The Digital Learning Double Standard

Digital learning may finally be reaching lift-off in K-12 education. Venture capital is flooding into education technology start-ups. School districts, strapped for funds in these post-recessionary times, are anxious to increase productivity, and digital appears to hold that promise. Hand-held and tablet devices are falling in price and making student access to the Internet easier and cheaper all the time. The quality and availability of educational digital content are on a steady rise. School districts seem genuinely amenable to “blended” solutions that mix teachers and technology—not replace the former with the latter.

This is exciting, as technology surely holds potential to help students learn—at their own pace, with the aid of different presentation media, customized to student needs, and the like. It is also worrisome, as technology can grow virally, taking our schools rapidly down paths yet unknown. Policymakers are consequently hearing a chorus of caution.

At last week’s Fordham Institute forum on the topic, in which I participated as a panelist (and wrote a paper for here), the all too familiar questions were raised. What is the evidence that digital learning works? How do we ensure that teachers providing or supporting digital learning are properly trained and certified? How do we hold providers of digital instruction accountable? Should digital providers be paid if students do not meet standards of proficiency? What tests should we use to assess students’ digital learning?

These are all great questions; the quality of online education will turn on how they are answered. If only policymakers were asking the same questions with equal vigor about traditional brick and mortar education.

Too many schools today educate students with little evidence of what works best, with no proven models of teacher preparation or licensing, with weak accountability measures for “providers” (meaning schools and teachers), with compensation disconnected from performance, with, in short, a host of unanswered but critical questions—and disappointing academic results.

If policymakers held traditional schools to the same standards they now want to apply to digital learning, there would be many, many fewer schools. But the growth of digital learning can provide us with better ways to think about how we educate all students. The answer is not to lower the bar for digital education. All approaches should be held to higher standards. But digital learning will never have the chance to prove itself if policymakers insist on all of the answers before innovations ever reach the schools.

Digital learning has much to prove. But so too does the so-called tried and true of brick and mortar schooling. Policymakers should therefore be providing educators equal opportunity and incentives to innovate with technology as with more traditional approaches. There is no reason for a double standard.