Microsoft 'School of The Future' Is A Disaster For The Kids

[mix]

Superintendent Arlene C. Ackerman told Dixon that other parents had come to her this spring with similar concerns about students' lacking "foundational skills" as teens began getting the results of their SAT scores and applying to colleges.

"This is not the first time I've heard this," Ackerman said. "We are looking at the curriculum at High School of the Future. We'll definitely be making some changes."

Later, senior class president Quetta Fairy said students were told earlier this year that only 48 of the 120 members of the senior class would be eligible to graduate.
http://crooksandliars.com/node/37343/print

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. As one of my brothers used to say, "Computers are stupid."

They are simply tools. They should not be the basis of a curriculum.

I can see how someone who had learned only by computer would have trouble reading a long, connected piece of writing or writing an essay that didn't include text messaging style.

[mix]

2. I wonder what the library is like at that school. nt

[Catshrink]

4. I find that kids just scan the page trying to find the answer to a question

they don't read for understanding.

The kids should sue the school. A student in NYC successfully sued the district for not providing her sped services she needed. Here the kids were experimental subjects that were harmed.

Arne Duncan is attacking teachers' colleges and research based education practice in favor of this kind of corporate takeover of schools. He's too arrogant to talk to teachers - Arne Duncan only talks to billionaires.

[msongs]

10. why blame arne duncan for Obama's policies? Duncan is doing what the pres wants nt

[Xipe Totec]

5. as a veteran programmer, I totally agree

Dumbest machines ever invented. So dumb, in fact, that they don't know what they are good for. You have to tell them.

[Catshrink]

3. WOW!

That is quite an article. This is an example of the stealth attack being waged on education.

[Rage for Order]

8. Yes, God forbid we try to improve public education

The only people who never fail at anything are those who never try anything new. From the article in the OP:

"Later, senior class president Quetta Fairy said students were told earlier this year that only 48 of the 120 members of the senior class would be eligible to graduate."

However, the http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-06-20-dropout-rates_x.htm">graduation rate in Philadelphia is only 55.5%, so it's not like the Microsoft School performed much worse than Philadelphia's traditional public schools. Should 45% of the students in public schools sue the city of Philadelphia?

This new method wasn't successful. Rather than burying our heads in the sand and declaring that nothing new will ever work, why not go back to the drawing board and see if a better way to educate students can be found?

[onehandle]

6. 'where every student was issued laptops and textbooks weren't required.'

[Catshrink]

7. Where's the any key?

I once saw the blue screen of death on a t-shirt. I can't remember if it had the Apple logo too.

[msongs]

9. today's crowd writes their term papers by texting w/research on...wikipedia lol nt

[Retrograde]

14. and in my day we used encyclopedias

Same problems, different media.

[Catshrink]

11. ...

:kick:

[Dinger]

12. What Catshrink Said . . .

[madfloridian]

13. Thanks for sharing that.

I like Madrak's post at C & L.

There has been too much effort spent turning people against teachers...instead of effort spent supporting them.

:hi:

[Starry Messenger]

15. "Public schools are now in a competitive market; many are slow to recognize that fact."

I read that today on DU. People had better recognize some more facts. Privatization is not some magic bullet. I swear the ghost of Milton Friedman has been haunting this forum all day.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-023.html

Public Schools: Make Them Private
1995, Milton Friedman

4. Education

So far, our educational system has been adding to the tendency to stratification. Yet it is the only major force in sight capable of offsetting that tendency. Innate intelligence undoubtedly plays a major role in determining the opportunities open to individuals. Yet it is by no means the only human quality that is important, as numerous examples demonstrate. Unfortunately, our current educational system does little to enable either low-IQ or high-IQ individuals to make the most of other qualities. Yet that is the way to offset the tendencies to stratification. A greatly improved educational system can do more than anything else to limit the harm to our social stability from a permanent and large underclass.

There is enormous room for improvement in our educational system. Hardly any activity in the United States is technically more backward. We essentially teach children in the same way that we did 200 years ago: one teacher in front of a bunch of kids in a closed room. The availability of computers has changed the situation, but not fundamentally. Computers are being added to public schools, but they are typically not being used in an imaginative and innovative way.

I believe that the only way to make a major improvement in our educational system is through privatization to the point at which a substantial fraction of all educational services is rendered to individuals by private enterprises. Nothing else will destroy or even greatly weaken the power of the current educational establishment--a necessary pre-condition for radical improvement in our educational system. And nothing else will provide the public schools with the competition that will force them to improve in order to hold their clientele.

No one can predict in advance the direction that a truly free-market educational system would take. We know from the experience of every other industry how imaginative competitive free enterprise can be, what new products and services can be introduced, how driven it is to satisfy the customers--that is what we need in education. We know how the telephone industry has been revolutionized by opening it to competition; how fax has begun to undermine the postal monopoly in first-class mail; how UPS, Federal Express and many other private enterprises have transformed package and message delivery and, on the strictly private level, how competition from Japan has transformed the domestic automobile industry.

The private schools that 10 percent of children now attend consist of a few elite schools serving at high cost a tiny fraction of the population, and many mostly parochial nonprofit schools able to compete with government schools by charging low fees made possible by the dedicated services of many of the teachers and subsidies from the sponsoring institutions. These private schools do provide a superior education for a small fraction of the children, but they are not in a position to make innovative changes. For that, we need a much larger and more vigorous private enterprise system.

Just in case a few Dems need a refresher course, Uncle Milty was a radical, right-wing economist. Say it after me boys and girls!