardee will receive $10,000 worth of Vernier technology equipment of their choosing. (…)

The contest opens March 9, 2011, and applications are due by June 1, 2011, with winners announced by September 15, 2011 (…)

For more information, see Win one of thirty $10,000 technology grants! on Vernier.com.

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One day my superintendent called and asked if I had invited JFK to be our commencement speaker. Why he would suspect me of inviting the President I do not know. I had no idea what he was talking about. He said, “Find out who did,” and hung up. I talked with the class officers, and, oh yes, Albert James, the secretary treasurer, wrote the president. Albert was a kid who, at thirteen, had a beard heavier than Richard Nixon’s. He was the kid whose dormitory mates could send out to the local store to buy a six-pack and no one would ask for an ID. From preschool to high school, his teachers had noted that he was an underachiever not living up to his potential.

In his last year he discovered science fairs. He entered and won the local and went on to the state where he came in second. His fame led his classmates to elect him secretary treasurer. As such, he thought President Kennedy would make a wonderful commencement speaker. He knew enough to go to the superintendent’s office and obtain letterhead stationery and wrote a letter to the President asking him to speak. JFK had already made a commitment to speak at a nearby college and the White House said if we scheduled our commencement to coincide, the President would consider speaking. Wow! Albert thought this was nothing out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, the President was shot in Dallas and we never finalized the arrangement. Continue reading →

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By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

[Note: An earlier version of this article first appeared as a comment to Jessica Knott’s “How Do You Define ‘Technophobia’?” -Editor]

I appreciate the comments on this sort of article (Liz Dwyer’s “Why Twitter Is a Teacher’s Best Tool,” 5.21.11) about as much as the article itself. One teacher (rossmau) commented that Twitter is less useful than her stapler. Another (Michelleg1) was effusive in her praise of Twitter.

I find Jessica’s question much more engaging than just talking about Twitter, which has its value and its drawbacks.

Many have noted that schools, as an institution, tend to resist change. Some decry that tendency as even troglodytic. It certainly frustrates me from time to time.

However, if you think about it, schools provides a critical service for our children for a dozen or more years of their lives. Were it subject to every whim of education theory, the results would likely be unpleasant at best. I’ve seen a few education fads come and go.

My favorite fad is “New Math.” Wow! Some still cling to it today, but it was totally discredited years ago. In science education (and others I think), we see “back to basics” as a fad that trades places with social relevancy.  Each gets stretched to its limit resulting in an overreaction in the other direction. So, one day, it’s all about learning the fundamentals of science. Another day, it’s all about relating science to your community, to your nation, to the world as in global warming. It’s not that these things are bad. They’re just not in balance. Continue reading →

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Today, I stumbled upon a blog post, “Why Twitter Is a Teacher’s Best Friend,” by Liz Dwyer. While I find Dwyer’s stances on the professional development and networking power of Twitter to be valid and refreshing, I was concerned by the line “Not all teachers have totally embraced Twitter. Some are a little tech-phobic.”

To me, integrating technology to its fullest potential involves finding true solutions. In my own teaching, Twitter is used only in very specific circumstances. Yet, I am not tech-phobic. I hesitate to embrace the proclamation that eschewing a technology makes one tech-phobic, yet many tech blogs seem to follow this bent.

How do you feel? How do you define “technophobia”? How do you make your technology decisions when it comes to information sharing, teaching objectives and networking?

I found this article to be a refreshing perspective in many ways and find it opens the door to an interesting discussion on our perspectives in the tech world and how we view those who adopt technology at slower rates. What do you think?

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I have hired and supervised a number of teachers in my career. I always ask myself, Are the people I am interviewing so interesting that I would like to spend an evening with them over dinner? Can they relate to their students and not just the subject matter?

One of the most remarkable people I hired as a teacher for multiply disabled students was Dorothy. She had just lost her husband. She was an excellent pianist and could have earned a living as a musician. She had been in love and engaged to marry a European from Holland before World War II broke out. She had lost all contact with him during the war. He was a member of the underground. He wired her as soon as he was able to after the war was over and indicated that he still wanted to marry her if she had not married. She said yes, and he came to the USA as fast as he could. He ended up as an executive in Shell Oil Company, and they lived around the world, often dining with heads of state and corporate leaders. They had no children.

She met my first criteria of being someone that I found fascinating as a dinner partner. Her educational background was exemplary, coming from Smith College with all A’s.

Continue reading →

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I worked in residential schools in the early part of my career. In addition to my classroom teaching, I taught wood working shop at night and on Saturdays. Every time Dale saw me he asked when he could take shop. You had to be at least nine years old before you could come to shop. Dale was one of the kids that the teachers did not like, and the house parents dreaded having him in their dormitory.

He wasn’t bad. He was just a pest. If you could possibly do something wrong, Dale was able to stumble into it. If you went on a field trip on a city bus and had to transfer, somehow Dale lost his transfer. If you stopped for an ice cream cone, Dale somehow managed to drop his cone before he finished it. Dale also had a misshapen head. It looked like someone stepped on it and left it off center.

The time finally arrived when he was old enough to come to shop. He was in seventh heaven. I had the young boys that year make three-legged foot stools. They turned the legs on the lathe and made kidney-shaped seats that they covered.

Continue reading →

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When Alexander Graham Bell tried to market his new telephone in England, government ministers told him that England would never need telephones. They would always have a supply of messenger boys. When I grew up in the 1930s, a long distance telephone call was only used for a birth or death of a family member. In World War II, long distance phone calls were used by servicemen to contact loved ones back home.

Today I have a friend with cancer who is being treated by the National Institutes of Health. She has her own blog where she documents the progress of her treatment for family and friends. I live on the East Coast, and many of my family members live on the West Coast. With Facebook, I am more in touch with the family than ever before. Sometimes I get more information about purple hair and body piercing by the younger members than I want to know. So far I have not received an announcement of tattoos. I have not checked my email this morning.

Young people and adults have privately financed the personal and corporate infrastructure of iPhones, iPads and iPods that make this vast social network possible.

The challenge for teachers is how to use these new resources for learning. We must develop rules for usage, but social media should never be banned from the classroom.

Continue reading →

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By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

Project-Based Learning or PBL seems to bundle some of the noisiest buzzwords into a single package, making it a convenient general model for best practice. But I have to confess that I seldom use the term because it’s so slippery. Every time I think I have a grip on it, it oozes away. Now that I have a few days before the start of summer session, I thought I’d try to get a firmer grip on it.

I did the usual googling, and Edutopia rose to the surface. I liked their site because it simplified, simplified, simplified the idea. In other words, it left out the philosophical history and pseudo-theoretical pedigree that’s top-heavy with Dewey, Piaget and the like. In a brief document titled “Why Teach with Project-Based Learning?: Providing Students With a Well-Rounded Classroom Experience” (28 Feb. 2008), I got what seemed like all the pieces to the puzzle.

Using the mouse, I cut away the excess verbiage to isolate the key elements, and this is what I ended up with. Through PBL, students:

• experience “active and engaged learning”
• “explore real-world problems and challenges”
• develop “cross-curriculum skills”
• work “in small collaborative groups”
• engage in “team-based and independent work”
• “obtain a deeper knowledge of the subjects they’re studying”
• “are more likely to retain the knowledge gained through this approach”
• “develop confidence and self-direction”
• “hone their organizational and research skills”
• “develop better communication with their peers and adults”
• “often work within their community”
• “are evaluated on the basis of their projects, rather than on the comparatively narrow rubrics defined by exams, essays, and written reports”
• feel that “project-based work is often more meaningful to them. They quickly see how academic work can connect to real-life issues — and may even be inspired to pursue a career or engage in activism that relates to the project they developed.”
• have “greater flexibility [in] project learning”
• “might be evaluated on presentations to a community audience they have assiduously prepared for, informative tours of a local historical site based on their recently acquired expertise, or screening of a scripted film they have painstakingly produced.”
• learn that this is “an effective way to integrate technology into [their learning]. A typical project can easily accommodate computers and the Internet, as well as interactive whiteboards, global-positioning-system (GPS) devices, digital still cameras, video cameras, and associated editing equipment.

Continue reading →

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By Frank B. Withrow

In the USA every child is entitled to a free and appropriate education regardless of ethnic background, disabling condition or socioeconomic level. In the last part of the 20^th Century, federal legislation ensured that all disabled children had a right to a free and appropriate public education. The contributions of disabled people in America has been tremendous, from Thomas Edison, Franklin Roosevelt, Stephen Hawking to Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder and Helen Keller, disabled people have enriched our society. Deaf people, blind people, cerebral palsied people and mentally challenged people have enriched our lives though their accomplishments.

Many of these young people have done well in regular classrooms with average learners. Others have had to have special programs and may from time to time be in separate classes or even individual tutoring. Learning comes through our sensory input, especially our sight and hearing. However the human mind is a marvelous thing that can compensate for distortions in our sensory inputs. Think with me for a moment about how we might reach a deaf blind infant. True, there are cochlear implants that might give the child a form of hearing. There have been experiments with ocular implants, but these have not been practical to date. How then will a deaf blind infant know his or her world? They must know their world primarily through the sense of touch, taste and smell. Unlike sight and hearing, touch, taste and smell are near senses.

Continue reading →

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By Bonnie Bracey Sutton
Associate Editor

Separate but equal?
It never was.
In education, we still have a long way to go.
In technology, are we there yet?

It is nearly exactly  sixty years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place in the field of public education. The promise of an equal education remains unmet for too many of the nation’s students of color and Native students. Inner city schools are crumbling and losing educational leaders. Rural schools are often technology challenged as well as economically challenged. The new ideas and wonderful examples of best practices are not a part of these schools’ learning landscapes.

How long will this go on?

In my early school days, like many Southern students I went to school with Hispanics, Dark Italians, Native Americans, and Black students. We were all called colored. The nuns had us capitalize “Black” and names of minority groups to give them importance, to show their importance. There were a few Chinese students, but they were allowed to go to other schools. We did not know why. We accepted it. Change was coming, they said.

There was a confusion about race. There always has been. I still have the bad habit of capitalizing any minority name. However, there has never been an illusion about the economic differences in communities and what that means for students of color.

Continue reading →

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By Tom Preskett

Today I want to reflect on some teaching I did on Tueday, 17th May at the Institute of Education (IOE). It was called 21st Century Learning: Using Web 2.0 Tools. I usually call this session Web2.0Learning, but our marketing people didn’t like that and renamed it. This was the first time I’ve been on the LCLL core events calendar so this was quite a big deal. By the way, the LCLL – London Centre for Leadership in Learning – is where I work in the IOE.

Web2.0Learning is a day’s training that I conceived a couple of years ago to teach educators about the various types of tools freely available ‘out there’ on the internet. I describe them as ‘outside your VLE’ tools. I’ve now delivered it five times mostly at the Chartered Institute of Marketing, and I’ve always found it a rewarding experience. Part of the satisfaction comes from the fact that it’s inspired and dictated by what I read, learn and reflect about in my personal learning on the blogosphere. It’s more of a personal interest than a work chore. Also, it allows me to be creative as I seek to make sense of the different tools and software I encounter and distill it down into coherent messages.

Continue reading →

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By Frank B. Withrow

[Note: This is a follow-up to Frank’s earlier article, “21st Century Schools: Bridging the Gap Between Traditional and Digital Learning Resources.” In this imaginative scenario, he shares a vision of how technology expands the ways in which 21st century students will learn. -Editor]

In the middle of the night, I thought about how a student’s educational life might play out in the next ten to twenty years. Endeavour’s launch was magnificent. We will step foot on Mars someday.

James Josiah Coleman was born on February 9, 2000, in Lanham, Maryland, just outside the Goddard NASA space center. You might even say he was a space baby. His father was a communications expert at NASA, and his aunt was a NASA astronaut. His crib had plastic shuttles hanging over it, and his first toys were NASA models. As a youngster he knew the statistics about all the shuttle flights, especially the ones his aunt flew on. His mother was a PhD research scientist at the Greenbelt Department of Agriculture Research Center. He had a younger sister named Casey.

Photo credit NASA/Jim Grossmann

He was known by his friends as “JJ” and was considered a nerd because even as a small kid he was obsessed with NASA data. He knew everything about Mars and dreamed of going there. Early on as a child he learned to speak Russian because his aunt Cathy spoke Russian as a member of the International Space Station crew. JJ had a talent for speaking other languages and also began to learn Chinese when he was in grade school. He did this by taking a Chinese course on line where he spoke with native Chinese speakers weekly via SKYPE. Continue reading →

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By Frank B. Withrow

[Note: An earlier version of this article was published in Frank’s personal blog. -Editor]

Our current educational system was designed for an agrarian society where books allowed us to store and retrieve information. Before books, young people were taught through apprenticeships with master workers or scholars. Books allowed us to train and teach children in classrooms and schools with libraries of the world’s knowledge and skills. This meant that the learners had to be convened in classrooms.

With today’s digital world, the classroom is not as critical as it was in a book based learning system. Today, information stored digitally can be retrieved 24/7. Moreover lessons can originate anywhere in the world. If, for example, I want to study Chinese, I can have lessons from China delivered via my computer and I can practice my Chinese via SKYPE with two-way audio-visual conversations with a native speaker.

Distant learning allows us to deliver high quality lessons to the most remote parts of the world as was demonstrated by the Star Schools Program. Early childhood education is now delivered via Sesame Street to 140 countries around the world. This does not mean that we no longer need school buildings or human teachers. It means that those classrooms will be organized differently and that the teachers will be mentors that guide teams of learners as they solve problems and produce projects.

Assessment of a learner’s progress will be based upon (1) projects completed, (2) effectiveness in team work, and (3) creativity. Schools will be open year round. Students will work in teams with clear individual learning plans that define their goals and objectives. Certain skills and background will be tailor made to meet individual needs. That is, sufficient literacy and mathematics skills will be expected, and required remedial work will be provided on an individual basis until basic proficiency is achieved. Continue reading →

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By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

Introduction: On May 12 and 13, I had the opportunity to interview Jessica Knott, a PhD student in Higher, Adult and Lifelong Education (HALE) at Michigan State University. She is also an instructional designer with TechSmith Corporation’s Camtasia Relay team. She serves as ETCJ’s editor on Twitter and writes a column, “ETC, Twitter and Me.”

Jim Shimabukuro: I just logged in to the TEDxLansing website. Please tell us about the event and, more specifically, about your live online course.

Jessica Knott: I’m super fortunate to live in a vibrant city filled with doers, and TEDxLansing is kind of an embodiment of that. I’ve been on the core planning committee for the past two years and am consistently amazed at the big ideas and bright spots that are unearthed in the state of Michigan, which is consistently looked upon as bleak. TEDx events are local, and highlight what can be as well as what is. They’re incredible.

Lansing (or, East Lansing, rather) also happens to be the home of Michigan State University, where I am a PhD student in Higher, Adult and Lifelong Education (HALE). I focus on distance learning and instructor presence, and how organizational changes and the shifting landscape of higher education affects how we communicate with our students. EAD 315 is offered to HALE students and gives them the opportunity to create and teach an online or in-person course in student leadership theory and development. However, it’s more than just a workshop or seminar. This class is a challenge in every way. Students with no teaching experience are mentored through the process from start to finish, and students who already know the ropes have some freedom to explore and try new things, while creating a solid, challenging course for students requiring a four credit summer course. This is my second year teaching it, and I’ve already learned a lot about my teaching style and working with undergraduate students. Continue reading →

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By John Sener

[Author’s note:  this article elaborates on an idea described in a previous article.]

Anyone who truly believes the common wisdom that our education system is “broken,” “failing,” and needs “fixing” should try answering these questions:

• When did it break?
• Who broke it?
• Was it working just fine before that?
• What did it look like then?
• If it’s now “failing,” when in the past was it succeeding?
• What did that look like, and what happened to change that?

When you ask these questions, the reality becomes apparent: education has never worked fine for everyone. It has always worked for some and not well at all for many others. The current system needs some repair work here and there, but to say that the entire education system is broken or failing and needs fixing to achieve “success” is at best misguided; at worst, it’s misleading, even pernicious nonsense.

This is so for three important reasons:

First, saying that education is “broken” and “failing” opens the door to would-be “fixers” of education who offer handy “solutions” that bring neither resolution nor success. Children’s author Richard Scarry created a character who helps us understand how this works. Mr. Fixit is “fix-it” incarnate — but as millions of children worldwide wisely know, Mr. Fixit has, shall we say, an inflated sense of his capabilities. He can fix some simple things, but most of his fixes go awry: a once-leaky boat that won’t ever leak (or float) again, a vacuum cleaner that only works on the ceiling, a talking doll that says “Dadda” instead of “Mamma.”  Would-be “fixers” of education produce results that are similarly dubious and often a lot more expensive. Continue reading →

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By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

DVD players have advanced so far that they’re beginning to take over functions that we normally associate with home PCs. For example, I bought a Sony BDP-BX37 unit for a little over $90 a few days ago. With an ethernet connection to a cable router, I can now bring many web resources to the widescreen, high-definition (HD) TV.

Except for newscasts from time to time and special documentaries, I seldom watch TV programs. Instead, I use the TV primarily for viewing DVDs. Thus, when my old, pre-Blu-ray DVD player finally died, I went shopping. I was amazed at the wide range of models, price drop, and value for the buck. I was especially impressed with the LAN (local area network) capability and USB port.

When I got the unit home, I couldn’t wait to try it out. I inserted the cables — HDMI to the TV and ethernet from the router. I also plugged a keyboard into the front panel USB port. The onscreen setup went smoothly, prompting me through a few simple steps.

My first test was YouTube, to explore the unit’s web capability. At the YouTube screen, I used the keyboard (instead of the buttons on the remote) to type in a search term. I selected videos at random from the ones that emerged. They played without a problem. The default viewing frame is very small, about 20% of the screen. Clicking on the remote’s center button (in the circular direction controls) zooms in to full-screen mode. In full-screen, results are generally poor with standard low-resolution videos. Those with higher definition are fair to very good. Continue reading →

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By Bonnie Bracey Sutton
Editor, Policy Issues

[Note: This article grew out of a comment that Bonnie posted, on 4 May 2011, in response to Jim Shimabukuro’s “The Web As a Platform for Teacher Revitalization.” -Editor]

I know how lucky I am. Chris Dede was a mentor. Before he taught at Harvard, he was a professor at George Mason University. Back then, he sometimes visited my classroom, bringing students with him, and sometimes I got to be a part of his classes.

Chris was one of the mentors in the Christa McAuliffe NFIE (National Foundation for the Improvement of Education) program, and he worked with five of us, representing various diversity components: Native American, international, digital divide, supercomputing, and futuristic education. We were groomed to help classroom teachers and had frequent meetings with these experts, who shared resources, ideas, and thoughts with us.

The NFIE was funded by the NEA from member contributions on behalf of the astronaut who died in the shuttle accident. It is a private foundation within the NEA. Chris was my knight in shining armor in the NIIAC (National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council). I could present ideas to teachers, but I was just a teacher. Chris had a PhD. They listened to him, though they may have been amused by the things I said. He was my resource for the duration of the time I was on the council. Continue reading →

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By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

In her comment (5.2.11) on John Sener’s “Fighting the High Cost of Low Teacher Respect” (5.2.11), Bonnie Bracey Sutton makes a few points that got my attention.

The first is: “The Internet sort of gets rid of a layer of supervisors.”

Supervision is a problem that teachers rarely if ever broach — and for good reason. Criticize it, and they’re out of a job. Supervision can be both good and bad. When it’s good, it’s empowering. That is, it supports the teacher’s efforts to realize her instructional goals through her preferred approaches. It keeps the teacher in charge of her pedagogy. Yet, along with that freedom comes the responsibility to meet school-wide objectives. The teacher is treated as a professional, highly trained and capable of making her own decisions about how best to achieve goals and objectives.

Supervision, when it’s bad, is overbearing, invasive, counterproductive, and ultimately dehumanizing. The assumption is, to put it bluntly, teachers are stupid and lazy. They need to be told what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. They need constant watching and prodding. The teacher is viewed as a technician or, worse, a machine, a component that needs to be programed, plugged in to a classroom, and periodically serviced and updated. From the supervisor’s perspective, the best teachers are those who are easily programed and maintained. Continue reading →

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By John Sener

[Note: On May 1, Bonnie Bracey Sutton, ETCJ editor on policy issues, posted a link to Dave Eggers and Ninive Clements Calegari’s NY Times op-ed, “The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries” (April 30), in the journal’s private listserv for possible discussion. On May 2, John Sener, ETCJ writer, posted a version of the following article in the discussion. -Editor]

I almost wish this article had been titled “The High Cost of Low Teacher Respect” because the issue is about more than just low salaries, as the actual article demonstrates. It is good to see teacher advocates fighting back directly with a “put your money where your mouth is” argument, though. You want results like Finland, South Korea, Singapore? Do what they do. Linda Darling-Hammond has been making a similar argument recently. Unfortunately, the argument presented in this article is weakened by a number of flaws:

• The current prevailing ideology in American educational reform is that the “free market” (more accurately termed the “rigged market,” but that’s another conversation) can do things more efficiently. This article really doesn’t address that argument. In part, it’s because it’s so hard to counter a free market ideology that operates on the level of belief (as opposed to actual results), and it’s exceedingly hard to disprove a belief. Continue reading →

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