This reader wants to know:
“I think at some point they have to be able to point to some tangible benefit of “reform” to the majority of people. It’s been more than a decade. Every year it’s just more mandates and less funding. The funding that does come isn’t towards anything that we find “valuable”. I didn’t ask for an elaborate school grading system that changes every year and I think testing kids in order to evaluate teachers is nutty. I don’t really consider the relationship between my kid and his school to be adversarial or “competitive”. He’s not a “consumer” at school, considering his “options”. He’s an 11 year old. Hopefully they’re working together.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The answer is never. Whenever their reforms fail, it’s always somebody else’s fault.
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One can easily point to the very tangible negative effects of these so-called reforms. U.S. English language arts curricula and pedagogy are being grossly distorted and rendered incoherent by being driven by the testing. That’s a disaster, and unmitigated disaster.
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Some think that “accountable” is seeing a flashy new computer toy in the hands of a pupil …. they identify having the newest toy on the block with all you need to succeed in life and the camera will follow you everywhere. but it used to be a little red wagon, then it was a flashy corvette, today it’s a personal jet with attendants. There is also another segment of “believers” that the ascendance of the machine is “accountable” because they have a deus ex machine philosophy…. it’s almost a religious belief and therefore doesn’t have to be “accountable” . These factions get together and look out world…. you are about to be “saved.”
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Yep. “Sleek and shiny syndrome”
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Our children, all of them, are now mules for the education industrial complex: the testing industry and a teacher reduction plan masquerading as a teacher “evaluation” system.
The goal is to reduce the workforce, increase class size, replace professionals with newbie scabs and devices, substitute a public obligation with a consumer good and funnel taxpayer $$$$ towards edufrauds peddling eduschemes.
That’s reform as brought to you by Obama, Duncan, Gates, Broad and their apparatchiks.
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Success Academy does monthly prep from 2nd grade on. There is lack of accountability within the Network as well. Case in point: Ms Roby, principal of Upper West Success Academy took a full-size room aimed for a class for her own office. She put a kinder class of 30-kids in less than 500 sq ft, a half-size room. This is half the space those kids need.
Guess what? The Network office didn’t have a clue about her doing this. Not all Success Academy schools are like this. I visited others in which their principals work in tiny offices without stealing space from the kids. But there’s no accountability, so abuses like Ms Roby’s can happen.
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If options had been considered properly when implementing RttT (I might add that the application for RttT reads like a contest in a high school sponsored by the SGA); anyway, then this factor would have been considered:
“One of the things that separates Bayesian Analysis from other decision-making techniques is that it assumes that our extensive experience in a given situation enables us to determine a relatively reliable estimate of the likelihood one of our hypotheses will be true or false.”
I don’t think enough analysis or research went into these policies. And I think Arne should be called onto the carpet for it. Setting out to destroy a business would not go over well in any business, I don’t imagine. So why is it OK in this one?
Note the use of “extensive experience.” I think from its inception the Department of Education has not relied on the extensive experience of those in the classroom (for whatever reason. . .that in and of itself would be an interesting thing to contemplate), and if you read Carter’s White House Diaries he specifically states that he likes the idea of a DOE as long as teachers are not involved.
I would like to know more about that comment. Does anyone know Carter? Can you ask him for me?
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I used to babysit for a lady whose family was good friends with the Carters. I think I will track her down. Really. I think he set a precedent. I want to know why.
Why does everybody in power not want teachers around? (Well, of course W married one. . .but that is beside the point right now).
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URGENT:
PLEASE send this to every public school parent you know.
The way FERPA was amended by Arne, without congressional approval, parent permission is NOT required.
Excerpt:
InBloom seems designed to nudge schools toward maximal data collection. School administrators can choose to fill in more than 400 data fields. Many are facts that schools already collect and share with various software or service companies: grades, attendance records, academic subjects, course levels, disabilities. Administrators can also upload certain details that students or parents may be comfortable sharing with teachers, but not with unknown technology vendors. InBloom’s data elements, for instance, include family relationships (“foster parent” or “father’s significant other”) and reasons for enrollment changes (“withdrawn due to illness” or “leaving school as a victim of a serious violent incident”).
Ms. Barnes, the privacy lawyer, said she was particularly troubled by the disciplinary details that could be uploaded to inBloom because its system included subjective designations like “perpetrator,” “victim” and “principal watch list.” Students, she said, may grow out of some behaviors or not want them shared with third parties. She also warned educators to be wary of using subjective data points to stratify or channel children.
One scene in the inBloom video, for instance, shows a geometry teacher virtually reassigning students’ seating assignments based on their “character strengths” — helpfully coded as green, yellow and red. On his tablet, the teacher moves a green-coded female student (“actively participates: 98 percent”) next to a red-and-yellow coded boy (“shows enthusiasm: 67 percent”).
Executives at inBloom say their service has been unfairly maligned. It is entirely up to school districts or states to decide which details about students to store in the system and with whom to share them, Sharren Bates, inBloom’s chief product officer, said. She said the company does not look at, use, analyze, mine or sell the student data it stores.
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I feel your sense of urgency considering the vision they paint for the future of educating our kids. I feel less hopeful after reading this. I couldn’t even click the video; that would make it too real for me.
As a parent I did get a form which I checked do not share info with the 20 or so possibilities. Not that I have faith in that contract.
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It was a NY Times news article and I know what you mean. I cringe when I receive certain articles and links. How much worse can it get? But check out this photo. It is directly from the inbloom dashboard. Imagine this being collected on your child:
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To answer the posted question, when every who is Whoville shouts until they are heard. Buffalo is shouting.
http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/education/forum-on-testing-reform-draws-2500-vocal-teachers-parents-and-administrators-20131002
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Philly is shouting too
Come on Whos, we need every who in Whoville! (Horton Hears a Who)
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