From an ISTE wrap-up by Sarah Cargill:
Startups are moving the financial needle of the education marketplace. They’ve said that they’ve had enough with the top-down, slow P.O. buying structure of school districts and they’ve decided to name new targets: students and parents. As it turns out, they’re spot on and parents are hungry to take their children’s learning into their own hands – and homes.
And where the startups go…
Most parents will be unwilling or unable to take their kids’ learning “into their own homes;” I get that. But don’t underestimate the pull of marketers who will frame this as a way to “raise student achievement." As long as that’s the way that most parents define "their children’s learning,” there’s a lot of gold in them thar hills.
Unless, of course, we help parents reframe that learning thing. In our “Welcome Back!” letters this fall, what if we hammered home the idea that command of facts and figures and knowledge and test scores tell us very little any more as to whether or not their children have the literacies and dispositions to flourish in this “new” world of access? What if we articulated the idea that if parents really want their kids prepared for anything, they need to be in classrooms where we’re focused on solving real and important problems, creating provocative and meaningful work, connecting to other teachers and students from around the world, and doing stuff that can only happen when a vibrant, engaged community of learners gets together to do real work?
Change. The. Narrative.