The lure of the perfect teaching machine is great. The reality is always disappointing. Machines simply cannot adapt to students’ needs as rapidly or smoothly as a competent and caring teacher.
Tales from the Classroom
Consider this parent’s lament. “When my son was in first grade, he came home from school in tears saying that he hated math…. Before this my son had loved math. His misery was all due to i-Ready…. I started asking around to the other kids’ parents, and I heard similar stories from all of them…. Some of [the kids] would hide in the bathroom to avoid it.”
Perhaps the most ironic thing about this abbreviated narrative was that the writer is a software engineer. He supports computer use in his son’s classroom. The problem, in his mind, was not the presence of screens or “sensory overload.” The problem is that it is too slow, repeating directions constantly for every single problem, even if the problem is almost identical to the last one that the student completed.
Even NBC News reported on i-Ready’s shortcomings in a recent report. Its story began with a math tutor in Anchorage who shared her students’ irritation. “They all hate it—it’s so boring and so monotonous.” The report moved on to a Rhode Island speech therapist, who reported that one of her students grew so frustrated that he punched the Chromebook’s screen. Finally, an eighth-grader in Los Angeles complained that “I’m losing brain cells every time I do a lesson.”
A Popular, but Ineffective, Answer
This situation is not limited to a few classrooms. NBC pointed out that i-Ready “has quietly taken over America’s public school classrooms, reaching nearly 14 million students each year…. Nearly one-third of students from kindergarten to 12th grade nationwide use i-Ready, including in nine of the 10 largest school districts.”
A recent article on UnHerd, an independent news gathering site, told the story of Massachusetts math teacher Benjamin Coleman. His Fall River school district mandated use of the system, despite many students’ complaints. Instead of reassessing the platform’s usefulness, the administration demanded that teachers increase their use of it. Mr. Coleman relates that, “The day that the principal told us that we needed to do i-Ready three times a week, that’s when I was done. It was three hours a week for each class, when we only had five hours a week. So, 60% of the teaching was going to be done by this computer that the kids absolutely hate.”
Why would a school system insist that teachers increase their use of a platform that was not working? To answer this question, it might be helpful to look behind the curtain and examine the situations in which administrators purchase these platforms.
Retailing Educational Technologies
Many purchasing decisions happen at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) annual conference. Held each summer, it is one of the primary networking opportunities for teachers and school administrators to connect with producers of any imaginable electronic tool. The ISTE claims that 17,279 people attended their 2025 event, which featured 2,098 presenters and 1,167 exposition booths.
Like any large trade show, the exposition floor is a mind-numbing array of bright lights, vivid colors, loud voices, banners, computer monitors and sales representatives. Teachers walk out with stacks of brochures, free samples, and any kind of object that can carry a company’s name and logo. Their minds swim with what they could do if they had enough money to buy all of this stuff.
However, the big fish are the superintendents. They are the real targets of the sales representatives’ flashy displays. Teachers might be able to buy a few books and posters and recommend products to the folks back home, but the upper administrators’ checkbooks carry the real clout.
The Superintendent’s Dilemma
Of course, superintendents are under massive incoming fire. According to some figures, the average tenure of a superintendent is about five years. They are the “front-men” for their districts and the targets of local discontent. When taxes are raised, a severe disciplinary incident occurs in a school, a personnel scandal arises, or test scores go down, they face the community’s anger. So, when they go to ISTE, they hope to get away for a couple of days, have a few good meals, and find a way to improve students’ scores.
On arrival, they are often putty in the hands of sales representatives. The rep takes them to a quiet hotel bar with some slick brochures, or to an “invitation-only” seminar with other administrators and a well-stocked buffet and drink table. In such a setting, it isn’t hard to convince them that this computer, software program or AI platform can turn them into a real hero back home.
When the expensive machines arrive, the administrator must justify the purchase. Teachers’ opinions are beside the point. If questioned by parents or the school board, the administrator can pull out the sales rep’s reams of statistics. With this armor, the embattled superintendent can argue that “It is working in other places.” Then, he quips, “Our teachers need to get over their bad attitudes and do what is best for our kids. We gave them the best tools on the market; now they need to do their jobs.”
Asking the Wrong Question Yields Wrong Answers
The ironic fact is that most schools already know how to help students learn difficult material. They have known it for well over a century. During the early twentieth century, budding leaders came out of one-room schools on the Great Plains, overcrowded classrooms in New York City and everywhere in between. Education does not require new methods or the latest cyber-gadgets. It needs dedicated, competent teachers backed by principals who consistently enforce rules, enabling those teachers to teach without constant interruptions.
Unfortunately, bureaucracies despise simple rules. They thrive by creating complicated processes that others must apply. To think that a computer program can solve that problem is an exercise in fantasy.
Photo Credit: © OlgaKhorkova – stock.adobe.com
First published on TFP.org.