Leap The Digital Divide To Save Primary Education

Will technology reduce costs of classroom education? Great story in NY Times today about tech future of education. Technology has the power to dramatically cut search costs and barriers to knowledge. Is the online classroom the solution? Instead of the goal being 30 students to one teacher in a brick and mortar classroom, is a much larger class with an excellent teacher that may be hundreds of miles away connected to the students via the internet better. Perhaps.

Is there a pecuniary savings in giving each student a computer and forgoing textbooks? I would like to see data on that question but I am certain that the value of being able to update course materials quickly would be amazing. Sphere: Related Content

Hopes For The "Race To The Top Fund"

I am hopeful that President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan's "race to the top fund" will help public schools. Finally we will be able to get a clear picture of the state of our education system. With 50 different standards for performance the data available about performance is very inaccurate. We are well past the time and need for absolute local control of standards and curriculum. The department is to hand out five billion dollars to states and nearly three quarters of a billion dollars directly to districts. Hopefully this is just to start. But this is a nice carrot to present the states when they can really use the dollars.

Arne Duncan said in February:

"If we accomplish one thing in the coming years—it should be to eliminate the extreme variation in standards across America.

I know that talking about standards can make people nervous—but the notion that we have 50 different goal posts is absolutely ridiculous.

A high school diploma needs to mean something—no matter where it's from.

We need standards that are college-ready and career-ready, and benchmarked against challenging international standards."

Amen. Sphere: Related Content