Why Technology Hasn't Lowered Costs or Improved Quality in Education

Below is an article that was published in the Spring of '06 that I wrote for Threshold magazine, a publication of Cable in The Classroom. I am on their Advisory Board. In short, in every other industry, technological innovation is an effort to increase productivity. Productivity is greater output with the same input of labor or the same output with less input of labor. No matter the case, productivity is dependent upon integrating technology with labor -- something that education at every level has willfully ignored.

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OUTSIDE HELP: IMPROVING PRODUCTIVITY IN SCHOOLS

After capital expenditures, instructional labor is education’s biggest expense. Yet, despite the enormous potential of technology for improving the quality and quantity of instruction, and the enormous pressures on schools to reduce spending, little has been accomplished to enable greater teaching productivity. Put simply, to improve productivity, either more or better instruction must be provided to the same students or more students must be taught with the same resources.

Schools that expect technology investments to drive quality improvements and cost reductions would do better by focusing on products and services that answer questions such as:

* How do we free up more time for our most skilled teachers to perform the most complex instructional activities?

* What parts of the educational process are best done by computers instead of people?

* Are there parts of the educational process that could be performed more cheaply by others?

* What services does my school provide that cannot be done better or more cheaply by someone else?

The answers to these questions are neither simple nor easy, and they threaten traditional notions of appropriate student:teacher ratios, quality control, classroom design, funding formulas, salary structures, and job responsibilities. However, every successful technology innovation in the history of humankind has enabled people to do more with less. Education should be no exception.

PRODUCTIVE APPROACHES
Though these questions may be thorny and difficult, the traditional 20:1 student:lecturer model is giving way to more productive ways of offering instruction. While most examples are in higher education, they do offer models for K–12 education as well. Schools are combining their own instructors with other instructional services to create programs that are cheaper, more effective, and more scalable. For instance:

To free up professor time for course management, course design, and student intervention, the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) contracted with a commercial company to grade student essays within 24 hours and adopted a textbook that included an essay-review service. The benefits? For the students, they receive suggested grades within 24 hours, have a third-party review, and the graders have more consistent training and provide more consistent assessment than could be provided in a traditional structure. For KCTCS, one instructor can teach more students, the per-student cost is lower, and some of the cost of providing the service is borne by the textbook provider.

After deciding to offer a program focused on math and writing for underprepared students, Kaplan University partnered with an online tutoring company to provide the assessment, content delivery, and tutoring components. The students receive tutoring access up to 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The school is able to shorten the development time of a program, reduce its risk and development costs, and rely on the expertise of a partner company for specific instructional activities such as online tutoring.

The National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT) has worked with more than 50 colleges to redesign high-enrollment courses. NCAT results demonstrate that, by rethinking instructional labor strategies, schools can increase student success and decrease per-student costs. When schools make greater use of digital content and courseware and rethink student: teacher ratios, staffing patterns, and faculty roles, students need less intervention from live instructors, and more of what they do need can be provided by tutors, teaching assistants, or course coordinators.

The Baltimore City School System is one of many public school systems nationwide to hire teachers overseas to affordably meet the “highly qualified teacher” requirement
of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The system hired as many as 50 Filipino teachers to teach in the city’s schools. Additionally, many online Supplemental Education Service (SES) providers under NCLB use tutors located overseas. Whether in person or online, tapping the global market for educational labor allows more flexible staffing, and either lower-cost or more-qualified staffing.

WHY NOT?
Opponents might argue that the intimate teacher/student relationship is lost if grading is outsourced. However, the reality is that the intimate teacher/student relationship is an ideal that is far less common than we would hope and is far more expensive than we would admit. Initial results from most of the NCAT’s projects and from the Kentucky grading project show that student performance actually improved, while per-student costs decreased. Another argument against such models is that outsourced instructors will have different teaching techniques and standards than those taught at a particular school. While there certainly are some teaching functions that are best not outsourced—particularly those that require
a high degree of socialization, such as most teaching of elementary students—there are many functions that can be easily outsourced. For instance, math, science, and writing fundamentals are essentially the same across schools, states, and countries. Most schools are already comfortable with outsourcing at least some elements of education—many schools that offer distance-learning courses do so through third-party providers, and textbooks and courseware are the result of outsourcing content development and delivery.

Every year, the cost of education outpaces inflation with no increase in overall student performance. In "The World Is Flat," the best-selling book that attempts to define trends and technologies in the global marketplace, Thomas Friedman describes how companies in almost every industry are “insourcing” their logistics—letting partner companies manage the tracking and delivery of their products and services—and outsourcing elements of their production process. These trends are increasingly part of education as well.

No matter how it’s defined, education, like other hidebound industries before it, is about to become part of a global market. In other industries, this has resulted in products and services that are cheaper and of higher quality. Viewed one way, this threatens the cost and service structure of American education. Viewed another, this is an opportunity to rethink the components and functions of a school and all of the political, economic, and accountability structures that surround it. If doing so can improve productivity in schools, more students will ultimately receive more opportunities to learn, achieve, and succeed.

Service Level Chicanery

For online tutoring, students want on-demand help. Frankly, why else would they choose to be tutored online? As the online tutoring industry evolves into a larger market, it is interesting to note the lengths to which companies will go to to promise on-demand assistance. For instance, Tutor.com claims on-demand tutoring on its web site and in various corporate blogs. However, their service is only available from 11 AM - 10 PM (PT). Perhaps a more accurate claim would be "on-demand tutoring except for 13 hours per day." Worse, TutorVista (and many other small tutoring companies) claim 24/7 tutoring. In practice, this means that a student can schedule a tutor at any time for any time with sufficient notice. It does not mean that a student can get help exactly when they want it. At SMARTHINKING, we offer true on-demand math tutoring for the fall and spring semesters. During the summer, drop-in tutoring is available for 16 hours per day because there is not a sufficient volume of students to support full 24/7 access.

Why would companies spin these little white marketing lies? Because true on-demand tutoring -- 24/7, drop-in, live service -- is more expensive, requires greater scale, requires greater expertise, and requires greater data than pre-scheduled tutoring. These companies are trying to attract customers without investing in the tutoring force and management expertise necessary to offer on-demand service.

To understand why on-demand tutoring is more expensive and more complex, it helps to think of on-demand tutoring like a customer service center. When you call a company or utility, you expect to talk to someone on the other end. Running such a center is very similar to running an on-demand tutoring service. A critical operational variable in a call-center is "utilization capacity." This is the percentage of time that tutors spend tutoring students. It utilization capacity is too high then students have to wait a long time for tutors. If utilization capacity is too low, then the company is losing money. For instance, if a tutor is being paid $12 per hour and utilization capacity is 50%, the cost per hour tutored is $24. But, because one or more tutors are almost always available, there are no wait times. So, utilization capacity and wait times are inter-related variables. To do it right, a company needs to set a service level target and then determine the target utilization capacity to meet that target.

So, utilization capacity and service levels are mutually dependent variables. However, achieving a target service level also depends on the average length of a tutoring session. For instance, if a typical session in a call center is 2 minutes long, then a customer service center doesn't need to staff as many people to achieve a low wait time because customer service representatives are frequently available. However, for online tutoring, the average session length is around 30 minutes. This means that, with a small number of students per hour, an online tutoring company must have a very low utilization capacity to meet minimum desired service levels. As the number of students per hour rises, utilization capacity can rise while keeping service levels constant. Because utilization capacity can rise, it costs less to offer on-demand tutoring with a large number of students than with a small number of students.

Lastly, to manage all of this efficiently, an online tutoring company needs management sufficiently skilled to schedule tutors appropriately and sufficient data to know when the peaks and valleys of demand are likely to be.

So, to sum up, true on-demand tutoring generates higher labor costs because a portion of a tutor's time will not be used, requires scale to keep the unused portion of time as small as possible, requires management expertise, and good data systems. This is a significant investment that all small online tutoring companies are unwilling to make. The expense of true on-demand tutoring combined with its attraction to customers is the impetus behind the false advertising cropping up in the online tutoring industry.

Defining Online Tutoring Quality

What is quality education? What is quality teaching? How can one measure it? These are some of the thorniest questions in education today. No single system or metric can determine it. For instance, standardized tests suffer from the fact that students may not test well, may have been trained on the wrong material, or may be having a bad day. Student survey data may reflect student opinions of the teacher rather than opinions of the learning. For instance, numerous studies in post-secondary education show a positive correlation between lenient grading and student satisfaction. Longitudinal data from schools, such as job placement rates or lifetime earnings of students, cannot be easily compared to each other because students at different schools enter and exit with different skill levels. Lastly, portfolio analysis -- the compilation and examination of a given student's work over a period of time -- suffers from the subjectivity of the teacher. Due to the flaws of any single metric, those that need to measure educational quality -- such as schools, accrediting agencies and parents -- are forced to rely on a meta-analysis of all of the metrics listed above, input analysis (credentials of instructors, training processes, and others), and reputation.

So what does this mean for online tutoring? A quick search of the Internet will demonstrate that every online tutoring company claims to have "high quality" tutors. Most will claim that their tutors are extensively trained. All list fabulous quotes from users. All show terrific survey results. All claim grade increases. So, how does a parent or a school determine who really is better? Using the above framework, they need to look at inputs, metrics, and reputation. Of these three, inputs are the least manipulable because inputs impact the cost structure of a business. They are also the least advertised, because they are a proxy for educational quality. However, they probably provide the best indication of the educational value of a service.

INPUTS
By looking at what goes into the tutoring process, one can get a sense of what should come out. The inputs that are relevant to online tutoring are tutor credentials, tutor training, tutor oversight, tutoring philosophy, service availability, service levels, breadth of service, and ease-of-use.

1. Tutor Credentials: Generally, tutors with advanced degrees in their discipline have a better understanding of the material than those that don't. This is particularly relevant in math and science. Companies that don't indicate the degree levels of their tutors are typically relying on current college students or graduates as opposed to masters level and PhD tutors.
2. Tutor Training: Just about everyone has been taught by someone who is brilliant in their discipline, but doesn't know how to teach. Tutor training on how to tutor is just as, if not more, important than subject level expertise. When students need help, they are typically frustrated and lack confidence. An effective tutor not only helps them with the subject matter, but encourages them as well. At SMARTHINKING, we call this the "affective" element of tutoring. Again, every company will claim to do this. However, if a company is serious about tutor training, its tutors will be part-time employees as opposed to independent contractors. Though hiring tutors as independent contractors is simpler and cheaper, IRS regulations require that any position that requires significant training as a job requirement must be filled by an employee.
3. Tutor Oversight: Tutoring is a one-to-one social experience that combines the delivery of subject knowledge with, hopefully, the social cues necessary to encourage the learner. However, as with any human interaction, there can be miscommunication between student and tutor, mistakes made in the provision of information, and differences in communication styles. Identifying and addressing these sorts of issues requires the subjective perspective of experienced educators. At SMARTHINKING, we have former college professors that oversee each of our disciplines. Further, they contribute to the scholarship surrounding online tutoring.
4. Tutoring Philosophy: An online tutoring service can be a learning service or an answer service. While not mutually exclusive, they are certainly not the same. Frequently, students want an answer, not a lesson. Tutoring companies that evaluate their tutors solely on student satisfaction ratings give tutors the incentive to do the work for the students. While this might make good business sense for a company trying to sell its services to consumers, it's not good education.
5. Service Availability, Breadth and Levels: All of these inputs are for naught if an online tutoring service doesn't provide service at the moment and in a subject that the student needs it and without an onerous wait time.
6. Ease-of-Use: Again, all of these inputs are for naught if the online tutoring technology is not user-friendly and capable of supporting educational interactions. For instance, Voice over the Internet (VOIP) is a feature that is frequently requested, but seldom used. This is because the set-up and performance for VOIP -- microphones, speakers, soundcards, volume settings, bandwidth, archiving, non-duplex service, voice lagtimes, and others -- make it more cumbersome than helpful. Also, math notation is notoriously difficult to do on the Internet. Technology that enables easy superscripts, subscripts, fractions, graphing, and other mathematical symbols enables effective online tutoring.
   

METRICS
Every tutoring company, SMARTHINKING included, touts its student survey results, quotes from satisfied customers, and sample tutoring interactions. Frankly, all of these are easily manipulated for marketing purposes. The only outcome metric that is more objective than the others are independent studies conducted by clients or others. While these will certainly have their share of methodological flaws, the bias of the company is removed.

REPUTATION
Because outcome data is so manipulable and input data is hard to discern, reputation and, by extension, brand, plays a role in determining educational quality. In large part, reputation is created by quality service over time. It is also reflected by a company's client base. For instance, to determine educational quality, one might look at the tutoring services chosen by other schools and educators. Presumably, other educators will vet a tutoring company on its educational features more fully than a parent, student or library might.

Despite the emphasis on testing in No Child Left Behind, the pressure being put on college accrediting agencies to measure school quality, and the growing demand for consumer educational services, the question of what is educational quality is not likely to be solved soon. In the meantime, those who need to look at quality are best served by evaluating an education provider holistically on inputs, metrics, and reputation, with an emphasis on inputs.