-
Apr
8
2012
I have in my hands a copy of the 2012 Interim Study Survey, a list of 20 policy topics proposed by various legislators and their committees for scrutiny and discussion over the summer. (Remember: legislators, like teachers, don’t really get the summer off; they spend their long break studying and getting ready for next year. The big difference: teachers do their summer prep for free, while legislators get paid $110 a day.)
Among the proposals is Item I, serendipitously for “Imagine”… as in “Imagine Learning”:
Study of education and student accountability
The owner and creator of the “Imagine Learning” program created this for student achievement and accountability by developing an environment that makes it easy and exciting for kids to “buy-in” to their education experience. The success rate is extremely high for all cultures and socio-economic backgrounds. This would be a great program to adopt in South Dakota—public, private, and reservation.
[Representative Patty Miller (R-16/McCook Lake), 2012 Interim Study Survey, Item I, sent to members of the South Dakota Legislature, 2012.03.31]
Given Rep. Miller’s votes and clueless advocacy for Governor Daugaard’s package of destructive education reforms, I’m not sure I’d take her word for any educational product being “great.”
But Rep. Miller’s language in this proposal sets off my sales pitch alert. Easy and exciting… education experience… I feel as if Miller is reading off a card handed to her by an Imagine Learning sales rep. It sounds like she’s asking the Legislature to convene a committee meeting not to comprehensively study the effectiveness of a variety of teaching tools and methods but rather to sit down for a sales pitch from one private company selling one specific product. Does Rep. Miller really expect the Legislature to sign a contract with Imagine Learning to buy its specific software and mandate that all of the teachers in the state use it in their classrooms?
Even if such an action benefiting one company fell within the proper jurisdiction of the Legislature (I’m pretty sure it doesn’t), on what basis does Rep. Miller pick Imagine Learning from the panoply of private players in the pedagogical market?
My research overnight is not nearly as thorough as the conscientious study our legislators would give Imagine Learning over the summer. But so far, I’ve learned online that this Utah-based company was founded in 2002 with a focus on computer-assisted English instruction worldwide. The company currently has a 92% renewal rate among over 2000 schools purchasing its software. It also sounds like Imagine Learning was able to get its Utah legislators to fund a statewide license for its product… after making a few campaign donations to local conservatives.
Imagine Learning has evidently made a successful sales pitch to numerous schools and legislators. The company offers lots of first-name-only testimonials. Its software pumps out plenty of music, cartoons, videos, and interactive games to keep students glued to the computer screen. But does it improve English skills?
Imagine Learning cites two studies affirming its ability to add value in the classroom, an analysis of early literacy test scores among customers/students at three elementary schools in one Illinois district and an analysis of English test scores in one California elementary school near the Mexican border. Both studies use the same methodology: add Imagine Learning English activities to some of the kids’ regular classroom activities but not to others, then compare their gains in test scores. Both studies show ILE users making greater gains than non-ILE users.
That sounds great… but both studies sound more like sales pitches than solid science.
Both studies appear to have targeted the lowest achievers. The kids who need the most help have the most to gain, and their gains will look numerically more impressive than those of kids already scoring high. Imagine you have two groups of kids, one with a test average of 40, the other with a test average of 80. You pour on the teaching and raise everyone’s test scores by 16 points. You can happily report that the first group increased its scores by 40%, while the second group improved by only 20%. Defining your subsets by ability clouds our view of whether the extra help you offered your low achievers really produced better-than-expected results or whether those percentages are just an artifact of your selective math.
Neither study addresses confounding factors. Neither study looks at other factors that may differentiate students within the small samples studies. Neither study mentions differences among teachers and teaching methods that may affect learning outcomes.
Neither study compares Imagine Learning to other educational interventions. Suppose x is standard classroom instruction. If our kids are struggling, we teachers understand that we have to add something to x. These two studies compare (x + 0) to (x + i). If we have extra resources to invest, we teachers want to compare (x + i) to (x + j) and (x + k). It seems obvious that some extra English practice will produce better results than no extra English practice. These studies cannot make clear whether the gains students achieved resulted uniquely from Imagine Learning’s product or whether the same gains would have come from extra practice in any other form, such as an extra 15 minutes each day of standing on our heads and yodeling our vocabulary lists. (Actually, I might have to try that with my French students!)
Both studies come from local private consultants. Both studies are labeled “Independent Assessment Study.” The Illinois study comes from ClearVue Research Inc. The California study comes from JointStrategy Consulting. Neither company has an online presence. Both were based in Utah at the time of the studies. Neither company has a substantial Web presence. The ClearVue research more so than the JointStrategy research is written as a sales pitch:
ClearVue Research, Inc does not hesitate, therefore, to recommend Imagine Learning English to public school administrators seeking a program designed to accelerate language and literacy skills in the early grades [ClearVue 2007].
You don’t get language like that from independent scholars. We can assume these consultants were paid by Imagine Learning to write up these two meager studies. So far I can find no truly independent scholarly analysis of learning results from Imagine Learning. Nearly all of the information you’ll find online is press releases and other information from folks making money off this product.
Our local school districts can apply their own expertise to determine the educational materials on which they want to spend their scarce tax dollars. They don’t need legislators like Patty Miller making specific purchasing decisions for them. Legislators, you’ll want to focus your summer efforts on studying the impacts of statewide policies, not sales pitches from out-of-state profiteers.
11 comments








