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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Also, it's about cost effectiveness, not just cost. The more parts of education that are scaled, the more money can be spent on other programs that can enrich kids' lives, which we currently don't have the money for in some cases (e.g. music programs, special ed, special programs for the gifted, actual educational research).
I mean, call me an out-of-touch plutocrat.
LAUSD's own numbers for 2016-17 indicate a maximum of $88K, and that's with a doctorate and maximum seniority.
http://achieve.lausd.net/cms/lib08/CA01000043/Centricity/Dom...
*Edit: Actually it was 2015 data. Also note that less than 1/3 of LAUSD's employees are teachers.
Maybe because, specifically in the U.S., there are 73.6 million [0] children aged 0-17. 45.7 million (or 50.4 million [1]) of which are school age. If that isn't a problem of scale I have absolutely no clue what is. You can't give every single one of them the kind of attention and resources a super rich kid gets. It's just not feasible.
We as a country made the decision a long time ago that every child deserves an education. I'm sure there's a few libertarians out there who'd disagree. But, I don't think that's a controversial opinion these days. I'd go as far as saying that the opposite opinion, that not every child deserves an education, is borderline taboo. It's not something I would ever suggest in polite company unless I'm intentionally trying to make people think I'm a huge jerk.
Given that we want all children to be educated, that there are limited resources to do so, and the number of school age children is enormous we have no choice but to think of education as a problem of scale. Currently we spend $620 billion a year on public education [2]. That number is sure to increase, but never to the point where every kid has all of the hands on teaching that would be preferred. This means system-wide improvements are likely going to have to come from somewhere else; namely better methods of teaching which can be applied nearly across the board. Is this the optimal situation? No. But, when you consider that the natural state of things is no education at all, perhaps we shouldn't reflexively sneer at attempts to make an imperfect system marginally better for everyone in the long run.
0: https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp
> it can't scale without an...investment that, so far, society has been unwilling to make
Without making any judgment on what is proper or appropriate education funding, tax policy, or anything political like that, the GP is right. Getting tech out of the classroom 1) is not a 100% positive thing; 2) costs more than society, to date, has been willing to spend.
> Are we trying to make education cheaper, or better?
It's not a binary proposition and pretending it is is dishonest. I want to see the median increase. I want to do it cost-effectively. If the choice is raising the median 5 points by utilizing technology for a marginal change in overall cost, or raising the median 20 points by quintupling education funding, one is possible and one is not.
Possibly, if we could actually pay all public school teachers decent salaries.
Which students deserve to be taught by the bottom 25% of teachers? Also if we wanted to move the mean skill of these teachers higher what would it take? 4 years? 10?
I think software provides a faster benefit. And one that can hopefully have an outsized benefit to students who have the bottom 25% of instructors. Plus faster software iteration hopefully lets us find more optimal solutions faster for groups of students.
This gives us some breathing room for fixing the long tail instructor issues.
Yes, there is a wide spectrum of competency/skill amongst all the practitioners of a profession; that's not a remotely novel insight. That's not an argument for underpaying them.
> Which students deserve to be taught by the bottom 25% of teachers? Also if we wanted to move the mean skill of these teachers higher what would it take? 4 years? 10? I think software provides a faster benefit.
Which students deserve to get taught by the bottom 25% of shitty, barely-tested software chugging algorithms designed on specious theories? Not your kids, I'd bet.
I have no way of knowing if this i-Ready is the bottom 25% or the top 5% of barely tested software chugging algorithms. It's the only choice I have anyways, so it's hardly worth educating myself on the matter. Luckily my daughter is in the gifted program, so I at least have some assurance that her teacher isn't total crap. And beyond that, being gifted gives her a decent chance of overcoming a potentially shit education.
Well the politics are not there currently to support teacher pay raises in many states. Its shitty but that is how it is. If at some point we get a political culture able to reverse that, great!
>Which students deserve to get taught by the bottom 25% of shitty, barely-tested software chugging algorithms designed on specious theories? Not your kids, I'd bet.
>My daughter is already a guinea pig for this stuff. Her public school uses i-Ready. http://www.curriculumassociates.com/products/iready/diagnost....
Why do we need to entrust these technology solutions to schools? They are pretty ill equipped to evaluate them except for large districts. The school should just be a data source. The actual software should be parent choice, much like we have school choice in many states. If one piece of software gets a bad reputation the parents can choose to use different software. (Much like paying teachers more, this may not be possible in todays political landscape)
https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/6aadft/math_teache...
Do as I say, not as I do.