Testimony to Minnesota Senate Education Committee on Digital Learning

Madame Chair, Senator Nelson, and Members of the Committee:  My name is Mitch Pearlstein and I’m founder and president of Center of the American Experiment, a conservative and free market think tank up and running in Minneapolis for 22 years now.  My previous lives in education have included service on the staffs of University of Minnesota President C. Peter Magrath and Gov. Albert H. Quie, as well as in the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education.  My doctorate is in educational administration from the University of Minnesota and my most recent book[i] spends a considerable amount of time on ways in which we might improve the educational achievement of all children, but especially our most disadvantaged young people.

Though having recited all this, I’m obliged to note that when it comes to the more arcane aspects of computer marvels, I claim no more expertise than the average 60-something, and that if asked anything of a technical nature, I will respectfully defer to the nearest 17 year old.     

But what I can argue with confidence pertains to broader matters of technology-related policy, starting with this overarching point:

When it comes to government’s essential role in funding education, the holiest of grails is significantly improving quality while simultaneously constraining costs.  Suffice it to say, no level of government, in or out of Minnesota, can cite many successes in melding and achieving these two imperatives in elementary and secondary schools.  Yet without indulging in the kind of exaggerated expectations and claims frequently voiced in K-12 education, the case to be made here is that of all reforms on the educational table, taking greater advantage of digital learning does, in fact, promise to help children learn measurably more without forcing taxpayers to spend measurably more.

The “here” just referred to actually is a recently released paper[ii] of mine that draws in large measure on roundtable conversations with more than a dozen savvy Minnesota educators and other leaders.  In just a handful of additional minutes, permit me to sketch several of their main points, reinforced by one or two by national players such as Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, who has written about how digital learning’s greatest power is the way in which it “creates the opportunity to reconsider what’s feasible,” as it makes it possible to “deliver expertise over distances, permits instructors to specialize, allows schools to use staff in more targeted and cost-effective ways, and customizes the scope, sequence, and pacing of curriculum and instruction for particular children.” 

Or as one roundtable participant succinctly put it in regards to customizing education, digital learning means students are less likely to be either bored or overwhelmed.

One of the major themes in our roundtable conversations, held last July, had to do with licensing.  Just as Minnesota districts and schools can buy textbooks from anyplace in the country or world, they can also contract with online providers anywhere on the planet – as long as courses are ultimately “taught” by someone with a current Minnesota teachers license.  A paramount problem with this restriction is that it precludes taking full advantage of the talents of the nation and world’s most remarkable men and women, both scholars and others. 

At one point in our conversations, a former Minnesota education commissioner fantasized about Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein leading Minnesota classes on the Internet.  “Man, wouldn’t that be fun?”  To which another participant quickly countered how “they couldn’t teach because they weren’t licensed.”  To which a second former Minnesota commissioner of education later added, “A Ph.D. astronaut cannot teach students in an online school in Minnesota, but he’s just fine for students in Arizona and Iowa who are in the same class and meeting the same standards.”

Exchanges like this speak to a central component of the legislation before you:  the need to review everything state government does in overseeing digital learning, from the ground and first-statute-pages up, as any number of laws and regulations which were timely and essential when first passed and implemented are doubtless anachronistic hindrances now.

It’s also surely true that many observers of certain ages doubt the richness of connections between teachers and students which digital learning affords, as they assume there’s no way electronic communication can be as full-bodied as face-to-face, brick-and-mortar interactions.  And just as likely, advocates respond by noting how teachers routinely claim how online learning can help them get to know their students better than ever before.  This is true in large part because it’s decidedly harder (counterintuitive as it may sound) to hide in a virtual classroom than in a physical one, as online students are required to have a voice by the very nature of the medium. 

Or to further reassure, and as noted by the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, “Although technology is important to online learning, it is crucial not to overstate its role.  In the online environment teachers and students are still the primary players; the technology plays a supporting role.”

A concluding metaphor, as told by roundtable participant Ted Kolderie, one of Minnesota and the nation’s most prolific education visionaries:

Thirty kids climb into a bus in St. Paul and head sought on I-35, with a teacher on a mic pointing out various things out the windows as they roll along.  Some kid says, “I missed that.  I was looking at something else.  Can we go back over that again?”  “No,” the teacher says, “we can’t stop and do that again.”  Another student says, “Gee, this is interesting.  Can I explore it a little bit?”  “No we can’t do that,” the teacher answers again.  And then a third student says, “I’ve been down this road before.  Can’t we go any faster?”  “No we can’t do that either.”    

Let’s just say lessons here about digital learning’s core virtues are not hard to decipher.  “If kids need more time,” Kolderie noted in one of our roundtables, “they can have more time and they should learn more because of it.  Or if kids can go faster, they can go faster and there should be achievement gains in that, too.  It seems to me that’s where huge potential lies.”

Ladies and gentlemen:  I completely agree with Ted and also thank you.

[i] From Family Collapse to America’s Decline: The Educational, Economic, and Social Costs of Family Fragmentation (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011).

[ii] Online Learning: A Literal New World of Possibilities for Minnesota k-12 Education.  Center of the American Experiment, 2012.