A regular commenter on the blog, Laura H. Chapman, shares her research on data mining:
Policies on data mining? “The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be.” Paul Valéry, poet.
It is no surprise that the Gates funded Teacher-Student Data Link Project started in 2005 is going full steam ahead. By 2011 his project said the link between teacher and student data would serve eight purposes:
1. Determine which teachers help students become college-ready and successful,
2. Determine characteristics of effective educators,
3. Identify programs that prepare highly qualified and effective teachers,
4. Assess the value of non-traditional teacher preparation programs,
5. Evaluate professional development programs,
6. Determine variables that help or hinder student learning,
7. Plan effective assistance for teachers early in their career, and
8. Inform policy makers of best value practices, including compensation.
The system is intended to ensure all courses are based on standards, and all responsibilities for learning are assigned to one or more “teachers of record” in charge of a student or class so that a record is generated whenever a “teacher of record” has a specific proportion of responsibility for a student’s learning activities.
These activities must be defined by performance measures for a particular standard, by subject, and grade level.
The TSDL system requires period-by-period tracking of teachers and students every day; including “tests, quizzes, projects, homework, classroom participation, or other forms of day-to-day assessments and progress measures.” Ultimately, the system will keep current and longitudinal data on the performance of teachers and individual students, as well schools, districts, states, and educators ranging from principals to higher education faculty.
This data will then be used to determine the “best value” investments in education, taking into account as many demographic factors as possible, including….health records for preschoolers. but the cradle is next, and it is part of USDE’s technology plan.
Since 2006, the USDE has also invested over $700 million in the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) to help states “efficiently and accurately manage, analyze, and use education data, including individual student records”…and make “data-driven decisions to improve student learning, as well as facilitate research to increase student achievement and close achievement gaps.” The newest upgrade of the concpt is for these state-wide systems to become multi-state…and a national system. This goes WAY, WAy beyond (and may pre-empt) routine data-gathering by the National Bureau of Education Statistics.
It is not widely known that in 2009, USDE modified the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act so that student data—test scores, health records, learning issues, disciplinary reports—can be used for education studies without parental consent (The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, 20 U.S.C. §1232g). Moreover, a 2012 issue brief from USDE outlined a program of data mining and learning analytics in partnership with commercial companies.
The envisioned data- mining program includes an automated, instant access, user-friendly “recommendation system” for teachers that links students’ test scores and their learning profiles to preferred instructional actions and resources. Enhancing teaching and learning through educational data mining and learning analytics: An issue brief. Retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/edblogs/technology/files/2012/03/edm-la-brief.pdf p. 29).
USDE is also pressing forward a “radical and rapid” transformation of public education. The new system is marketed and funded as “personalized, competency-based learning” 24/365 from multiple sources. It is intended to dismantle place-based schools, seat time, grade levels, subject-specific curricula, traditional concepts about “teachers” and diplomas. Multiple certifications with flower along with an abundace of badges earne for completing learning paths and play-lists of learning options, awarded by profit and non-profit “learning agents.” The role of “teacher” is envioned as a relic, along with the institution of public schools. See USDE, Office of Educational Technology, Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology, Washington, D.C., 2010. http://tech.ed.gov/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/netp2010.pdf/////////
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You know what I’m afraid of?
1. Bad data. 2. Becoming a cog in a machine. 3. Losing my humanity.
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Sadly, I think we are already there.
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Oh yes, read more like this here: http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/01/abolishing-representative-government-education-common-core-choice-charter-schools/
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WOW! Utopia ! Too bad the voice of the classroom practitioner is missing!
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Wow. Only one of those aspects benefits the student. The rest is just judging and blaming teachers.
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The constant surveillance is dehumanizing. I’m linking to a thought-provoking article on the future of the surveillance society:
View at Medium.com
We become merely the cogs to perform the cognitive processing computers cannot yet do, with little value placed on the most human aspects of ourselves, which are hard to quantify and categorize into data fields, with surveillance ensuring we spend little time on inefficient human pursuits like creativity, independent thought, democratic action, or inspiring students.
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Did that link work? On my screen it is showing as a text box with an M and the word “undefined.” I’m trying again, this time as a tinyurl link.
http://tinyurl.com/o4h7zlb
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Interesting info on data mining but I was unable to go to the pages for either of the links:
http://tech.ed.gov/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/netp2010.pdf/////////
Click to access edm-la-brief.pdf
Could be me but someone might want to check the links. Error message both times said file could not be found.
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Anthony. These links worked this AM.
Click to access NETP-2010-final-report.pdf
Click to access edm-la-brief.pdf
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Thanks Laura, in that second link I found this, which pretty much sums up their vision for education, and their limited view of teaching as telling. Chilling.
“Education is getting very close to a time when personalization will become commonplace in learning. Imagine an introductory biology course. The instructor is responsible for supporting student learning, but her role has changed to one of designing, orchestrating, and supporting learning experiences rather than “telling.” Working within whatever parameters are set by the institution within which the course is offered, the instructor elaborates and communicates the course’s learning objectives and identifies resources and experiences through which those learning goals can be attained. Rather than requiring all students to listen to the same lectures and complete the same homework in the same sequence and at the same pace, the instructor points students toward a rich set of resources, some of which are online, and some of which are provided within classrooms and laboratories. Thus, students learn the required material by building and following their own learning maps.”
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Those links didn’t work either and after searching a number of DOE sites, buried in tiny fine print here: http://familypolicy.ed.gov/content/ferpa-general-guidance-parents
I found the key part about how organizations can have access to private records without parental consent if conducting “studies for or on behalf of the school making the disclosure for the purposes of administering predictive tests, administering student aid programs, or improving instruction”
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“This data will then be used to determine the “best value” investments in education”
According to Bill Gates?
Ha ha ha ha ha!
“Devalue Added Model”
Gates is to value
As white is to black
As any can tell you
His software’s a hack
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You are a wonder with words and non-trivial insights.
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This is so scary, not just for the teaching profession, but for the future society that will result from this cold, I inhumane, impersonal, approach to learning. Gates, Duncan, Obama, and the like don’t want this for their own kids, just the masses. Brave new world indeed.
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I am amazed that they think they are going to learn so much from the data. I read the list and I immediately thought of this common term used in statistics:
“Correlation does not imply causation”
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Perhaps I’m being naïve… I wonder how much we really have to fear from the grandiose ideas of tech-ed planners.
For example, TDSL can only work with “period-by-period tracking of teachers and students every day; including “tests, quizzes, projects, homework, classroom participation, or other forms of day-to-day assessments and progress measures.” The data input requirements of such a system– even just to input grades on routine daily h.w. & wkly quizzes– would require a whole layer of clerks & their supervisors for every school. Forget trying to input descriptions/knowledge points measured by each of those quizzes & hw assnts; that could take a second teacher in every classroom! Meanwhile we have states w/drawing from RTTT-assoc stds & testing for budget reasons– it’s getting tough for PARCC to establish some sort of baseline with only 12 states onboard…
Digitizing industry in order to automate inventory systems was an expensive & tedious process, but (being as one was dealing w/widget profits) ultimately a boon to industry. Trying to apply this approach to teaching & learning will fall on its a** immediately because there is no way to measure teaching & learning “profits” in any $-connected way; states are already figuring this out as they tot up the bill for online nat’l stdzd tests.
Hidden in the depths of the second link, there may be some useful ways to apply these ideas to teaching (perhaps Harvard’s ‘River City’ model for teaching physics?) on a case-by-case basis. If there’s ed value, students can be tracked via a fictional moniker with no connections to school records etc.
Efforts should be directed to (1)tightening FERPA regs back up by whatever means– put an end to any kind of 3rd-party involvement; any behavior-related data may not be connected to personal data (just use overall incident no’s to compare schools); [probably lots of other caveats!]… AND… OPT OUT OF ALL STDZD TESTS. Cripple the data-system-monster at ground level.
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” just to input grades on routine daily h.w. & wkly quizzes– would require a whole layer of clerks & their supervisors for every school. Forget trying to input descriptions/knowledge points measured by each of those quizzes & hw assnts; that could take a second teacher in every classroom!”
Not if instruction is totally programmed for online delivery, with teachers just moderating the “interface.” That is the endgame.
Here is the downstream “vision” of how the “recommendation system” works.
This video has a slow satart, but if you look carefullly you will see the kids “teaching themselves,” being checked into a real school by a survellience system that does an automatic picture ID for attendance.
Notice the surgically sterile science classroom. The kids and teacher (and a parent) are spending most of their time looking a screens on not touch pads.
The sccience lessons and the sub-routines for “personalized ” instruction are all identified by schematic graphics with tiers od assignmnets and chekout to verify completion.
The principal’s observations are part of the system and done on the fly. She sits in an office where the main sign of something that might be a candidate for science study are some plants in pots sitting on the windowsill.
This demo from Pearson includes a report on whether the featured middle-school kid (an actor) is on track for college and career. It has data on his preference for a major, and a recommendation system on which colleges he should be considering.
The “recommendation systems” within the larger course of studyare programmed by anonymous specialists who have been employed to deliver a profitable interactive package. Data entry is on the fly, what is called real time or just in time, with all of the assessments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpQCEgEfRyc
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sorry about typos this “not touch” was intended to say “Not Apple” touchpads
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They have money for clerks. They have money for administrators. They have money for “grade principals” at charters, rather than one principal. They have money for charters. They have money for consultants. They have money for Pearson and PAARC. The only thing they don’t have money for is books, supplies, Teachers, smaller classrooms, specialists, libraries/librarians, nurses, lunchrooms.
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After apparently being woken up by his tablet, boy soon walks to school carrying tablet in his hands through an urban landscape. Meets up with other boys. First miracle: they make it to school without dropping, losing or breaking said devices.
They enter a classroom with other happy, well-cared for, and apparently upper middle class kids. Wow, there must be almost 8 students in this particular class, another miracle. Maybe it’s a private school.
What are they actually learning? It looks like something on photosynthesis, with what appears to be drawings of cells. But that’s just a guess, because this marvelous video does not actually let us in on the learning.
Teacher stares at his large data management board, with robot like facial expression. He makes it look soooo easy!
Kids sit at fabulous digital tables. I wonder how much those cost?
Mom interrupts her high-powered meeting to check a personal text message from her son. I guess that’s okay where she works.
Principal pops in the classroom and decides teacher is “confident” based upon the snappy way he swipes the digital table, and his fancy finger waving. Principal also finds that this teacher apparently connects assessment to instruction, though what he is actually instructing is anyone’s guess.
Eventually, kids are dismissed, and play ball and roughhouse on their way home. But, where are their tablets?
Later, mom is checking her kid’s data and sees a list of where her child is recommended to attend college. She expresses a satisfied smile. I guess she can afford any college on that list.
There is no “dad” apparent in the featured child’s home, but his mom must make beaucoup bucks based upon the well appointed and large home the family lives in.
Wow… what a piece of fantasy marketing propaganda. It makes me think of Disneyland, back in the sixties. Anyone out there recall Monsanto’s “wheel of progress”? I remember sitting in the theater and being really impressed by refrigerators with water dispensers. It also reminds me of that scene in one of the Star Trek movies where Dr. Spock is re-learning all his lost knowledge, standing in a round computer module, reciting facts at a rapid pace in response to a computerized voice.
But as we know, a sucker is born every minute, and this little video is definitely for suckers.
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Donna–
Point taken on charters, but it’s temporary. For the moment, they’re a stylish charity interest for hedge-funders. But big-$ input will fade unless there’s a robust ROI. That can only happen with Walmart-like nat’l chains where ed is delivered cheaply, hence lo-quality (no fear of hi-achievement), which can only exist in poor areas. Even there it’s likely to go bust as the market is limited and low in resources.. If fed ponies up the kind of dough capitalist interests look for in their investments, the same conservative folk who wish to be dis-burdened of hi costs to educate the poor will put pressure.
But my point is regarding the concern that big-$ interests will somehow convert all US ed to a sort of automation. ‘They’ are not paying for data-entry clerks & their supervisors in mid
& upper-mid public schools (the huge majority of US schools)– tho newly state-mandated CCSS/PARCC/VAM regs are beginning to make that a necessity– the local budgets can’t pay for it, & hence smarter states beginning to balk at these regs & even w/dw from the programs.
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Bring those twerps (not the student actors but the adults) out here to the woods and see how well they survive without all their gadgets.
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The investors in preschool are going to test-drive the ROI model on low-income children through the use of “Social Impact Bonds.” If it works, they will scale it up, which seems to be concurrent with the federal push for increased and possibly mandatory requirement for pre-school.
All about the money, and the marriage between government and corporations. And remember, the metric to measure will be the common core aligned pre-school assessments:
“It’s hard to size the market because it’s a relatively new instrument, but we do see it growing,” Phillips said. “We’re optimistic we’ll be able to move to both larger investment sizes and more standardization of deals, which will help us get this market to scale.”
http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2014/03/21/resultsbased-financing-for-preschool-catching-on
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“The data input requirements of such a system– even just to input grades on routine daily h.w. & wkly quizzes–”
Wow. This is exactly what our teachers do in Powerschool:
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To me, one of the problems with “data mining” is simply that the results obtained can be skewed and used in any way someone wishes to tilt the table (pun intended)
If keeping any of these records was truly useful, there would be results beyond compare. I just read an article about the intense testing mania in China, and the suicides that go along with that.
Conformity. That breeds good test taking. Creativity and individuality does not necessariliy produce good test scores.
What is this country all about? What about “rugged individualism”? What about the American Dream? What about each person fulfilling his/her heart’s desire? Those don’t seem to flow out of a testing culture.
Yet, those who are all for individualism are often the ones preaching conformity. Go figure.
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I might have missed it but how are they planning on evaluating the programs that TFA graduates come from? How are they going to use the testing data from their students? They teach for a minimum of 2 years, who get the blame if they don’t produced results, their undergrad collage or the TFA program?
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Good question cary444…let’s see what the ivy league schools do when part of their evaluation is based on how well their TFA alums do with 5 weeks of training to teach in the most underfunded and undermaintained schools? Or will there be an ‘opt out’ clause for that program?
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Of course TFA and TNTP and such other bogus “teacher” programs will be exempt. They are exempt from being Highly Qualified. Why the fact that they are white and privileged is enough to Highly Qualify them, and then they attend some weekend lectures, and are granted masters degrees in education, then they principal or administrate a charter school….or, they are anointed by governors to Supe positions after having attended Broad “Academy” – its all very lovey dovey. Statistics and common sense don’t equal into it at all. Teachers bad; edreform good.
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Has anybody else read Dave Eggers “The Circle”? Talk about dehumanizing! I used to joke about Bill Gates as the great Satan. Seems like less of a joke all the time.
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“The Gates of Hell”
The Gates of Hell
Are leaved with gold
And Satan’s bell
Is loudly tolled
But bell is cracked
As we can see
And Bill has hacked
Our Liberty
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Granted. the verbiage in the links is intimidating. However I think we should take heart in view of tech & financial realities. The big-$ ed interests who obviously drafted these position papers for ed.gov cannot hope to put their $ where their mouth is.
They (Pearson, Gates, Walmart, Koch et al) don’t even spend enough $ to get all schools online in states at the low end of per-pupil spending– w/o which those states can’t implement PARCC, let alone this code-writer’s wet dream. Sure, they buy legislators & encourage drop-in-the-bucket fed aid like RTTT. But they have no plans to pick up the tab for US education!
THEY don’t want to pay for the jazz they’re peddling here– high-tech ‘personalized’ ed via fancy programs & longitudinal data bases. They want taxpayers to front the capital for design, infrastructure & maintenance. They’re not donating their ed products, but manipulating laws so that their products will pay for themselves through inflated prices/profits.
They will not sink the kind of $ req’d to develop the pie-in-the-sky, AI-like systems imagined in these links unless they can see where the ROI is coming from. And it’s not coming from taxpayers in the current set-up, where the bulk of monies is held by the 1%, & the 99% are scrounging for jobs, while states make draconian cuts to ed.
IMHO all the hype, the peddling to pols of grandiose ideas [for which the tech doesn’t even exist– oh, please! neuroimaging melded to cognitive advances, while we’re still measuring ed achievement by content-bites– short-answer, computer-scored stdzd tests??] is just smoke & mirrors whose goal is to prop up some quick next-quarter products, & a few more in subsequent quarters, & just enough time to spirit the profits to the Caymans as the house of cards collapses behind them.
We need to keep pressing the financial case to the voters: what are you getting for your ed taxes? We need to show ordinary Americans what those in corporations have long known: setting up management-by-objectives accountability measures always, inevitably results in establishing another layer of pencil-pushers who add to expenses, but add nothing to the bottom line.
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And people suggest that the Common Core is dead……It is – at this point – merely delayed.
The testing infrastructure — from the GED, ACT and SAT, to the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems and data mining — is solidly in place.
Now here’s the really interesting – and problematic – thing: the original purpose of education “reform” in general and the Common Core in particular was to ensure American economic competitiveness. But it’s a ruse. A very dangerous one.
The U.S. always has been economically competitive in the global marketplace. When it drops in the World Economic Forum competitiveness rankings, it’s because of things like weak auditing and reporting standards, dishonest business practices, and big deficits and debt. These are inherently tied to supply-side economic policies.
Supporters of supply-side policies are usually those pushing market-type education “reforms.” Indeed, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable — ardent supply-siders who advocate corporate welfare of all kinds — have led the fight for Common Core and education “accountability.”
Meanwhile these same entities are pushing to alter legislative fiscal scoring practices to enhance the illusion that corporate and top-bracket tax cuts pay for themselves and produce economic growth, and they are lobbying new Congressional leaders to undo Dodd-Frank regulations. They already succeeding in keeping big bank derivative trades unregulated while placing taxpayers on the hook for when it all goes south.
The World Economic Forum’s new (2014-15) economic competitiveness rankings had the U.S. moving up to third, with the WEF noting an improved “institutional framework.” This includes “the proper management of public finances” and a “sound and fair” marketplace. As the WEF pointed out, the need for both has “become all the more apparent during the recent economic and financial crisis and is especially crucial for further solidifying the fragile recovery.”
And yet, the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable want more irresponsible tax cuts, while corporate profits are at record highs.
When the U.S. moved up in the rankings last year the WEF cited an improved macroeconomic climate. This year it notes that “macroeconomic disarray harms the economy.” Yet the Chamber and the Roundtable lobby for disarray.
The WEF report says this about the critical importance of s nation’s institutional framework:
“The global financial crisis, along with numerous corporate scandals, has highlighted the relevance of accounting and reporting standards and transparency for preventing fraud and mismanagement, ensuring good governance, and maintaining investor and consumer
confidence. An economy is well served by businesses that are run honestly, where managers abide by strong ethical practices in their dealings with the government,
other firms, and the public at large. Private-sector transparency is indispensable…”
As Republicans take control of the Congress, the Chamber and the Roundtable and corporate-style education “reformers” are salivating.
The rest of us should be very, very concerned about their plans.
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Just catching up with this post now. Wow. It’s fascinating…. and scary.
I was kind of clobbered when I opened up one of those links [ http://tech.ed.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/edm-la-brief.pdf%5D and saw the logo for the Department of Education right below the title “Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics”. The phrase “data mining” just seems to carry so much baggage these days, what with all the revelations about the NSA’s data mining etc… Boy, these people are guileless. Yup, we’re about to “mine” our own children! And, that’s just a very weird juxtaposition on the cover….the Department of Ed’s tree logo on the bottom and then that Jackson Pollack computer fling of data points. Are those red states and blue states along with the west ? Or are we looking at an electron microscope image of some kid’s brain on common core? I mean, you’ve got this organic image on the bottom (the good ‘ole Department of Ed. tree) then this, what …satellite map of airplanes flying? You can tell I’m having big time trouble with this since I can’t even get past the damn cover of one of these reports. Yup. I am inefficient. I’m an ineffective teacher. I’m reminded of the Kurt Vonnegut story, “Deer in the Works.” What the hell am I doing in this job?
I get bogged down in the visuals because, well, you know, an image is worth a thousand test questions. Skipping down to page 18, I see one of those flow charts…the sort of thing I haven’t had to deal with since I took a computer programming class in 1981. Can’t have a good report without a flow chart, right?
I’m not able to paste an image of the flow chart here but trust me when I say that human beings are the central guiding feature of this diagram. NOT. Teachers and administrators are on the bottom… again. But there IS a lone student head in the upper left corner, two arrows converging at his or her neck. Ouch. Most of the flow chart, though, looks like the homemade map I made when we had to have our septic system dug up. What crap.
NONE of this surprises me. Repeat NONE. Having studied the history of our preparation for nuclear warfare I know that no matter how crazy and inhumane the proposition is, there will always be someone around to produce a report full of B.S. to justify the horror. I’m sure the people who wrote this educational “Issue Brief” drive through Starbucks, go on home, put their feet up and watch TV. They’ve got their paychecks. And, they’re probably nice people. Smart, too!.
But did they ever actually talk to a teacher? Did they ever visit a real, live classroom and sit down with some of the students? I didn’t see evidence of that.
To quote from the acknowledgements: “The authors incorporated many of the thoughts and experiences of the experts interviewed for this report…” Experts, it seems, meaning the corporations and universities that are enmeshed in the educational-industrial complex. Not people who inhabit actual schools.
Thank God I had the chance to read Jacques Ellul and Lewis Mumford and Joseph Weizenbaum years ago. THANK YOU Vassar College and all your wonderful professors….stirrer-uppers, you. At least, I have some context in which to consider all this lunacy…..
Of course, there IS another way. In fact, MANY other ways! But they take time.
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John, I appreciated your attention to the organic imagery in USDE’s logo and the varied representations of education via flow charts and goofy images.. Also the reference to Lewis Mumford whose work I read at state university and yes, in a teacher education program, vintage late 1950s.
I was also around to witness the birth of computer graphics–a collaboration of Chuck Csuri in fine arts and a couple of computer programmers. I was around to see the introduction of computer programming to tykes, I think the language was called LOGO make the turtle go left , of right, etc. I learned more than I wanted to know about the logic of programming while exploring decision making guided by game theoretical concepts and the recommendation systems flowing from those calculations. Computer experts and ethicists stopped Reagan’s Star War’s fantasy of a fully automated defense system based on some “perfected recommendation system.”
This is to say that I’m not hostile to the use of computers for education and creative work. I am deeply skeptical of the invisible hand of programmers who operate free of any need to comply with FERPA or with protocols for human subjects research.
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Skepticism is exactly the correct word. What’s always bothered me is the blind rush into anything “new”….anything computerized. Some people in schools especially seem to be suckers for this sort of thing. And these are the people who are meant to be teaching critical thinking? Though, you know, the lack of concern for the “big picture” of where this is all going has been an issue for a LONG time.
Of course, thank you for taking the time to pore over the minute details of these government reports. That attention to detail really matters, too.
Yes, computers. This internet thing…I guess it’s not a fad. (That’s a joke….a quick, throwaway line from the film Matchstick Men, with Nicholas Cage. It’s a really underrated movie that one of my students suggested to me years ago. That line always makes me laugh a bit.)
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Note that this statement appears at the very end of the ‘Enhancing Teaching and Learning
Through Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics’ issue brief:
“The Department of Eduction’s mission is to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness…”
Then read my comment above about the global competitiveness canard.
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Yes. I found it. My link to that paper didn’t work so I went back to Laura’s original. And, there it is…..literally on the last page. Then I re-read your post. Yup, isn’t it always about competitiveness… the “threat” from beyond. But it is a ruse, like you say.
Our workers are allegedly not good enough (false). Our schools are not good enough (false again).
Years ago I did a lot of reading about Sputnik and the frenzy it put our schools in: “My God, we’ve fallen behind the communists in science and math. Johnny is listening to that….rock ‘n roll music.” I found this great magazine article from the late 1950s about the need to develop an E-bomb….the education bomb. We’ve got the A-bomb and then the H-bomb but what we really need to develop is the E-bomb.
I don’t know. Maybe there’s just something ingrained in our national character that leads so many of us to always be looking back over our shoulders at where we came from…. and who else might be coming here next. My wonderful grandmother did not want me to tell anyone we came from Russia.
I always loved to teach immigration when I had U.S. History classes. It’s great. Considering how tough it was for so many people to get here…..our relatives…us, now….I don’t think we need the perpetual lectures on competitiveness.
But they just keep trying to use our fears to put us down.
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Then you likely came across this article by Gerald Bracey:
Click to access k0710bra.pdf
“Eisenhower was casual about Sputnik. Indeed, hisdeputy secretary of defense, Donald Quarles, announced that ‘the Russians have, in fact, done us a ‘good turn’ unintentionally in establishing a doctrine of freedom of space.’ Eisenhower wrote, ‘We felt certain that we could
get a great deal more information of all kinds out of the free use of space than they could.’ It was a wonderful doctrine that opened space up to exploration, but one that educators paid a terrible price for. For his part, Ike was utterly perplexed that the success of Sputnik was seen to reflect a failed public school system.”
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“the link between teacher and student data would serve eight purposes [with translation in square brackets]
1. Determine which teachers help students become college-ready and successful [Those with high VAM scores do. The rest should be fired]
2. Determine characteristics of effective educators [They get high VAM scores]
3. Identify programs that prepare highly qualified and effective teachers [They produce teachers who get high VAM scores]
4. Assess the value of non-traditional teacher preparation programs [Do they produce teachers who get high VAM scores?]
5. Evaluate professional development programs, [Do they help teachers get high VAM scores?]
6. Determine variables that help or hinder student learning, [Teachers with high VAM scores, gadgets and software help, Teachers with low VAM scores, librarians and art and music teachers hinder]
7. Plan effective assistance for teachers early in their career, [Assist them to the front door if their VAM score is low.]
8. Inform policy makers of best value practices, including compensation. [ VAM is “best practice” not only in the schools, but in the universe at large]
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Hee, hee…. this kind of thinking powers the NYC DOE.
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” V = VAMc2 ”
VAM the teachers
VAM the tools
VAM the education schools
Value equals VAM c-squared
As Einstein with us mortals shared
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