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There's been a lot lately about "flipping the classroom," a teaching method where students are to view a lecture at home --ostensibly on-line--of their teacher presenting key concepts while saving doing harder and trickier homework-type assignments for in class. This idea appeals to me and I've been somewhat surprised that so many other education peeps out there whom I follow don't seem as enamored. Not only are they disparaging of the idea, but they seem to think "lecture" is synonymous with torture.

Some intended learning sticks with us, some slips away into oblivion and most hovers somewhere in between. The determinants are nuanced and complex. In all of the current enthusiasm for so-called flipped classrooms and the wonders of the Khan Academy's online lectures these distinction are often overlooked.

The most famous teacher in the United States right now is Salman Khan, creator of Khan Academy.  Khan Academy is a collection of nearly 3,000 online youtube tutorials mainly about math and science.  Bill Gates watches the videos with his kids, and has made Khan a household name.  Because of Khan, a new buzz-word in education is the 'flipped' classroom where kids are expected to watch videos the night before and then do their 'homework' in class, supervised by the teacher.

Khan's idea does not represent a "revolution." Posting video tutorials online is a great idea, and I have no doubt that some teachers find value in "flipping" the curriculum so that students can utilize class time to get one-on-one help. But to suggest that this is a revolution-or that it will have even a modest impact on our overall education system-is pure delusion.

Some may be put off by Superintendant John Kuhn of Texas calling out politicians directly, and flipping the notion of "failure" on its head. But he is right, and his conviction is inspiring.  (See the VIDEO of his speech BELOW.) His points reveal in a timely way an inconvenient truth in education and politics right now. NCLB, Race to the Top, and other policies that use high stakes tests to assign value to students, teachers and administrators do one thing really well: they create an even stronger disincentive for teaching in high needs schools than do the difficult working conditions that have always existed in underresourced schools--the imminent threat of being labelled unacceptable or ineffective by one narrow standradized test given on one day in a year, the results of which correspond more closely nation-wide to socio-economic status than any other factor. They create the same disincentive to learn for such students.

Here's how Salman Khan thinks schools should work: Students should learn lessons online and do homework and projects in class. This "flipping" of the traditional classroom is the operating system espoused by Khan and his Khan Academy, a Web site whose popularity is exploding as millions tune into its free videos, practice exercises and assessment tools.

"Half a year after Newark Public Schools launched an "agenda to ensure all students are in excellent schools," the plan has come under a federal civil rights investigation to determine whether it "discriminates against black students.""

We found that we did NOT need to fire anyone in order to improve. Instead, of trying to ferret out the weakest links, we sought to RETAIN everyone. Can "old dogs learn new tricks"? Yes. And old dogs KNOW a lot of valuable tricks, and if they are honored for this knowledge, and engaged in rich processes like Lesson Study and teacher research, they can build on what they know, and share it as well.

The two teachers systematically dissect the video, noting a variety of missteps. There are a few unquestionable errors of mathematics: Khan uses incorrect terminology at a couple of points. Khan is also inconsistent in his language about positive and negative numbers (using plus when he means positive, or minus when he means negative), which is perhaps a lesser sin, but poor practice and misleading for students. He's also inconsistent in his use of symbols, sometimes writing "+4", sometimes writing "4", never explaining why he does or doesn't. He making the kind of mistakes that would reduce his score on the Mathematical Quality of Instruction observational instrument, used in the Gates-funded Measures of Effective Teaching Project.

The virtual teacher has arrived - flickering away on a screen on a school bus, in a bunk bed or in the shade of a beach umbrella, and turning traditional education on its head.

The narrative surrounding Khan Academy has, it seems, gotten a bit out of hand. It's not Sal's fault. He didn't set out to become one of the biggest celebrities in education but simply to help his cousins with their math homework. But Ann Doerr, wife of venture capitalist John Doerr, picked up on it. Then Bill Gates. Then the San Jose Mercury, 60 Minutes, the New York Times ... and all of a sudden Khan Academy, a collection of low-res videos offering step-by-step instructions for how to solve math problems, was being hailed as the Next Big Thing in education. And big it is: Khan Academy boasts almost 3,300 videos that have been viewed over 160 million times. That's a heroic achievement. But there's a problem: the videos aren't very good.

At The Answer Sheet, Valerie Strauss has spurred a debate over the definition of slope-not exactly the sort of detailed intellectual stuff we might expect in a newspaper. The discussion of the finer points of mathematics is more akin to the nuanced conversations you may find in a university math department or a scholarly journal. But the source of this controversy is Sal Khan and his Khan Academy-which leads us to our need to pull back from the slope debate and address just why is there a controversy about Khan?

Here is a new critique of the Khan Academy, the subject of a widely read post I published Monday about the hype and reality of the academy. You can find that post here. And you can find a response to that post from the founder of the Khan Academy, Sal Khan, by clicking here. The following was written by Christopher Danielson and Michael Paul GHoldenberg. Danielson holds a Ph.D. in mathematics education from Michigan State University. He teaches math at Normandale Community College in Bloomington, MN. He maintains the blog "Overthinking My Teaching" and has written for Connected Mathematics. As of this writing, he has three badges and 11,041 energy points on Khan Academy. Goldenberg holds a master's degree in mathematics education from the University of Michigan, as well as master's degrees in English and psychological foundations of education from the University of Florida. He writes the blog "Rational Mathematics Education" and was a co-founder of the group Mathematically Sane. He currently coaches high school mathematics teachers in Detroit.

"Our latest Storify gives some context to the ongoing media coverage of the Khan Academy. At first almost exclusively heralded as having the potential to be an education game-changer, the videos-and Salman Khan himself-have recently come under fire for what some say is questionable pedagogy."