
Education Startups Court Brand-Name Teachers, Raising Ethics Issues - SirLJ
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/02/technology/silicon-valley-teachers-tech.html
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gnicholas
As a founder working in edtech, I'm glad to see a light shined on these
practices, which are surprisingly pervasive. My company has received mass
emails from teacher-bloggers asking if we want to submit our products for
reviews or find out about sponsored posts. When I replied to inquire about
product reviews, they responded with information about how I could sponsor a
post. As it turns out, their entire site is a bunch of sponsored posts,
masquerading as an unbiased source of information and reviews.

I'm not saying this doesn't happen in other industries. But it is frustrating
to see so much of it in education — to the point where I have asked myself: is
this just how all the successful companies became successful? Is this just the
way the game is played?

Hopefully articles like this one will help set a trend toward better behavior.
It sounds like teachers could get in a bit of trouble, both ethically and
legally, if they're promoting products without appropriate disclosure. But
they probably just figure that anything that companies ask them to do is ok
for them to do. Now parties on both sides are on notice that much of what is
going on is not legal.

For anyone interested in reading more about the dark-ish underbelly of edtech,
check out [http://www.hackeducation.com](http://www.hackeducation.com). No
affiliation — just a fan.

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lobotryas
Don't know about others, but I was caught off guard by the first photo of the
article (she's teaching 3rd graders to tweet and post on IG).

I'm under the impression that you must be 13 or older to agree to a TOS and
most 3rd graders are 8-9 years old. Does this also mean that all of these kids
have their own smart phone? So many questions...

While I'm not a teacher I have no idea how this (IG and Twitter) is beneficial
to learning at the slightest. I definitely know that I would delay giving my
kid any smart device for as long as absolutely possible so they can get as
much of their childhood away from staring at the screen as they can.

~~~
patja
I teach at the middle school level and I can tell you very few teachers have
any awareness of COPPA. They see kids using these apps and services and just
assume it is normal. Parents are checked out or overly-permissive about
telling their kids to lie about their birthdate in order to get on FB,
Twitter, and Instagram.

When I explain and ask "is it OK to misrepresent yourself in order to deceive
someone to give you something that otherwise they would reject as an illegal
act" I get blank stares.

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cm2012
If I had kids, I would tell them to sign up as 18 years old always. No need to
have some arbitrary rules restrict them.

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yazan94
I see the argument for potential conflicts of interest, but in an age where
teachers are underpaid, most school districts are under-funded, and
traditional teaching styles are outdated, I do applaud these moves as ways to
introduce innovation in a field that still hasn't fully embraced newer
technology nor newer studies on effective teaching methods. But the question
that should be posed is how does a school district or a Dept. of Ed. maneuver
to not stem this innovation but also reduce the likelihood of a
lawsuit/illegal bribe/unethical behavior by teachers?

~~~
lotsofpulp
Teachers and school districts are under funded in order to create exactly this
situation. Some people don't believe in providing all children with the same
opportunities, or at least a decent minimum standard, and/or gutting taxpayer
funded education makes it easier to push certain religious, economic,
environmental, political views.

It's a damn shame my country (USA) can't provide adequate and quality food and
schooling to its children, yet is so proud of itself.

~~~
rpiguy
The United States spends more per pupil than all but four other countries in
the world! Most schools are not underfunded.

[http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/apr/21/jeb...](http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/apr/21/jeb-
bush/does-united-states-spend-more-student-most-countri/)

Much like healthcare the U.S. spends a lot of money per pupil on public
education, but it is a wildly inefficient system. Our return per dollar is
poor.

Furthermore, there are a lot of factors contributing to this inefficiency.

\- Schools are locally controlled and budgeted, but have to deal with federal
and state regulations and initiatives.

\- Wildly different systems for school funding, property tax, school tax, etc.
that all have their drawbacks and favor middle and upper class neighborhoods.

\- In the US we expect a lot of services from the school that are not provided
in other countries (sports and band are prime examples that in other countries
would be programs staffed by volunteers and not paid out of the school
budget).

\- Litigation, helicopter parents...

\- Intellectually bankrupt unions opposing reform

Outside of the discussion around funding, the larger problem is cultural. You
could gold plate the toilets in Detroit or Baltimore or Appalachia and buy
every student a MacBook Pro and pay the teachers 50% more and it won't make
students want to learn.

If you want to increase the "quality of eduction" you need to fix the culture
first.

I am not denying that there are some deplorable public schools out there and
those should be fixed, but they are a small minority of schools.

The problems are larger and societal.

~~~
jancsika
> You could gold plate the toilets in Detroit or Baltimore or Appalachia and
> buy every student a MacBook Pro and pay the teachers 50% more and it won't
> make students want to learn.

Average elementary teacher salary in North Carolina in 2013 was $45,947

times 0.5 is $22,973.50 plus $45,947 equals

$68,920.50

For that kind of salary I'd go teach arithmetic at Nantahala School in the
middle of the Western NC woods. Like a lot of schools in remote locations of
"Appalachia" it is small-- a K-12 school with something around 100-200
students total. 200 divided by 13 would equal a pretty manageable class size.

For that kind of average salary I'd bet there'd be a nice mix of similarly
chipper new teachers also happy to get paid handsomely for their efforts.

I'd also bet that the students would respond to a sudden influx of interest
and funding in a place that otherwise looks like it was frozen in the year
1973.

First lesson plan would be titled: "Math: The Details matter."

~~~
rpiguy
The average salary is close to 65K in NJ and it hasn't helped Camden or
Newark. I am not against paying teachers more but it won't solve our education
problem.

65K for 9 months of teaching with several holidays built into those 9 months
is quite a lot. Perhaps if we made school year-round teacher pay would go up
considerably.

Of course one of my favorite summer experiences was when I realized that as a
supervisor at a theme park that my algebra teacher was one of my subordinates,
as he took a summer job there too!

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bllguo
Can we learn from other countries that achieve greater outcomes _without_
fancy technologies, before introducing unproven fads like Instagram to the
classroom?

US education is just depressingly terrible in so many ways. If I had a kid, I
feel like sending him/her to public school would be borderline unethical.

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rb808
I was thinking about how many of us get free products (and T-Shirts) from big
tech companies. I was thinking teachers are probably OK with this too. Its
likely the most motivated ones are most onboard.

