NYC Educator: Blended Learning

NYC Educator: Blended Learning:

Blended Learning

There's a piece in the New York Post that pretty much confirms everyone's worst suspicions about so-called blended learning. Actually, this particular brand does not appear to have been blended very well at all. In fact, it sounds like the very worst sort of credit recovery, and I only wish it were restricted to that which the story describes.

How many of us have seen or heard of kids getting on computers, answering a few questions, and somehow getting credit for courses they'd failed? You answer A, B, C or D, maybe get it wrong, and maybe answer again. Or maybe you sit with the book and look it up. More likely, you find a smart girlfriend to do it for you. Actually, if you're smart enough  to look up the information, you're probably smart enough to avoid taking the makeup computer thing anyway. Still, the story describes students paying other students 80 bucks to sit at the computer.

80 bucks seems like a lot of money for a high school kid to pay. What on earth is the kid learning by doing such a thing? Certainly nothing I want my kid to learn at school. I'm not a big fan of cheating. I discourage it actively in my class. Of course if my class were designed to restore credit in a multitude of subjects for no particular reason, I might have a different outlook. And of course, if I let kids take tests at