This teacher blogger takes issue with the opinion article written by Kerrie Dallman, the president of the Colorado Education Association, supporting inBloom, a project of Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch.
She writes:
“Aside from your support of inBloom in Colorado and the glaring ethics and privacy issues the system poses, I have some real problems with your argument that teachers need inBloom as a “tool.”
“First, you claim that inBloom fixes the problem that teachers “don’t have enough time to truly personalize learning for every student to meet their individual needs.” Sure: teachers who log into 30 systems with different usernames and passwords each day (this really happens?) waste time. But the solution to that waste of time isn’t to consolidate confidential information about students into one database; it’s to reevaluate the overuse of data that you describe. After all, the best teachers in the world have been successful for hundreds of years without staring at test results and other flawed data on spreadsheets, and those teachers will continue to be successful whether the Gates Foundation gets its hands on children’s personal information or not. The idea that storing loads of statistical data about our children can “personalize learning” is counterintuitive, as the testing culture that accompanies corporate educational reform reduces students and teachers to numbers and depersonalizes the personal culture of learning teachers work so hard to achieve. As you note, “nothing can ever replace the instincts of a teacher.” Unfortunately, the people making decisions about education don’t trust the instincts of a teacher.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Actually, the people making the decisions about education ONLY trust the instincts of the teachers who work in their own children’s private schools, where there is little, if any, standardized testing and teachers continue to have autonomy in their classrooms, without being required to follow common standards or implement high-stakes tests and stare “at test results and other flawed data on spreadsheets.”
When our representatives in government have determined that only the elites deserve prime filet mignon and dog food is what everyone else should get, is there really any question whatsoever about equity in our nation?
You are right, of course. I can confirm such teaching practices in the private school at which I taught and from which both of my children graduated and went on to the University of Michigan, and graduated. The autonomy was a good part of the fun of teaching there, which in order to have I accepted lower wages and a defined contribution pension plan. The other part of the fun was the great kids.
You seem to assume, however, that the purpose of America is to achieve equity for its citizens, rather than merely freedom and opportunity. It is entirely possible, however, that the effort to achieve equity through government has the opposite effect, of increasing wealth disparity (as well as diminishing freedom). If so, it would be a cruel paradox.
A million people left Detroit after the 1967 riot, taking much of the city’s tax base with it. Until you pass a law saying people cannot move out of the city, that they MUST stay there to keep it integrated and to keep its services funded, you are going to get separation by assets, and de facto segregation. And if Detroit can then no longer afford to repair its street lights, guarantee public safety and emergency services, and deal with the drug traffic, only those stuck there will stay there.
So, for the sake of equity, do you support government control of where a citizen can buy property? As long as schools are quasi funded by property taxes, that’s the conclusion your assumption seems to lead to.
When “high-income kids who don’t graduate from college are 2.5 times more likely to end up rich than low-income kids who do get a degree,” then the path to “freedom and opportunity” is not a level playing field for all. I’ve taught in private schools, too, for unlivable wages, no benefits and no pension, and three college degrees was not a ticket to the middle class for me.
“RIP, American Dream? Why It’s So Hard for the Poor to Get Ahead Today”: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/rip-american-dream-why-its-so-hard-for-the-poor-to-get-ahead-today/276943/
I also know that a narrowed curriculum, dictated standards and frequent mandated bubble tests would have seriously constrained and prevented me from providing my students an enriched, well-rounded education.
I find it impossible to believe that politicians, who would never choose to send their own children to the public schools under their control, are speaking honestly when they contend that the “reforms” they prescribe for educating the masses are for the purpose of providing high quality, college and career ready education. I think it’s a hoax for the purpose of creating massive numbers of low-wage workers for their corporate sponsors.
I agree with almost everything you say, and also with the remedies proposed by the author of the Atlantic article. Somehow we need to reach every kid.
As a teacher, I simply don’t have time to go through the records of every one of my 150+ students and ascertain their best “learning style”, academic history, test scores, etc. I refuse to run a classroom that is subdivided sixteen different ways.
The premise that more information is helpful to teachers is fundamentally flawed.
Considering the low class sizes that are touted by the private schools attended by the kids of politicians, I highly doubt their teachers have anywhere near 150+ individual student needs to address.
Most of the unregulated charter schools beloved by politicians are exempt from the Common Core etc., including mass data collection and sharing, and many of them tout low class sizes as well. Since neither the private school kids nor the charter school students are subject to the same privacy violations, it looks like this is a strong incentive proffered by the elites to get parents to pull their kids out of public schools and place them in charters and private schools.
Why people don’t see these moves by politicians and their corporate sponsors as class warfare that is being waged against middle and low income families, for the sake of privatization and increasing the coffers of wealthy elites, is just beyond me.
Right again, though whether it is deliberate “class warfare” seems to me more of a Marxist rallying cry than anything else. Yet, that that is the consequence of the current drift of events is undeniable. As I’ve said several times here, “You can have what your daddy can pay for,” but what happens to the children with no daddies? The government takes over, and very possibly could be doing a better job by its by-default children. But because there must be a bureaucracy to manage the money for those children, government daddy-dom costs perhaps twice or thrice as much as what a real daddy must spend. It isn’t, of course, fair, but it is real.
Short of restrictive laws saying any fetus without a certified responsible daddy must be aborted, I doubt things will change. In fact, the incentives go the other way. Mothers of children can qualify for SSI, for food stamps, for section 8, which provides for minimal needs, but it doesn’t provide for first class education any more.
And then what you get is the sad Treyvon Martin, going nowhere except to prison, and desperate George Zimmerman trying to hang on to what little he had, thinking gun toting would help him do so. And Treyvon mistaking him for some kind of white homosexual predator (creepy ass cracker), jumped him, and began beating the crap out of him, giving him an old fashioned whuppin, not expecting GZ to be packing.
If Treyvon had liked school and been able to do well in that environment, I doubt he would have beaten up on GZ, and if the robberies in his gated community had not been perpetrated by hoodie wearing thieves, I doubt GZ would have been so frustrated that like a wanna be cop, he would have considered concealed carrying a part of the solution.
That’s why, somehow, we have to reach every kid.
And we don’t need to wade through the useless “data”. We teach little and growing people. We see them, hear them, talk to them. We listen to them read, discuss, question. We read what they write. We conference and watch them grow.
I don’t need numbers on a spread sheet because they are not assets to me (coined by the Rheeject).
We are professionals with experience, credentials and knowledge. We are not on an assembly line making widgets.
It is a waste of money, but they don’t listen because they don’t care and they don’t respect teachers despite their flowery B$.
create chaos, create change. agree with Cosmic Tinkerer but have to tell you that private schools are in deep with this too, some by choice believe it or not and some by force as in Catholic private schools.
the only use of this “tool” of data will be to manipulate it and use it against parents children scholls, teachers and citizens. the arguments for it are a farce. people who support it are either paid off, threatened or really really stupid and need to get away from our children. The data mining is not the only predatory factor in the reform business, common core methods seem to mirror those of Grooming used by religious cults and pedophiles.
Reblogged this on Crazy Crawfish's Blog and commented:
Great debunking of the pro-Gates/pro-inBloom propaganda being spewed into the media by folks masquerading as concerned and impressed education stakeholders. If you listen closely to these posterboards you might even hear in the background. . . “Work from the privacy of your own home and earn zillions of dollars with my new X money making program. Listen to this testimonial from. . .” Or “Befoe the magic mate cutting sy
Children’s and families’ right to privacy is an impediment to profiteers.
Beware:
http://thetruthoneducationreform.blogspot.com/2012/12/blog-post_7246.html?view=snapshot
http://thetruthoneducationreform.blogspot.com/2012/12/blog-post_5636.html?view=snapshot
http://thetruthoneducationreform.blogspot.com/2012/12/blog-post_4149.html?view=snapshot
http://thetruthoneducationreform.blogspot.com/2012/12/blog-post_65.html?view=snapshot
“As you note, “nothing can ever replace the instincts of a teacher. ‘Unfortunately, the people making decisions about education don’t trust the instincts of a teacher.'”
And there you have it … denigration of teacher expertise.
Kerrie nailed it!
Peter Pan is correct about Catholic schools being forced in to things such as Common Core and a lot of our parents have no clue about this. That’s what all the textbook companies cater to now and it is too likely that SAT & ACT will be Common Core based not to teach CC standards. All of the Catholic elementary schools in my Archdiocese have been administering the Iowa Test of Basic Skills for students in grades 2-8 for years now. I’m waiting to see what test will be given if not starting this upcoming school year, then by the next. However, we will not be having any such data base. Alabama’s public school students were pure lucky that Alabama did not succeed in gettting a RTTT grant.
Hats off to the two moms of Catholic school students in Indianna for leading the grassroots effort to get Common Core and all that is associated with it paused in their state so that it could be better studied and understood by all. Hopefully, truth will prevail.
I don’t understand the knee-jerk response to technology. Much of this seems to be a response to standardized testing, but until we manage to get rid of that there’s not a lot of point in getting angry about the technology. It seems like we’re protesting fireworks because the same technology has been used for war.
The reality for teachers in our district is that they are required to track some data on the students each year. The expectation is that they will also differentiate instruction. For some of them, this means balancing different learning styles and students on different levels, including the students with IEPs, those with other learning challenges, those in the mainstream, and those with ALPs (advanced learning plans). The technology could allow them to quickly check how a student did with a concept last week, access a learning plans database with some new ideas that the teacher could try with that student, and do so for each student in the classroom. It’s a fascinating idea, especially with the links to different lesson plans, suggestions for various learning styles and the like.
I’ve heard teachers in Jefferson County talk about how the inBloom system would simplify life when it comes to the number of systems they are required to use for student data. They’re not paid to do this (in fact, our teachers haven’t had a raise for years, though they did agree to a pay cut during budget cut talks a couple of years ago). The teachers are everyday people like you and me, talking about the reality of our classrooms, district expectations and using technology to ease the burden. This is something the teachers have been asking for: a way to streamline the various systems so they could access all the information that would help them individualize instruction to a student without accessing multiple databases. It wouldn’t have to be through inBloom, but the reality is that our district does not have the money to develop something similar on their own.
Our teachers in Jefferson County are EXCELLENT teachers. The fact that some see the possibilities technology offers does not make them incompetent or suggest that they aren’t any good in the classroom. Our teachers don’t deserve to be criticized as they were by the teacher-blogger quoted above.
It’s also worth noting, again, that it’s not that the data isn’t already in databases or vulnerable to hacking. If the teacher-blogger was reading closely, she’d note that the system already exists in various databases, some administered through third-parties, and the thing that the inBloom system would do would be to consolidate those systems. Same data, but stored in one place rather than thirty. As has been previously mentioned, the district will control what data is released to inBloom. As a parent, I haven’t been concerned that my third-grader’s data is being released to the third parties that administer some of the current systems, and I haven’t seen any evidence that the data is being misused.
My concerns as a parent are about class sizes, Colorado’s abysmal record of public school funding, and the impact of standardized tests and school accountability. inBloom can be beneficial with or without standardized tests, just like computers and databases themselves aren’t inherently evil or dangerous. As a public school parent, I will continue to focus my efforts there to support my public school child (and her younger sister), our great Jefferson County Public Schools, and the excellent teachers who teach here.
You assume teachers need an electronic system to keep track of this. You assume the data points on a spread sheet tell us all we need to know. You assume data from testing is valid. Technology is a tool. It does not replace teaching and learning. Where do you think the money wil come from? Concerned about class size now? Just wait.
Lisa, it seems you missed the point. If you had read this letter more carefully, you would understand that it is in no way a criticism of Colorado’s teachers; in fact, it is Kerrie Dallman’s editorial that discredits teachers’ ability to function properly without the help of Bill Gates. (“Your case for inBloom is lukewarm at best, and an unintended (I hope) consequence of your argument is that it affirms reformers’ claims that teachers are failing at their jobs and that data collection is the answer.”)
This letter is also not a criticism of data; it is a criticism of the OVERUSE of data and, more importantly, the CEA President’s advocacy of Bill Gates’ damaging policies. (“I’m not necessarily doubting that inBloom could be useful in some educational settings, but the implications of allowing corporations to infiltrate the system they claim is broken for the purposes of meddling in our children’s educations are alarming.”)
If you are worried about class size, then Gates’ influence should be of serious concern to you, as he has advocated for larger classes. (From the Washington Post: “Lately, Gates has been advocating paying teachers based on classroom performance instead of seniority and ending costly investments in class-size reduction, two of the more provocative topics in public education.”) If we open the door for and welcome Bill Gates’ corporate reforms, as Kerrie Dallman has done, more testing, more over-reliance on data, increased class sizes, privatization of our children’s education, etc. will come with those reforms.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/college-inc/2011/02/bill_gates_talks_about_teacher.html
Lisa,
If I may ask you. Do you teach? If so what subjects, grade level and for how long?
“I don’t understand the knee-jerk response to technology.”
Please define “technology” as you use it here.
Thanks,
Duane
I am by no means criticizing any teacher that feels that data bases are a tool that can help them help their students. I am concerned that a lot of private information that isn’t something that will help a teacher know his/her students academic strengths and weaknesses is being collected about students that could land in the wrong hands. I have a feeling that more than a few Louisiana parents wish that concerns about this had been taken more into better consideration.
See inbloom Data Fields for Students
Click to access inBloom-Data-Fields-excerpts.pdf
Linda,
Can you please explain that document. Where is it from? What are the categories for? How is that document to be used? etc. . . .
Thanks,
Duane
Duane,
I have seen this on many sites: united opt out, NYC parents, class size matters.
Here is one: http://www.classsizematters.org/privacy_overview/inbloom-data-fields-excerpts-3/
Or you can google inbloom data fields…you get many links.
Duane, That originated from this InBloom document: https://www.inbloom.org/sites/default/files/docs-developer-1.0.68-20130118/ch-data_model-enums.html#type-SexType”
I’m a Pinellas County parent of an student with a disability. Long grueling experience short, a school psychologist tampered with 3 crucial documents of my son’s. The “data” is unethical, opinionated, incorrect. There should’ve been a better balance of power here, as this individual absolutely misused their position to do damage. Working to right this wrong, and get my son off of the pipeline to prison that this individual seems to believe he should be on. This data sharing is criminal for several reasons, one of them being, the data is wrong.
Precisely……the changes FERPA transforms RTT into a stimulus plan.
It has little to do with teaching, learning and caring for our children.
See this letter signed by the following…they are chomping at the bit for your kids personal, private information: (SURPRISE…..NCTQ)
Will they be gathering the data of the Gates or Obama children?
Alliance for Excellent Education
American Institutes for Research
Association for Career and Technical Education
College Summit
Council of Chief State School Officers
Data Quality Campaign
Houde Consulting Group, LLC
Education Trust
International Association for K-12 Online Learning
Knowledge Alliance
NASSP
National Association of State Boards of Education
National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium
National Association of System Heads
National Center for Higher Education Management Systems
National Council on Teacher Quality
National Math & Science Initiative
National Skills Coalition
State Higher Education Executive Officers
Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education
http://www.nassp.org/Content.aspx?topic=NASSP_and_Coalition_Letter_on_the_Family_Education_Rights_and_Privacy_Act
NYC recently admitted that there had been “a software glitch” that exposed the personal and financial data of around 1200 people. We don’t trust NYC to protect our most vulnerable citizens’ personal information.
http://www.wral.com/personal-data-briefly-exposed-at-nyc-bike-share/12697376/