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Closing Achievement Gaps with the Free Flow of Information: Challenges Posed by America's K-12 Public Education System
JonathanBoyer | | | The presentation of educational material to students in American schools is largely guided by two things: textbooks and curriculum plans. More so than in some other countries, "textbooks are ubiquitous and widely used in classrooms" and are the primary educational crutch of teachers. See How Do Teachers Use Textbooks? Given this entrenched reality, the educational success of a school as a whole (given a normal distribution of teacher quality) largely depends on the quality of available textbooks. When such is the case, it is exceedingly important to be confident that the absence of monetary incentive to create textbooks, due to lack of property protection, will not reduce the quality of available textbooks. Assuming that "Moglen's Metaphorical Corollary to Faraday's Law" is correct in that creating things for others is an emergent property of human minds, the question, then, is whether the difference between writing textbooks and programming educational software is a significant one in terms of their creative essences. | |
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- Wouldn't it be germane to inquire: (1) whether textbooks are the sort of material suitable for large-scale collaboration; and (2) who has been gaining the economic rents associated with lowering the number of textbooks available by raising their price while (hypothetically) increasing their "quality"?
| | | On the assumption that quality of textbooks would not be negatively affected, the benefits of a free textbook market are fairly obvious: associated costs would no longer be crippling to schools in low-income neighborhoods, and, at least theoretically, a richer variety of materials would de-handcuff teachers. At the same time, a free database of more creative curriculum plans, as textbook supplements, would allow teachers to experiment with methodologies at no cost.
Challenges arise, however, not because of theoretical flaws but because of legal and administrative constraints. Particularly since the passage of NCLB, education in the United States has become a large-scale enterprise in which the achievement gap is monitored through implementation of uniform standards, evidence-based practices, and strict quality controls. With such a pervasive force necessitating the near universal standardization of educational practice, serious feasibility concerns arise in terms of organizing, evaluating, and distributing a potentially over-flowing free supply of textbooks and curriculum plans. In a regrettable sense, the smaller the political stranglehold over textbook and curriculum markets, the easier it is to evaluate the educational inputs employed to close the achievement gap. Unfortunately, such a large-scale demands a simple formula despite an exceedingly complex problem. | |
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- To describe American educational policy as nearing universal standardization is surprising: the US remains the only place in its world with local rather than national responsibility for setting curriculum. The steps presently being taken, while centralizing to some extent, would still appear entirely chaotic anywhere else. Nor are these centralizations actually preventing the deployment of free curriculum, which is being necessitated by economic collapse. States like Arizona that are urging their teachers to take materials off the web rather than expecting the State to be able to purchase textbooks are being forced into the revolution, but in they will come.
| | | Free Educational Software
Given a legal regime in which all software is free, it is reasonable to anticipate a re-vitalized software programming environment in which a larger pool of programmers have the freedom to collaborate in producing a greater assortment of educational software. While it is difficult to imagine how this could have a negative effect on education as a whole, there might be challenges in terms of leveraging educational software in a way that could narrow the achievement gap. Beyond the fact that those on the losing side of the achievement gap are typically poor and often lack homes/home-computers, children with inherent neurocognitive deficits and/or unsupportive parents generally present the most complicated educational challenges. Without a sufficient supply of programmers who are cognizant of, and sufficiently understand, these challenges, it is plausible that a free software market would become inundated with programs that are remarkably adept at enhancing the education of natural born learners but less adept at untangling the roots of various achievement gaps. In other words, if an educational software market neglects students who are 1+ standard deviations below various cognitive means, educational achievement might be enhanced on average, but the achievement gap might be untouched or even widened. While it is certainly possible that a free software market might be more inclined to address the neglected (as an otherwise profit-driven market might focus on the larger pool of "normal" customers), this does not entirely solve the fundamental problem that the complex learning problems contributing to achievement gaps will be more difficult to program around. | |
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- Maybe the idea of "educational software" needed to be rethought a little bit. Most of the world that kids interact with isn't "educational worldstuff." And not everyone being educated is a primary-school child. Free software, collectively, is still the most important free technical reference library for learning available on Earth, for reasons I first gave more than half a decade ago.
| | | Free Reading Material
Backed by the legal argument that all children have a right to read and learn, many contend that all reading material should be void of copyright and thus free to all. As a consequence, underfunded schools would be able to afford sorely needed reading materials, and poor children would have unobstructed access to similar materials at home. Unfortunately, though, better access does not create an automatic conveyor belt to educational consumption. More like a necessary baby-step, free access to reading materials is far from sufficient for the purposes of closing achievement gaps. Without a mutually reinforcing combination of parental leadership and intrinsic motivation, educationally starved children would have solid food but no teeth. Or they might rather starve than take the time/energy required to use a can-opener. | | | Thanks again. Through my revisions, I am currently attempting to address some of the posted comments. I am compelled to reiterate, though, that the purpose of this essay was not to present a thesis about everything that might be feasible; the goals of the essay were to raise concerns and ask questions that people might otherwise neglect to consider. Judging by the comments received and the thoughts provoked, I am somewhat pleased with the extent to which those goals were achieved. I have no doubt that given a room full of 1,000 readers, there would be an endless variety of responses or "solutions" to these questions and concerns. While the coordination you suggest is not beyond imagination and might be feasible given a monumental shift in education administration, it remains an obstacle and a concern nonetheless. Perhaps someone can address or solve it in what would be a great topic for an education law/administration journal article. But I don't see myself doing that here.
-- JonathanBoyer - 10 Dec 2009 | |
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- What you haven't adequately responded to, Jonathan, is the criticism that you've disproved an irrelevant proposition. No one has stated that free access to information is a sufficient condition for amelioration of the ails of the US educational system. Whether it is a necessary condition is a proposition to be debated, although I don't think you have an easy side in that debate, if you care to take it up. But this essay is simply a victory over a strawman, and however thoughtfully that is done, it looks miles better than it is.
- Moreover, the larger social significance, beyond our borders, is not to be found in the issues raised by "educational reform" in the US. Two different problems can be distinguished: (1) securing an education for motivated learners presently trapped in enforced ignorance; and (2) helping children to fall in love with learning, thus creating motivated learners out of children who presently do not achieve their potential. Globally, (1) is by far the greatest problem: ignorance, like hunger, is a fundamental human injustice we have a responsibility to prevent. We can provide every motivated learner on earth an opportunity to learn if we can free the material needed for learning. The problem presented by (2) is not made harder by free access to information. To the extent it is made easier to solve, so much the better. To the extent that children cannot be taught to love learning, the best advice one can give is to treat the children better. This society's bad treatment of its poor children, who are one fifth of its children, is evident.
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