
Technology Billionaires Trying to Remake America's Schools - gk1
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/technology/tech-billionaires-education-zuckerberg-facebook-hastings.html
======
germinalphrase
My father was a fine art printmaker by training. In the 1980's he was working
in advertising doing (what was then called) desktop publishing. Physical
photographs, knives, glue - old school image-making. Making art on the side,
he became a _very_ early adopter of digital image making tools and rode the
wave as his entire industry was transformed. The tools available to the (what
is now called) graphics designer changed completely - but the goals and
underlying skills of the job did not. Designers became better designers.

To extend the analogy, I have this feeling that we're putting a great deal of
effort into "taking the designer out of the design" rather than making tools
to augment the designer's abilities/speed/workflow. Yes - we can probably
create a system that can spit out company logos just as "good" as a mediocre
designer, but if our best designers are still making do with knives, glue and
paint then the entire field is being held back.

There are purpose-build tools for all kinds of professions, but teachers are
largely making do with the same processes and tools that they did fifty years
ago.

They don't need a LogosmartAI to replace them; they just need Photoshop.

------
heymijo
The main thing we can learn from history, is that we do not in fact learn from
history. That's what I have taken from B.H. Liddell Hart's great little book
"Why Don't We Learn From History?" and it is exactly what is happening here in
education, again.

Today on the HN homepage there was an article about how NJ was the innovation
hub of American before the Valley, which generated a nice discussion. Akarnani
recounted the story of Fred Terman's failed effort to make NJ more like the
Valley.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497136](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497136)

This historical anecdotes illustrates how even when many essential pieces are
present (money, smart people, etc) it is a nearly Sisyphean task to change a
system and a culture. The great management thinker W. Edwards Deming once said
"a bad system will beat a good person every time" and that is the history of
the past 60 years in education reform. I wrote about that in more detail here.
[https://medium.com/@m_pettyjohn/on-humans-hard-problems-
and-...](https://medium.com/@m_pettyjohn/on-humans-hard-problems-and-complex-
systems-8c2aa2d176a2)

This NYTimes article reaches out and touches nearly every broken aspect of
education that makes improvement seem intractable. Zuckerberg wasted $100
million in Newark and seemingly came away learning the wrong lessons. Benioff,
big hearted and charitable, has his heart in the right place, but long-term
will have little impact.

With that in mind it is almost inconsequential what the Silicon Valley
billionaires do in education.

There is massive potential in our teachers and students, but to unleash it we
need to understand our history, take a systems view and approach, and
genuinely understand the discipline of management, which even to the big
successes in the Valley seems like an afterthought.

If you're outside (or even inside!) education, reading The Case of Mrs.
Oublier, a study of one California teacher during the state's massive 80's
reform effort, can be enlightening to the challenges faced.

[https://393methods1.wikispaces.com/file/view/Cohen,+D.+K.+(1...](https://393methods1.wikispaces.com/file/view/Cohen,+D.+K.+\(1990\).pdf)

~~~
devindotcom
Well said. And it's important to carefully investigate the limits of the
system that is to be improved, as it almost certainly is larger and more
complex than anyone thinks. More money is good, better tech is good, better
pay for teachers is good, but these are hot spots on a huge network of systems
and circumstances. "Holistic approach" is an overworked phrase but it's the
thing we need here because education overlaps in so many ways with other
aspects of society.

~~~
Consultant32452
Interestingly, the best available research suggests that adding better tech to
schools doesn't seem to improve education outcomes.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34174796](http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34174796)

~~~
heymijo
We can also look at tech from the student side of things:

There is some nice software out there. Desmos comes to mind.
[https://teacher.desmos.com](https://teacher.desmos.com)

But most software that makes its way into schools is not Desmos. It's usually
something that merely replicates the content delivery method of teaching.
Think Khan Academy. Other software is often just a digital way to practice
facts or algorithms (my mind is in the math world for these examples).

I noticed an older comment of yours about expectations your first CS class had
including how to navigate a nix system, at least one programming language, and
Matlab. Let's pretend this class was instead algebra I where a student is
expected to know the fundamentals of arithmetic including properties of
operations (so you can use them to manipulate equations), that the equals sign
indicates balance, exponentiation, strong proportional reasoning with a solid
understanding of multiplication/division, and an understanding of integers.
Combine this with a course where the teacher delivers a lesson each day, you
do homework, and then have a test each week, never stopping to go back to
things that may not have sunk in, let alone pausing to work on any holes in
the things mentioned above that are critical to understanding algebra. I can
introduce Desmos to help you model linear equations in a wonderful interface,
but it isn't going to do a damn thing to increase outcomes if a) you are
lacking in any of the requisite starting knowledge and b) don't go to
extraordinary lengths to keep up with the pace of the course.

I like tech, but I don't think it's any sort of panacea for what ails our
schools because it doesn't (and maybe can't) address the root causes.

~~~
Consultant32452
My daughter's school uses i-Ready. It does give differential lessons to each
student based on how they've done on the tests. It even occasionally circles
back in areas you were maybe just "ok" in. The problem I've seen (based only
on her reports so not even remotely scientific) is that if you fail a section,
it gives you the exact.same.lesson again. It doesn't try to show you the same
material in a different way. It just cycles you back through the same exact
thing. Additionally, she reports that "all" of her fellow classmates hate the
time they spend doing i-ready. I suspect it's not very engaging, there's no
group/social interaction, etc.

~~~
heymijo
Ugh, that kind of teaching, whether from tech or a teacher just kills me as I
suspect it kills students' dispositions towards those subjects. I truly hope
that your daughter has many other opportunities to engage in meaningful
mathematics throughout her education.

------
6stringmerc
Mark my words: In 15 years time, the Salesforce.org meddling in Education will
be a "Poster Child" study in Hubris outside of one's field of expertise. It
will not work. Education is inherently time wasted by way of learning, and as
a species, Humans are far too diverse for the grand dreams of utopian
schooling. I mean, sure Utopian Schooling is possible but it's incredibly
intrusive, Homogenized, and reductive - all of which projects like this try to
pretend aren't fundamentally necessary.

Do I have a better plan? I do. Research backed.

Want a hint? Every child should have Music Instruction two times per week for
at least one hour per session. That would do more than any stupid spreadsheet
or Board Room review. I know, because Research backs it up. Not
this..."venture" of sorts.

~~~
beambot
Wealthy individuals commit time, money, and effort to important problem. Screw
those guys... am I right?

I hate this attitude. Their overall vector is in the right direction; even if
it's off slightly, at least they care and are doing something about it. You'll
catch a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar... so perhaps you should
try reaching out and volunteering your own resources (time & money) rather
than just sounding off -- and not even linking to the research!

~~~
scrumper
> Wealthy individuals commit time, money, and effort to important problem.
> Screw those guys... am I right?

No, this is not right and the attitude dripping off your post isn't very
constructive either.

These individuals have disproportionate leverage as a result of their wealth
and available time. The likelihood is that they are going to make a bit of a
mess with this leverage (you even say it yourself - "overall vector...off
slightly"). So they can have a seriously deleterious effect on really very
large numbers of children as a result of the power they wield.

A group of misguided parents in a PTA might might end up getting, say,
Intelligent Design onto the science curriculum in their district; an
opinionated billionaire could do rather more harm than that to very much
larger numbers of students.

As for volunteering, many people do exactly that (and how do you know
6stringmerc doesn't?) by standing for school board elections, chairing the
PTA, campaigning locally, giving talks in schools, and so on. The key point is
that these are _local_ actions with local fallout. Conducting experiments at
scale based on the idiosyncratic preferences of individuals who happen to have
got lucky in business is a terrible, terrible thing to do to a city full of
children.

I mean look at the proposals! They're classic examples of turning problems
into nails when you're holding a hammer. Neflix recommendation algorithms to
select lessons! Why? What the hell happened to pedagogy? Frankly, where's the
humility? If Reed Hastings had got himself a masters in education and spent a
few years teaching, even part time, there'd at least be some practical
experience in the problem domain to guide his transformative efforts;
otherwise it looks like dilettantism.

~~~
rndmize
> So they can have a seriously deleterious effect on really very large numbers
> of children as a result of the power they wield.

I have a hard time seeing how anything they decide to do to change schooling
is going to make it worse than it is.

Our current education system is largely still in a factory style, where
students are all taught the same material, run on the same idiotic schedule,
are taught aimed at tests, and generally have any genuine interest in learn
crushed out of them by the second grade.

Classes teach generic material and completely fail to demonstrate useful
applications. Useful things like critical thought, philosophy, personal
finance, cooking, computing systems/programming - not taught. Students learn
to focus on rote memorization and local application of principles - see the
articles the problems of getting students to solve conceptual physics problems
vs. mathematical ones - and then proceed to forget most of the material as
soon as there's no test on the horizon.

And we've known how to do better for a long time. Montessori's analysis of
children and how they learn, her experimentation with the classroom and
materials - this sort of thing is a hundred years old at this point, but we
don't apply it widely. Instead we largely have the same old ineffective crap
that we pass for "teaching". There's a reason Khan Academy became a thing.

We already know that schools do a bad job of preparing students for the
current economic landscape. There's no reason to look at this and say "but
some of these things might not work! Think of the children!" The children will
be fine (or at a minimum, no worse off). We've already seen this where school
districts have blown millions of dollars on new tech, to no useful effect.
Zuckerberg threw a hundred million at some school district on the east coast,
to zero benefit. But stuff like that isn't going to make things any worse. And
on the flip side, they won't get better without action like this and without
experimentation.

Better education is, imo, the best way to put this country on a strong footing
for the coming decades. The government isn't going to do it. The private
market isn't going to do it at scale. The average PTA isn't going to do it,
and really, what the hell do most parents know about education, other than
what they experienced? Committees and groups are the kind of thing that get
bogged down in details, have no clear direction, and take forever to decide
anything. At least a random billionaire can have the money and direction to
get things done, even if not all of their ideas pan out.

One last thing - I feel these days schools are much less important than in the
past, in so far as learning. The internet provides tremendous access to
information; sites like Khan and other education material has improved over
traditional textbooks by leaps and bounds; Stack Overflow and similar provide
places to ask questions and find answers/explanations to specific problems or
concepts; and so on. Fifty years ago, if a billionaire decided to bulldoze
some schools and leave a bunch of children with no place to learn, that would
have been a dire problem. Today, it's much less of an issue.

~~~
scrumper
I agree with your broad point about the fairly poor state of education and its
central role in the country's future. I don't agree with some other things:
one of which being "at least a random billionaire can have the money and
direction to get things done, even if not all their ideas pan out." I argued
that above so I won't rehash it, but to summarize, I hold the precautionary
principle in high regard, and you - I think - prefer iteration and
experimentation; we can agree to disagree.

Otherwise I found your comment a bit contradictory. You don't like recent
investments in classroom technology and say that technology isn't a solution,
but you seem to think that technology is an at least partially adequate
replacement for the classroom itself. Mark Zuckerberg wasted $100m in New
Jersey (was it a waste? How do we know?) but seem happy for that pattern to
continue.

To pick on a specific theme you touched on a few times: learning isn't even
mostly about information. Ask anyone who bought a textbook in college then
slept through lectures and never spoke to their professor. Kahn Academy
doesn't represent a visionary, Montessori-compatible approach to learning
math; instead it's a scaled up, gamified, alternative to an already stale math
education pattern of rote memorization, depersonalized instruction, and
practice problems. That's a part of math education - you have to learn how to
apply techniques after all - but hardly represents the paradigm shift in math
teaching that gets talked about here frequently. Don't get me wrong: Khan is a
very good thing, especially for students struggling with bad teachers, but
it's not the next step. And that's just talking about math education.

I don't agree at all that schools are less important. Schools are the only
place where kids have mandatory exposure to specialists who's only job is to
teach them things. To my point above, information is not education.
'Education' is the thing that happens when decent teachers with adequate
materials and reasonable tools spend focused time with children. So you need
time - which means smaller class sizes; you need tools, which really is a
solved problem requiring only situational application of cash; you need
materials, same; and you need decent teachers, which is a matter of training
and status and autonomy and job satisfaction and vocation, and that is a
really thorny mess. It's a generational political problem, not a thing a
billionaire can meaningfully affect with a recommendation algorithm for
syllabus modules.

So I guess my conclusion is - a really just absolutely epically well-funded
lobbying foundation with a world-class policy board would do far more good
than a series of expensive experiments playing with the margins of the
existing borked system.

------
ChicagoBoy11
I've worked in K-12 schools all my life and the answer is so incredibly clear,
yet there is so much incentive riding in never saying it: Students and
learning are secondary in the business of education.

True, meaningful educational impact happens when you can deliver authentic
instruction -- instruction that creates a really tight feedback loop between
the learner, the instructor, and the subject. We have tried with technology to
mimick that at scale. Khan Academy and online quizzes is not a new idea; B.F.
Skinner had a device doing this since at least the 60s. It works to stuff
CEOs' pockets with money, feed the ever-larger administrative behemoth that
schools are becoming, etc. Results, not so much.

There is no greater evidence than the fact that schools are probably the only
sector which has literally gotten less efficient over the past decades; we
literally spend more money per pupil for worse outcomes. The incentives in
public education are absolutely abysmal, and we've seemingly done everything
in the book to strip the voice of students and families in this sector.

As schools, our feedback loop between our own quality is practically
nonexistent. No wonder we don't do right by these kids. Lots of money to be
made selling software, though.

~~~
needsoul
Recently I read comments about "the art of learning" by child chess prodigy
and expert in martial arts Josh Waitzkin about coaching and how to conquest
excellence. My take on that is that if your family or society inspire on you
the value of hard work and incremental improvement, you will obtain a strong
motivation to get better in whatever you do and that will give you an enormous
opportunity to succeed. Speaking from my own experience, in my high school our
math teacher had a voice problem and on top of that he used to speak very
quickly, hence it was really difficult to understand what he was saying, but
that was not a problem for me, I learned all the math in a book and became the
right hand of that teacher, my duty was to try to teach to other people in
class. Another nice anecdote was how I discovered the multiplication table, I
was a dumb body in my childhood, I repeated several years until I was nine or
ten years. I didn't know what was 2 x 2, then someone told me that the
multiplication table was written in our pencil and that to answer that you
have to memorize that table, that was my start on math. It seems that all the
ways to a solution are written somewhere. Anyway I wouldn't change any bit my
wild education, I have really loving memories from my chilhood and school. I
would never change that for a formal education, let nature teach you,
something in the spirit of Mark Twain novels.

------
pdog
Meanwhile, the same tech billionaires influencing the public school system
will follow a completely different curriculum—usually private, low tech, with
limited screen and device time—for their own children.

Do as I say, not as I do.

~~~
jsolson
That low tech limited screen time curriculum requires well trained (aka
expensive) staff. Yes, it might have better outcomes, but it can't scale
without an absurd investment that, so far, society has been unwilling to make.
If you can raise the _general_ standard of education at the same cost by going
digital, that's still positive sum, no?

~~~
rhizome
Classic blinkered-technocrat perspective, why does "scale" matter in
education? What is the endgame when education is scaled as much as possible,
plugging kids into VR headsets and calling it a day?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Because that's literally how civilization improves. You're able to code for a
living because people before you figured out how to make agriculture scale.

All humans have finite amount of time during the day, finite resources and
finite lifespans. All of which is allocated pretty tightly. If you want to add
value to the lives of people, your best bet is something that _doesn 't_ come
at a great cost to them. Hence scale.

A secondary benefit is that big things which don't scale are only attempted by
few players with lots of resources; making things more scalable means more
smaller players can compete on the market.

~~~
rhizome
How about we spend more effort creating more fairly-paid teachers than making
more dormfart-website CEOs?

~~~
TeMPOraL
1\. "Dormfart-website CEOs" are not necessarily what's required to scale
education.

2\. How about we reduce the number of teachers (and have the remaining be paid
fairly) by making education scale? See also my agriculture example.

~~~
rhizome
_" Dormfart-website CEOs" are not necessarily what's required to scale
education._

But they're consuming money and attention that could be redirected to solving
real problems. I know, this is a perpetual complaint with someone in any
crowd.

 _How about we reduce the number of teachers (and have the remaining be paid
fairly) by making education scale?_

Unless you have an innovation in mind that I haven't seen, I fall back to the
copiously documented truism that you can't use technology to solve a people
problem.

 _See also my agriculture example._

I don't concede that children can be educated within the same concepts that
are used to harvest cows and cotton.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I fall back to the copiously documented truism that you can 't use
> technology to solve a people problem._

Thing is, I don't buy that truism. IMO technology is sometimes the best way to
solve a people problem, because it sidesteps all the issues of politics and
ego.

> _I don 't concede that children can be educated within the same concepts
> that are used to harvest cows and cotton._

Why not? Just like modern agriculture makes a farmer more productive per unit
of land, we should strive to make teachers be able to teach more children and
teach them better.

~~~
rhizome
_because it sidesteps all the issues of politics and ego_

AKA the reasons why it's a people problem.

 _we should strive to make teachers be able to teach more children and teach
them better_

You're comparing apples to oranges. Agriculture does not "strive."

All in all this sounds like pie-in-the-sky thinking. The science I've seen
says larger class sizes do not result in better outcomes, do you have anything
that contradicts that? Anything demonstrating even a clear benefit from
technology in the classroom? Anything about scaling? That is, is what you're
proposing anything more than imaginary?

------
edtechstrats
Unlike how other instructional materials are adopted by schools, educational
software operates in secrecy - it remains essentially a black box to
educators, parents, and students. There is no mechanism for independent
reviews/audits of content or code, no insight into the instructional approach,
checks for factual accuracy, or evaluations of potential bias.

The money quote (for me): “That sounds like a low bar [that their apps did not
harm students’ educational results],” Ms. Woolley-Wilson said. “But with the
history of education technology, it is not.”

------
pasbesoin
If I'd been allowed to work at my own pace; there's been some understanding
for my environmental needs (I can do classroom/group, just fine, but I need
peace and quiet when I'm working by myself); and I'd been provided some actual
social oversight and guidance, instead of the "Lord of the Flies" dominance of
the student peer group (staff were largely divorced from all but pedagogy, and
my parents -- plopped down in front of the TV every night -- were no help at
all). Well, I think I would have done a lot better.

That is to say, you can throw all the money and toys and methods you want at
it. What you need, is people actually paying attention.

And paid to pay attention. So that they are not overwhelmed with workload nor
how they are going to pay their own bills and take care of their own families.

In other words, invest in the people providing the education. Choose them
wisely, and empower them. The rest is just various forms of b.s.

------
ccvannorman
Why is it that billionaires from _many industries_ subvert democratic process
constantly, yet when they do it openly and for education, it's criticized? If
anything, the biggest problem with education is that _nobody_ has had any
power at all to make a substantial difference at scale. For once, I applaud
billionaires for subverting the democratic process.

This is literally the first time I've read an article with a line similar to:

“They have the power to change policy, but no corresponding check on that
power,” said Megan Tompkins-Stange,

“We should be asking a lot more questions about who is behind the curtain,”
Ms. Davis said.

------
notadoc
Entirely altruistic?

~~~
corysama
Whenever someone rich gets in the news for being nice, people seem to love
digging for some way that their motives are not "entirely altruistic". I
understand that sometimes these deals are BS and don't actually benefit anyone
but the rich person. But, I don't understand why people get so upset over the
rich person benefiting _in any way shape or form._

I've seen such outrage as "He only gave away a $1,000,000 so that he could cut
$350,000 off of his taxes!" :/ "The deal eventually, indirectly feeds some
money back into the project in the long term making it self-sustaining!" :/
"It not anonymous, so he's only helping thousands of people to be famous for
helping thousands of people!" :/ "He's rich, so giving away huge amounts of
money is easy for him. Helping thousands of people should not be recognized
unless it was hard!" :/ Then there's the classic "So, he's helping this part
of the problem. But, why doesn't he help the rest of the overwhelmingly huge
collection of tangentially-related problems?" :/

Sometimes it seems that the standard we hold people to is "Helping people must
be anonymously self-immolating to avoid disparagement." Then we disparage the
same people because, as far as we can tell, they are not helping enough.

~~~
notadoc
Who is disparaging anyone? Or are you speaking from your own observations in
your social circle?

~~~
corysama
Not you. Though I wonder what you were specifically wanting to find out with
your question.

I'm speaking from observations made sometimes on Hacker News and frequently on
Reddit.

------
mcrad
I mean let them do some R&D, then get public support and eventually maybe make
a business out of it, not the other way around.

This is the opposite of corporate social responsibility, yall. Do your freakin
job, Benioff!

------
SirLJ
I am not sure experimenting on someone else children is a good idea, what will
happened with the kids attending the "failed experiment" schools?

~~~
JayHLorne
We've been doing that experiment for decades... you are currently experiencing
the results.

~~~
SirLJ
my schooling was done in Europe and I do see a difference indeed :-)

------
csa
While I appreciate the effort of the billionaires, I largely think that this
type of "redesign" is more of a bandage than a cure. I think that there are
some much greater fundamental systemic problems the go far beyond not
"thinking bigger".

My beliefs are somewhat extreme in this topic, but I will share anyway. In
broad strokes:

1\. One of the biggest problems is that education has come to be ruled by the
administrators. They are not servant leaders, rather they are aristocrats.
Their pawns are students, faculty, parents, and taxpayers. These stakeholders
need more influence in the decision-making process.

2\. Mandatory schooling (both explicit and implicit) could easily stop at 8th
grade with the goal of basic numeracy and literacy as well as fundamental
learning skills. These skills will provide enough education for the graduates
to function in society as well as move forward in the education system if/when
they choose to do so. Currently, most of high school (and middle school,
frankly) is just very expensive and inefficient baby sitting.

3\. That said, secondary, tertiary, and trade-based education should be widely
available, of high quality, and low price -- probably subsidized heavily by
the state -- throughout a person's life. Many people do not realize the value
of education and learning until they are older, and our current system does a
relatively poor job accommodating these people.

4\. Overall curriculum design needs to focus on autonomous learning (touched
on in the article). Note that this means that the learner takes responsibility
for their learning, not someone else (e.g., teachers). Also note that this
does not obviate teachers, rather it just makes them one of many sources of
knowledge/learning. Anecdotally, I have seen this type of system pull off what
many would consider to be miracles.

5\. Learning in general should be much more contextualized and (when
practicable) experiential. Many/most students do not see how the current
curriculum content applies to them. The current content seems to be related
to, and largely is a product of, the type of education upper middle class
people want. Folks from other walks of life actually have a lot of curiosity
and a high capacity to learn, but taking part in the current curriculum would
turn them into an alien within their community (e.g., non-native English
speaker being beaten/abused for speaking English well). Few people are willing
to do this.

6\. Assessment should lean much more heavily on portfolios than on
standardized tests. Don't get me wrong, standardized tests have their place,
but currently they are overused and are often times misused.

This is an issue I very passionate about. Please let me know via a response
here if you would like to discuss this more.

