BLOWBACK? Matt Richtel has a knack for taking edtech into headlines. His latest NYTimes frontpage piece explores the deliberate absence of technology in the Waldorf School in Los Altos, CA, where many Silicon Valley execs shell out big bucks to send their kids to school. Waldorf parent Jonathan Martin is not a fan of his "snarky" tone, arguing that this story is merely a "pawn for Richtel's antagonistic crusade." Others decry this piece as a sort of conspiratorial "class warfare." Waldorf has a lovely philosophy--it also has more than twice the per-student budget of any public school in California and deeply engaged parents. We like the point made to EdSurge by Dreambox CEO (and now chair) Jessie Woolley-Wilson in a longer conversation on the role of technology: her goal is to use Dreambox to "re-democratize learning so that it doesn't matter who your parents are or what your zip code is."
