The problem with Learn Everywhere is that it’s not really about learning. It is, instead, about earning credit towards graduation, something that has very little to do with learning. (It’s not hard to find students who have ‘credit’ in algebra, but who can’t tell you what a variable is, let alone how to solve or graph an equation; or students with ‘credit’ in Spanish, who ‘can order at a Mexican restaurant… if the menu has pictures’; or students with ‘credit’ in English, who can’t put three grammatical sentences together to make a coherent paragraph; and so on.)
Credit does, however, have everything to do with seat time, and its correlates, job security and adequacy funding.
Note that if a student could simply demonstrate his knowledge of a subject — for example, by passing the final exam in whatever class in that subject is taught at his school — then there would be little need for the kind of bureaucracy required by Learn Everywhere. All that would be required is a slight alteration of Ed 306.27.
School districts could still claim to have ‘local control’ (i.e., their teachers would be writing and grading the tests), and no one would have to get ‘certified’ to help students learn, or follow an ‘approved curriculum’. A student who is taught by a relative, or who learns from a book, or who learns by watching YouTube videos, or whatever, could take a test that is already being given to students in his school, and get the same credit as them by passing it. There could be no concern about the state ‘dumbing down’ the ‘high local standards’ so prized by districts.
A major problem with Learn Everywhere is that it’s misnamed. A more descriptive name would be Teach Everywhere, because the design of the program is to make it possible to certify teachers (aka ‘providers’) in non-school environments.
Naming it properly makes it easier to understand the primary source of resistance to the program — namely, the idea that teaching (and by extension, granting credit) is a job that is owned by the unions. The unions don’t care where, or whether, anyone learns anything… so long as students are required to sit in classes taught by union members, for a certain number of hours per year, for a certain number of years. (Hence our 90% graduation and 40% proficiency rates.)
Teach Everywhere means: There are people outside of schools who can teach as well as public school teachers, so let’s certify them to teach in non-school environments. Both logistically and politically, it’s basically trying to roll a big boulder up a bigger hill, but it’s the program that the Commissioner tried to implement.
In contrast, Learn Everywhere means: Students can learn in lots of different ways, in lots of different environments — including some we wouldn’t even think of — and if they can show that they’ve learned what we want them to know (using the measures we already have in place), we shouldn’t care at all where or how that learning happened. It’s basically rolling the boulder down the hill, and it’s the program that the Commissioner should be trying to implement.
