On the surface, it may seem like charter schools are the ideal testing grounds for educational technology. They’re designed to be small and nimble. These “incubators of innovation,” as President Obama called them, are able to quickly try out new ideas.But in the journey towards successfully implementing educational technology in classrooms, the tortoise may outpace the hare. That’s because it’s only in big, slow-moving traditional schools that edtech can reach its full potential to democratize education.
Edtech is lauded for its ability to facilitate differentiated instruction in classrooms with a wide range of learners. But charter classrooms aren’t the best test case for this—the diverse classrooms of public schools are far better. About 98 percent of U.S. public schools had at least one student with an Individual Education Plan (IEP) because of special needs in the 2011-12 school year, according to a report by the National Center for Education Statistics. And with the rise of mainstreaming, these students are spending more time in classrooms with non-special-needs students....
This article originally appeared on Edusrge. Read the full article here.