Though I still have so much to learn, three fundamental truths are clear to me after a dozen years in education reform:
1.) There are no silver bullets capable of solving a problem as complex and devastating as the crisis in U.S. K-12 education. How deep is this crisis? A recent Annie E. Casey Foundation Report estimates that 50% of low-income 4th graders are "below basic" in reading.
2.) Despite truth # 1, popular sentiment in education reform swings to and from the latest, greatest silver bullet (basic math, whole language, smaller class sizes, etc.) with alarming frequency. This trend is a serious impediment to real progress in education reform.
3.) This "pendulum" of popular sentiment is currently swinging towards education technology as the next silver bullet to close the achievement gap in low-income schools. This is a real cause for concern.
The last truth might strike you as odd coming from a guy who just joined an education technology company, but Innovations for Learning is not your typical education technology company. Allow me to explain.
The increasingly pervasive idea that technology alone can fix public education in low-income communities where parents and other adults are often absent in--or detrimental to--the lives of children is misguided. The reality is that the human resources in our communities and schools are more important than ever, and technology alone will never close the achievement gap between affluent and low-income schools. Though I am absolutely thrilled by the prospect of what the technology of tomorrow might do to improve student learning--more specifically, the potential of developing adaptive learning platforms that are truly adaptive (they will know what kids know, what they don't know, and how they learn best)--my enthusiasm is grounded in my belief that the thoughtful combination of both humans and technology will ultimately do the most for students.
And while I can't claim it as a fundamental truth, I can honestly say that I believe that Innovations for Learning's Teacher Mate Handheld Computer System offers the most powerful marriage of people and technology presently available to low-income students, their teachers, schools, and families.
Though I'm told brevity is the key to blogging, for those who would care to read on for the back-story, I'm more than happy to elaborate.
My two years as a fifth grade teacher in a low-income community south of San Francisco were a humility contest. My greatest challenge was figuring out how to effectively serve 24 students with 24 very different educational needs--one student at a kindergarten reading level, one student at an 7th grade reading level, and 22 students who were somewhere in between. The importance of differentiating instruction was constantly reinforced in the ten years that I led Resources for Indispensable Schools and Educators (RISE), where we worked hard to recognize and retain teachers who were standouts early in their careers--teachers who knew what each of their students knew, what they didn't know, how they learned best, and differentiated their instruction accordingly.
That being said, Innovations for Learning's TeacherMate Handheld Computer System is a real step in the direction of our realizing the potential of both humans and technology to close the achievement gap in our low-income schools. The Teacher Mate's powerful software delivers students early literacy and numeracy content that is tied to an individual teacher's curriculum and adjusted to an individual student's pace. The TeacherMate provides teachers with numerous data points about student performance, which in turn allows that student's curriculum to be adjusted and revised, accordingly, and in real time. All of this happens during the school week, alongside more traditional educational tools. In this way, students that are ahead of the day's lesson can forge further ahead, while those that are behind have a powerful resource with which to signal their progress and get caught up. The TeacherMate platform is currently available on a focused handheld device resembling a Nintendo Game Boy, and is coming soon to the Apple Operating System, Google's Android, and the devices of tomorrow.
In short, Innovations for Learning is harnessing technology's current capabilities to help teachers, tutors, and parents alike differentiate instruction--helping them know what kids know, what they don't know, and you guessed it, how they learn best.
We at Innovations for Learning have a lot to learn ourselves, and like the students we serve, with a lot of hard work we will improve a great deal over time. So please don't expect the TeacherMate or our next innovation to be perfect right away. Doing so just might help send the pendulum back in the opposite direction towards another non-existent silver bullet.
But we need look no further than this blog for yet another powerful example of humans and technology. To all the humans out there, thanks for reading [and I don't say that lightly given the (il)literacy statistic noted with truth #1 above] and thanks in advance for your thoughts. And to all the technology out there, thank you for delivering my message.
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