Equal Scrutiny: Data Use, Access, and Assessment in Digital Education Contracting

• In Event: 72.062 - Understanding the Digital Evolution in K–12 Education: Policy and Practice Perspectives

Abstract

Current policy contexts in K-12 districts incentivize, and at times require digital education tools such as online courses and assessments for students (Molnar, 2013; Sheehy, 2012; Davis, 2011). The rise of third party management and privatizing initiatives in K-12 instruction comes despite an inadequate research base on implementation of K-12 online learning and in particular, implementation in low-income settings (Means et al, 2013; Shear et al, 2012). Greater scrutiny is needed into the role of the vendor in facilitating sufficient access to high quality instructional opportunities, given the immense amount of time and financial resources districts, teachers and students commit to these digital education settings. It is within this larger context that we examine three cases of digital education contracting, asking four central questions:

1. What drives the digital curriculum?
2. What drives the digital instruction?
3. What drives assessment and access to data?
4. What is the role of the vendor in these processes?

This paper will focus on the third and fourth of these questions, detailing implications of privatization and contracting on data use, access and assessment in digital education.

We draw upon findings from three descriptive, embedded case studies of digital education: digital courses, digital schools and digital tutoring. The case of digital tutoring involves a longitudinal, mixed-method study in six urban school districts that integrates quasi-experimental analysis of impacts on student achievement with an in-depth, qualitative examination of the intervention in practice. The cases of digital courses and a blended digital school draws upon two, separate longitudinal qualitative studies using in-depth interviews, focus groups, formal observations and document analysis.

Findings from these three case studies disentangle the extent to which data and assessment is locally controlled and accessed (those in a position to integrate technology towards helping it meet students’ needs), versus centrally controlled and accessed (those selling or legislating use of technology across a wide jurisdiction), and how this is not simply a technical detail under the domain of “user permissions”. Decisions of these sort can make an enormous difference in whether and how end users such as teachers are able to see and assess student progress in digital education and review and use data generated by digital education platforms to better adapt instruction to students’ needs.

We detail examples of teachers and students not being provided with accessible, timely or accurate data on student learning, but also instances of how digital education has the potential to be transformative in terms of building new and powerful assessment structures. Through new technologies, the assessment feedback loop can be faster and offer an opportunity for assessment data to be archived in a structured record of student progress. The goal of this paper, and the larger study from which it originates, is to stem the tide of fragmented, rushed, top-down approaches to digital education and capitalize on the strengths of the technology, people, and policies to think more deeply about how the digital era is changing the worlds of teaching and public policy.

Authors

• Annalee G. Good, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Patricia Burch, University of Southern California