Responding to what they call unfair scrutiny from state and federal regulators, representatives from online colleges discussed a self-imposed quality-assurance framework at today’s Presidents’ Forum in Washington, convened by Excelsior College.
But state officials said they are still concerned that self-imposed standards are not good enough and that online programs are not consistent in providing students with high-quality education. . . .
As the internet rapidly matures in coming months and years, these nanny standards form yet more schooling firewalls for the delivery of open learning from the internet. These nanny-creep-firewalls will undermine educational effectiveness for both the colleges who get stuck with them and the governments that demand them.
The most recent post on this blog describes how the new HTML.5 will facilitate delivery of study materials conforming to what a student is ready to learn. This individual assessment of what to learn next is based on at what level of the subject the student has already engaged in previous websites. This fundamental new way to set a standard for what to study next is totally separate from the perceived lockstep standards of either the college or the government. The assessment HTML.5 will generate totally accommodates the learner.
The day is coming when standard setting nannies will need to prove their relevance in the new venue of online response to a student’s level of inquiry. It seems sort of silly for a nanny standard to test a student on algebra in her first college year, when the internet is sending her more basic math knowledge based on her past visits online. Or really silly to give the same algebra test to a student in her class who is exploring calculus and trigonometry based on HTML.5 selected resources where he is spending time.
Because it is about kids, public education has managed for more than a century to dodge its true identity as welfare state socialism. As Barack Obama drives the United States economy off the cliff into unsustainable debt, almost suddenly we realize: Duh, all that money that went to public schools is drying up.
The simple truth is that the welfare state is bankrupt. The money that earners pay for Medicare does not come close to covering the costs. This year, Social Security will pay out more money than it takes in.
Ever so slowly, education is showing up in this conversation — though Rahe does not mention it in his excellent article. Yet when the welfare state is bankrupt there is no money for public schools.
Replacing public schools has been off the table for reasons that have been hammered into our thinking since our grandparents and theirs were children. School is eagerly anticipated by little children. Teachers are to be deeply admired and protected. The senior prom is one of life’s great moments. The public schools are a great American achievement. How many of those and the many other preconceptions of schooling were true for most of us? How many for the newest generation of American kids?
Obama has now lifted his chin and resolved to make education better by 2020. What he has proposed is to spend billions of federal dollars, many of them given to the states with the proviso that the receiving states not reduce their own k-12 spending.
As the states run out of money and the federal deficit falls off the cliff, public schooling will be broke.
History is full of surprises. Who would have thought that the sacrosanct public schools would close because they became unsustainable? The education blob that has resisted reform for decades would melt away because there was no more public money to throw into it?
And the kids? Here is the most stupendous surprise in the history of human learning: Each kid will learn anything and everything from the device in his or her hand. The cost is miniscule — less to provide handschooling for every kid in American than say cover the Chicago public schools expenditures for a year or two. The generations that will rebuild the future will not be stunted by public schooling. There is something to be optimistic about!
And we have Obama to thank, because by ripping away the veils to reveal the socialist core of public education and speeding the nanny state bankruptcy, he is going to cause real learning to emerge in our children’s hands long before 2020.
When will the money run out for public schools? Watch this:
The strong echo continues in schools and across the world of what Jonathan Kozol indelibly named savage inequalities. The mobile window opens a global commons that is the same for each and oblivious to who is visiting it to learn.
