Good, Burch Examine the Potential Dangers of Privatizing Digital Education

April 17, 2014

Digital education may be an innovative path forward for the American public schools system, but many of the existing virtual teaching programs have serious flaws, according to a new book co-authored by WCER researcher Annalee Good and former UW–Madison Assistant Professor and WCER researcher Patricia Burch.

The book, Equal Scrutiny: Privatization and Accountability in Digital Education, is set for publication in May. In it, the authors point out that the trend for private education technology contractors to provide schools with digital education programs leads to concerns about the quality of services, who is served, and who benefits.

“Digital education has great potential for transformative education, especially in disadvantaged communities,” said Burch, now an associate professor of education at the University of Southern California. “However, it has yet to deliver on that promise.”

Digital learning has the power to create enormous opportunities for school districts to teach students in more effective and economical ways, if properly funded and effectively managed, but many districts delving into digital education are moving too quickly into territory that is unfamiliar to them, Good said.

“There’s great promise to digital education, and our research shows that there is high-quality digital teaching and learning going on,” Good said. “But the issues of transparency and accountability, as well as ensuring that kids from all economic backgrounds have access to quality digital education, are still very much in question.”

In their book, Burch and Good identify national, state, and local policies that created the widespread practice of school districts contracting out digital education services, including laws in several states mandating all public school students take at least one online course in order to graduate. The authors investigate the impact of this and other policies on schools, teachers, and students and their families.

“It’s fascinating to see just how prevalent digital education has become, and it’s a bit concerning that there are pressures on districts to adopt digital teaching and learning that aren’t solely based on educational improvement,” Good said. “It’s also amazing to see the amount of money being spent on digital education with not that much research having been done on its effectiveness in the K-12 context.”

The book is based on three years of inquiry into school districts across the United States that have begun to use private digital vendors for standalone courses, charter schools, and tutoring.

Burch and Good studied how the responsibilities for curriculum, instruction, data use, and assessment were divided between the district and its digital education vendor. In each case, the researchers discovered disparities in the quality of digital education programs. And Burch and Good largely found that students were better served when there was greater transparency in exactly what an instructional program would look like (e.g., the role of the instructor, realistic assessment of the requirements for internet access), as well as what role the vendors play in program delivery.  

As more educational programs move toward adoption of online, virtual, or other forms of digital education, Burch and Good said more research and scrutiny are necessary to prevent larger problems in the future.

“Technology is changing how education is delivered to America’s students, but there isn’t yet a body of research backing all of the methods being marketed,” Good said. “That shouldn’t mean districts don’t purchase digital education services, but it does mean they should use caution.”

The researchers found that some districts either don’t ask for or are not offered full access to the programs and data used by private contractors. It then becomes more difficult for those districts to track student learning, and allows the contractors to operate without oversight, which has led to problems like this in Utah and around the rest of the country.

Data control is another issue dogging the future of digital education. The federal government recently got involved in the debate by issuing guidelines when districts own the data collected by their digital education contractors and when the data belongs to the vendors.

Burch said disadvantaged communities face the biggest challenges when it comes to digital education, as currently they have very limited access to learning technologies relative to wealthier communities, and the few programs that serve those communities have quality issues, she said.

“The digital education being sold to disadvantaged communities generally does not equate with expanded learning opportunities,” Burch said. “For example, a company may decide for reasons of cost not to have a live teacher, leaving children and their families without the supports they need to master content.”

The goal of their book, Good said, was not to propose a model for what digital education should look like, but rather to highlight major issues surrounding the trend to purchase it. The bottom line, Burch added, is that, despite the allure of digital education due to its potential for solving some of American public education’s most vexing problems, it would be best for the country to take a slower approach towards its adoption.

“Simply moving education online doesn’t alone solve enduring problems of unequal access and disparities within and across schools,” Burch said. “Going slower with digital education can mean moving smarter. We worry that the incredible promise of digital education will be lost if we don’t decelerate and really pay attention to the content of what districts are spending their very limited resources to buy.”

Equal Scrutiny: Privatization and Accountability in Digital Education can be ordered in advance at Amazon.com and other online book retailers.

Burch, P. & Good, A. G. (2014). Equal Scrutiny: Privatization and Accountability in Digital Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.