Equal Scrutiny

In the current rush to adopt and expand digital learning, many important considerations are being overlooked that will have major consequences for the future of American public education. Equal Scrutiny reveals what is really going on in the world of digital education and offers a realistic framework for parents, educators, and researchers to use in evaluating how well students are actually being served. "By connecting digital education to the social and economic forces that are powerfully affecting education and the realities of teachers' lives, Patricia Burch and Annalee Good provide us with a nuanced, unromantic, and data-rich analysis of the limits and possibilities of digital education." -- Michael W. Apple, John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison "This lucid challenge of the marketing hype promoting privatizing initiatives in digital education directs needed attention to the paucity of evidence behind claims and lays needed groundwork for future empirical studies." -- Henry M. Levin, William H Kilpatrick Professor of Economics and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University "Burch and Good skillfully demonstrate how technology and privatization have become intertwined in the current school reform movement. Few researchers offer us the quality of insights that Burch and Good give us in Equal Scrutiny." -- Christopher Lubienski, professor of education policy, organization, and leadership, College of Education, University of Illinois "Equal Scrutiny is a must-read for all twenty-first century educators. Revealing, sensible, balanced, and provocative, this book should lead to much-needed discussions about how digital education, which is mostly unregulated and unaccountable, is changing schooling in ways that have yet to increase learning opportunities for low-income students." -- Jill Koyama, assistant professor, educational leadership and policy, Graduate School of Education, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York Patricia Burch is an associate professor of education at the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. Annalee G. Good is the research director for the Multisite Evaluation of Supplemental Educational Services at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. She also teaches online courses for middle-schoolers.