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How to Get (everyone) to Sesame Street



Sesame Street was created to help prepare young children, especially children from low-income areas, for school. The show would help low SES students catch-up by giving them access to basic literacy and math skills. Or so it was intended. What actually ended up happening was something referred to by Attewell & Battle (1999) as the “Sesame Street Effect.” Low-income students did improve academically as a result of watching the program. Their rate of improvement, however, was significantly less than their higher SES peers. Thus instead of “catching-up,” lower SES students were left further behind. A technology intended to be an equalizer, ended up increasing the achievement gap.

“The Sesame Street Effect” is in on the forefront of my mind when it comes to technological innovation in education. The problem was not the technology. Sesame Street was a brilliant concept that really did help kids learn. The issue was that higher SES and lower SES children engaged with the program differently. Higher SES children would watch the program with an adult who could mediate between the technology and the child. The adult could ask follow-up questions and repeat the learning objectives. Lower SES children would watch the program on their own. The differences in how the children engaged in the technology can perhaps explain the differences in their rates of academic improvement.

I’m one of the believers who thinks that technology will revolutionize education over the next five to ten years. But I don’t think this will happen, or at least it won’t happen for ALL students, unless we really think about the role of the adult (the parent, the teacher) in mediating between these new technologies and the child.
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