Archives for category: Online learning

Is the School of the Future in the Cloud?

By dianerav
May 17, 2013 //
63

Having studied the history of education for some decades, I have a built-in resistance to claims about the school of the future, particularly when it involves the end of schooling. Over many years, I have seen predictions about that Great Day when all children are self-motivated, all learning comes naturally, and instruction by adults becomes superfluous. The archetype of this idea was A. S. Neill’s “Summerhill,” which was a huge bestseller in the 1960s. But it was preceded by many other visions of schools without books, without tests, without classes, without teachers, without stress, without walls, without without without.

Here is the latest: a school in the Cloud, with Grannies to answer questions as self-motivated children use the Web to learn at their own speed, as they wish. The man behind this proposal won a $1 million TED prize for this idea.

What do you think?

Categories Online learning, Students, Technology, Computers

What Arne Duncan Learned from Breakdown of Computer Testing

By dianerav
May 11, 2013 //
100

This is a story that may elicit a gasp from you. That’s what it did to me. Arne Duncan was asked about the breakdown of the computer assessments in Indiana. He responded with a brief soliloquy on how businesses fail and succeed, and why we cannot go back to the olden days of pencil and paper (which no one suggested). Be sure to read the excellent comments that follow the linked articles.

And ask yourself what happens if and when hackers tamper with the tests and the scores.

A reader sent this not-to-be-missed article:

This is our education CEO speaking on the fact that kids in Indiana are on Week Two of a frustrating, time-wasting adventure in standardized testing:

“We should have competition. We should be transparent — I don’t know who that company is, I don’t want to pre-judge — but if that company can’t deliver, there’s an opportuntiy for someone else to come in and do something very, very different… We should not have one problem and then say we should go all the way back to pencil and paper, that doesn’t make sense to me.

This is a business. Folks are making money to buy these service. If those folks are doing a good job to provide that service, they should get more business. If they’re doing a bad job providing that service, they should go out of business…
We’ll get better and better. I do think, directionally, this is the right way to go. We have multiple players playing in these space… Let’s see who’s for real. But again, directionally, having computer-adaptive tests, having the ability to evaluate way more than just fill-in-the-bubble stuff — the critical thinking skills — directionally, it’s the right way to go.”

I am so, so tired of this CEO-speak. I really need Arne Duncan to tell me testing companies are “a business”? Kids are taking these tests. They aren’t his employees.

It’s also dishonest. It’s a rhetorical tactic. No one was suggesting that we “go back to paper and pencil”. His response to every question on this testing regime is to portray his critics as Luddites who don’t understand the “21st century.” It’s a way to shut down critics and it isn’t a response offered in good faith.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, For-Profit, Indiana, Online learning

Who Is Funding Privatization in Texas?

By dianerav
April 12, 2013 //
2

It won’t surprise you to know hat here is a lot of money behind the conservative agenda in Texas. But you might be interested to see the connections between the privatization advocates in Texas and national organizations like ALEC.

Julian Heilig Vasquez traces the connections in his series on the Teat, in which he reflects on what is known as neoliberalism.

Categories ALEC, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Online learning, Texas

Who Is Behind the Corporate Smear Machine?

By dianerav
March 13, 2013 //
21

I posted earlier about a web attack on the integrity of the distinguished scholar Gene Glass. Dr. Glass had the nerve to write a critical review of virtual charter schools, based on research and evidence. Observant readers discovered who created the domain name of the attack website. First, Sherman Dorn tracked down the domain owner. Then another reader added this comment:

 

 

Here’s the link to the information Sherman Dorn identified:
http://whois.domaintools.com/geneglass.org

Domain Name:GENEGLASS.ORG
Created On:22-Jan-2013
Registrant Name:Steve Grubbs
Registrant Organization:Victory Enterprises, Inc.

The ‘About’ page of Victory Enterprises:
http://www.victoryenterprises.com/about_us.htm

On its website: “GeneGlass.org is a project of the Center for School Options.”

Only two individuals are named on the website for the Center for School Options.
http://centerforschooloptions.org/about/leadership/

1. Jim Horne (Chairman) who was appointed by Governor Jeb Bush as the first appointed Commissioner of Education for the state of Florida.
2. Rose Fernandez, “Executive Director for the National Parent Network for Online Learning… the founding President of the Wisconsin Coalition of Virtual School Families, and has served on the Board of the National Coalition for Public School Options and School Choice Wisconsin.”

Categories Bush, Jeb, Corporate Reformers, Online learning

Indianapolis: Farewell to Public Education

By dianerav
February 18, 2013 //
33

I received a desperate message on Facebook from Tarrey Banks, the founder of The Project School in Indianapolis. TPS is a charter school started with a grant from the Walton Foundation. Greg Ballard, the mayor of Indianapolis, is the authorizer. TPS has low test scores, after four years, and the mayor has decided to close it. Banks and TPS parents are outraged. They went to court, blocked the mayor in a lower court, but then lost when a federal judge upheld the closure. TPS is losing the battle.

To get the big picture of what is happening in Indianapolis, read here. You will encounter a familiar cast of characters, including, of course, Bill Gates and Stand for Children.

What is happening in Indianapolis is terrifying if you believe that public education belongs to the public, not to private corporations. .

Here comes a scary future. First, the “blueprint” for Indianapolis, confidently predicting a future of perfection and excellence, but without any meaningful road map. Just promises. And here come the charters, opening with high hopes and closing when judged by scores.

Open, close. Open, close. Open, close.

Below is Banks’ letter. Read it. Read Mayor Ballard’s Blueprint for Utopia. But if you read nothing else today, read this article about the grand plan to privatize the schools of Indianapolis.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5_NQFzJRhSGZ2ZEaWZFYmhwNU0/edit?usp=sharing

This is the Mind Trust / Mayor Ballard (TFA Deputy Mayor Jason Kloth) take-over blueprint. This will literally be the end of public education in the urban core of Indianapolis.

We need help. It’s all but over. The 10th most populated city in the country is about to be one of the biggest systems of educational apartheid in the nation.

My name is Tarrey Banks and I’m the founding school leader of the Indianapolis Project School. I am a lifelong public school educator who made the decision to start a charter school with a group of passionate educators. We are the only truly progressive public school in our city. We take and teach all kids…we don’t push out, kick out, expel, etc. My daughter is a 7 year old student at our school…I made it for her because I know that all kids deserve what she deserves. We are four years old and this week we were the victim of a conservative political strategic attack. Just 3 weeks our mayor has decided to close our doors. The process was corrupt and the information they used was false and/or inaccurate. We are fighting the good fight, but I firmly believe our school will be shut down by the close of business on Monday. I truly believe this is the death of progressive public education in our city if we do not use this as a catalyst to attack the corporate reform agenda.

I know you are busy…you must be. I intend to use the closing of our school as the beginning of a rebellion. Will you help? How can I get you to Indianapolis to push this force back and make folks wake up and see what is happening? Our city is doomed if I can’t move this conversation in a different direction. We have 100′s of families, students, community members, educators ready to protest…to really blow it up…but I need more…I need a national presence…

Will you? What can I do?

Tarrey Banks

Categories ALEC, Black Alliance for Educational Options, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Indiana, Online learning, Privatization, Stand for Children, U.S. education

Reader Asks: Is This the True Goal of “Reform”?

By dianerav
February 17, 2013 //
46

A reader posts the following comment.

Thought you might be interested in Gates latest “Request for Proposal: Literacy Courseware Challenge.” More teacher-less, computerized learning to support his Common Core [National] Standards. “Adaptive digital learning tools” are his robo-teachers, because apparently the standards [read: curriculum, no matter how many people say that the CC are not a curriculum] are teacher-proof. Just create a huge quonset hut, or even better, a stadium, full of computer cubicles, sit the kids down, and, voila! A perfect Gates-ian school. Disgusting.

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/learning/Pages/rfp-literacy-courseware-challenge.aspx

Categories Bill Gates, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Online learning, Privatization

N.C. State Board Caves to Online Lobbyists, with Restrictions

By dianerav
January 10, 2013 //
1

North Carolina is a plum market for the online for-profit charter industry.

Today, the state board of education agreed to allow them to open in the state but set some limits.

Here is a link to a report on the decision by North Carolina Policy Watch:

“Virtual charter schools will face restrictions if they want to open up in North Carolina.
The N.C. State Board of Education voted today to adopt a policy that would require the online-based schools to adhere to a significantly lower funding formula ($3504 per student) than brick-and-mortar charter schools, maintain high graduation rates and low withdrawal rates of students. Schools will also need to keep a ratio of one teacher for every 50 students and keep graduation rates within 10 percent of the state average (80 percent), and can’t have withdrawal rates higher than 15 percent in two out of three years.”
Some legislators were unhappy that the state board of education imposed restrictions on the industry. Online charters get dismal results, but they are heavily favored by Jeb Bush and Bob Wise, and of course, the technology industry. They are also a favorite cause of the far-right organization ALEC, which counts some N.C. legislators among its members.
Two for-profit online corporations have already sent letters of intent to the state board of education: Connections, which is owned by Pearson; and K12, which is owned by the Milken brothers and listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Both have hired lobbyists to help them in the legislature, which may eliminate the restrictions imposed by the state board of education.
The bottom line: ALEC and for-profit corporations win, kids in N.C. lose.
Categories Corporate Reformers, For-Profit, North Carolina, Online learning, Privatization

Schools for Other People’s Children: UPDATE: LINK ADDED!

By dianerav
January 6, 2013 //
7

One of our most perceptive essayists Rachel Levy watched John Merrow’s program about Rocketship charters and recoiled with alarm.

She said if she put her children in front of a screen two hours a day, she would be called a bad parent, but the charter does it and it is called innovative.

She was distressed that the school treats test scores as the only goal of school, so stuff like art and music don’t get time. That’s what kids do on their own time, if they choose, after school.

And what is it that parents do, other than chant with their children?

What’s clear to Levy is that Rocketship is a school for “them,” for other people’s children, not for “ours.” It is all about test scores, for the glory of the founder, not about education.

Rocketship may be a Model T, an apt means of mass-producing test scores, but that’s a horrifying metaphor for stamping out standardized children who never ask questions, never day dream, always find the answer demanded by the program.

Rocketship is a school designed by Alphas and staffed by Betas for the children who are Delta, Gamma, and Epsilon. Read your Huxley.

Rachel also notes possible conflicts of interest. See her P.S.

Categories Blended Learning, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Online learning, Teachers and Teaching, Technology, Computers

Can High-Quality Schools Be Mass Produced?

By dianerav
December 29, 2012 //
8

John Merrow raised this question in his PBS show about Rocketship charters.

I have not visited one of these schools so do not pass judgement on them. I can say without qualification that I would not want my grandchildren to attend a school where children spent two hours a day in front of a computer screen doing point and click. I have heard that these charters offer no art or music. I hope that’s not true. I will wait to hear from others.

But the key question here is: Is it possible to “mass produce” a high quality school.

My assumption here is that the goal is to cut costs by replacing teachers with computers and having a “system” that can be managed by inexperienced, low-cost teachers.

My answer is that the question is an oxymoron. Any school that is “mass produced” [i.e., teacher-proofed] cannot be high quality. Just as one cannot mass produce a string quartet, or mass produce great families, or great anything, one cannot mass produce a great school. A high quality school has a culture made up of its principal and teachers. They cannot be mass produced. Period.

John Merrow’s show last night was called: Profiling Rocketship Education

“Rocketship Education operates seven schools in San Jose, California that are among the top performing low income schools in the state. The dream was to eventually serve one million students. Although others have tried, nobody has successfully mass produced a high quality, cost effective school model. Will Rocketship be the first?”

Categories California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Online learning, Privatization

The Ultimate Reform School!

By dianerav
December 28, 2012 //
11

Drop whatever you are doing, and read this. EduShyster serves up a delightful portrait of an award-winning school in Minneapolis that embodies every new reform strategy. And here is the best part: It hasn’t opened yet! It won’t open until next September and it is already a great success!

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Gates Foundation, Online learning, Privatization
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