PILOTed

Will Student Data Privacy Bring Innovation to a Halt in Education?

Student Data Privacy is a priority issue in education. States have introduced 410 privacy bills since 2013, 36 states have passed 71 bills into law, and federal bills are being introduced to change FERPA along with new privacy provisions in ESSA.

Let’s make sure we approach the issue intelligently.

In an earlier post, we provided a primer on how to be compliant. And in an Edchat Interactive on October 4, Bob Dillon is going to discuss how to make sure your voice is heard in the discussions.

This post looks at the Data Quality Campaign report Student Data Privacy Legislation, to discuss the types of issues before the states.

The interest in privacy reflects the “public appetite for greater accountability, restrictions, and transparency about information sharing practices.” States seem to be focusing on the processes that districts (and schools) use for making decisions about data use (or governance), transparency, and how third-party providers can access, store, use, and dispose student information. Some issues that are gaining importance is the role of parents and parental consent and what happens when the data crosses over between school and personal life.

Proposed laws tend to take two tacks. Prohibitive provisions spell out what each party cannot do, and what types of data they cannot collect. Governance provisions to laws tend to ensure that authorities have the right roles and procedures to use data appropriately. Most laws use both.

Most of the laws deal with how schools interface with third party providers. Some of the common issues that were or are being considered for various state laws:

1. If a teacher chooses to use a program with her kids, what are the privacy ramifications?
2. If a learning application stores student progress on the cloud, what can they do with the data?
3. Does a parent have a right to refuse to let her child use a school-approved program?
4. If a student uses the same device for school and social networking, what responsibility does the school have for what the student posts?
5. Should there be special provisions for student information systems, 1:1 device programs, surveillance, or other issues?
6. Should parents or students fill out surveys, and what types of consent should be required?
7. Should parents have an easy way to find out what types of data are being accumulated on their children?
8. What privacy and security training should teachers and students undergo?
9. What should happen when there is a privacy breach?

Why should state legislators have the only seat at the table? How can school and district administrators develop compliant privacy policies that further student learning? How can teachers make sure students have access to the right resources and still comply with laws and policies?

If you are curious or have an opinion, perhaps you should join us October 4 as Robert Dillon leads a discussion on Privacy, Security, and Innovation in Education.

Is the US globally competitive?

Most of you who are reading this are in education, and most are in the US. We are preparing the next generation to take roles in the US culture, society, and workplace. And to participate in the workplace, there have to be good jobs. Are there, in fact, going to be jobs, for today’s students?

The World Economic Forum publishes an annual study of the world’s economies and how attractive they are for business. With all the talk about high tax rates, crumbling infrastructure, and bloated government in the US, the report’s conclusions are that “Switzerland, Singapore and the United States remain the three world’s most competitive economies.”

In terms of size, the US is the world's largest economy. Switerland’s economy is 19^th and is 1/30^th the size of the US, and Singapore is 37^th and is 1/3 the size of Switzerland’s. The US looks great compared to other large economies, China is the 28^th, Japan is 8^th, Germany is 5^th in terms of competitiveness.

Overall, growth around the globe has slowed, due to low productivity gains, increased income inequality, and aging populations. But there is a promise for future higher economic growth due to a “Fourth Industrial Revolution” based on digital platforms and technologies that converge physical, digital, and biological applications. Some of the most promising areas are artificial intelligence, biotechnology, robotics, the Internet of Things, and advanced manufacturing such as 3D printing.

If I were directing school, district, state, or federal education policy, I would be preparing students for leadership in these fields. In fact, the report concludes that “an increasingly important element of competitiveness is creating an enabling environment for innovation.”

The process of starting to produce new products and new sectors is incredibly difficult; education is only one piece. Two good models for focused effective strategies are the Dominican Republic, which set up the National Productivity and Competitiveness Initiative as a public-private partnership and Colombia which set up a National System of Competitiveness to coordinate initiatives of the government with the private sector, schools, and civil society on issues related to productivity and economic development. While the US as a whole is much larger than either country, these could be great models for state or county initiatives here.

Compared to the rest of the world, the US is in pretty good shape. We should feel lucky to live here. Not that we can’t do better, and not that we don’t have to move forward. As a society, and as the people who will most influence the next generation, we need to focus on programs and activities that will increase equality and prepare students for the jobs of the fourth industrial evolution.

Education: Follow the Money

Twenty years ago, we all accepted that the US had the best education system in the world. But that changed about ten years ago, when we started paying attention to international reports on student outcomes.
But at least we knew that we outspent everyone. Others may be (temporarily) ahead of us, but by putting our money where our priorities were, we could hold our heads high. And maybe these reports were measuring the wrong things. Isn’t it generally true that you get what you pay for?

Well it turns out, the OECD points out that we aren’t spending that much. In K12, the US now ranks 12^th (out of 46 OECD countries) in terms of spending per student. While the US spends about $140,000 per student over their 13 years of K-12, Luxembourg spends about $250,000. The US is 7^th on spending on education as a percentage of GDP.

And it’s not much prettier in Higher Education. As Inside Higher Ed points out:

"During the last 25 years, states have been paying an ever-shrinking portion of the costs of educating students at public colleges. That trend will be hard to reverse, as spending on Medicaid and other competing needs is likely to increase in most states."

And states pay almost three times as much for Higher Ed as the Federal government does. “Over time, the burden of the cost is being shifted from the state over to the students,” said Steve Mims, the filmmaker behind “Starving the Beast,” a documentary on the defunding of public universities.

If you’re reading this, you care about education. What are you going to do about it?

Highlights from the BMO Back To School Conference 2016

What to expect in policy over the next 12 months

Both candidates have been strong supports of charter schools, and both have shown broad support for reducing the burden of student loans. Trump is strongly anti-union. Clinton is likely to make a huge investment in preschool. Clinton is likely to follow Obama’s policies. Trump is more likely to fund school choice, letting the money follow the student even if the student moves out of the public education system.

Regulation has been subject to wide swings based on the discretion of federal and state policy makers, and the full effects of policies are often delayed for two to three years after a regulation is adopted. As a result, many administrators take a wait and see posture (we’ll be here years after you’ll be gone), since so many policies fizzle before they can be fully implemented.

Maybe focusing on student loans doesn't solve the underlying problem. Isn't the real question how do we make sure that students don't go to institutions where they are worse off after they finish than they were before they started?

Where are the EdTech Opportunities?

Schools are becoming more sophisticated, especially since a typical school system deploys over 30 different systems. They are not just looking at one-off solutions, they are more often looking at how any solution affects the total picture: does it make it easier for teachers, does it drive student learning, how does it affect other systems they have, does it provide needed easily accessible information to teachers and administrators, does it help the school with compliance and compliance reporting?

Still, a lot of money is wasted in EdTech. While other sectors can make claims that technology drives efficiency, in education there may never have been an instance where a school or district actually laid off people based on a technology solution. Imagine telling a parent that her son’s school is moving to 1:1 and that now there will be 60 in a classroom instead of 30. 

Education moves a lot slower than other sectors; remember, it took 30 years for the overhead projector to move from the bowling alley to the classroom. One of the biggest problems is making teachers comfortable with teaching with technology, and that’s difficult to do when schools only have 1 tech support person for every 60-100 teachers. PD is an opportunity, with $2.3B in federal Title II funds.

If you’re a potential investor in education, this is not a sector you can just dabble in. It’s a tricky business and it’s very hard to scale. You’re more likely to get a return on a $30M business looking to grow to $100M than on a $3M one hoping to grow to $30M. And the failure rate of education startups is too high to make money on.

The best opportunities may be outside the US. There is a massively growing K12 population around the world, and everyone wants an IB or US style education for their kids, and an increasingly large number are able and willing to pay for it.

What does Arne Duncan think about education now?

Education should be a bipartisan priority, yet neither candidate is talking about the big issues of education. Don’t blame the candidates, it’s a reflection that no votes on education, it’s our fault.

The ultimate issue is making education lead to real jobs. How are we going to keep good jobs in the US when employers can go wherever the qualified workers are?

For-profit schools have been much more nimble than the public sector. They saw an unmet need, they have been able to scale. They are able to react to the market. But if for-profit schools do not police their own bad actors, the government is going to do it, and they are not going to like the results.

Early childhood education shows a 7:1 ROI. There is no excuse for society not to make that investment.

Since Common Core came out, 40 states have opted for tighter learning standards. That’s a good result.

SpeakUp's From Print to Pixel

SpeakUp's latest report is From Print to Pixel: The role of videos, games, animations and simulations with K-12 education.

They report that 84% of school principals believe that effective use of technology within instruction is important for student success, but cite that the biggest obstacle is getting teachers to change their instructional practice to one infused with technology; the top barrier is the lack of teacher training on how to integrate digital content within instruction.

According to principals the 5 biggest benefits of using more digital content:

1. Increases student engagement
2. Extends learning beyond the school day
3. Enables personalized instruction
4. Increase relevancy and quality of instructional materials
5. Improves teachers’ skills with technology

What are the biggest uses of technology by teachers? 68% use videos they find online, 48% use games, 36% use online curriculum and 30% use online textbooks.

Students, not surprisingly, embrace these forms of instruction. One example, through the eyes of a 6^th grade student: “Virtual reality simulations can help us with subjects like science, help us interact with chemicals or tools that can be dangerous in the real world. Even in History we could practically time travel and experience the Trojan War or experience what it was like to be a Pilgrim without any real danger.”

MS and HS students like video-based instruction:

1. They can watch it as many times as they want
2. Easier to understand concepts
3. Connects lessons to the real world
4. Fits their learning style
5. Easy to access and find

Yet, relatively few students seek out resources on their own. Only 44% of HS girls and 34% of HS boys say they independently go online to find videos to help them learn. About half of all secondary students say that they are learning important things online on their own outside school.

To me, that is the biggest disappointment. It's exciting to live in a time of change. But, I would have hoped schools would be better able to spark students to take more control of their own learning. 

Account Management: Often Acknowledged, Seldom Practiced

If you’re like most EdTech businesses, you need to be the best, and you need to close business. Which means you’re probably primarily focused on product, and secondarily on sales. Right?

We’ve written before on Why aren’t more Edtech products reaching more students, Lead generation, and The Fallacy of If You Build it, They will Come.

But no matter how great your product, or how well you are at selling new customers, if you don’t retain and grow existing customers, you won’t stay in business for very long. Especially in education; where there is a limited universe of potential customers . There are fewer than 4,500 districts with more than 2,500 students, and about the same number of Higher Ed institutions; how many of these can you afford to lose?

Renewals? Upgrades? Lifetime value of a customer? Maybe it’s time to shift priorities.

Effective management of the lifetime value of a customer needs to permeate every phase of your operation: product, sales, implementation, support, and marketing.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Product: How does your product make teachers, students, and administrators keep coming back? What else can you offer them to help them solve problems?
• Sales: To what extent are you communicating long term gains through long term use?
• Implementaton: How well are installation and training aligned to the reasons the school chose to use you?
• Support: How do you help schools find out what else they can use you for?
• Marketing: what conversations are you having with prospective and existing schools that help them work better and smarter?

Do you want to talk about account management, renewals, and upselling in greater depth? We’re running a session at Ednet on Sept 27 or just contact us.