Arne Duncan and His Distance Learning Missive

By heather on August 12, 2009

I read this article on August 8th with no real plans to write a post about it, but sometimes the content just sticks with a gal, you know? In The LA Times, “Swine Flue Won’t Mean School’s Out,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan warns:

“Realistically, some schools will close this fall. It’s incredibly important to all of us that our students continue to learn,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said. “Educators need to start thinking now about having temporary home school in place using both phones and the Internet.”
Now, many of us have seen the writing on the wall and know that online classes and distance learning will of course begin to play a huge part in K-12 education. I’m excited by it, but reform has been slow in this country, even if other countries are moving more rapidly towards 21st Century learning. I also know that history tends to repeat itself, and sometimes it takes a disaster or an abrupt shift in legislature to push change through in any profession. But here we are, once again, asking schools to come up with the solution for a problem for which the entire Equation of Success is responsible.

As I’ve written before, my Equation of Success is as follows:

Schools + Home + Government + Student = Student Success

In other words, it’s the school’s job to provide the good teaching and the solid curriculum. It’s the home’s job to provide for the health and stability and nutrition and follow-through for the child. It’s the government’s job to help fund education. It’s the student’s job to do their best. Only if each variable is pulling their weight can a student succeed.

But once again, schools are being put to the task of solving a problem that the other elements have a hand in creating and solving. After all, families with no healthcare and no childcare options continuously send their sick children to school. And the government has never devoted enough funds to develop deep-seated educational technology in our schools. (see my article on the recent cuts to ed tech). Yet here we are, a la NCLB, with a missive and no guidance or enough resources.

As an ed tech advocate I’m thrilled that schools must take distance learning seriously. I believe it to be a 21st Century form of differentiation that has the potential to bring the highest form of knowledge to the most isolated area and to students who struggle to work within our current educational system.

I want to move forward and begin to be a part of the discussion, brainstorming, and implementation of more widespread distance learning opportunities for K-12 students. I just never thought that schools and districts would be so isolated, having to solve the challenges of this evolution alone.

After all, how will we compensate teachers for their extra online time? Or will we hire teachers-on-assignment to do only that? How will we develop the online curriculum with teachers who still need to be trained? Will we pay for pre-made curriculum as we develop our own? From which budget are these monies coming from? How will we outreach to those students with no computer in their home? Or will the achievement gap widen with each day a school is closed?

Teachers are frequently asked to work with no compensation or with inadequate supplies, with the assumption that they will solve the issue and not cause a problem, for the good of the students. And I forget sometimes, that districts are also asked to do the same. The umbrella mission of schools and their “education for all” objective unfortunately allows many ways out for the other variables in the Equation of Success.

But districts’ umbrellas only open so wide without the parents, the government, and the students holding open their own. We know that this jump in educational practice must occur one way or another, but we need to pull together as a community to make it happen…for the good of the students.