Rethinking Education: Moving Beyond Teaching to the Test

How do we use educational technology? How do we use innovation to then give teachers permission to dismantle that mindset of teaching to the test? Because I think once we dismantle the mindset of teaching to the test and teaching in that silo based thinking of education, then it's going to give teachers the agency to then just integrate everything into the core curriculum and we're going to have a new way of thinking and a new way of teaching. And that's what I think it's going to be a big shift that needs to happen because we've been teaching the same way forever and ever and ever. Where do you think the teachers are getting that signal to like get narrow and teach to the test? Is that historically the

leadership's been doing it or they just implicitly assume? I think there's been so much pressure on school districts to raise test scores. Yeah. And so I think that and I think in the dashboard and I think there's been maybe a lack of innovative leaders maybe. I know Amy, you're such an innovative leader that you give that agency to your leaders to say it's okay to be innovative but not everybody has that because they're scared at what they're going to get and maybe they're afraid at giving or maybe pulling

they're so tight with the reins that there's you know if they give a little they might not get what they're they're going to you know what I mean? So I think that we're afraid of loosening the reins a little And your thesis is if you actually loosen it a little bit give a little bit more autonomy that your scores won't actually suffer in fact they might improve because we're more engaged etc. Yes. And the cognitive demand of that type of work is higher as well so the lab measure would hopefully reflect that. But I don't think we're training our teachers to do that because we are we're just not there yet right? We're

not training our teachers because we're training our teachers to teach to the test right now. So how do we fix that? to do best first instruction and like this one size fits all I hold all of the knowledge and it's my job to give it to you in one way to everyone. I mean the philosophy behind all that is just really antiquated I feel like education knows it doesn't work but I mean in my very limited two years of experience behind the curtain it just feels like it's there's so many other pressures between unions and curriculum and textbook vendors and there's so many other external drivers that don't allow for change to happen. So there's a recognition that it's not working but Might I add to where a profession of

apprenticeship so we've seen somebody do our job for 16 years prior to now having our job. So I would put forward potentially like models of excellence how often are teachers exposed to these integrated learning opportunities with a high cognitive demand that have real world relevance? I've seen somebody do my job for 16 years. It's going to be a challenge to adjust and what's what are the structures in our system that provide the support so even as a teacher if I recognize all I have in my toolbox is what I was exposed to prior what access do I have to new tools and how to use those? Well and that to me that causes an equity issue right? Because if you're if the question is what access do I have to the tools

you're automatically assuming that it's the teacher's role to be the primary person that gives the access to the students. And so if you have a teacher that really likes EdTech and likes Conmigo and is into it then those students are going to benefit from it which is a very small percentage of the total teachers in a district. So if I'm unlucky enough to have a teacher who doesn't like that and doesn't like is afraid of AI and won't use Conmigo then it's an equity problem. I now because I'm dependent upon a teacher to let me use it I don't get to benefit from the tech. And how sad for that grade? that I mean that's the thing about what I feel like we've seen across the AI EdTech vendors is it's all so still

an old model of teacher centered. All the control lies with the teacher and until we somehow miraculously give PD to every single teacher to show them how amazing it will be if they could differentiate with AI and personalize our kids are suffering as a result because they we just aren't able to upskill them that quickly. And we could provide PD to those teach to a lot of teachers but if they're still hesitant are they going to use it? So how do we change that? Right because PD is not sufficient to change behavior you have to do the behavior and adjust behavior see the behavior model different behavior change is complex right? So simple professional development doesn't We're almost doing what we're asking teachers not to do.

We're professing and then asking them to apply or mimic which how well does that work?