Leonie Haimson, leader of Class Size Matters and a student privacy hawk, reports on the bankruptcy of ConnectEDU. Data mining is big business.
She writes that:
“ConnectEDU was one of the three data dashboard companies chosen by the NY State Education Department to receive a statewide set of personal student data through the inBloom data cloud, as part of their “EngageNY Portal.” Now ConnectEDU has announced it has gone bankrupt, despite receiving a $500,000 grant from the Gates Foundation less than a year ago….The assets of ConnectEDU, including 20 million personal student records, are being bought by a venture capital company called North Atlantic Capital. Now the FTC is stepping in, to try to block the handing over of all these personal records. According to Education Week:
The potential sale of 20 million student records by ConnectEDU, an ed-tech company that filed for bankruptcy in April, has prompted the Federal Trade Commission to step in to protect the student data, the agency announced Friday.
“ConnectEDU, a 12-year-old Boston-based company, provides interactive tools to help K-12 and post-secondary learners make academic and career decisions. In its privacy policy, ConnectEDU promised that—prior to any sale of the company—registered users would be notified and have the ability to delete their personally identifiable data.”
“
Diane Ravitch's blog 
ConnectEdu features the following sentence prominently on its home page:
“By serving educators, students and parents, administrators, and employers,
ConnectEDU helps progress learners and guide their transitions from school to career.”
The company progresses learners?
We all make mistakes in grammar and usage from time to time, especially when we are in a hurry (as when we are writing notes on blogs).
But this is a featured statement made in large type in the middle of the company’s Home Page on its website.
Perhaps the company could have used an editor capable of distinguishing between transitive and intransitive verbs. Progress may be a transitive verb in Bizlish and in the dialect of Bizlish known as Rheeformish, but in the Standard English still spoken by many teachers and by those administrators who have not gone over to the dark side, the verb is intransitive.
Expect more of this kind of thing as the occupation of U.S. K-12 education by technocratic Philistines goes forward under the direction of Rheeformish financiers, those Masters of the Universe.
Here is hoping more of this ilk go bankrupt. The Rheeformers are morally bankrupt; it will be a wonderful day when they stop putting their money where their egos are.
And thanks again to Arne Duncan, Dark Lord of the Department for the Centralization, Standardization, Regimentation, Depersonalization, and Privatization of U.S. Education, formerly the USDE, for
unilaterally, without Congressional approval, revising the FERPA regulations to allow states and districts to turn over students’ private data to corporations WITHOUT PARENTAL CONSENT.
Without you, Arne, the whole ugly extrinsic punishment and reward system of summative standardized testing, with its dramatic consequent demotivation of teachers and learners and its dramatic distortions of curricula and pedagogy would have been so much more difficult to implement.
And let us not forget how we all thrilled at your call to Race to the Top^TM of that big pile of eduinvestor cash!
Heck-uhv-a-job!
cx: comma after pedagogy, above
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a lawsuit against the Dept. of Ed. challenging the change to FERPA/. A judge dismissed the case citing that EPIC did not have standing to challenge the law. Someone with standing needs to challenge the changes.
In a sane world, the unions would long ago have done this on behalf of teachers, or the PTAs would have done so on behalf of parents, but all have been bought off by deformers. Disgusting.
Protecting student privacy should be a priority especially when record information is being distributed to outside parties.
Project Share was a pet project of former Texas Education Commissioner, Robert Scott.
Scott used every opportunity available to market the “learning management” system.
http://projectsharetexas.org
_________________
From: To the Administrator Addressed [mailto:TAA@LIST.TETN.NET] On Behalf Of Ratcliffe, Debbie
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2014 5:06 PM
To: TAA@LIST.TETN.NET
Subject: Project Share/Epsilen update
The Texas Education Agency (TEA) recently confirmed news that ConnectEDU has filed for bankruptcy protection. ConnectEDU is the parent company of Epsilen. Epsilen provides the learning management system (LMS) used by Project Share and hosts the ESTAR/MSTAR and TxAIR systems.
TEA is working to ensure safekeeping of all Texas-owned data and will share additional information as it becomes available. As a precautionary measure, anyone who has content saved in the Epsilen LMS is encouraged to ensure the content is saved elsewhere.
These people will change when people stop buying.
Remember that.
This is unconscionable that such private records are just rolled over in what basically amounts to a business deal! Glad to hear the FTC is stepping in. This really should be a Supreme Court issue! When I read, “registered users would be notified and have the ability to delete their personally identifiable data…” This is nonsense. Registered by what… coercion???? All records should be expunged by federal overseers and immediately.
I hope that people in other states are taking notice of this and will work to ensure that this will not be allowed in their state.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/connectedu-receives-innovation-grant-to-help-close-k-12-literacy-gap-2013-09-10
PRESS RELEASE
Sept. 10, 2013, 9:00 a.m. EDT
ConnectEDU Receives Innovation Grant to Help Close K-12 Literacy Gap
Company Selected by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to Support Students in Mastering Common Core State Standards through Technology
“Literacy is the foundation of learning,” said Evan Nisonson, CEO at ConnectEDU. “The tool we will build with this grant will empower teachers to provide the individualized instruction that their students need to master the rigorous reading and writing skills in the Common Core Standards. We are proud that the Gates Foundation believes in our ability to impact literacy and look forward to helping our country’s students graduate from high school ready to succeed in college and the workforce.”
http://www.connectedu.com/services.html
Services Offered:
DATA MANAGEMENT
“Data is the fundamental element without which our innovative solutions would cease to function. Often a stumbling block for under-resourced institutions, ConnectEDU has developed an expertise in the management of data—including data acquisition, loading, standardization, normalization, storage, and security. To ensure a successful implementation of a product, suite of products or enterprise deployment, our data management solution is our core competency.”
So, why are the assets of this company being bought by the investor group? Because they have value. Why do they have value? Because having lost the battle to create a national database of student responses and test scores, they are going to work this at the state and district levels, probably through selling products that have the database capability as a feature–probably “learning portals”–e.g., portals for delivery of online learning products.
So, this stuff isn’t dead AT ALL. It’s just going to be resurrected IN DISGUISE. And WHILE PEOPLE SLEEP because they aren’t interested in learning about the details or following a complicated story,
the promise of total centralized command and control, cradle to grave, will be realized.
Yes, the devil really is in the details of this complicated story and it will be too late if we slumber AGAIN as these details morph into the next hydra. It all has the potential for being sold off, siphoned off into discrete chunks, re-branded and sold into “learning portals” where all bets are off.
I really like this, although I am not an edu-expert by any means. It has the benefit of being serious and specific and it has absolutely zero slogans and no marketing language:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-darlinghammond/its-time-for-a-new-accoun_b_5351475.html
I particularly like how the writers specifically call out Race To The Top by including it with NCLB. The fact is, Obama ran against NCLB and his education appointees then adopted exactly the same approach. I don’t think public schools should be run by like a private sector entity and I’m not backing politicians who believe that. They’re wrong.
Two decades of this approach is enough. Hire someone else, or bring someone in from outside this small group of people who all sound the same.
Arne Duncan had a Twitter Q and A the other day and when a teacher objected to teaching to the test Duncan told him to reject “the status quo”. What the hell IS that? Are they unable to speak without these ridiculous slogans, now? It’s reached the level of parody.
That article really, really gave me the creeps.
Why? Because of the CC compromise/trade-off?
It’s support for the continued Common Coring of U.S. education is unconscionable.
cx: Its, no apostrophe, of course
Okay, I see your point. I just wanted to make sure that was it. I anticipated that and I’ve read your argument agin CC.
CC aside do you like it? or is it impossible to set that aside?
Chiara, if someone said to me, your deck is being eaten by termites; you should treat that, I would. And if at the same time that person said to me, I have a few gallons of sorghum molasses for you to pour out onto the floors throughout your house, for it has the most wonderful smell, I would think, this person is crazy.
I also very much dislike the whole “new accountability” notion. These people are wedded to top-down prescriptions.
Ecologies are healthier than are monocultures. Here’s how people work: when you give them autonomy and responsibility, they do amazing, creative, valuable, important things. We need teacher empowerment at the building level. We need teachers to have the time in their schedules to do Japanese-style Lesson Study, to take on themselves the business of continuous improvement as an integral part of their PRACTICE, and they need to make their own decisions, with their colleagues, about materials and approaches and assessments, based upon free choice from among ones presented in an ongoing, continual national debate among scholars and researchers and practitioners and curriculum developers.
Of course, we need to DUMP the completely useless summative standardized tests, reserving them only as an OPTION that a child can choose if he or she wishes to do so in order to demonstrate, by that means, what he or she has learned.
But dumping the centralized bullet list is also an urgent priority.
And so is stopping this business of micromanaging the work of teachers. No one does his or her best work in that way, and from such systems, nothing beautiful is born.
Chiara, this article trots out the usual nonsense about the Common Core. Defenders of the new national bullet list NEVER talk about the bullet list itself. Instead, they trot out some blithering generalities about “higher standards,” and what they are referring to there, I suppose, are what they consider to be the “instructional shifts” represented by the Common Core. In ELA, those are that students will read substantive texts and read them closely, make written arguments based on evidence from texts, do less narrative writing, read more informational texts and fewer narratives, learn academic vocabulary, and do more literacy work in non-ELA classes like history and science.
Now, the first thing to say about all that is that those are not shifts. They are what we’ve always done.
It’s breathtaking presumption on the part of that noneducator Lord Coleman to presume to claim that these are revelations of some kind and horrifying that union leaders and nationally known professors of education would not call him out for the arrogance of such a presumption. If someone presumed to issue new “standards” for the medical profession and those “standards” said that doctors should start basing their diagnoses on evidence and start using sterile procedures for a change, what do you think the AMA would say to that? Doctors would be furious about and appalled at the arrogance and ignorance and presumption.
The second thing to say is that the defenders of these “standards” NEVER talk about the actual items on the actual 1,600-item bullet list, and there is a reason for that: The bullet list is indefensible.
The actual items on the bullet list–the actual “standards”–are backward, hackneyed, unimaginative, often prescientific, and terribly distorting of curricula and pedagogy. I call the incredibly retrograde, long discredited approach to literature that is ossified in these “standards” “New Criticism for Dummies” or “New Criticism Lite.” The new “standards” for vocabulary and language are based in folk mythologies about how people acquire the vocabularies and grammars of their native tongues. As such, they are completely PRESCIENTIFIC. The writing standards are a joke. They are practically Xeroxed from level to level, they are based on an empirically indefensible division of writing into three hackneyed “modes,” and they address nothing having to do with acquisition by students of some part of the enormous toolkit of specific techniques for good writing that skilled writers have mastered, and so they will lead to a lot of terrible writing of formulaic pieces–to the teaching of InstaWriting for the Test instead of to the teaching of writing.
For the most part, the “standards” in ELA neither cover world knowledge (knowledge of what) nor formulate procedural knowledge (knowledge of how) in ways sufficiently operationalized to allow for valid testing,
and they describe much of ELA that does not involve, primarily, explicit learning processes as involving such processes and so, again, misconceive, at a very basic level, much of what would be measured if we were following scientifically informed, rational assessment procedures.
And though these “standards” cover vastly different types of learning and acquisition in vastly different domains, they are pretty much formulated as though there were not differences in these. In other words, the “standards” were misconceived at their most fundamental level, at the level of the categorical formulation of a “standard” for a particular KIND of learning or acquisition in a particular domain.
Again and again, specific “standards” are just ludicrous. We are told, for example, at level after level, that a standard dealing with argument “does not apply to literature,” as though no one ever presented an argument in a work of literature or wrote a work of literature primarily to present an argument. Think of that when you read Milton’s opening note on the “Argument” of Paradise Lost.
We are told that the “standards” do not tell teachers what and how to teach, but they do precisely that again and again. So, those who promulgate these “standards” are either lying about that or are so clueless that they don’t understand the entailments of their own mandates.
But perhaps most importantly, these putative “standards” draw a boundary in the vast design space of possible curricula and pedagogy and say, in effect, that what is within these boundaries people can consider teaching, and what is outside them they may not. What makes this so terrible is a) that almost everything within those boundaries in the CCSS is a cliche and that b) there are many better ways to approach most of this stuff, many of which have not yet been conceived. The CCSS in ELA is a string of cliches and halftruths and outright misconceptions. It ossifies the most unimaginative possible teaching. Consider this example: of all the thousands of topics related to figurative language that one could treat with students–some of them really interesting, profound, important topics–why one Earth would we want to concentrate, year after year, on “how the author’s use of figurative language affects the tone and mood” of a selection? But that’s just what these “standards” tell teachers they must do. And publishers are taking them as their roadmap for creating curricula. In other words, the standards (and the formats used in the tests on the standards) are BECOMING THE CURRICULUM, which was ENTIRELY PREDICTABLE and is, in fact, just what BILL GATES, who paid for the standards, said they would do: they would make the curriculum, in his words “fall in line.”
So, why the dumb standard on figurative language? Well, what other answer to that question can there be but that David Coleman knew so little about the vast literature dealing with figurative language that that’s all that occurred to him?
And so every textbook will follow his puerile mandate, and that will be what the figurative language instruction will come to.
And the same can be said for standard after standard after standard.
It is completely APPALLING to me that supposed LEADERS in education would consider mandating David Coleman’s puerile list, would think it acceptable to put this guy in charge of telling every teacher, curriculum coordinator, and curriculum coordinator in the country, “I have done your thinking for you. Your job is not to have ideas. Your job is to implement and obey.”
That seems, to me, INSANE, when we could, instead, issue a few general guidelines that would allow the degrees of freedom within which innovative new curricula and pedagogy could be produced based on ongoing contributions from the entire body of scholars, researchers, curriculum developers, and classroom practitioners in the country.
Oh, no, forget anything that any of those people have to say.
David knows best.
That seems, to me, just STUPID.
And unacceptable in a free country.
And incredibly backward in a time when technology has given us an opportunity to have open-sourced, crowd-sourced ALTERNATIVES of a richness and variety and depth never before dreamed of.
No, instead, we get Coleman’s insipid, invariant, mandatory Powerpoint bullet list for U.S. education.
Appalling.
cx: It is completely APPALLING to me that supposed LEADERS in education would consider mandating David Coleman’s puerile list, would think it acceptable to put this guy in charge of telling every teacher, curriculum coordinator, and curriculum developer in the country, “I have done your thinking for you. Your job is not to have ideas. Your job is to implement and obey.”
Well said. Every administrator still defending the Common Core should have to read this and try and refute it. If they can’t…..they will be at that point aware that they are pushing a substandard system which is, of course, unconscionable.
Thank you, Dawn
Oh, no. Thank you. With your permission, I will be delivering this to the superintendents, principals and school board members in the district where I teach and the district where I live. It is much more specific and eloquent than I have been able to be thus far. And I will add your additional post about beautiful teaching to it as well.
Dawn, for such a purpose, I should prepare a finished copy, not something like this, a blog post, off the top of my head. There are a number of infelicities that I would fix. For example, while it is true that the “instructional shifts” are not shifts at all, for the most part, but descriptions of what we’ve always done, some of them (less emphasis on reading and writing of narratives) are new–and wrong-headed. And there are some typos–not for no, etc. If you want to click on my name and go to my blog and leave me a note, I’ll have your email and be able to send you a more finished copy. Or, you are free to take what I have written and adapt and fix it yourself. Anything here, Diane has said, is free for the taking. I am honored that you think my ideas worth sharing with others. Warm regards, Bob
Thanks. I will leave a note on your blog.
Dawn, I sent you an email. Warm regards, Bob
Dawn, this is an older piece by someone else, but for those with no background at all on these issues, it covers a lot of ground:
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/got-dough-how-billionaires-rule-our-schools
Bob -I agree with Dawn – could you write a separate white paper stating much of the above so it could be downloaded ? Your stuff is hilarious – we teachers get it because we deal with the foolishness of ed reform on a daily basis – but could you also write just a straight piece? section by section ? put it in one place, the basic points? Many of us need to be clear when talking to those outside education and give them the reasons and rationale behind our beliefs supporting local, free, public education and its importance to our democracy.
Dawn and Cali, I have been trying to find the time to work on a book-length treatment of the Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] in ELA. I have a LOT of notes toward such a book. But unlike, say, Mike Petrelli, I do not have a Gates Foundation paying my bills. 🙂 So, this will take me some time.
Arne Duncan @arneduncan · May 27
.@TweetlySaved Great teaching rather than test prep will always help our students be most successful. Challenge the status quo if necessary.
The change to FERPA is the weakest link in the system. That is what must be challenged. Without data, none of this goes forward. Maybe a class action suit comprised of a number of teachers who have been maligned by the “evaluation” system recently imposed intersecting with CC testing could be started.
ABSOLUTELY agree and that is why I have made as many parents as possible aware of the changes to FERPA. Yes, anyone with standing needs to challenge the law. Sooner rather than later.
These for profit database/privacy outrages started in Texas with Wireless Generation, Optimization Zorn (OZ-Systems) and ConnectEDU, etc. Someone interested in writing a book about Texas sized conflicts of interest at the Texas Education Agency and the UT Sytem?
http://www.texasobserver.org/oz-systems-texas-pre-k-accountability/
Next step should be shutting down the “Data Quality Campaign” funded by Gates.
http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org
Another grant collecting lemon gathering child data without parental permission – OZ Systems aka Optimization Zorn operated by Robert Scott’s best friend’s wife – Erin Jones married to Adam. We need national reporters reporting on the corruption and the millions wasted with NO value for students and families.
OZ Intelligent Education Systems
http://www.oz-systems.com/education
OZ-Systems or Optimization Zorn (before Texas bankruptcy) seeks to collect your child’s data without your permission.
I long for the day when people will dare to say,
There Are No Standard Children, and Our Job Is Not to Standardize Them
We Share in Common the Right to an Un-Common (Core) Education
Persons, Not Pearson; Gateways, Not Gates
Those Who Can, Teach; Those Who Can’t Micromanage Teachers
Extrinsic Reward: The Damaging Kind of Punishment because It Is the Most Insidious
Abracadabra, Hocus Pocus: The Test Results Are about to Speak
Please Add “Uncooperative with Tyrants” to That Evaluation. Thank You.
Warning: CCSS Literature Program. New Criticism for Dummies.
Sorry, but I Teach Writing, not InstaWriting for the Test
Enjoy the Fruits of Learning; Chuck the Core
Teaching: There Is No App for That
CCSS: Reign of Error and of Terror
PARCC: Spell That Backward
not-Smarter, imBalanced
My Third Grader Can Out-think Your Secretary of Education
1984: Rheeformish Public Policy Manual
Bee Eater: Unqualified but Dependably Rheeformish Sociopath in Position of Authority
Lord Coleman: By Divine right, Absolute Monarch of ELA Education?
Common Core: NCLB Fright Night II: The Nightmare Is Nationalized
Outgrit the Sinaporeans!
VAM: Vacuity-of curriculum-and-pedagogy Acceleration Mechanism
“All Your Base Belong to Us”–the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
He sees you when you’re sleeping
He knows when you’re awake
http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/your-states-progress/10-state-actions/
You can’t collect enough data on people. Nothing short of Total Information Awareness is acceptable!
Welcome to the Panopticon!
This us the company working with the for in Hawaii I told workforce was a joke and P 20 still hired them.
Jeff
>
Cross Posted at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/NYC-Public-School-Parents-in-General_News-Data_Education_Privacy_Public-Interest-140531-72.html
There’s a key factual error in the reporting here. ConnectEDU owned several subsidiaries, only some of which have access to private student data. The Academic Management Systems subsidiary acquired by North Atlantic Capital has no such private student data, desires none, and was subject to thorough FTC review prior to the court’s approval of the sale. Not all ed tech companies traffic in private data and not all VC firms yearn to control it.