Mercedes Schneider posted a critique of a webinar hosted by the Education Writers Association on the subject of data-mining and student privacy.
She was upset that the panel of three included two cheerleaders for data mining and the third produced research funded by Microsoft.
The post was strong, but the letters that followed are amazing. She got responses from the CEO of inBloom, defending it, from privacy experts, from the researcher whose viewpoint she challenged, and from parent advocates.
This is the best, most free-wheeling discussion, including all points of view, that I have seen on this vital subject.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I guess that Edward Snowden was unavailable to participate as a balancing skeptic on the panel?
Good news for those in favor of a “better education for all”: “This is the best, most free-wheeling discussion, including all points of view, that I have seen on this vital subject.”
Bad news for those in mad dog pursuit of $tudent $ucce$$: “This is the best, most free-wheeling discussion, including all points of view, that I have seen on this vital subject.”
I am forced at gun point [?!?!?] to remind the viewers of this blog that when you are a cage busting achievement gap crushing member of the “new civil rights movement” of our time you should beware of mistaking admonitory maxims for stern commands:
“Honesty is the best policy – when there is money in it.” [Mark Twain]
😎
As always Krazy, you are an informed and insightful comic. I posted my views directly to Mercedes site so shall not repeat them here. Thanks to Diane for broadening the discussion.
Ellen Lubic
But do check out the comments. They are coming out to save face. Some waffle, some shuck and jive. Make popcorn first and read it all. Woowee!
The comments were great.
Thanks, Diane. 🙂
Still have no info on the teaching experience of the new Chancellor in NYC.
There have been several articles in the NYT if you have access.
Where in the NYT?
There have been a couple in the metro section. Here is a set of links to a number of reports thanks to Google: http://article.wn.com/view/2013/12/30/Former_teacher_Carmen_Farina_named_school_chancellor/#/related_news
Robert,
His is a short article from Newsday that might help.
http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/carmen-fari-a-built-sense-of-community-as-teacher-1.6696157
I think it is the CTO ( chief technology officer) not the CEO who came out of woodwork to post. I eagerly await to see if Garret Suhum responds to any of my questions. I kinda doubt it though.
I think it is good that he spoke out, but you must note that he only has 8 months experience with InBloom! Just think about how much you knew about a District with only 8 months there.
Maybe he is an honest guy with no clue what is going on or what he got himself into!
He’s replied to your posts before.
That may very well be true, but then the question becomes should he indeed be speaking out as an authority on what has been done or what inBlooms long range plans are? He may be unwittingly telling people things that are not true, but if people believe him the results are still the same.
Tim..how can anyone in this mix not have a clue as to what is going on?
CTO is a major job, and certainly would be filled by one who has carefully assessed all the information.
Ellen
I think it is the CTO ( chief technology officer) not the CEO who came out of woodwork to post. I eagerly await to see if Garret Suhum responds to any of my questions. I kinda doubt it though. Anyone laying odds?
Yes, that was the title he gave, but he seems to have disappeared. Sheila, too.
I am beginning to think Sheila is an inBloom advocate in privacy advocate clothing.
I don’t get her at all. She plays both sides. They both disappeared.
I think I do now.
You guys made it too hot in the room. 🙂
Good deal.
Do Sheila and Garrett have kids in school?
If so, do their schools participate in this data mining?
Sheila has grown children.
Too patronizing for Sheila to say parents don’t understand. I understand alright.
People understand quite well. That’s why they are rejecting this Orwellian vision for the future of education. What a horror. Resist.
Linda: “disappeared”? As the creator of “edufraud” I would have thought you had kept up with the latest memos on terminology.
Nowadays we call it “pulling a Rhee” — as in the Feb. 6 public discussion at Leigh University that Michelle Rhee “disappeared” herself from months before it even happened. In this case it’s a “pulling a late Rhee” — once they found themselves in an open democratic forum they suddenly realized the pitfalls of having a genuine back-and-forth with informed and concerned people.
Kind of like hiding out in a “witness protection program” except that it’s for the perpetrators, not the witnesses and victims. It saves the participants from painfully putting their feet in their mouths over and over again. Oh, and it almost guarantees a continued flow of $tudent $ucce$$.
I hope I cleared that up for you. And I didn’t need even one semi-colon.
😎
Thank you as a!ways for your clarity, I assume they are getting their talking points from the guys with the bags of money.
Sheila, I realized minutes ago, it professional FERPA Opt Out person. Her posted flyer on Opt Out info is signed with her name. What ever else she does is a mystery. I would appreciate her explaining to us who she is so we can all put her info into perspective.
Ellen
Come on, Crazy. Don’t you think people care about their reputations? These are people w families. Including myself. You may not care about the words you say but I consider mine carefully. You wanted to Garrett to answer questions. He does & then you say maybe he’s not truthful.
Doesn’t make sense for you to say that.
Wrong! Garrett never answered all the questions posed to him.
You read selectively and pick and choose your “facts”.
@Mercedes –
“You guys made it too hot in the room.
Good deal.”
True – the commentors made the room too hot, but you, Mercedes, are building the house in which the room is contained! Once again, I am in awe.
Privacy issues aside (not that I don’t have concerns about them)…I would like to see some discussion about the massive amounts of time entering the data into these systems take. I am an infant-toddler teacher and have to upload my anecdotal observations (and my assistants’) into a system called GOLD. I then have to determine which of their rigid “objectives” and “dimensions” I need to click off at specific developmental levels for each observation. i can also upload videos, photos or voice recordings.This data generates activities that supposedly will help the child reach the next level. They are simplistic and common sensical and any in-tune mom or baby-sitter would engage in them instinctively (Peek-a-Boo, anybody? Really?). We are being pressured to use this “data” to “inform” our planning. So, I have 20 years experience as an early-childhood educator…how exactly is spending massive amounts of time to type out and upload my hand-written notes (to tell me what I already know about a child and recommend activities I already do) helpful to me or the kids? We are also required to do periodic screenings (a different tool, with different items) on the children to see if they may be delayed and an early intervention evaluation is warranted. I can go into more detail, but what is the point…NYC DOE teachers have already won a grievance with back pay for time after hours they required to enter data into a special education data system. Teachers get a 45 minute prep period a day- to prepare for their teaching, respond to their students’ work, or to meet with parents and students. Most teachers spend many hours a week of their own time doing these things as well. When do the powers that be expect all of this data to get uploaded, rated, analyzed, et al? And if veteran teachers are saying the data is useless…
Oh my god, Margie. That is truly horrifying. Just stop entering the data. Type in generalized fillers, for every child, if you feel you must keep your job.
I’m frustrated, and a little frightened, that people have to cast around and talk about whether this “data” will be “misused”. Isn’t its intended use disturbing enough?
Marketers want to use the false authority of all this data to put the children under control of their proprietary, “personalized”, “adaptive” algorithms, and force them to undergo continuous monitoring of their progress toward the marketers’ next goal.
Isn’t its intended use frightening enough?
That is very, very well said, chemteacher. Anyone who doesn’t find this Powerpointing of education extremely frightening isn’t thinking AT ALL.
“I believe in standardizing automobiles, not people.” –Albert Einstein
“There’s no bullet list like Stalin’s bullet list.” –Edward Tufte
GOLD is useless. It was developed as intellectual property to funnel kickbacks to the creators. Every child entered is worth $$$!
Teaching Strategies (GOLD developers) have a free workforce with every teacher they coerce into the “data/assessment” system.
Crazy said:
[I am beginning to think Sheila is an inBloom advocate in privacy advocate clothing].
You’re 2/3 right, Crazy. I am a privacy advocate. I do not advocate for inBloom however I do believe it’s secure. At the same time I think we need the legislation that I have been discussing elsewhere.
Robert:
I have adult children however one of children’s behavior records were breached. So I’m sensitive to privacy. I have been looking at it since 2006. Before inBloom & independent of my son’s breach.
Mom:
I apologize if I said something that came across as patronizing. I don’t know what you’re referring to specifically but think we exchanged comments on Mercedes’ blog.
Linda;
I went to a movie. That’s not disappearing. Thank you for your concern.
I don’t play both sides. I am objective.
Mercedes:
Your blog wasn’t too hot. Interesting that I saw it reposted with this lead in:
[Mercedes Schneider is one of the most powerful and important voices in the anti-corporate education reform industry movement. Her research is extraordinarily thorough and her writing is amazing.]
Great topic — not privacy related. I know it’s all tied in together in conversations but very separate issues. Maybe this is part of the problem. I’m not saying what you do is a problem — perhaps connecting privacy & anti-corporate education is creating a problem. Yeah, I know I’ll get ridiculed for saying this. I’m not concerned about what people write on a blog. I care about whether it factually correct but it doesn’t bother me when people criticize me because we disagree.
Sheila. let’s just spit it all out! This Data base would be worth multibillions. If you think the likes of Murdock and his minions would not attempt to profit from this, you are very trusting and naive!
The beauty of the database is, of course, that it can’t be replicated–that it’s a monopoly. So, there’s the revenue stream to be generated by charging districts per student fees for the data storage and collection. There’s the revenue to be generated from charging publishers to correlate their computer-adaptive curricula to the database. And there is the revenue to be generated by offering proprietary computer-adaptive curricula so correlated. All potentially extraordinarily lucrative. But to make this work, the CC$$ had to be in place first.
As Arne Duncan’s Chief of Staff put it in a post on a Harvard Business School blog, “the adoption of common standards [the CC$$] and shared assessments means that education entrepreneurs will enjoy national markets where the best products can be taken to scale.”
Robert, the revenue that you speak of is true but it is chump-change compared to the revenue that can be had by selling to other companies interested in direct advertising.
But again, the key is that there can only be one such national database of all student scores and responses–so it becomes a monopoly–the equivalent in the education market of the operating system in the personal computer market–the one piece that everyone has to use and pay for using–the tollgate through which curricula of the future will flow.
If this doesn’t creep you out, you’re not thinking. But then again, a LOT of people haven’t been thinking about what the game plan was here, including a lot of self-styled edupundits who have been falling all over themselves to embrace the first stage of this plan–the CC$$ and the new te$t$.
I just got home from work, or I would have had an opportunity to say this earlier: You’re way off base here, Sheila. Your first comment to Mercedes was this:
“You could have sold me anything but to question the integrity of Joel Reidenberg invalidates your post.”
No, raising questions about the possibility of bias because of funding sources is vital and encouraged in the struggle for independence and impartiality in science.
As I explained to Joel, “if AMGEN funded your research on erythropoeitin, your disclosure would in no way insulate you from skepticism.” I would add that AMGEN funded a lot of people in its successful efforts to boost Epo sales, and a panel composed only of researchers in industry pay could never have been defended.
I’m a scientist, before even a teacher, and by any academic standards, Reidenberg has a conflict of interest because he takes Microsoft funding. As I pointed out to him, he has a right to argue for his own impartiality if he wishes, but he has NO right, whatsoever, to denounce people for declining to accept his reassurances. It isn’t about his specific integrity, it isn’t defamation, it isn’t an “ad hominum attack”.
I don’t think Linda’s concern was aimed at you, Sheila, because you aren’t a member of the panel Mercedes is writing about. But in any case, your antagonistic stance is unwarranted and ignorant of basic standards for impartiality.
Sorry, I posted that on the wrong thread. I’ll try again.
Hi Sheila,
We have no history. Just from what I’ve read here and on Mercede’s thread, I can appreciate the fact that you’re staying on course and stating your opinions.
We may have a similarity in that I’ve never allowed myself to be branded a “liberal” or “conservative”. I examine the “facts”, according to my personal experience and the information I get from sources, who’s credibility I always check on before forming my own opinions. And I always try to understand the “other side’s” point of view so that I can gain even more information.
In this situation, as a longtime schoolteacher who’s voice has been progressively diminished these 10-15 years, I must say that I’ve heard and been witness to a TON of the “other side’s” point of view. And much of it goes counter to what I’ve learned, not only as an educator, but also as an informed citizen of the United States. Getting replies from people of influence in the “reform” movement such as what we’ve seen inMercedes blog is only noteworthy because it so rarely occurs. It is very difficult to form a feeling of trust towards people who are part of an entity that is shielded from the public, yet exerts such enormous power, both politically and within the media.
I’m very tech savvy and if there’s one thing that I do know for certain about technology, it’s this:
Anything can happen. Anything.
The people who developed the hardware and software are brilliant, as are the people who like to hack into it. And, regardless of the most altruistic of motives, the profit motive is enormous in all areas of the spectrum.
I’m glad to hear that you are comfortable with the stability and security of inBloom. I do not share your feelings. Especially when you consider the track record of the major players who are involved in it’s development and dissemination. And, personally: even if it was secure, I still would be against it. Agribusiness brought us an all powerful Monsanto. It wasn’t necessary. Either is inBloom. None of this “stuff” is necessary. That fact, alone, makes it suspect.
Linda, is that comment in reference to me? Was below directed at me?
[Linda
January 5, 2014 at 10:58 pmThank you as a!ways for your clarity, I assume they are getting their talking points from the guys with the bags of money.]
Linda, the only thing about your comment to me about meeting w men w money bags that doesn’t classify your words as slander is that no reasonable person would believe what you say. Legal opinion from defamation expert. So please don’t expect any response from me again.
Once again, you assume and you’re wrong.
I just got home from work, or I would have had an opportunity to say this earlier: You’re way off base here, Sheila. Your first comment to Mercedes was this:
“You could have sold me anything but to question the integrity of Joel Reidenberg invalidates your post.”
No, raising questions about the possibility of bias because of funding sources is vital and encouraged in the struggle for independence and impartiality in science.
As I explained to Joel, “if AMGEN funded your research on erythropoeitin, your disclosure would in no way insulate you from skepticism.” I would add that AMGEN funded a lot of people in its successful efforts to boost Epo sales, and a panel composed only of researchers in industry pay could never have been defended.
I’m a scientist, before even a teacher, and by any academic standards, Reidenberg has a conflict of interest because he takes Microsoft funding. As I pointed out to him, he has a right to argue for his own impartiality if he wishes, but he has NO right, whatsoever, to denounce people for declining to accept his reassurances. It isn’t about his specific integrity, it isn’t defamation, it isn’t an “ad hominum attack”.
I don’t think Linda’s concern was aimed at you, Sheila, because you aren’t a member of the panel Mercedes is writing about. But in any case, your antagonistic stance is unwarranted and ignorant of basic standards for impartiality.
I wasn’t referring to her, but I don’t care anymore. Our concern is our children, all of them. That’s not her priority. She offers nothing to parents and teachers.
Don’t worry about inBloom. We need to teach children early
not to have any expectation of privacy in the future and that
Big Brother has only their best interests at heart.
What other training would be appropriate for children of the prole class? Really.
And, of course, the inBloom vision for the future of education–computer adaptive curricula delivered through this single monopolistic gateway and repository of student scores–is why Gates paid to have the Common Core developed in the first place. The CCSS was a necessary step in this strategic plan.
And remember
War Is Peace.
Ignorance is Strength.
Freedom Is Slavery.
Teaching Is Punishment and Reward.
Learning is Mastery of the Bullet List.
and
Arbeit Macht Frei.
That would be the CC$$. Sorry for the mi$$pelling.
What, is no one going to congratulate me on my most excellent goodthink in the post above?
Let me remind you what happens when you do not. This oversight will be recorded in your permanent record.
Okay. Very clever. We just need to have “like” buttons for each comment.
The rest of you who did not comment favorably on my goodthink, above, please be advised that I shall be upsubing your failure to comply to the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth. Remember: “He sees you when you’re sleeping; he knows when you’re awake.”
This just in from Minitrue: Pluralism Is Standardization. “Differentiation” is oldspeak. Repeat. “Differentiation” is oldspeak.
Academic freedom on the part of curriculum coordinators, curriculum developers, and teachers is oldthink. Freedom is the ability that educators have to comply. Having ideas not approved by Comrades Coleman and Gates is doubleplusungood.
And this from Miniplenty: Thanks to bb, the Powerpointing of U.S. education via the CC$$ is almost complete. Remember, if it isn’t on the list and isn’t tested and isn’t recorded in the inBloom database, then it is of no importance and may constitute thoughtcrime.
And finally, this just in from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: “All your base are belong to us.”
I hope the good doctor can help me overcome that video, Robert.
“Swig, swig, swallow” your base
belong to us! AAARRGGHHH,
Help me good Dr. McGullicuddy, before I belong to us!!!!
Oh no, I’ll have to get my stashed bottle from the barn!! Quik before I blong to use. AAARRGGGHHH!!!!!
How horrifying it is to think that all this perversion is becoming normalized and even institutionalized. . . . . .
How very far we have come since the day during the administration of the elder George Bush when the president floated the idea of national standards and tests only to be shouted down by a resounding chorus of freedom-loving people from all parts of the political spectrum!!!!
Ah Robert, wouldn’t that be superplus goodthink?
Comrade cheesehead, that is superplus superplus goodthink on your part! Of course, everything is about ordering, about testing and establishing and enforcing the rank ordering of persons in the meritocratic hierarchy. Soon, we shall no precisely who our Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon children are. We shall be able to monitor, from cradle to grave, their correct hierarchical slotting via the inerrant database.
Having successfully set into operation turning U.S. K-12 education into punishment and reward based a bullet list of standards [sic], Gates is now turning his attention to post-secondary education, with the same goal in mind, and his wind-up toy, Barry Obama, just gave a big speech announcing his support for the grading of U.S. colleges based on standardized tests. Meanwhile, David Coleman, appointed absolute monarch of U.S. education by Achieve, is at the College Board revising the SAT to match the CC$$, with the goal of extending the Powerpointing of U.S. education to the post-secondary level.
know, not no, of course
Robert,
“Don’t worry, Be. . . . . .
long to us!”
Robert…you made me laugh loudly…thanks. Goodspeak is the key. And if you are Aspergian as Gates may be, you have no empathy for others so that you can stay focused singularly on your own goal(s) of making the most money and winning the most points in the game of life. Gates just recaptured his status of being the richest person in the world.
Look out world goodspeakers and all the rest of us!
Ellen
More than a quarter century ago, I was proud to get one of those Ed Writers Association awards for a story I published in “Learning” exposing the corruption of a thing called “Chicago Mastery Learning Reading” (and later, math). There was a time, not very long ago, when Ed Writers (and other outfits and outlets, like the Phi Delta Kappan and Education Week) actually maintained independence and integrity.
One by one they were bought off by the billionaires, until today the agendas for meetings like the Ed Writers conference are set well in advance to push the Party Line of the Plutocracy.
I mainly follow the donations of Eli Broad, and assume most other billionaires do as he does. He seems to donate to all candidates, and lobbies all legislators, and finances many grant projects, with what we might see as abandon…but in actualilty, he spreads his endless wealth in all directions, written on the wind, so that his fingers are in every pie. By definition, all become polluted with this excess of economic power. We certainly have seen this form of philanthropy exercised by many of these plutocrats who seek power over all of society.
Ellen
George, it’s ironic and sad when Ed Week has to post a statement denouncing anyone who would dare to challenge the magazine’s journalistic independence in the face of the money its parent nonprofit receives from Gates, and people like Diane Ravitch can’t even get an advance copy of some report from the Department of Education because she writes for a more widely read but online-only news site in 2013. I’m not holding my breath for the day when people realize the danger of restricting the free press or impeding their access to information.
There is a book out for developers of digital learning systems with a chapter about how sharing standardized data among online learning systems will hasten adoption. Could this be the real reason for Common Core?
Read below to find out what kind of cognitive and affective information might be collected and shared about our children.
Here is bibliographic information about the book:
Sottilare, R., Graesser, A., Hu, X., and Holden, H. (Eds.). (2013). Design Recommendations for Intelligent Tutoring Systems: Volume 1 – Learner Modeling. Orlando, FL: U.S. Army Research Laboratory. ISBN 978-0-9893923-0-3
Here are some quotes from selected parts of the book:
Chapter 2 ‒ Lowering the Barrier to Adoption of Intelligent Tutoring Systems through Standardization……………………….7
Robby Robson (Eduworks Corporation) Avron Barr (Aldo Ventures)
The immediate market needs of potential customers are to track results and hold down implementation costs. These are conditions for diffusion of the technology, but once diffusion starts, other requirements will appear. For example, since ITSs provide individualized learning, it is likely that students will frequently switch among different systems. If the one system has gathered data about a learner’s cognitive or affective characteristics, other systems can make use of it.
Learner Information Package (IMS Global Learning Consortium, 2005) and the Europass (Cedefop, 2012) can be used for transcript data, curriculum vitae (CV) data, and high level competencies (e.g., language skills), but new standards will be needed for expressing and comparing learner information.
Independent of how it is represented, the key question for standardization is what information should be exchanged. In other words, what should an ITS be telling other systems, including other ITSs, other enterprise learning systems, and other applications used by instructors, students, managers, and researchers? The question of what information should be exchanged is the question of what student data are required to achieve near optimal adaptation. We can make some reasonable conjectures concerning the types of learner information for inclusion:
• Educational records and high level competencies such as language skills. Standards exist for these data. It is not clear what inferences an intelligent tutor can make directly from them, but since human tutors find them valuable, there is an argument for including them.
• Competencies (including Skills, Knowledge, Abilities, Outcomes, Objectives) and level of competence. These have also been standardized and represent data that are crucial.
• Data in affective, motivational, and social dimensions. Cognitive models are more common and better understood, but many adaptations rely on data in these dimensions (Dimitrova, 2009). For example, tutors may observe how students react to different types of stimuli and discover beliefs and attitudes that other systems could use to select instructional content and strategies.
• Goals, including learning goals and mission/task goals. These goals are also data that a human tutor would want to know and that might be important for adaptation.
• Physical adaptations, such as location, device capabilities, ambient light, and accessibility data.
As an historical note, we believe that the task of standardizing learner data was first taken up by the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee. In 2000, the scope statement for the Learner Model working group (IEEE, 2000b) read: “This standard will specify the syntax and semantics of a ‘Learner Model,’ which will characterize a learner (student or knowledge worker) and his or her knowledge/abilities. This will include elements such as knowledge (from coarse- to fine-grained), skills, abilities, learning styles, records, and personal information. This standard will allow these elements to be represented in multiple levels of granularity, from a coarse overview, down to the smallest conceivable sub-element. The standard will allow different views of the Learner Model (learner, teacher, parent, school, employer, etc.). Its purpose is to enable learners (students or knowledge workers) of any age, background, location, means, or school/work situation to create and build a personal Learner Model, based on a national standard, which they can utilize throughout their education and work life.
Chapter 7 ‒Affective-Behavioral-Cognitive (ABC) Learner Modeling Abhiraj Tomar and Rodney D. Nielsen University of North Texas
The ABC User Model (Figure 7-1) tracks the affective, behavioral, and cognitive states and patterns of the user and applies a cognitive theory of emotions to infer and analyze these states and patterns.
Could this be the real reason for the Common Core?
Of course it is.
The CC$$ is a necessary preliminary to the creation of a national database of student responses and test scores, which was in turn needed in order to implement the Gates vision for computer-adaptive curricula.
This is all part of a very well-rehearsed plan. It is not at all surprising, of course, that Arne Duncan’s DOE would issue a report calling for the use of various devices to monitor students’ affective states since this is research that Gates is funding and Duncan is simply a wind-up toy for the implementation of Gates’s vision. The technology blueprint that Duncan issued at the beginning of his tenure as Secretary of Education was basically the Gates/inBloom strategic plan. It called for all these pieces–national standards, online national tests based on those standards, and a national database of student responses. The fix was in on this stuff from the very beginning. And, of course, it was not at all surprising that Duncan would revise the FERPA rules to allow enormous amounts of private student data to be turned over to a private corporation without parental consent. Duncan knows for whom he works.
He circumvented Congress when he revised the FERPA rules. There are legal challenges, but they’re “waiting in line”.
Thank you, DNA Martin, for your post. It’s really important that people start learning about what is happening here, about what is being engineered. I’m sure that Gates thinks that this is a win-win–that with a national database and curriculum portal in place, he and his partners will make an enormous amount of money–billions–and that education will be vastly improved. These guys actually believe that reduction of education to mastery of items on the bullet lists is a positive thing.
It’s astonishing how very few people have figured all this out, even though the parts of the puzzle all fit together quite neatly. It saddens me greatly that so many people in responsible positions in U.S. education haven’t figured out what’s behind the push for national standards and national tests–why the folks who paid to have these created did so. They were part of a strategic plan–an extraordinarily Orwellian plan.
Gates is a computer guy. He recognizes that paper is expensive and that pixels are cheap and that it is inevitable that paper textbooks will be replaced with online ones. And, he’s a true believer in computer-adaptive instruction. He also recognizes that the national database of student responses that the coming computer-adaptive curricula will adapt to can be turned into a monopoly so that whoever owns that database basically controls the portal, the gateway, through which all curricula must pass.
Of course, computers have enormous promise as educational tools. The Internet is basically the universal library/encyclopedia that various thinkers have dreamed of for millennia. But we can have that and we can have computer-adaptive curricula WITHOUT having a single set of national standards and WITHOUT having a single national database. Individual programs created by competing developers can do initial diagnostics and do ongoing formative assessment WITHOUT ANY OF THAT Orwellian crap.
It is no exaggeration to say that the vision of a single national database of student responses and gateway for curricula is a grave threat to freedom. Decent people will oppose their creation.
And thoughtful ones will recognize that the root of this evil is the creation of a single set of invariant national standards. Without those, none of the rest of it works. And without those, of course, we can have real competition among competing educational visions–competing and continually revised and improved upon learning progressions, for example, that free educators can adopt and adapt as they, based on their own professional judgment.
Freedom or centralizaiton and standardization? This is the choice we face. I know which side I am on.
“I believe in standardizing automobiles, not people.” –Albert Einstein, Interview with the Saturday Evening Post
“There’s no bullet list like Stalin’s bullet list.” –Edward Tufte, “The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint”
Back to Margie up there at 8:18, 1/5–I taught Early Childhood SpEd for 13 years in a public school system (3-5-year-olds)–we used a pre-screen/inventory (Brigance booklet, by Curriculum Associates) to find areas of instruction & to check progress. We all used different color pens for the screening and for each quarter. This worked quite well–melded nicely with each child’s Individualized Ed. Plan, and was easily shown to and shared with parents (as opposed to confusing computer crap, probably your GOLD). Very effective, uncomplicated, useful information in a nutshell, released to NO ONE (but the parent, collaborating teachers and future elementary school teachers, as contained in child’s file, which was LOCKED in A FILE CABINET IN THE OFFICE!) Margie–if you can–find the Brigance, grab some retired teacher(s) who can tip off the parents for you, & they’ll kick up the fuss you need to get back the materials that will actually help your students.
All of this other insanity is, of course–as is everything in the U.S.A. today–all about the $$$$ our kids can generate for the enterpreneurs. After all, education is the new gold mine–just ask Pear$on.
Lots of great comments both here and on Mercedes’s ‘blog. But one thing I haven’t seen discussed much is just why, setting privacy aside, anyone even thinks all this data collection will do any good for education? It seems to me this is just like CCSS: an untried at best utopian idea that we’re foisting on the entire country without any discussion.
And note the details of that book DNAmartin cited—The US Army?! That book and the other citations mentioned in the excerpts are about training soldiers and workers, not educating children to become citizens.
You ask, what is the argument for data collection?. In the book that I cited above, Design Recommendations for Intelligent Tutoring Systems, the argument is that better adapted and individualized tutoring can be created using data mining from big sets of shared data.
I think the real reason is better explained by chemtchr:
“Marketers want to use the false authority of all this data to put the children under control of their proprietary, “personalized”, “adaptive” algorithms, and force them to undergo continuous monitoring of their progress toward the marketers’ next goal.”
Most disturbing to me from the book, Design Recommendations for Intelligent Tutoring Systems, is the physiological response and monitoring technologies that are already being developed to collect, share & mine data about learners’ affect. Will there be a CC$$ of learner’s affect and mood? Hatcheries and conditioning centers?
On those monitoring systems, see the Department of Education Report entitled “Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the Twentieth Century.” This report laments the fact that we can’t yet get FMRI machines small enough to install in classrooms to monitor, continually, students’ affective states as they are doing their worksheets on a screen and then explains that the good news is that other technologies–such as bracelets for measuring galvanic skin response and retinal scanners–can do the same job are are already being developed at tested by the DOE.
I am not making this stuff up. It’s an unapologetically Orwellian vision of the future of U.S. education conceived by a technocratic mastermind–Bill Gates.
And many, many edupundits are playing right into the implementation of this vision. Key to it all is the CC$$. The standards [sic] are the engine that runs the juggernaut. They are the sine qua non of education deform.
In 2012 Diane reported in this blog that Bill Gates was funding galvanic skin response bracelets to measure student affect. There was a reply to Diane’s report at Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/13/us-usa-education-gates-idUSBRE85C17Z20120613
Recently, the Columbia University researcher (R.Baker) reported that he could not complete his Gates funded study investigating galvanic skin response affect monitors because the students destroyed the devices.
Bless those students!!! Our futures depend upon the likes of them!!!
Right on, DNAmartin; right on!
While slightly off topic, I understand that Disney is using some type of electronic bracelet in its parks to monitor visitors. It may seem benign that a bracelet could contain a child’s birthdate information in order for a Disney character to greet a child on her/his birthday. But this sounds like the technology Gates is promoting. In addition, to enter a Universal park, one must submit a fingerprint. There may be benefits in such technology, but our own ambivalence to this technology may not be a good thing. It all reminds me of the YA dystopian novel Feed. Bless those kids who destroyed their test bracelets at Columbia.
Why would anyone think that this is a good idea for American education?
Here’s the theory and it’s background:
In the final decades of the twentieth century, a meme swept big business in the United States: You get what you measure. The way to improve performance is to establish clear key performance measures, or KPIs, and then hold people accountable for achieving these. That’s why I call the theory that informs the current education deform movement “Just give a guy a KPI.”
In education, the application of this theory gave us the following: a) create standards and b) hold teachers (through VAM) and students (through criterion-referenced tests) accountable for meeting those standards. People sometimes say that the application of this theory to education hasn’t been tested, but those people are wrong. No Child Left Behind was an implementation of that theory. It required that all states create tough standards and tests to measure attainment of those and that states achieve adequate yearly progress toward attaining those standards. According to the theory, if we did that, by 2014, all students would be proficient in ELA and mathematics.
Well, guess what? It’s 2014, and NCLB has been an utter failure. It has brought about no improvement in outcomes by the deformers’ own preferred measures–state test scores and comparative international test scores. But rather than accept the overwhelming evidence -that their simple-minded nostrum has failed, the education deformers, who believe that they cannot possibly be wrong about this, have come up with the Son of NCLB–NCLB on steroids. The failure, they would have us believe, was because the standards and tests weren’t “rigorous” enough. So, here we are stuck with NCLB 2.0–the CC$$, PARCC, Smarter Balanced, and the new Value-Added Measurement crap being rolled out across the country.
The deformers believe that it’s a simple matter to make a list of what kids should learn and then test to see whether they have learned it. They don’t understand, at all, that the devil is in the details. They aren’t interested in learning about why their theory doesn’t work. Again, the “Give a guy a KPI” theory of education is faith-based. It doesn’t depend on evidence. It’s an article of faith, like Original Sin or Transubstantiation. It cannot be wrong.
The KPIs, in education, are measurements of proficiency with regard to a bullet list of what kids are to know–the standards [sic]. The Gates Vision is that books and paper are expensive and pixels are cheap and that if you have the bullet list of what kids are to learn in place, and if you know what they have and have not mastered from the bullet list, you can deliver to them computer-adaptive curricula that addresses only what they have not yet mastered. The benefits of this approach are, the defomers believe, are that the learning is personalized to the student in real time and that teachers–the most expensive component of schooling–can pretty much be replaced by software. (You just need a few of them around as “facilitators” to make sure that the computers are turned on and working.) That’s the Gates/inBloom vision. I call it the “Powerpointing of U.S. education”–turning it into a bullet list of skills to be mastered. On the dangers–of reducing complex matters to bullet lists, see Edward Tufte’s brilliant, extraordinarily important and relevant essay “The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint.”
What these deforms will mean, in fact, will be a great dumbing down of U.S. education as all curricula and pedagogy are forced into the Procrustean bed of the standards [sic], and Tufte’s essay goes a long way toward explaining why.
It doesn’t help matters at all, of course, that Gates’s chosen vehicles for implementing this vision, Achieve and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), chose a couple of complete amateurs to prepare the new standards [sic] in ELA. It was already bad enough that the Give a Guy a KPI, Learning Is Mastery of a Bullet List, and Teaching Is Punishment and Reward approach to education was deforming our K-12 schools beyond all recognition. The execrable quality of the new standards [sic] just makes all this worse.
Thanks, Robert; I think you make some excellent points.
I also have noted here and elsewhere that this is just the 21st Century continuation (perhaps culmination) of the take over of public education by the wealthy about 100 years ago. Then, they wanted schools run like businesses to efficiently create a working class that was not much of a threat to their interests. Now, of course, they have computers and true believers like Bill Gates. (Clearly Gates doesn’t think this is a great education, since his own kids, like those of the reformers, will never have to suffer CCSS; they’re too important to society.) So, clearly this is very much about class warfare.
But too this reflects a deeper social vision of what Jacques Ellul described as technique in his book The Technological Society, in which Ellul argues that
Thus, the Gateses, etc., are also acting out their roles a the élites in our modern society. And if anyone has read Gates’s remarks on technology, he certainly is a true believer.
Of course, this is dehumanizing. As Ellul goes on:
As usual, Chris Hedges has some very appropriate things to write on this issue.
As usual M&S quite correct in suggesting the reading.
From it: “And in the end, as in all totalitarian systems, the citizens become the victims of government folly, monstrous lies, rampant corruption and state terror.”
Perhaps it will take what Hedges suggests, massive and prolonged street demonstrations and uprisings. Unfortunately the vast majority of the population gets its daily dosage of soma from the idiot box, boob tube, the TV and the Fawning Corporate Media (Ray McGovern’s phrase, and all should read him along with Hedges).
Thanks, Duane. And agreed fully on Ray McGovern.
This paragraph, alone, says it all:
Fourth, USDOE Assistant Secretary for Innovation and Improvement Jim Shelton used to work for Gates as the Gates Foundation director of its education division. Shelton is also a partner with the charter-market-creating New Schools Venture Fund (a connection to Education Undersecretary nominee Ted Mitchell) AND was a senior management consultant for McKinsey and Company (former employer of Common Core “lead architect” David Coleman).
This whole thing plays out like Telenovela with all the twist and turns and inter-related story plots. Everyone knows everyone else from somewhere else and had a past relationship that is now influencing how and what they get/do today. I really just have to sit back some days and wonder just how long they’ve (and you know there is a ‘they’) have been planning this…hmmmmm?
Several quick points:
1. the collection of data – lots of fit – is an essential piece of the Common Core.
2. money – lots of it – can be made from testing and data collection.
3. virtually all of the reasons given for the type of “reform” advocated by the big-money foundations (Gates, Broad, Walton), and by the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber or Commerce, and by charlatans like Michelle Rhee, are bogus.
4. the main reason given for the Common Core – to prepare students “ to compete in the global economy” – is entirely fictitious.
5. the main stream press coverage of public education and education “reform” is mostly abysmal, and the Education Writers Association – which may have turned the term “The Educated Reporter” into an oxymoron – is no exception.
6. some people have absolutely no shame.
Education Writers Association Board:
http://www.ewa.org/site/PageServer?pagename=abt_board
What a bogus organization!
Well, Robert…I’m here in NYC and your
Ha…got me there, tech! Just press the wrong button and you’re done, lol.
“This is the best, most free-wheeling discussion, including all points of view, that I have seen on this vital subject”.
I couldn’t agree more, Diane.
What’s breathtaking to me is that organizations that purport to oppose centralization and top-down regulation–the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Business Roundtable, the Chamber of Commerce, ALEC, etc.–are falling all over themselves to support the creation of a centralized Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth and this Orwellian national database.
Here’s the alternative: Competing visions for education, including competing standards, learning progressions, curriculum frameworks, etc..
Freedom or centralization of power and authority? We are at a crossroads. Which will you support?
Freedom.
I agree: it goes against the “philosophy” of those organizations. Money talks.
My tendency, rather, is to think, cynically, that there are many people to whom freedom means only freedom for themselves and for those of their economic class.
Certainly, Achieve as decided for the rest of us that we are free to think about education whatever David Coleman tells us we are to think. In other words, we are free to comply.
Thanks. I’ve been suspicious of the EWA. They seem to be a bit clueless, or worse.
I repeat:
“I challenge Duncan, and Gates, and Guidera, and Shelton, and Reidenberg, and anyone else who promotes the longitudinal data collection on America’s students to first volunteer for hundreds of points of his or her own information– selected by others– to be placed in the trust and care of the privatizer-friendly data cloud.
“Such a demonstration really would be the heights of “backing up one’s opinion with data.”
I am posting this link to an article about Common Core as it relates to a global initiative to comply with UN resolutions to advocate sustainability. While I am not on board with some of the ways in which this has been tied in to religion and the green movement, it does expose the involvement of the CEO of Pearson and Bill Gates with the UN goals. Please give your opinion on this somewhat thorough explanation of what is undeniably an interconnected attack on public education. On Jan 5, 2014 4:58 PM, “Diane Ravitch’s blog” wrote: > > dianeravitch posted: “Mercedes Schneider posted a critique of a webinar hosted by the Education Writers Association on the subject of data-mining and student privacy. She was upset that the panel of three included two cheerleaders for data mining and the third produced resea” >
http://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/2014/01/10/whats-the-u-n-s-global-education-first-initiative-and-academic-impact-and-what-do-they-have-to-do-with-common-core/
Senator Ed Markey wrote to Arne Duncan about his concerns for the educational privacy rights of students / families. You can see
the response Arne Duncan sent to Ed Markey at
Click to access 2014-01-10_Education_Privacy.pdf
Senator Markey wrote a letter requesting A. Duncan to respond and clarify policy on student privacy in data gathering.
In October, Senator Markey sent a request to Arne Duncan asking for clarification of the policies on privacy of student data. Arne Duncan’s took 3 months to respond and he was shallow and cavalier in his response.
(a) putting the onus on the school board when they “outsource”;
this is usually done after the state has made a list of “vendors”?
(or in this case chosen PARCC?j (see the reason that Kentucky is dropping out of PARC and re-issuing RFP for new vendors)
If the state has already issued an RFP and then an “award” the school board has very little choice ; how can they possibly oversee these complex interplay of technology and tests. This is purposely done to keep the cities and towns and the educational professionals out of the dialogue but then making them accountable and responsible for the messed up results
(b) Arne duncan said it was “flexibility” and that is certainly not true
because Arne Duncan held “a gun to the heads” and said if you want federal
money then you will march to these orders. I have repeatedly called the
President’s telephone line to complain and I have repeatedly written to
Governor Patrick about all of these intertwined issues.
—————————–
You can get both Senator Markey’s letter and the Duncan response at Senator Markey’s page in PDF (if you want them and can’t get them, let me know and I will forward; jeanhaverhill@aol.com)