Exploring online preschool
by John Watson
Online preschool…the phrase conjures images of young students on devices in ways that seem antithetical to all that preschool should be.
And yet, at least one organization is attempting to use online resources to help preschool students. It has been described in several articles over the past year or so. The most prominent was an article this past summer in the New York Times. As the article, “An Online Preschool Closes a Gap but Exposes Another”, describes:
Waterford Upstart…has children spend 15 minutes a day, five days a week over the course of nine months, tapping through lessons on a computer. About 16,000 children in 15 states graduated from the program this year, and the Waterford expects to expand the program to a projected 22,000 students by 2020.
This is not a program for children of the rich, who are generally enrolled in play-based preschools that last at least several hours. Instead, it is geared to lower-income families with fewer prekindergarten options. Like hospitals that have doctors consulting through teleconferencing and elder-care facilities that offer nursing via avatar, online preschools are cheaper than traditional schooling.
An article from District Administration goes further:
the program…isn’t meant to replace traditional preschool, say its founders; it’s meant to provide a meaningful preschool experience for families who don’t have access to traditional preschool.
“We do not want to replace anything,” says Claudia Miner, executive director of Waterford.org, the Utah-based nonprofit that developed UPSTART. “Our goal is to serve children who do not have access to pre-K programs, and fill in the gaps in K-12 access.”
These quotes reference a theme we touched on recently, in a post about online gym: it is rare that online classes, schools, and services are truly competing with a readily available option that is ideal for the student and family. Instead, and especially at their start, such programs are often competing with a far-from-ideal alternative.
In the case of online preschool, it’s hard not to be sympathetic to the critics who contend that online isn’t good enough, and that as a wealthy country and society we should be able to provide better than online preschool. But the people interviewed in the New York Times article and elsewhere don’t have the option to launch a billion-dollar program. They are looking for a viable, near-term option that will be better than the current option, which all too often is nothing.
With these competing interests in mind, Chelsea Waite of the Christensen Institute offers “three principles that the public and policymakers should keep in mind when considering how online early learning programs might play a role without cutting families short on quality pre-K:
“Don’t overstate what online early learning programs are trying to accomplish.”
“Wrap additional support services around online early learning programs.”
“Design programs taking advantage of online early learning with the families they serve, not for them.”
Although Chelsea’s points are specific to online preschool, they provide valuable guidance for other situations in which an online option is substituting for a hypothetical, not-really-available option. I would generalize them as:
Be realistic, and don’t overstate the benefits or underplay the challenges.
Figure out onsite supports.
Determine the needs of schools and learners, and determine how to best to serve them in a wholistic manner.