I worry about the teaching profession when educators that taught before edtech took over leave the field, we are loosing institutional memory! The tech industry seems to prey on human nature as a way to keep "users" of their product. Thank you for shedding light on the nefarious tactics the company uses to gaslight educators about their crappy product!
Yes Denise - and Curriculum Associates targeting teaching colleges represents a concerted effort to expedite the loss of that institutional memory. Out with Teh Olds, in with the Ed-Slop!
My first few jobs after my bachelor's degree were at a major university where the education department and the EdD degree were seen as a bit of a laughingstock by the other professions. I didn't get the critique at the time, but It was quite a culture shock for me when I transitioned from working in a healthcare profession to the educational arena some 20 years later, and got to witness first hand those critiques brought to light. The elevation of ideology over research, the dominance of charismatic gurus instead of effectiveness and best practices, the tendency to be driven largely by fads, and a history of very shoddy research has left the education profession very vulnerable to large publishers of both print and ed tech. There are a few working to change this, but again, the ideological resistance gets in the way even when good research is presented. And don't even get me started on continuing education programs aimed at teachers. They are grossly cultish and infantilizing in their tone; it feels more like marketing targeting naive children than research and information being disseminated to a professional audience. Friends of mine who are teachers manage this in a variety of ways, but are mostly too busy and overwhelmed to even be tuned into what's happening, or recognize there's a limit to how much push-back they can get away with...
I really wanted to be a staunch supporter of public education as a great societal equalizer, but I just can't unsee everything I've seen at this point...
Thanks for this powerful perspective, which confirms a suspicion of mine that much of what currently ails education stems from it having mutated from a straightforward intergenerational communications trade into something more akin to a so-called social science. And most of the social sciences are really just so much pseudo-intellectual bullshit. That creates a perfect environment for the Ed-tech charlatans to peddle their snake oil. 🫤
Respectfully, I have to disagree with your characterization here, both of what education should be (a straightforward intergenerational communications trade) and with lumping every single field that falls into the social sciences together.
There is currently a body of research, consisting of well-designed, well-implemented studies that give key foundational information on how people learn, and on how to effectively teach. I promise, teaching is more complex than it might seem at first glance, it's not a "just copy what I did and you'll be fine" kind of thing where teachers can just be trained at a trade school level. The research is convergent in most of its conclusions and comes from a number of fields, including cognitive psychology, neuroscience, behavioral psychology, and education.
Unfortunately, much of this has been ignored or distrusted by the folks teaching future teachers because it doesn't always fit with the theories and ideologies education has been leaning into for the past half century. Part of the problem is that there has been a decades long issue of those in the education field, both K-12 and higher ed teaching future educators to not have received a rigorous education in scientific methodology.
If you want educators and administrators to be better informed, better able to conduct effective research, and more critical and selective when it comes to the claims of ed tech, then you would want them to continue towards full professionalization, _not_ going backwards and becoming just a "trade" profession. There is nothing wrong with the trades, but HVAC techs and electricians don't need to be critical consumers of experimental research in theirs and related fields, whereas a much larger proportion of the folks in education absolutely do need this if they don't want to continue to be hoodwinked and engaging in counterproductive practices. The stakes are too high to allow generations of kids to be guinea pigs as to whether the latest educational fad is effective or not, instead of actually carefully designing research to find this out _before_ it's implemented wide scale.
On a personal note, I had to laugh at one of your other posts about your son's middle school having being a TV show setting. I actually grew up in North Hollywood, and though I never attended your son's school I went to two different high schools that also both served as movie sets while I was attending them - one for The Wonder Years, and the other for Parker Lewis can't lose. It's a very LA thing :)
If you ever become interested in the ed research rabbit hole, I recommend following a smattering of both education reporters focused in this area (eg, Holly Korbey at the Bell Ringer, Natalie Wexler, Emily Hansford) as well as a mix of teachers, researchers and interventionists (eg, Paul Kirschner, Carl Hendrick, David Didau, Daisy Christodolou, Karen Vaites, Mark Seidenberg, Harriet Janetos).
Fair enough - I confess my comment contained hyperbolic over-generalization (occupational hazard from comedy world), and you're right that lumping *all* the social sciences together as BS is unfair and incorrect. My take there is rooted in my own experiences studying oodles of '90s Ivy League undergrad sociology and psychology -- which I found to be rife with laughably unprovable theorizing that is routinely presented as fact (the DSM, in particular, can be a pretty cartoonish tome). You're absolutely right that teaching is highly complex - and I wasn't implying otherwise by invoking the word "trade." In fact, I would respectfully counter that the common disdain for that word in higher ed is a form of elitism that blithely discounts the complexities involved in all trades. And yes, the best HVAC techs are indeed critical consumers of experimental research in their field. That said I totally agree with your core point that educators should be better equipped to identify the BS intellectual fads to which I think we're both alluding. Thanks for the writer recommendations! And re: LA school locations - I know it's so funny. Definitely check out "Pen15" - greatest middle school show ever!
But thank you again and I look forward to continuing the conversation as the next part of this series that I’m writing now dives deep into another corner of this same issue. 😀✌️
It’s fascinating that there is an ageist divide here. Their research must have shown that experienced teachers can see through their completely useless snake oil!
I remember blogging about the encroachment of edtech into schools last year, discussing the work Sophie Winkleman has been doing in the UK. I'm sad to see it spreading in the USA school systems too.
I guess you'll already be aware of her work and that of Jonathan Haidt (on the negative impacts of the screen-based childhood and social media). But for your readers, this is a link to the Substack article, by the two of them, that I blogged my thoughts about.
NEVER STOP SPEAKING ABOUT THIS. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I am desperate to speak to a teacher who actually likes iReady. I 100% do not think they exist, and the teacher now regretting being a part of the “awards” just reinforces that.
And the two “Extraordinary Educators” who generously shared their perspectives for this story are likely only the tip of the i-Regret iceberg. One has already confided to me that since this piece was published, multiple members of his Extraordinary Educators cohort reached out to him privately to thank him and express their own regrets over having also been hoodwinked by the program.
I’m genuinely curious—do you feel no responsibility for the educators whose images you’ve pulled into this piece? Did you obtain consent to having their likeness used in an article that frames teachers as “shills” or participants in a “scam.” Regardless of your stance on ed-tech, publicly attaching real educators’ faces to that narrative feels unnecessarily personal and professionally harmful. There’s a difference between critiquing a program and using individual teachers as collateral.
I feel responsibility for the 14 million children helplessly pulled into i-Ready — and it is *Curriculum Associates* who is “using individual teachers as collateral.” Indeed, there is nothing in this report that has not already been publicly disseminated widely across the internet by CA itself as i-Ready marketing collateral. My framing is clear that the “scam” is not being perpetrated by any practicing educators, but upon them (and school districts - and most importantly innocent children). I support teachers unequivocally, but accepting any “honor” that explicitly promises “national recognition” constitutes willfully entering the public sphere and consenting to scrutiny of all one’s actions therein.
I worry about the teaching profession when educators that taught before edtech took over leave the field, we are loosing institutional memory! The tech industry seems to prey on human nature as a way to keep "users" of their product. Thank you for shedding light on the nefarious tactics the company uses to gaslight educators about their crappy product!
Yes Denise - and Curriculum Associates targeting teaching colleges represents a concerted effort to expedite the loss of that institutional memory. Out with Teh Olds, in with the Ed-Slop!
i-definitely-NotReady!
i-Respect!
My first few jobs after my bachelor's degree were at a major university where the education department and the EdD degree were seen as a bit of a laughingstock by the other professions. I didn't get the critique at the time, but It was quite a culture shock for me when I transitioned from working in a healthcare profession to the educational arena some 20 years later, and got to witness first hand those critiques brought to light. The elevation of ideology over research, the dominance of charismatic gurus instead of effectiveness and best practices, the tendency to be driven largely by fads, and a history of very shoddy research has left the education profession very vulnerable to large publishers of both print and ed tech. There are a few working to change this, but again, the ideological resistance gets in the way even when good research is presented. And don't even get me started on continuing education programs aimed at teachers. They are grossly cultish and infantilizing in their tone; it feels more like marketing targeting naive children than research and information being disseminated to a professional audience. Friends of mine who are teachers manage this in a variety of ways, but are mostly too busy and overwhelmed to even be tuned into what's happening, or recognize there's a limit to how much push-back they can get away with...
I really wanted to be a staunch supporter of public education as a great societal equalizer, but I just can't unsee everything I've seen at this point...
Thanks for this powerful perspective, which confirms a suspicion of mine that much of what currently ails education stems from it having mutated from a straightforward intergenerational communications trade into something more akin to a so-called social science. And most of the social sciences are really just so much pseudo-intellectual bullshit. That creates a perfect environment for the Ed-tech charlatans to peddle their snake oil. 🫤
Respectfully, I have to disagree with your characterization here, both of what education should be (a straightforward intergenerational communications trade) and with lumping every single field that falls into the social sciences together.
There is currently a body of research, consisting of well-designed, well-implemented studies that give key foundational information on how people learn, and on how to effectively teach. I promise, teaching is more complex than it might seem at first glance, it's not a "just copy what I did and you'll be fine" kind of thing where teachers can just be trained at a trade school level. The research is convergent in most of its conclusions and comes from a number of fields, including cognitive psychology, neuroscience, behavioral psychology, and education.
Unfortunately, much of this has been ignored or distrusted by the folks teaching future teachers because it doesn't always fit with the theories and ideologies education has been leaning into for the past half century. Part of the problem is that there has been a decades long issue of those in the education field, both K-12 and higher ed teaching future educators to not have received a rigorous education in scientific methodology.
If you want educators and administrators to be better informed, better able to conduct effective research, and more critical and selective when it comes to the claims of ed tech, then you would want them to continue towards full professionalization, _not_ going backwards and becoming just a "trade" profession. There is nothing wrong with the trades, but HVAC techs and electricians don't need to be critical consumers of experimental research in theirs and related fields, whereas a much larger proportion of the folks in education absolutely do need this if they don't want to continue to be hoodwinked and engaging in counterproductive practices. The stakes are too high to allow generations of kids to be guinea pigs as to whether the latest educational fad is effective or not, instead of actually carefully designing research to find this out _before_ it's implemented wide scale.
On a personal note, I had to laugh at one of your other posts about your son's middle school having being a TV show setting. I actually grew up in North Hollywood, and though I never attended your son's school I went to two different high schools that also both served as movie sets while I was attending them - one for The Wonder Years, and the other for Parker Lewis can't lose. It's a very LA thing :)
If you ever become interested in the ed research rabbit hole, I recommend following a smattering of both education reporters focused in this area (eg, Holly Korbey at the Bell Ringer, Natalie Wexler, Emily Hansford) as well as a mix of teachers, researchers and interventionists (eg, Paul Kirschner, Carl Hendrick, David Didau, Daisy Christodolou, Karen Vaites, Mark Seidenberg, Harriet Janetos).
Fair enough - I confess my comment contained hyperbolic over-generalization (occupational hazard from comedy world), and you're right that lumping *all* the social sciences together as BS is unfair and incorrect. My take there is rooted in my own experiences studying oodles of '90s Ivy League undergrad sociology and psychology -- which I found to be rife with laughably unprovable theorizing that is routinely presented as fact (the DSM, in particular, can be a pretty cartoonish tome). You're absolutely right that teaching is highly complex - and I wasn't implying otherwise by invoking the word "trade." In fact, I would respectfully counter that the common disdain for that word in higher ed is a form of elitism that blithely discounts the complexities involved in all trades. And yes, the best HVAC techs are indeed critical consumers of experimental research in their field. That said I totally agree with your core point that educators should be better equipped to identify the BS intellectual fads to which I think we're both alluding. Thanks for the writer recommendations! And re: LA school locations - I know it's so funny. Definitely check out "Pen15" - greatest middle school show ever!
In case you haven't already seen this, Kelsey Piper just wrote a piece for The Argument about the state of research in education:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-194200902
Yes I did - I even bought a sub to read it all. It’s excellent and it reminded me of our exchange also! I posted about it earlier @ https://substack.com/@johnallenwooden/note/c-245087486?r=hb28&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
But thank you again and I look forward to continuing the conversation as the next part of this series that I’m writing now dives deep into another corner of this same issue. 😀✌️
It’s fascinating that there is an ageist divide here. Their research must have shown that experienced teachers can see through their completely useless snake oil!
Yup because ageism is the last surviving socially acceptable ism. And dressing it up as an honor for "rising" educators is transparently Orwellian.
I remember blogging about the encroachment of edtech into schools last year, discussing the work Sophie Winkleman has been doing in the UK. I'm sad to see it spreading in the USA school systems too.
I guess you'll already be aware of her work and that of Jonathan Haidt (on the negative impacts of the screen-based childhood and social media). But for your readers, this is a link to the Substack article, by the two of them, that I blogged my thoughts about.
https://www.afterbabel.com/p/sophie-winkleman-tech-schools
Thank you for sharing this! I've read it before and it's exceptional.
NEVER STOP SPEAKING ABOUT THIS. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I am desperate to speak to a teacher who actually likes iReady. I 100% do not think they exist, and the teacher now regretting being a part of the “awards” just reinforces that.
And the two “Extraordinary Educators” who generously shared their perspectives for this story are likely only the tip of the i-Regret iceberg. One has already confided to me that since this piece was published, multiple members of his Extraordinary Educators cohort reached out to him privately to thank him and express their own regrets over having also been hoodwinked by the program.
I’m genuinely curious—do you feel no responsibility for the educators whose images you’ve pulled into this piece? Did you obtain consent to having their likeness used in an article that frames teachers as “shills” or participants in a “scam.” Regardless of your stance on ed-tech, publicly attaching real educators’ faces to that narrative feels unnecessarily personal and professionally harmful. There’s a difference between critiquing a program and using individual teachers as collateral.
I feel responsibility for the 14 million children helplessly pulled into i-Ready — and it is *Curriculum Associates* who is “using individual teachers as collateral.” Indeed, there is nothing in this report that has not already been publicly disseminated widely across the internet by CA itself as i-Ready marketing collateral. My framing is clear that the “scam” is not being perpetrated by any practicing educators, but upon them (and school districts - and most importantly innocent children). I support teachers unequivocally, but accepting any “honor” that explicitly promises “national recognition” constitutes willfully entering the public sphere and consenting to scrutiny of all one’s actions therein.