One year as a Kaplan coach - the Commoditization of Education

[ddeubel]

I just spent a well deserved 4 day holiday on an island with me, myself and I. Also, books, magazines, sunshine, the beach, mountains and very few people. Perfect!

One of the articles I finally got to was this one below -- One Year as a Kaplan Coach. A very good read and insiders view of how we just throw money at "testing" and teaching to the test. Vast waste as companies like this - just like Haliburton in another field, make BILLIONS. Money that could go to create better environments for our students (yes, studies show that the best way to get students improving is to create a "nice" place for learning. ), money that could go for so much else.

So if you too have a moment, please read. Very flowing and not heavy handed. But he reveals the emperor has no clothes. Timely also, after Barak's speech on Education and his own mentioning of hours of school time spent "filling in bubbles". Here too is Barak's fine speech, if you haven't seen it.....

Glad to be back to terra firma

David

One Year as a Kaplan Coach - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: One Year as a Kaplan Coach

[Laura Gibbs]

The scary thing about Kaplan is that, at least in some settings, it works - you get what you pay for. At least that is what I have been told by people I know who've been Kaplan instructors. I don't have time to read what looks to be a very long article (!), but when I was in grad school I knew people who made money (a LOT of money) doing LSAT prep courses for Kaplan. The courses were tightly managed, hyperfocsed, and they did indeed raise people's test scores. If I were going to take the LSAT, I'd take a Kaplan course for sure. Why? Because I have no faith that the test is going to test my knowledge - it is going to test my ability to take the test. If Kaplan will teach me to take the test, it's worth it.

Now as to the whole perversity of TESTING... ah, another subject.

But at least Kaplan, as a business, HAS to deliver. Unless they can actually raise people's test scores, they are not going to get people to fork over the money.

[Skip Zilla]

Thanks, David, for posting Jeremy Miller's article, One Year as a Kaplan Coach. It's unsettling in its implications for Education (with a big "E"). Laura and I got into a conversation at her blog which draws out the puss of the same kind of programmatic, problem-fixing mindset qua commercial opportunity. Without going into a lengthy attribution of similar misdirection in Educational reactive knownothingness elsewhere, which disturb the hell out of me, let me just sum up my disgust for such lack of love and attentiveness to real students' fortunes with this: "Yes, Virginia, there is an Anti-Christ."