Mark NAISON, professor of African-American studies at Fordham University, co-founded the BATs.
BATs are everywhere. They think high-stakes testing is child abuse. They think that evaluating teachers in relation to student test scores is nonsense.
Mark Naison here posts a hilarious parody of New York’s educator evaluation system, untested, being built in mid-air, that old airplane cliche.
If you are angry about high-stakes testing, watch it.
If you are upset about the loss of teacher autonomy and professionalism, watch it.
If you want to laugh out loud, watch it.
If you work for the New York State Education Department, DO NOT WATCH IT.
Be careful, laughter is dangerous.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane, I sent this video to Brian Lehrer. He hosted Mr. Walcott and his deputy this morning on his NPR show. Listening to Walcott/deputy was sickening how they presented this as benefitting teachers by lessening the evaluation burden on them and freeing up more time for teaching. Truly disgusting.
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Michael, 75 days more and they will be gone. Isn’t that a pleasant thought?
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Certainly is. Needless to say I enjoyed “Reign of Error”.
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🙂
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Diane, Unfortunately, I do not find this video humorous at all. Coming from a family who lost many members during the Holocaust, this video is quite chilling to me. As a retired teacher of the deaf and a parent, I am particularly concerned about what’s happening in NY and all over the country with massive data collection and privacy issues. Unfortunately, I think we cannot remain naïve enough to think that this personally identifiable, sensitive data will only be used for the benign purposes the ed reformers state, particularly in that it includes, according to what I’ve read, personality judgments as well as hard data like test scores (which are probably invalid anyway). I have been making my way through a lengthy and very disturbing book. I’m going to quote several passages from it. I would appreciate your opinion if you think that I am carrying my distrust of corporate reform too far by seeing potential parallels to what happened more than 70 years ago in Germany.
The book is:
IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation by Edwin Black (2001)
This is an unimpeachably researched and thoroughly documented work, produced after a gargantuan undertaking across continents and languages, detailing the collusion between Thomas Watson and his IBM, which had a virtual monopoly of punch card technology (and the cards themselves), and the Nazi frenzy for identifying Jews (going back generations) for the purpose of annihilating them.
From the frontispiece:
“Only after Jews were identified—a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately—could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930’s no computer existed. But IBM’s Hollerith punch card technology did exist. … IBM and its German subsidiary custom-designed complex solutions, one by one, anticipating the Reich’s needs. They did not merely sell the machines and walk away. Instead, IBM leased these machines for high fees and became the sole source of the billions of punch cards Hitler needed.”
I am not at all ascribing such sinister and horrific motives to today’s educrats and technology purveyors, but I think the technocratic mind-set predisposes them to leech the humanity from their data, as well as enabling them to rationalize their participation and shield themselves from negative unintended consequences of their policies. And then of course, there’s greed.
A passage that I found of particular concern was this:
page 321
“[Rene] Carmille [“a mysterious French military technocrat”] had been working for months on a national Personal Identification Number, a number that would not only be sequential, but descriptive. The thirteen-digit PIN number would be a manual ‘bar code’ of sorts describing an individual’s complete personal profile as well as professional skills in great detail. For example, one number would be assigned for metal workers, with a second modifying number for brass, and then a third modifying number for curtain rods. Tabulators could then be set to whisk through millions of cards until it located French metal workers, specializing in brass with experience in curtain rods. Those metal workers could also be pinpointed in any district. The system mimicked a concurrent Reich codification system that assigned a descriptive bar code-like number to every product and component in Germany. Carmille’s number would ultimately evolve into France’s social security number.” (emphasis added)
This bar-coding seems to me to resemble the plan to maintain a national database of every child from pre-K to 12, and college and beyond. What nefarious uses could this information be put to, even beyond the exploitation by vendors and the potential for hackers to find out personal information on vulnerable children?
As I implied, my imagination may be running away with me, and if you think that my musings are over-the-top, please tell me.
Thanks for all of your great work on behalf of public education.
By the way, I was in the audience when you spoke at URI two nights ago. Bravo, Diane!
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@ressenger… sorry that this video was so upsetting for you given your background and thanks for providing these excellent but “chilling examples”. I too have family members that I never even got to meet because they too were victims of the Nazis. As a teacher, I “bleed” for the lovely children I teach day in and day out .. the children I suspect will grow into angry adults who feel abused and powerless thanks in large part to a very misguided and abusive education system.
I really enjoyed this satirical piece Anytime we stand up and fight for justice when we feel powerless we are honoring those who have died under injustice. This video did just that! My deceased relatives might be cheering on a film of this nature because it serves to protect the rights of title one children who are truly being abused and having their childhood’s destroyed not just by poverty but by public education which is supposed to help them. It is most interesting the parallels you bring up in terms of the relentless record keeping and mining of data. This contributed to the downfall of the Nazis. Let us hope that “ed reformers” get off the education stage and that all this nonsensical data carries them off all the faster. They may not be as evil as the Nazis but what they are doing surely is heinous!
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ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS!!!! Will be sending this on to colleagues. thanks Mark
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Comparing standardized testing of students with the Holocaust is an indication of mental hysteria. Get a grip on yourselves.
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Jim, when people are subjected to absolutist mandates by distant, unaccountable, self-appointed authoritarians, then tend to start thinking about totalitarianism in general.
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Yes, and charter schools are heavy with authoritarianism. I’ve witnessed an assembly from a charter school CEO and felt like I’d sat through a bizarre rally for the likes of Kim Jong Il, etc. It amazed me that urban children are being raised in this bizarre environment. I’m not exaggerating. I wonder how this was preparing kids for a free and open democracy.
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It’s not Dee Dee, but neither did traditional public schools. How do I know? Obama got elected twice, the most Kim Jong Il like personality in all of American history/politics. I don’t suppose you share my premise now, but you will, you will, eventually, when you find your ox being gored.
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My teaching colleagues loved this video!
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I posted in on my Facebook page
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This might help answer the age old question, “How many bureaucrats does it take to screw up the public school system?”
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NY teacher: I am surprised you have not kept up with the latest EduMantras from the High Holy Church of Testolatry.
First you start with a criterion-referenced item on a Sacred Standardized Hazing Ritual: “How many educrats does it take to screw in a light bulb?” The correct answer being: “One to hold the bulb and nine to turn the ladder.”
Public school systems are much more complicated than light bulbs. Nonetheless, after training at the Broad Academy and learning that public schools are much much less important than light bulbs, it turns out that if you get the right sort of eduapparatchik you only need one per location to do significant damage.
For example, if you follow the train wrecks [aka urban school districts] that follow in his wake, the redoubtable Paul Vallas is in A League of His Own—“I go in, fix the system, I move on to something else.”
Link: http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Paul-Vallas–213999671.html
English-to-English translation: I sneak in, put the fix in, move on to destroy something else.
The Power of One.
Creative disruption and destruction. Ain’t it grand?
😦
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