Black Boxes and Open Data

[Michael Hardner]

An article discusses problems assessing education on a global scale - the 'black box' that is education.

I have conflicting views on this.  I do not think that this organization is going to be effective at finding out the truth, the essence of quality education.  That is like trying to find a formula for 'good'.  I do, however, think that research is good and moreover that engaging with publics and even the masses is something we need more than ever.

 

Although this is ostensibly about 'education', let's make this thread about 'black boxes'...

 

http://blogs.worldbank.org/edutech/open-data-closed-algorithms-and-black-box-education

[?Impact]

I'm not surprised that Michael Trucano is often met with polite but blank stares. It is far from clear what he is advocating from a practical standpoint. Yes, there might be some, as he suggests, that are against better transparency because they have something to gain, but I don't see that as the fundamental problem. Education is an immensely complex subject, and results of which take decades to evaluate. Certainly some of the mechanics are [partly] understood, and we could even suggest simple, but the entirety of the task is beyond measure. What we think of as metrics during the process might be [I suggest are] totally irrelevant at end of task. How do you measure the inspiration a teacher gives to his/her students, yet that might be the absolute most important long term success in their future development.

Remembering back to the dark ages of my own public education, how should I evaluate the mechanics versus the inspiration. Yes, learning the alphabet and 2+2 are some of the fundamentals that are very important, but the desire to do learn and do better and how to learn have served me far more in my adult life. I was lucky to have many good teachers, but there is one I remember above all others and yet I couldn't tell you a single fact, formula, or whatever I learned in her class. Mrs. Brown (grade 5) however taught me to love learning, how to learn, and how to work in groups to achieve success for the entire group. While she was a strict teacher, she also made education fun and certainly I and I know a lot of others in our class always enjoyed her teaching.

When reading Mr. Trucano's article, I couldn't help but thinking of the efficiency experts of the 60's who thought (or at least claimed) they could simplify everything and magically transform the workplace. Yes our education system can improve, and there are already many processes in place to help with that improvement and newer/better ones will evolve over time. The model we don't want to fall into however is building the magic box that will determine the outcome for children based on their DNA test when they enter pre-pre-kindergarten, yet that is the feeling I am getting from the article. 

[Moonlight Graham]

On a side note, I find it ridiculous that we highly subsidize virtually every university and professor salaries, yet their research is locked away from the public in journals that are inaccessible without a fee payment.  We have all of this amazing knowledge being produced by the most educated people in the country (that we're funding) but we can't even access that knowledge!

[SpankyMcFarland]

On 2016-11-26 at 4:22 AM, Moonlight Graham said:

On a side note, I find it ridiculous that we highly subsidize virtually every university and professor salaries, yet their research is locked away from the public in journals that are inaccessible without a fee payment.  We have all of this amazing knowledge being produced by the most educated people in the country (that we're funding) but we can't even access that knowledge!

We are not funding the journals which examine the research and attempt to filter out the dross. Good journals have a lot of moving parts. 

[Moonlight Graham]

On 2017-01-27 at 9:40 PM, SpankyMcFarland said:

We are not funding the journals which examine the research and attempt to filter out the dross. Good journals have a lot of moving parts. 

So they take the content we subsidize, the professors whose salaries we pay for, and print it in a book.  Wow.  And a lot of students can't even access these journals online because they sell their own content back to universities, which some don't buy. Sounds like a crappy system to me.

[?Impact]

19 hours ago, Moonlight Graham said:

So they take the content we subsidize, the professors whose salaries we pay for, and print it in a book.  Wow.  And a lot of students can't even access these journals online because they sell their own content back to universities, which some don't buy. Sounds like a crappy system to me.

You certainly raise a valid point. While the private journal does have an investment in the intellectual property (reviewing, editing, publishing, etc.), the public investment in the research is often many fold more significant. Also many of the reviewers are other professors (or post-docs or even grad students) supported by public funds. Most of the prestige journals are owned by private interests, probably the biggest being Elsevier. Note that Elsevier acquired many of the journals it publishes and did not start them. You might be interested in an old article in the New York Times on researchers suggesting a boycott of Elsevier for the very reasons you cite..