A recent post reported that Rupert Murdoch’s Amplify business won a contract to develop the formative assessments for one of the two federally-funded consortia preparing tests for the Common Core standards. Joel Klein is head of Amplify. As in any conversation among knowledgeable adults, we often don’t explain every word to outsiders. Do you object to the Common Core? to the online assessments? to the contract going to Murdoch and Klein? to the profit-making at a time of budget cuts? This student has a question about that post. Please explain your concerns to him or her:
“So, question. I’m a student and don’t understand exactly what this is about? What I see it as being, given the comments, is that its like a boring sort of Leapfrog. Or mass produced education. Is this correct? Someone correct me if its not.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There are a number of levels on which one might address the question, “What is this about?” The most basic answer is that the current educational “reform” movement is about money, specifically the approximately half a trillion dollars of public money spent on public education annually in the US. Those with the most money (the top 1% of American wealth) want more money. So, in its most basic sense, the current educational reform movement is one of greed. Greed is the motivator to ignore, hide, and distort research evidence that says vouchers and charters and grading teachers based upon student standardized test scores cannot “fix” education. Greed is the motivator to manufacture in the first place the problem that “education in the US is failing.” Greed is the impetus for the conflicts of interest whereby those in elected or appointed positions are also benefitting financially from the reforms they are promoting. The corporate reform movement says, “Forget research-based evidence to the contrary. I have to be right about the ‘failure’ of American education because I want to make a profit.”
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Bravo! Excellent answer, very readable, concise, to the point. This campaign against public education is not about learning or schooling but rather is about the private sector plundering the vast assets of the public sector while also demolishing and demoralizing opposition to corporate takeover–teachers, parents, students…many thanks for printing such a fine statement.
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Thank you. I appreciate your enthusiasm for my distilled response. 🙂
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Very well stated. Very succinct.
I would also add that politicians also play their role – which is bilateral. They want their friends who are really in power to make more money (probably so they can get a piece either now or later), and they want to look good for the taxpayers – the politicians want the public to think they are doing something to fix that which is really not broken to begin with. All for more votes and public attention.
The same goes for most at the state departments – they are nothing more than politicians that need something to be wrong so they can step in and ‘fix’ it. They also go on to top paying executive jobs (think Peter Gorman – ex-superintendent of Charlotte NC). Pete was all about testing and corporate takeover to fix a problem where there was not one. The problems in Charlotte stem to from very high poverty rates among students.
So we see two groups of people working in unison with the billionaires that Ms. Schneider so efficiently identified – politicians and state personnel.
Its the perfect storm – the public has been shocked into believing something is wrong by all three groups, when really the public is slipping more and more into debt and despair as the middle class continues to be attacked. This is about money. It’s about the upper class of this country stealing funds from the middle and lower classes to prop up a cut-throat private sector that needs more poison – I mean money. The public sector is under attack, and teachers represent a vast ocean of money and resources for the billionaires to siphon from in terms of their pensions and benefits. For ever veteran teacher terminated, there are large possible savings that benefit both the state and billionaires. The billionaires get the difference in providing resources or even replacing teachers via online virtual instruction.
All three aforementioned groups win, while students and teachers lose.
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This is the perfect answer to give anyone who is unfamiliar with corporate reform. When I read responses to articles about what’s happening in public education, a lot of the responses from people NOT involved in education indicate they just don’t know why the propagation of charters and standardized testing is not “fixing” education.
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My answer starts with looking back 600 or so years to the Gutenberg printing press. This technological innovation revolutionized the dissemination of information. Or that more common folk had access to information that formerly was in the possession of the church and the text transcribing monks.
Fast forward to today where the networked computer and the internet has made information available to almost everyone.Think about that for a minute. And the applications of this new democratization of information revolution are only just being explored much less envisioned.
This is what private equity folks know and want to capitalize on, at least in my opinion.
What these revenue seeking folks don’t know, or maybe know and don’t care about. is that the “gestalt” of human learning is very complex and motivation plays a huge role in whatever student learning outcomes are or should be which is another nebulous variable here. Are we sure we want the education policy of our future generations to be decided by those who are seeking short term profit?
I could continue for awhile but my main point is that we humans have embarked on a technological revolution that is going to affect every nook and cranny of our lives, and I would use this fact as a lens when trying to understand this “boring sort of Leapfrog.”
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I would say it this way: these reforms are not necessarily based on sound educational principles or sound research. For example, psychometricians (people who study tests, testing, scores, measurements of personal attributes) have shown quite convincingly that the VAM that is being promoted nationwide is not sound, from a mathematical point of view. Some reformers acknowledge this, but then say they will use it anyway. Also, many of the “policies” make sense to us on a different level (perhaps they are simple, or catchy, or easy to understand), but are not sound on an educational level. An example would be the idea that we have to fire the bottom 10% (or whatever) of teachers, since they must be ineffective. Why? That is easy to understand, but what is the basis? It is kind of like the idea that, when asked to divide something three ways, most people naturally divide into equal thirds. That looks nice, but is not necessarily something that has a basis in education.
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I think the student said it very, very well — it is mass produced education.
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But isn’t mass produced education what traditional schools are all about?
New communication technology does allow students to follow their own path.
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Yes, but the new technology’s easy and much less costly access to knowledge and information is best handled by those who already are proficient with text and computation.
I believe traditional classrooms with a teacher or instructor present is the most efficient way to prepare our kids to be fully capable to effectively utilize new communication technology.
An example might be to continue traditional K-12 education and use more internet classes and learning in some graduate programs. Undergrad school still probably needs the brick and mortar approach.
For proof, consider the effect your favorite teacher and/or Prof had upon your development as a student and a learner. As for me, I know that my teachers not only helped me to become a learner but they also imbued me with who they were and are.
And that is why teachers and teaching is priceless and must be preserved. Hows that for opportunity cost? (no snarkiness intended)
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I think there are times in which students can use full-time virtual, online programming to learn. It sort of reminds me of the PACE system in the 80’s and 90’s that was paper based where students could learn via paper illustrations, etc… and then be assessed on what they learned.
The first huge, insurmountable issue with online learning is the sheer amount of screen time that are allocated which exceed that which is advised and enforced by agencies. Kids simply cannot look at a screen for so long – it has health ramifications.
Secondly, your use of ‘mass’ compared to ‘mass’ in traditional schooling are vastly different. With virtual online learning the masses in a classroom at our traditional schools still must interact and learn social skills. We still have deep social ills plaguing this nation and our public school classrooms are a great place to try and unite different types of people. I simply do not think this is doable through a computer.
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@ Brutus2011,
I certainly agree that proficiency is important for self learning, and that is why it might be reasonable to have different models of instruction for first grade than for twelfth grade, and different models of instruction for different students.
I don’t believe it is an either/or situation, but one that recognizes the strength of student self-learning, the ability of individuals other than teachers to guide students (you might look at the math stack community to see how this can work: http://math.stackexchange.com/), and the changing role of a teacher.
I always worry about opportunity cost.
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@ Me,
I was not recommending any particular amount of “screen time”. No doubt there is an optimal mix.
Students at my son’s traditional public school must show up at 8:05 in the morning or be punished. They must follow a predetermined path through the material or face the consequences. They must all be at the same place at the same time in that path or face the consequences. Even their food is standardized, now limiting calories no matter how active the students.
That is the way that I see traditional public school education as “mass” education.
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Our curriculum is differentiated: not all of my second- graders are doing the same thing at the same time. Reading groups are based on reading levels. I currently have children reading from the first grade level to the third grade level. In math, some children are working on sums and differences to 10 while others are now learning their multiplication facts. No mass- produced, cookie cutter education here! (But one hell of an exhausted teacher!)
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Would,it be better if you were not exhausted? Joe Nathan posted a video in part about brining technology into the classroom in another thread. You can find it here: http://www.educationevolving.org/pai .
I was particularly struck by Mr. Pai’s refusal of a smart board particularly interesting. My son differentiates between “smart board teachers” who talk a lot and those without smart boards.
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How so? Please specify.
Is this just something that sounds good, like an advertising slogan, or a slick website, or do you have anything of substance?
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Which point are you referring to? That traditional school is designed for mass education or that modern technology can allow for individualization?
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I think that all of the above comments are good descriptions of reform and reform issues, but the question was –
“So, question. I’m a student and don’t understand exactly what this is about? What I see it as being, given the comments, is that its like a boring sort of Leapfrog. Or mass produced education. Is this correct? Someone correct me if its not.”
S/he was asking (I think) about the Murdoch thing specifically.
My simple response would be simply that Murdoch won a contract to develop formative (ongoing – perhaps daily – mini-assessments) that will be digital (online).
This is disconcerting because:
1. Formative assessments should NOT be formal. The “form” part of the descriptor means that we use formative assessments to help us design our lessons and content based on the results of these on-the-fly assessments. They should be teacher-created and based on what we want to know about our students at any given moment in time. Maybe we just want to know if they grasped one particular vocabulary word during a lesson. A quick overt response might suffice (thumbs up, thumbs across or thumbs down against the chest). Or we might want to know if students understood an assignment on the civil war. Maybe a Ticket Out would do the trick. Each student would write the three things s/he felt were the most important point take-aways from the assignment on an index card and hand it to the teacher as they walk out of the room. Teachers use simple formative assessments ALL THE TIME. We do not need Murdoch and his cronies creating formal formative assessments.
2. We don’t trust Murdoch. Google him to find 5011+ reasons why.
3. Adding in MORE assessments (formative or summative) is ridiculous. See all the thousands of comments to the hundreds of posts on this blog and many other teacher blogs for why.
4. Apparently our computer labs and classroom computers will only be used for all of these formative and summative assessments created by this and other teams of non-educators. So much for 21st Century Learning (and I do so hate that term, but still our kids need to use computers for something other than assessments).
I’m sure others have reasons why this particular contract is another despicable example of cronyism and bad reform policy.
Does this help clear things up regarding the horror of Murdoch getting this contract?
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I see it as many insidious things, one being that it is a reallocation of tax dollars to the private sector. One has to question both the motives and means of amassing wealth at the expense of our greatest resource- children.
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Children are not “our greatest resource”. That is an appalling concept to think of another person as a “resource” to be used and used up.
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I think “4equity2” meant that children are our greatest resource because children are our future–not as a consumable resource.
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Perhaps you read too literally. Do you suppose any of us intend to “use” and “use up” our children? Really?
They are the future, and if waste their educational years, what kind of future will it be?
The greatest good any nation can produce should be found in its people.
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I would like to respond specifically to “it’s like a boring sort of Leapfrog.” As a parent and teacher, I think I understand the concern about the use of computers in schools.
Some adults seem to believe that if it’s on the computer, the students will enjoy it and therefore learn from it. Listen up, adults, that is NOT always the case. The diagnostic-prescriptive programs used in computer labs across the nation are not engaging over time. They are repetitive and lack true intellectual challenge that is needed to maintain interest. Frequent, mandatory exposure to the same program has, in my experience, resulted in reduced interest, behavior problems, and decreases in computer-based accuracy scores. In short, they are boring. It seems obvious that students who are not engaged in the learning tasks will not benefit as much as they would from those that are exciting and varied.
Think for a moment about your own computer use. Casual gamers frequently seek new and varied experiences, based on the prolific number of games available online and for purchase. I am a puzzle solver, my husband is an object finder, one son prefers simulations and multi-player games such as Minecraft, the other is more of a dabbler with varied interests. Both sons have been placed in computer programs for differentiated reading instruction or as a part of the weekly schedule, and both have described it as boring; they prefer interaction with others (shared reading) and variety.
I was unable to find a great deal of research support (outside of that prepared by the vendors) for general instructional programs, although course- and goal- specific programs seem to have a positive effect on end of course assessments. Student learning preference was a factor in one research result. This is not my area, maybe I am wrong about the results–
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The students comment would suggest that at least one system of high tech learning toys is not boring: Leapfrog.
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I don’t get the Leapfrog metaphor, but the student has it right: mass produced education, just like mass produced television, or mass produced computer games, or mass produced movies. One smart “education maker” and distributed to millions at a price. Except it’s not entertainment. If you can’t crack the high stakes on line assessments, you don’t get credit for the course, or the time you were in high school. No test, no diploma. THEREFORE, you’d better purchase and practice with the formative assessments assiduously so you can find out before the BIG TEST what you don’t know, and then you can buy a second program to learn it from before you try for some other BIG TEST. Formative assessment=practice test. Summative assessment =the real test by which you hang by the neck or ascend to the next level.
Don’t worry though. It the modern world of government gives you everything. You’ll get your free contraceptives, gays will wed all over in married bliss, if your girlfriend gets pregnant there’ll be free abortion, and you can live with your parents until they die. What fun! No chance of independent living because you won’t be able to afford it, even if you do manage to finesse some kind of college degree. Welcome to the world of utopian socialism. If it were put in a novel and you read it in high school, you wouldn’t believe it, but it is happening to YOU, now. Not only has the train left the station, but YOU are on the tracks, and it’s barreling down the rails toward you, its headlight paralyzing you like a frightened deer. But, hey, President Obama wants it, so it must be OK, since he’s cool and hip, and well, he wants what you want too, peace, happiness, and universal brothersisterhood. God forbid you should want to be independent and make the meaning of your own life on your own. That wouldn’t be mellow, being part of the collective, though would it. Just try to get a date with either of his daughters and you’ll find out what he REALLY wants for you: an unmarked grave that’s part of a monument to his own greatness as an agent of “change.”
You young students are like a field of marijuana plants. If you try hard and grow tall enough you’ll be harvested by machines and go on to the big hookah at the university. If, however, you are short and stumpy and the harvester can’t pull you up by the roots and ship you off to college, you’ll be ploughed back into the ground for political fertilizer, where you’ll get your food stamps, section 8 housing, and state funded Medicaid. It’ll be enough to buy booze and pizza and drugs, until you won’t know the difference between happiness and anger. You’ll be one of the Lotus Eaters and you won’t even recognize the allusion, let alone be able to think about it and its function in the work from which it is taken. And if I say, “just like your teachers,” you’ll look up with innocent bleary eyes and say “Wha?” And the teachers will say either “I don’t get it, and it doesn’t matter, because I’ve got tenure and I’m sticking to the union,” or “Wha?”
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Leapfrog is not a metaphor, it is a set of high tech learning toys.
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Harlan, you should have stopped after your first paragraph. That made sense.
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Yes, Harlan. Afraid you gave yourself away. And it negates anything you think you have to offer to the discussion.
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Blah blah blah blah blah…
Harlan, please go elsewhere to feed your apparent obsession with the so-called culture wars. Okay?
Take a hint. It’s 2013. Your Archie Bunker rants were already growing mold in 1983.
Look, I suspect I’m not too many years behind you, at least not chronologically.
Yeah, I’m an old guy too. But I’m not a bitter, cantankerous, confused, nasty, full of rage, full of hate, full of BS old coot.
It’s one thing to be old; it’s another to be a grumpy old guy who can’t understand why the world “just can’t be the way it was before!!!”
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Don’t you mean “the world ‘just can’t be the way it WASN’T before”? (that is most regressives want to return to a world that never was except in their imagination)
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Correction: sums and MINUENDS to ten. One long day. I do have a SMARTBoard in my room. I use it to organize my students’ day for them and as a very expensive overhead projector. I fought getting one, but got one anyway. I like it now: it gets my students’ attention better than I ever can. But, I also limit the time I stand in front of it teaching: kids that age are good for 15-20 minutes tops before they lose it. I’ll check the clip out later. Thanks.
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Don’t you think, that like every previous “new” technology, the Smart Board will eventually be greeted with students’ yawns?
The most transformative teaching-learning experience is based on relationship, not the latest gimmick.
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But new technology can create new communities. One example is this blog, another, more academic is math stack exchange.
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No one is questioning the power of new technologies just the automatic assumption that they must be better because they are innovative. I watched a show on a weaver who has embraced computer technology to allow her to program designs and have them automatically produced. She can reproduce photographs with weaving. Her work is incredible, but does it replace the work of an artisan who works solely by hand? They both have their place.
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Actually I think many posters are questioning the power of new technology, for example poster JD in another thread seeing the wisdom of old Amish laws.
What more posters are concerned with is the ability of students to learn independently from the classroom.
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I think I am probably closer to “an Amish” (Waldorf?) philosophy on technology simply because I have seen it used so poorly. Computers begin to be used as babysitters rather than as tools to accomplish some goal. I am still a big fan of pencil and paper; the act of writing with one’s own hand plays a role in the learning process. We get very careless with the way we use computers assuming learning is taking place because they are sitting in front of a screen.
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I think any technology can be used poorly, especially when we are trying to figure out how to use it well. That is not a reason to abandon it, however.
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I am not suggesting that we abandon it, just be more judicious in our use. As a special education tool, computers have been a godsend. They have allowed my students to access the general education curriculum in ways that were unavailable in the past. We all know and can list ways to use technology that have enhanced our classrooms and our practice ( don’t get hung up on “we all”). We all can also probably list the ways computer can be used for mindless activity.
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I have put two students through public schools with IEPs. The gifted and talented one benefited greatly from using technology, the one with learning disabilities less so.
The further from the average a student is, the more the average approach needs to be modified.
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It is all in how it is used. Each student is as individual as your children are to you; there is no such thing as average. Every child approaches a problem from a unique perspective. Were computers more useful to your gifted child because of his ability to access technology on his own? I can’t speak to your child that needed extra help without knowing what kind of support he needed and what strengths he had.
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I would not say it was usefull to access technology, it was useful to access a community that valued scholarship first and foremost.
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Years ago, when my daughter went off to high school, she came home one day early on and said it was so nice to be in classes where she could use “big words.” She was and is very bright; high school provided opportunities to find a like-minded community, so I understand what you are saying. She did not have to go to the university level to find her peers, like your son, and her high school tracked students for academic subjects, but in middle school when peer relationships become so important, it is rough to feel like you don’t fit in. Of course, 3/4 of the kids feel like they don’t fit in for one reason or another, but they don’t know that so many feel the same way. There were only a few kids that I can identify over my years of teaching and parenting that were far beyond their classmates academically. They were fortunate to live in a community where their parents had access to resources that could fuel their children’s learning. We still do an inadequate job for kids at the other end of the spectrum as well.
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Yes, this blog is an example of a new community. BUT think if what is known about how adolescents learn. I’m not talking about learning what their current pop idol is doing, but why and how mathematics is relevant, what can be gleaned from the reading and related discussion of a novel, how something like genocide occurs. Students at this level are sensitive to relationships. What they will contemplate depends largely upon whom they respect and with whom they relate.
Who can bridge this? Who can facilitate this? A computer program?
Who can create the cognitive dissonance critical to developing understanding?
A computer program?
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Did you take a look at math stack exchange? I found this post and the comments very moving: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/167294/am-i-too-young-to-learn-more-advanced-math-and-get-a-teacher/167306#167306
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Yes, I did. Do you think this represents the average student? I teach middle school math- the “grade level” students. Believe me, many of these “grade level” students are 2to 4 grade levels behind.
They do not have the intrinsic motivation demonstrated in by the writer.
It’s a different ballgame. Totally different. And it’s the majority of students in the district in which I teach.
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I do not think that student represents the majority of students, but rather a minority that we should be concerned about. The traditional class must teach to the majority. With moremindividualizedminstruction, it can also teach for the minority.
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There is also the power factor. The will to power has always been a factor in education. There is sometimes a constant jockeying for power or one side trying to exert undue influence over another. You probably see this at your school with students, teachers, and administrators. At some schools, the office staff and custodians hold unexpected power. This power motive goes up to the highest levels where it becomes entrenched with the profit motive, as several other posters have already mentioned.
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