Ohio State recently received a $2.99 million dollar grant from the U.S Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences to help implement a system that will track middle and high school students’ progress in math and science. The project will use a networking system to track information students enter into graphing calculators in algebra, physics and chemistry courses. Teachers will be able to use the data to gauge their students’ understanding of concepts and how effectively they are being taught.
OSU’s College of Education has already begun implementing the program in some of the chosen classrooms. The project will eventually involve 150 teachers and up to 15,000 students from 28 different states.
In a Lantern editorial last Wednesday, this page called for Ohio universities to do more to help reverse the mediocre quality of secondary education in this state. It also encouraged OSU, as a superior public institution, to use a large number of its resources to better help prepare students for college and the workforce. This program appears to be a step in the right direction.
By actively tracking students’ understanding as they progress through a subject, teachers can address and correct students’ specific difficulties in a subject as they arise, rather than discovering poor retention from subpar test scores. Catching these problems early should have a trickle-down effect on students’ ability to learn and retain the information presented to them in school.
As with any new innovations and teaching theories, it is difficult to estimate how effective this program will be. Given the current abysmal state of education in this state and country, a radical approach may be the only way to solve the problem.
We applaud this attempt to cure some of this state’s educational failures. OSU, as a proud research and resource laden school, will undoubtedly use the Department of Education’s money with precision and promise. We hope for its success, and for implementation of future programs of this nature.
