A Bush Brother Spreads His Vision of Computerized Teaching Programs

Helpful quotes: "A recent extensive study of educational software by the federal Education Department, which looked at 15 reading and math courses used by nearly 9,500 students in 132 schools, found that computer-based instruction, while expensive, had no effect on student achievement. (Mr. Bush’s curriculum was not studied.)

Todd Oppenheimer, the author of a 2003 book, “The Flickering Mind: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom and How Learning Can Be Saved,” said the worth of computerized instruction depended on how it was used and how much it spurred inquiry."

Angela


May 30, 2007
On Education
A Bush Brother Spreads His Vision of Computerized Teaching Programs

By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
SPOTSYLVANIA, Va.

To review with her class of fifth graders the tapestry of reasons Europeans came to America, Cheryle Hodges clicks on a mouse that brings a roly-poly disc jockey to a screen at the front of the classroom here at Harrison Road Elementary. He throws up his hands in time with the music, a move the children instantly mimic, as they call out the refrain he launches: “Money, Souls and Soil.”

In less than two minutes, the rap mentions cash crops of sugar and tobacco, the missionary drive and the push for land that propelled colonialism — all facts the children are expected to know for state standardized exams in social studies. The teacher picks up on another lyric, noting European powers that dominated exploration of North America — a point the children are also expected to know.

“The kids are so into the video games,” Ms. Hodges, a veteran teacher of 27 years, said as the children watched a cartoon character named Mr. Bighead, who switched hats rapid-fire to portray the British, French and Spanish perspectives on the colonies. “We have to entertain them, or we lose them.”

The clips emanate from a purple plastic box, known as a COW, for Curriculum on Wheels. They are the brainchild of Neil Bush, brother of the president, who is president of Ignite! Learning. The company has sold its science and social studies curriculums, aimed mostly at middle school grades, to 2,300 of the nation’s 85,000 public schools, and is seeking to expand its business to China, Japan, South Korea and the Middle East.

Mr. Bush’s curriculum coordinates with both the standards movement sweeping states and its national embodiment, No Child Left Behind, which requires all children in Grades 3 to 8 to be tested each year in reading and math, and once in science. Some educators have criticized Mr. Bush for using his brother’s No Child Left Behind law to market his product.

His mother, Barbara, also rankled some philanthropists last year when she donated an undisclosed sum to a relief fund for victims of Hurricane Katrina on the condition that some of the money be spent to buy COWs for the Houston schools that had taken in victims.

In a recent interview in Washington, Mr. Bush said he had not lobbied for business through his connections to President Bush. “We have a very strict policy of having no interface with any agency of the federal government,” he said.

To educators, though, a big question is whether a technology-based curriculum — Mr. Bush’s or any of a multitude of others — works.

Inside each COW is a hard drive containing a year’s worth of social studies or science lessons done in short cartoons, songs and occasional straight narration. The lessons are devised to match the standards in many states, and the company is working on a math curriculum.

Mr. Bush said his curriculum made social studies and science more accessible. “Middle schools use 19th-century technologies to teach 21st-century kids,” he said. “Textbooks honestly have failed middle school children. They rely on children’s ability to read, and they’re boring.”

Mr. Bush said he began the business with no experience in pedagogy or software development. His only real experience, he said, was as a boy with dyslexia. Teachers once told his mother that Neil, then in the seventh grade, would probably never graduate from St. Albans, the Washington prep school that he did, ultimately, complete.

A recent extensive study of educational software by the federal Education Department, which looked at 15 reading and math courses used by nearly 9,500 students in 132 schools, found that computer-based instruction, while expensive, had no effect on student achievement. (Mr. Bush’s curriculum was not studied.)

Todd Oppenheimer, the author of a 2003 book, “The Flickering Mind: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom and How Learning Can Be Saved,” said the worth of computerized instruction depended on how it was used and how much it spurred inquiry.

“To what extent does the software elaborate and open up academic exploration, and to what extent does it narrow it down, regiment it and standardize it?” he asked. “If it’s in the first category, it’s possibly good. If it’s in the second category, it’s more than likely bad.”

Classrooms here in Spotsylvania are participating in a study that will test whether children using the COWs do better on the state exams than those not using them.

On the company’s Web site, ignitelearning.com, are testimonials from teachers and school officials, some of whom say that they have been able to toss out their textbooks because the COW is so comprehensive. In Spotsylvania they have held on to their textbooks, and use the COW mostly to supplement lessons. Jean Young and Rebecca Mills, who head the county’s science and social studies instruction, said the COWs’ content did not completely match Virginia’s state standards in the two subjects, so had teachers tossed their textbooks, there would have been gaps in their teaching.

Back in Harrison Road Elementary, in a more crowded classroom across the hall from Ms. Hodges’s fifth-grade class, another fifth-grade teacher, Merilee Grubb, had a handful of students who seemed distracted, chatting with friends and ignoring her. But when Ms. Grubb clicked on the videos, the children quieted down and watched almost automatically, with some singing along.

Once the clip ended, though, the same scattered rumbles of distraction ran through the room, and Ms. Grubb had to remind the audience to pipe down. The clips seemed to change the classroom chemistry somehow, raising the expectation among students that their teacher should be just as funny and engaging as Mr. Bighead.

Jeremy Siefker, a middle school science teacher, used the machine a few times over the last year, but was struck by how passive it seemed. “As a review, it uses catchy phrases and tunes,” he said, “but as far as scientific investigation and inquiry, I don’t think it’s very good.”

Spotsylvania received the machines free this year in exchange for participating in the study. Usually, the cost is $3,800 for the machine and $1,000 a year after that. Alternatively, schools can pay a flat fee of $6,800 for the machine outright. But at a meeting of the county’s middle school science teachers last week, the cost was put in perspective; each school gets $1,000 to cover all the lab supplies, equipment and other expenses connected with science for an entire year.

Perhaps the moment of truth will come with the results of last Friday’s statewide exams. If the students using the COWs do better than those using textbooks alone, the findings will be heralded as a ringing endorsement of the approach’s success.

But perhaps those results are not all that matters.

Mr. Oppenheimer said that at the heart of learning was a mystery: a teacher who draws upon years of knowledge and experience to connect with a fresh mind, lighting the spark for a new, untried soul to find its way, going places the teacher could never have conceived.

And that may be nearly impossible to put in a box.

E-mail: schemo@nytimes.com.
Joseph Berger is on vacation.


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company