Education Reform - Technology

My last foray into education reform comes from Paul E. Peterson’s Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning. (2010) This book is more of a history of the American school, and as the title suggests, begins at the beginning and offers a possible vision of the future. As such, it is relevant to the current conversation on reform. Since a good deal of the emphasis in the Methods for Teaching Secondary Science course has been about technology (in part because this is an online class!), I would feel remiss if I didn’t touch on the subject. Although I cite Peterson’s work as a launching point, his work only treats virtual education in the last chapter. He goes into depth with an example from the Florida Virtual School, and proceeds to discuss the business model, pedagogy in the virtual world, accountability, and cost effectiveness. In terms of reform, I can only consider virtual classrooms as a supplementary vision. In the short term – on a public school basis (pK – 12) it is no more realistic than the 100% competency that NCLB demands for 2014. I’m no Luddite, and neither fear technology nor discount its potential to be part of the solution. But it is certainly no panacea either. As Diane Ravitch clearly articulated, the “fundamentals of good education are to be found in the classroom, the home, the community, and the culture.”