A reader forwarded the following story.
Microsoft and Pearson will join forces to build “the first curriculum…for a digital personalized learning environment that is 100 percent aligned to the new standards for college and career readiness.”
Now we see the pattern on the rug.
It begins like this:
New York, NY (PRWEB) February 20, 2014
Today Pearson announced a collaboration with Microsoft Corp. that brings together the world’s leading learning company and the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions to create new applications and advance a digital education model that prepares students to thrive in an increasingly personalized learning environment. The first collaboration between the two global companies will combine Pearson’s Common Core System of Courses with the groundbreaking capabilities of the Windows 8 touchscreen environment. The Common Core System of Courses is the first curriculum built for a digital personalized learning environment that is 100 percent aligned to the new standards for college and career readiness.
“Pearson has accelerated the development of personalized digital learning environments to improve educational outcomes as well as increase student engagement,” said Larry Singer, Managing Director for Pearson’s North American School group. “Through this collaboration with Microsoft, the global leader in infrastructure and productivity tools for schools, we are creating a powerful force for helping schools leverage this educational model to accelerate student achievement and, ultimately, ensure that U.S. students are more competitive on the global stage.”
“Personalized learning for every student is a worthy and aspirational goal. By combining the power of touch, type, digital inking, multitasking and split-screen capabilities that Windows 8 with Office 365 provides with these new Pearson applications, we’re one step closer to enabling an interactive and personalized learning environment,” said Margo Day, vice president, U.S. Education, Microsoft Corp. “We’re in the middle of an exciting transformation in education, with technology fueling the movement and allowing schools to achieve this goal of personalized learning for each student.”
In addition, iLit, Pearson’s core reading program aimed at closing the adolescent literacy gap, will be optimized for the Windows 8 platform. Designed based on the proven instructional model found in the Ramp Up Literacy program, which demonstrated students gaining two years of growth in a single year, iLit offers students personalized learning support based on their own instructional needs, engaging interactivities, and built-in reward systems that motivate students and track their progress.
Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1748922#ixzz2uLL0Nx7J
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Sound like an earnings call to Wall Street analysts.
YES!
But surely the moment will come when some gentle and appealing person will put their hand on someone’s shoulder and say, “dude. . .parents just aren’t that into this. They don’t want it.”
And Pearson and Microsoft will look humbly at their feet and nod, “yeah; ok. I guess you’re right. I guess we came on too strong. Maybe we can put these products on the clearance shelf and someone will buy them to turn them into something else.”
? Maybe.
Wishful thinking …but exactly what the parents should demand!!
Good morning, class. I am roboteacher model CC$$.Achieve.TFA.666.v2b1.
In 2.6 seconds I will begin facilitation of your rigorous computer-adaptive lesson on standard CC$$.Literacy.ELA.RI.8.4b, Module 937, subsection S9l, “Joy in Literature.”
Bear in mind that we shall be monitoring during the lesson to ensure that you are appropriately gritful. As always, failure is not an option, and no excuses will be tolerated. Students not reaching proficiency for modules 937-943 will be placed in the public-school-to-for-profit-prison pipeline, formerly the K-12 public education system of the United States.
This message brought to you by the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Pearson Education, and the USDOE^tm, your public-private partnership.
Commencing lesson.
a.k.a., 2021 a classroom odyssey
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
LOVE IT
South Korea is using them already.
“appropriately gritful”
Nice!
Wolves in sheep’s clothing.
>The phrase originates in a sermon by Jesus recorded in the Christian New Testament: Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. The sermon then suggests that their true nature will be revealed by their actions.<
Don’t forget, it was “all about the kids”
Yes, but they are also “our most valuable assets” – at least according to that great educator, Michelle Rhee – and assets must be monetized, providing a return on investment.
We need to not forget the mill stone that would be tied around one’s neck and caste into the sea for those who abuse children…..
We’re gonna need a LOT of millstones…
This is a video of a 9 year old attempting to take the PARCC sample test:
http://parentingthecore.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/parcc-online/
This is the parent:
“And what I am seeing (which you’ve all hopefully seen now as well) is that I have some serious issues (simply from a technological perspective) with the proposed PARCC assessments. You know, the ones that over a million U.S. students will be field testing two months from now. The ones running on a platform that apparently fails to register letters or registers additional letters as our kids try to type. The ones that require our third graders to switch back and forth between various input formats numerous times as they try to answer a math problem.
The ones that made me, an adult, so frustrated that I wanted to throw my iPad out the window.
The ones I never would have dreamed in a million years of opting my daughter out of. At least not before today.”
The motto of ed reform could be: “let’s do everything at once, and do it as poorly and half-ass as humanely possible!”
Where are the adults in this “movement”? When do they step up and act like adults? Should 9 year olds really be bearing the brunt of their recklessness and cavalier approach? It would be one thing if they were foisting this on adults, but we’re talking about 3rd graders here. Should 3rd graders really be responsible for the beta testing of this product? if so, can we at least pay them?
Your Motto should be posted everyday!!!
Yes
If I may make a minor correction in your motto: ““let’s do everything at once, and do it as poorly and half-ass as INhumanely possible!”
We can’t stop it. We can only figure out how to use it to help the students. Technology has always been the future of education. We have to accept the changes and blend with them to make them the best they can be for all students. I can remember a typing teacher having to retire because she couldn’t accept the new classes in keyboarding and computers. Maybe school can be all year round with the combination of classroom work and on-line work. Create work spaces in schools where students can come in to work at stations. Start with high school and work down to all grades. Teaching methods have always been behind the times,( example: school year based on farming). We need to shorten that span. We, teachers, have been bashing charters, vouchers, e-schools, etc. I want to see come concrete examples of new technology working. What if unions lost some power? How can we keep our rights? Changes need to happen or we are going to be left behind.
The issue here, Bill, is the monopolistic centralization of command and control in U.S. education–national standards, national assessments, a national database of student responses, scripted lessons, and a couple of monopolistic providers of the curriculum.
In other words, the issues is NOT the technology per se. The technologies are EMPOWERING, a realization of the ancient dream of universal access to the knowledge of the world. Trains can be used to take people on vacation or to take them to death camps.
The national standards and assessments were part of a strategic plan. That’s why the monopolists paid and lobbied to have them created.
Trains can also break down and strand people in the middle of nowhere, or fail to get out of the station.
Tablets are not just ready for this sort of prime time. Maybe they will be one day, or maybe they’ll be superseded by a better platform much sooner than we anticipate. This technology is moving too fast, costs too much, and is simply not good enough.
I think that the destructibility issue can be dealt with, though it certainly hasn’t been yet.
After that, everything depends on what we use the devices for. Again, if a kid has access, via a device, to a 6-million-volume library instead of a 2,000-volume one, that’s a good thing, as is providing access to the universal library that is the Internet. And, of course, online videos are great for demonstrations and, generally, for graphical presentation of development over time.
But clearly, having kids hunt and peck to do their writing on tablets is a TERRIBLE idea, as is having them take writing and mathematics tests online. FLERP is absolutely right in saying that the technology is just not there yet. Pen and pencil are much, much better for doing writing and working math problems–far, far more flexible and nuanced. In math, computers can, of course, be great tools, but there is nothing that compares to a sheet of paper and a pencil.
What I’m seeing in the new educational software offerings is mostly
dumbed-down (I mean breathtakingly dumbed down) but graphically stunning slide shows and animated cartoons,
with some “technology-enhanced questioning,” as on the new PARCC and SBAC tests, that is basically a poor shadow of what one can do better with pencil and paper.
Most of the new educational software is what Edward Tufte calls “chart junk.” It looks good but has very low information content and transfer.
I call this the Powerpointing of U.S. K-12 education.
And the very idea of having student writing “graded” by computers is just appalling. Anyone who thinks that that is a good idea should not be allowed anywhere near a school building, for he or she is emotionally stunted and either profoundly ignorant or insane.
The chart junk (I’m a big Tufte fan) goes way bay in education. 30 plus years ago when you went to a large meeting, the exhibit hall was filled with junk and snake oil.
Now it’s been digitized. But most is still junk.
But there is also great stuff out there; it takes time and effort to put it into play. Given what technology could do to expand learning, it’s a crime what it’s often used for.
Technology does not have to mean Pearson and Microsoft. Technology is powerful but neutral. People decide what it means and does.
Anyone remember those PC Jrs IBM sold to many schools?
But the resources that these big players can bring to bear will absolutely swamp smaller, innovative publishers. There is no way for a small publisher, even with a brilliant product, to compete, not when the big one can do print runs of millions of copies at extraordinarily low unit cost because of the size of the runs, and not when the big on can draw upon vast capital to lock in licensing and vast intellectual property holdings.
Bob, are you saying just give up?
Whether small or large publisher, I don’t see delivering canned, scripted online lessons as where technology should or has to go. We can do better.
I am not giving up, not at all.
But I recognize what I am up against here, and it’s frightening.
Makes it more fun. Actually, too many people don’t realize what we’re up against – the money and power, and think we can just make rational arguments.
Is Gates and friends proposing to stop teaching people to write with a pencil? Just curious. I’m all for technology and teaching keyboard in 4th or 5th grade or whatever if the plan is to put everyone on computer terminals. I think the AP exams are still handwritten. How much handwritten work still goes on in colleges?
I still see value in the pencil and paper. Imagine if all art had to be made digitally. Tactile skills are still 21st century skills, and it all starts with writing and playdough.
It’s already started. My children were being taught to use Powerpoint for presentations by around the 4th grade. By 5th, the teachers preferred the writing assignments be emailed in or brought in to class on a thumb drive. They were taught to use the internet for research, but not how to use the library for the same.
This was one of the things that I didn’t like about this school and that caused me to look for new schools for my children.
“Changes need to happen or we are going to be left behind.”
Whoa, Nelly! Aren’t we going to be “right behind”?
Left behind who or what? Blah, Blah, Blah!
Bill
We are not talking just about a keyboard and a word processor and the web for information as part of a discrete project. We are seeing children being asked to drink from a fire hose of unproven technology and it replacing the role of teachers in the classroom through intimidation.. We are being asked to replace all social interaction which is required in the work place with isolated computer instruction and testing by those who are unaccountable. Some may look to that brave new world.
Personalized learning translates to dehumanized learning. We don’t needhumas we just need machines. They will understand us, ralate to us, and care for us. Really!
There is no question that technology can be used to personalize and empower. If I put 7 million books at your disposal via a tablet, you have a lot of choice. If you can get feedback and check your understanding at any point and get additional help when you need it, that’s extremely valuable personalization.
We should not fear the technology per se.
What’s frightening about all this is the monopolistic control that a few providers will be able to have because of the economies of scale that they can achieve. Example: Gates owns Corbis, one of the world’s largest collections of images. Images are one of the costliest parts of any K-12 product development.
Real innovation and quality comes from competition. We’ve already had a massive reduction of the number of players in the K-12 market with any real market share. Most of what people now think of as separate publishers are actually imprints of three large K-12 publishing houses. I fear further consolidation of the market in a few hands and the poor quality that will result from lack of real competition.
And creating national standards and tests plays right into securing this monopolistic control for a few providers. That’s why those providers paid to have these national standards created. A lot of educrats who support these “standards” don’t understand that.
THEY HAVE BEEN PLAYED.
All good points, Bob. Now, what can we do about these monopolies?
What have we HISTORICALLY done with such monopolies when their actions have proven detrimental to the public good?
We need for people to start buying small and local.
But here’s what happens. A district holds an adoption. The big publisher sends videos and boxes and boxes and boxes of “free” ancillary materials and lots of sales people, and the teachers look at the materials and vote.
They prefer the student edition from the small publisher, but the big publishers has ALL THOSE FREEBIES–hundreds and hundreds of them. They have the free tablet or the cloud resources or whatever. And the sheer size and scope of the big publisher’s offering wins the day even though most teachers will, in the end, use almost none of those ancillary materials.
I have seen this in adoption after adoption after adoption. And almost always, a year later, the buyer is wishes it had gone with the smaller publisher that had higher quality, more innovative material but a lot less of it.
Walmart or the corner grocery? Amazon or the corner bookshop?
There’s hope in the open source movement, but the creation of national standards goes a long way toward nipping that in the bud for lots of technical reasons.
Here’s the only hope that I see, werebat: that there will be a grassroots revolt against the usurpation of local autonomy and decision making, the local school boards will say Enough and opt out of the standards and the tests and assert their right to purchase whatever materials they wish to purchase for use in their schools.
But that’s a hard road. We’ve put a lot of power of the purse in the hands of federal and state educrats and politicians, and the monopolists, as always, benefit from that, big time.
Don’t look for either political party in the United States to act meaningfully to create real competition and a level playing field in the K-12 educational materials market. Both political parties are absolutely OWNED by the oligarchs.
So, the reaction is going to have to come from the people.
Local school boards are a good place to start.
Bob,
Have you heard of Vista Higher Learning out of Boston?
Duane
Duane, I have been to the website. I haven’t seen a demo. What do you think of this stuff?
TE posted some video math lessons that I thought were outstanding.
I think that it’s extremely important to recognize what the technology can do well and what it can’t.
I wish that a lot of school systems around the country would just put their foot down and say, unequivocally, we will not allow our students to take online tests in mathematics or online tests in any subject that require writing and extensive reading online. There are just too many issues with those given the current state of the technologies.
And it’s important that systems not purchase devices and lock themselves into contracts that limit what their kids and teachers can do with computers in the future–that lock them into a single provider’s platform and software going forward, for example.
Pen and pencil is an efficient interface and typing on a actual keyboard is pretty fast. Personally I’ve never used a touchscreen keyboard, but I know there is nothing in the world more frustrating than going to a less efficient tool.
Hunting and pecking on a touchscreen for letters and numbers is the biggest waste of time in the world. Surely Bill and Melinda Gates can see that.
Bill Gates seems to lack a conscience. His use of the Gates Foundation to create and promote the Common Core, while at the same time plotting for Microsoft to profit from the Common Core, is pure evil.
I really do wish Bill would Beam himself to another Planet…and take his money with him…and ….
he could ride along with the big P….
Malanthropy (n); the use of ostensibly non-profit, taxpayer-subsidized, foundations to advance the financial, political and ideological interests of their founders. See Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates
Yes. Exactly. Another entry for the Reformish Lexicon!
From a mentor:
I see what Gates sees in computer-adaptive curricula. However, if you look at advanced models of education like those promoted to lead “gifted” children to their peak potential it is all based around adapted-curricula rather than computer-adapted curricula. Adapted-curricula does not adapt based on previous lessons learned. Adapted-curricula is curricula that has been adapted to tap into the child’s passions. We can’t expect little Johnny to happily complete division just because he mastered multiplication. We can however expect him to want to learn division because he loves baseball, and baseball is all about statistics, and statistics requires mastering division.
I also see his vision for a national standard as a necessity. In fact, that is a global need, not just a US need. We need a baseline and a common measure. I get that. The problem isn’t the vision for this, it’s the implementation through excessive testing, and worse testing that is tied to funding rather than testing as a diagnostic. Even worse than that, is the fact that school systems under pressure to gain funding via the system: 1) Game the system with their “gifted” students, and 2) push all the pressure to perform on the children. The latter is super-bad because it elicits the same physiological and emotional responses one expects from a child that is bullied at school. Scary indeed that we would condone this, but everyone above the student has a pat answer that absolves them from guilt. Teacher: I have to follow policy, or I will be fired. Principal: I am just trying to get my teachers the funding support they need. Superintendent: I have to keep the schools in compliance with state mandates. State Board Of Ed: This is what the legislature handed us. Sate Legislature: This is what we have to do to get Federal funds (aka our own tax dollars) back from the feds. No one, at any level, is willing to stand up for the kids on the bottom of the rung. Kids that bear all the weight of the excuses made above them. Kids that aren’t allowed, or string enough yet, to fight back.
Personally I don’t think he really cares to own this central database or the testing standards. Gates has no further need for money. I believe he would gladly turn over the reigns to a non-profit, or government, organization. He only wants to control things long enough to assemble what he believes is a working solution. One fully born from free-market forces. Again, I see his point, but he is missing some critical stuff. Gates wants to do good, he is just an egomaniac with a wallet that sees only the forrest. The trees (aka kids) are lost to him. He ran Microsoft the same way.
Perhaps the worst thing that has resulted from Common Core is that it is mandated through coercive withholding of a state’s own tax money to force it’s implementation. This type of manipulation through taxation is a long-standing problem that needs to be addressed if this country is to thrive. It stifles diversity and innovation. I could go on and on about this, but the bottom line is that the Supreme Court rulings in South Dakota v. Dole were a colossal mistake, and we are now experiencing the results of that errant decision. Bottom line: A government should NEVER be allowed to withhold tax money from it’s citizens. Ever.
So what can technology do to improve education? There are a number of places it can help.
1) Richer and lighter media. Richer meaning that text books come alive with sound, video and interactivity. Lighter meaning the physical sense. Have you felt a 4th grade back-pack lately? It is absurd that we make them cart so much paper around. The only reason we can’t make all text’s digital is copyrights. The publishers don’t want to risk us (the parents/students) doing the Napster thing and trading their work without payment.
2) Improving teacher productivity. Our current model of education is classroom based. It is mass-production on a small scale. A scale that doesn’t do well beyond a 20:1 student/teacher ratio. Bringing the cost of education down under this model requires distributing the cost of the teacher (by far the most expensive thing) across more students. Most of the classroom technology introduced in the past 10 years does little to change this ratio. If fact it only adds to the per-classroom costs because computers cost WAY more than their purchase price. This hidden cost is one reason there isn’t money for teacher pay. Additionally, Smart boards, iPads, and other nifty gadgets might help teachers teach more, but teaching is’t all about teaching. Teaching is about classroom management. Teachers do not spend most of their time teaching, the majority is spent on “overhead” in business parlance. Recess, lunch, emotional outbursts, social issues, safety, time management, etc. The list of things we ask of classroom teachers is ridiculously long and leaves little time for teaching. It is also impacted by temporal constraints like music being only once a week for 50 minutes. Very little of the technology schools spend money on improves effective student/teacher ratios. It could if that was the focus, but even then I believe there would only be incremental gains.
3) Harnessing the power of open-source (aka free curriculum). By open sourcing all our curriculum, we remove profiteering from basic education. Under this model, those organizations (public or private) that want to train students toward a particular skill set are charged with underwriting the development of new curricula. However, the curricula is immediately made available to the world to both scrutinize and improve. Without copyright concerns, everything can be delivered on lightweight, inexpensive computers and tablets.
4) Crowd-sourcing, when combined with open-sourcing, leads to the development of adapted-curricula. Under this model, the open-source lessons in division are available to baseball fans. These fans, as a labor of love, translate division lessons into baseball parlance and make them available to little Johnny so he can learn this corpus of knowledge in the context of something he loves. When every child is free to learn math in the context of whatever it is they enjoy, they will do so spontaneously.
5) Remote teaching & tutoring. Harness telepresence, proxy testing, and similar technologies to bring students with like interests and goals into contact with teacher that are equally motivated by he same interests and goals. Can you imagine how motivated a teacher would be if all their students were interested in the same topics? Instead we just toss them 25 students and expect the teacher to identify with and connect with each new student. Even the best of teachers have kids in their classes for whom they are not the best coach. Let’s use technology to bring each child under the tutelage of a teaching coach that fits them best.
6) Proactive Socialization. Harness advanced math, like graph-theory, to identify social outcasts that become Columbine shooters. Identifying the isolated, outcast child is the first step in re-integrating them into society and addressing their unmet emotional needs before they pick up a gun. This is a whole topic unto itself.
Anyway, my personal utopia would be to see the classroom model abandoned altogether. I think we have reached the limits of what classroom production can achieve. Schools are, in fact, a large daycare system. Let’s acknowledge that and solve it separately from the teaching aspect. We need to find a way to separate the duties of teaching (knowledge transfer & coaching) from the duties of child care and logistics. As long as we continue linking daycare with education we are going to remain rate-limited with regard to our ability to produce fully-educated children.
Adapted-curricula is curricula that has been adapted to tap into the child’s passions.
yes yes yes yes yes!!!!
Bob, did you even READ that muddles soup you’re ranting yes yes yes to?!! I strained out the operational ideas being advanced:
“I see what Gates sees in computer-adaptive curricula… to tap into the child’s passions…I also see his vision for a national standard as a necessity. In fact, that is a global need, not just a US need. We need a baseline and a common measure… testing as a diagnostic. .. Gates has no further need for money. He only wants to control things long enough to assemble what he believes is a working solution. One fully born from free-market forces. Again, I see his point, but he is missing some critical stuff. Gates wants to do good …”
“mproving teacher productivity. ..Bringing the cost of education down under this model requires distributing the cost of the teacher (by far the most expensive thing) across more students. … open-source lessons in division are available to baseball fans…, translate division lessons into baseball parlance and make them available… Remote teaching & tutoring. … Harness telepresence, proxy testing, and similar technologies to bring students with like interests and goals into contact with teacher that are equally motivated by he same interests and goals… ”
“the classroom model abandoned altogether… solve it separately from the teaching aspect. …separate the duties of teaching (knowledge transfer & coaching) from the duties of child care and logistics. … remain rate-limited with regard to our ability to produce fully-educated children.”
chemteacher, I made a comment about the notion of adapting curricula to the student. This is an idea that I approve wholeheartedly. I did not comment on the rest of this piece.
I don’t think that the way forward in K-12 education is standardization but, rather, providing alternatives–many, many alternatives appropriate to a diverse, pluralistic society.
Productivity (n): a euphemism intended to mask the reality of fewer people doing more work for less pay.
And yet, who am I to question the Gods of Efficiency and Productivity? After all, I’m a nobody, a chump, a rube, a failure, a cause of the Achievement Gap, a hater of children and lover of the status quo: I’m a career classroom teacher and teacher’s union member.
O Great and All-Powerful Mammon, how I rightfully loathe myself.
Nevertheless, before the so-called reformers disappear me, I promise to do my part for Teacher Productivity (at least until I get left in a ditch somewhere): I promise to speak twice as many words in each class.
There, now I can at least die happy, knowing I’ve done what I can for Productivity.
XO, Michael!
Joanna, you’re really creeping me out here:
“We need to find a way to separate the duties of teaching (knowledge transfer & coaching) from the duties of child care and logistics. As long as we continue linking daycare with education we are going to remain rate-limited with regard to our ability to produce fully-educated children.”
No. we do NOT need to separate the care of human children from the education of human children. The way a human child learns is physiologically linked to his emotional responses. Who ARE you, anyway, that you spew forth such unfounded, blithering new child development theories as though they were fact, in support of a brave new business model of education delivery?
“The Fun They Had”:
http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/funtheyhad.html
Years ago, Joe Littell and Fred McDougal left Rand McNally, borrowed some money from Fred’s aunt (I believe), and started McDougal, Littell. The company came out with an extraordinarily innovative program of small titles for use in 6-to-9-week classes taught in schools using flexible modular scheduling. Then they came out with some innovative literature texts and with the first big basal grammar and comp program to incorporate the writing process.
A small start-up like that wouldn’t have a chance in hell today. The economies of scale created by national standards and the resources available to the big companies would make it impossible to compete.
The big companies can afford to GIVE AWAY their products, practically, for a time in order to lock in customers. One that school system has the proprietary tablet with its proprietary software, making a transition to a competitor will become almost impossible–too costly. Think of the fee that you have to pay to change phone services multiplied hundreds of thousands of times.
McDougal could innovate back then because it was a small company and local schools and districts had the autonomy to make their own decisions.
Until local schools and districts start asserting their autonomy again, the Walmartization and Microsofting of US K-12 education will continue and become far, far worse. There will be far, far more consolidation of control in a few hands.
I have tried to explain to people from Day 1 that the national Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] were the first step in a business plan.
There is a reason why certain ENORMOUS, monopolistic K-12 educational materials providers and would-be providers paid to have these created.
Absolute Truth!!
The Microsoft trust needs to be busted and Mr. Gates sent packing for the profiteer he really is in the ugly tradition of Rockefeller, Morgan and Carnegie. Nothing good comes from monopoly, only poverty and suffering for most people and our children.
My mom bought a tablet this winter with the help of my supposedly computer savvy cousins. They brought home a tablet with Windows 8. It’s so confusing for her to use. Like anything Microsoft puts out there are more steps than necessary to complete a simple task! Windows 8 is terrible and they have to dump it somewhere. Ha! Public schools!
The Surface Tablet rollout was a disaster. But once you’ve locked schools into a technology, they are stuck. It’s just too expensive to shift to a different provider.
And don’t expect those tablets to be neutral platforms for anyone’s materials. Not a chance in hell that that will happen.
Meanwhile, in Gate’s home state of Washington…the state is under a court order to fund education. The legislature is recommending $40M for technology and Seattle Public Schools wants to cut counselors, assist. principals, librarians and other support staff.
Someone, please stop the madness!
Ya, the goverment offering $44M of RTTT money but mandating VAM is like back in the olden days when they were giving out free blankets with smallpox. Thanks, but no thanks.
“Get tablets out of classrooms” is a campaign I could get behind. I don’t care if they’re Microsoft, Apple, Amplify, Samsung, whatever. I don’t care what companies are writing the software. Tablets are an immature technology, always obsolete, only good at media consumption and shallow gaming, not interactive in any reasonable meaning of the term, vectors of disease, and too expensive. They also break when you drop them, and kids already spend too much damn time at home starting at screens.
For the labor-minded out there, tablets are probably the thin edge of the wedge by which bricks and mortar schools become virtual learning centers. Class = hand out tablets, set timer for 50 minutes, collect tablets. Who needs teachers?
“For the labor-minded out there, tablets are probably the thin edge of the wedge by which bricks and mortar schools become virtual learning centers. Class = hand out tablets, set timer for 50 minutes, collect tablets. Who needs teachers?”
That’s my concern, and I’m not a teacher. I don’t know why the people who are pushing this expect me to rely on their good intentions. I think ed reformers have a terrible 20 year track record, nearly every assurance they have made to the public in this state has not come true, and now I’m supposed to believe this won’t end up as a cheap substitute for public schools.
The first place I saw “online learning” was in a juvenile detention center. The difference was everyone who works with delinquents knew it was a cost-cutting measure, a rip-off, of those kids. The state didn’t want to pay to bring teachers in. They were ripping off the most vulnerable kids, because they could get away with it. Now that it’s been rebranded as “personalized learning” by America’s largest corporations and media (but I repeat myself!) I’m supposed to believe it’s altruistic?
I know what is going to happen in statehouses all over the country. They don’t want to pay for K-12 schools. They are going to use this to cut costs on public ed, and all these miraculous claims will go out the window.
It is naive and reckless for people who call themselves “advocates for children” not to admit this risk. There is risk here. Children could lose.
You are so right.
I say keep tablets IN the Classroom..one set..do not give them to kids to take home.
Use them only as a resource just as you use other resources..Period.
They still break and need to be replaced. I just wonder how well this will all work out.
brilliantly thought through and articulated
an important post
The Executive Vice Provost at Arizona State University recently told a reporter that in three years’ time 80 percent of classes at ASU will be taught via computer.
Teaching, there’s an app for that!
“About iLit
A tablet-based reading intervention for grades 4-10, iLit provides teachers with everything they need for their students to gain two years of reading growth in a single year. In an iLit classroom, each day begins with the students reading a self-selected title from the thoughtfully curated high-interest leveled library, which culls Pearson’s vast collection of Penguin, DK, Adapted Classics and other texts. The daily instruction allows for gradual release of control through explicit guided reading, modeling the fluency and meta-cognition of a successful reader while teaching important skills and strategies to fill reading deficiency gaps. By taking advantage of Pearson’s award-winning proprietary technology learning solutions, iLit provides students real-time feedback and coaching on informal summary writing and formal essays. Scaffolded hints and personalized feedback allow the students to write and re-write independently, practicing skills in a safe engaging environment before submitting for grading. It is the only reading intervention program with technology-based writing coaching.”
It is the only program with technology-based writing coaching?
Technology cannot coach writing. I’ve graded many essays written by my students which were full of dense prose and malapropisms they found by right-clicking in Word. Only humans can coach writing, just like only humans can assess writing!
Note that Pearson holds the vast “collection” of that “thoughtfully curated library”.
Note that the “award-winning learning solutions” are proprietary.
Note that new Windows operating systems need only work 80% of the time. That’s Gates own standard.
This is old news, or an update from April, 2011, when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation first announced a collaboration with the Pearson Foundation. “ One of the central pieces of this work [aligning resources and instruction to the CCSS] is developing full curricula on a digital platform, and we’re excited the Pearson Foundation has taken a leadership role in leveraging new technologies. Pearson is developing digital courses in math and English language arts that will help teachers and principals implement the standards, with printed materials and online courses using video, interactive software, games and social media. We are pleased that through our partnership with the Pearson Foundation, four of these courses—two in math and two in English language arts—will be available for free online.“ Source: Phillips, V. (2011, April 27). Cutting-edge tools to help teachers in the classroom. Retrieved from http://www.gatesfoundation.org/foundationnotes/Pages/vicki-phillips-110427-cutting-edge-tools.aspx
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This announcement did not reveal that the two foundations were supporting the development of 24 courses, making four available free, but leaving 20 available for sale by Pearson INC (now joined by Microsoft INC). Only one month later Microsoft INC expanded its online education relationship with Pearson INC for the international marketplace. Source: Gewertz, C. (2011, May 11). Gates and Pearson partner on Common Core. Education Week, 1, 20. The digital course development was being lead by Judy Codding, former President and CEO of America’s Choice and coordinated by Susan Sclafani, former counselor to U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige. The substantive leaders of the Gates/Pearson curriculum also led the College and Career Readiness Standards Work Groups on mathematics (Phil Daro) and English/language arts (Sally Hampton).
The “through-put of money from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to the Pearson Foundation is one of many examples of a new form of market-based philanthropy. The resources of deep-pocket non-profits are mobilized for organized agenda-setting campaigns through “partnerships” with other foundations, a host of professional organizations, and interest groups organized as lobbies. These complex arrangements among non-profits are legally structured to secure government contracts and generate commercially viable products or services Source: Global Philanthropy Forum, (2011). Annual conference program: Ten years hence. Retrieved from http://www.philanthropyforum.org/forum/2010_Annual_Conference.asp?SnID=1807066400
As another indication of the seamless relationships that favor “through-put” into the highest level of policy formation, consider that one of the directors of Pearson International, serving in 2009 for compensation at about $98,000, was Susan Fuhrman, president of Teachers College at Columbia University and president of the National Academy of Education.
Go right ahead Pierson and Gates.
WASTE YOUR MONEY..
From what I see..98% of this country…teachers and parents…are fighting this battle.
Put together what you want and if it is aligned with the CCSS..WE DO NOT WANT IT…..NONE OF IT!!
A pencil and piece of paper is still one of the most elegant technologies ever invented. And you and I are its masters, limited only by the reaches of our imaginations and the depth of the knowledge carried in our hearts and minds.
amen to that, Emmy
well, well said!
Pearson or persons?
You are going to be asked to choose. The latter are expensive.
Expect the expected.
Is student learning to be “personalized” or “Pearsonalized?”
David Coleman’s redesigned SAT is explained in today’s NYT education section.
Will anybody be surprised if Pearson and/or Microsoft become test prep playres?
Common core wolves are prowling in sheep’s clothing …beware! mind control and robotic like children no longer free to create no longer to play no longer allowed to be children,,,taught by computers, machines, robots… While mega men stand with their serpentine arms entwined as they wait for their mega profits and whisper “ROSEBUD ROSEBUD!!
New Common Core SAT to be rolled out. Will it be called the SCCAT? 🙂
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/05/new-sat-test_n_4899565.html
I like that it will have an optional, open-ended essay that calls for analyzing an essay. I hope that students will be given a choice of essays to analyze.
According to the article, all essays will be in response to this question:
“As you read the passage in front of you, consider how the author uses evidence such as facts or examples, reasoning to develop ideas and to connect claims and evidence, and stylistic or persuasive elements to add power to the ideas expressed. Write an essay in which you explain how the author builds an argument to persuade an audience.”
Let’s hope they work on the wording of that. I wouldn’t give that wording a passing mark.
And I was just beginning to believe that slick guy from inBloom when, at the inBloom hearing in Manhattan last Friday, he told me (in answer to my question) that all Bill Gates wants to do is help teachers and children and that is why inBloom is a not-for-profit that is happy to store all of my child’s personal and sensitive data. Gee, didn’t see this coming. My bubble has burst.
From NYT (3/5/14)
Saying its college admission exams do not focus enough on the important academic skills, the College Board announced on Wednesday a fundamental rethinking of the SAT, eliminating obligatory essays, ending the longstanding penalty for guessing wrong and cutting obscure vocabulary words.
David Coleman, president of the College Board, criticized his own test, the SAT, and its main rival, the ACT, saying that both “have become disconnected from the work of our high schools.”
In addition, Mr. Coleman announced new programs to help low-income students, who will now be given fee waivers allowing them to apply to four colleges at no charge. And even before the new exam starts, the College Board, in partnership with Khan Academy, will offer free online practice problems from old tests and instructional videos showing how to solve them.
The changes coming to the exam are extensive: The SAT’s rarefied vocabulary words will be replaced by words that are common in college courses, such as “empirical” and “synthesis.” The math questions, now scattered widely across many topics, will focus more narrowly on linear equations, functions and proportional thinking. The use of a calculator will no longer be allowed on some of the math sections. The new exam will be available on paper and computer, and the scoring will revert to the old 1600 scale, with a top score of 800 on math and what will now be called “Evidence-Based Reading and Writing.” The optional essay will have a separate score.
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Among other changes, the new test will not ask students to define arcane words, relying instead on vocabulary used in college courses. Credit Paul Vernon/Associated Press
Once the pre-eminent college admissions exam, the SAT has recently lost ground to the ACT, which is based more directly on high school curriculums and is now taken by a slightly higher number of students.
The new SAT, to be introduced in the spring of 2016, will not quell all criticism of the standardized-test juggernaut. Critics have long pointed out — and Mr. Coleman admits — that high school grades are a better predictor of college success than standardized test scores. A growing number of colleges have in recent years gone “test optional,” allowing students to forgo the tests and submit their grades, transcripts and perhaps a graded paper.
For many students, Mr. Coleman said, the tests are mysterious and “filled with unproductive anxiety.” Nor, he acknowledged, do they inspire much respect from classroom teachers: only 20 percent, he said, see the college-admissions tests as a fair measure of the work their students have done in school.
Mr. Coleman, who came to the College Board in 2012, announced his plans to revise the SAT a year ago. He has spoken from the start about his dissatisfaction with the essay test added to the SAT in 2005, his desire to make the test mesh more closely with what students should be doing in high school, and his hopes of making a dent in the intense coaching and tutoring that give affluent students an advantage on the test and often turn junior year into a test-prep marathon.
“It is time for the College Board to say in a clearer voice that the culture and practice of costly test preparation that has arisen around admissions exams drives the perception of inequality and injustice in our country,” he said in a speech Wednesday in which he announced the changes. “It may not be our fault, but it is our problem.”
Some of the changes will make the new SAT more like the ACT, which for the last two years has outpaced the SAT in test-takers and is increasingly being adopted as a public high school test by state education officials. Thirteen states use it that way now and three more are planning to do so. The ACT has no guessing penalty, and its essay is optional. It also includes a science section, and while the SAT is not adding one, the redesigned reading test will include a science passage.
But beyond the particulars, Mr. Coleman emphasized that the three-hour exam — 3 hours and 50 minutes with the essay — had been redesigned with an eye to reinforce the skills and evidence-based thinking students should be learning in high school, and move away from a need for test-taking tricks and strategies. Sometimes, students will be asked not just to select the right answer, but to justify it by choosing the quote from a text that provides the best supporting evidence for their answer.
Continue reading the main story
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The revised essay, in particular, will shift in that direction. Students now write about their experiences and opinions, with no penalty for incorrect assertions, even egregiously wrong ones. Going forward, though, students will get a source document and be asked to analyze it for its use of evidence, reasoning and persuasive or stylistic technique.
The text will be different on each exam, but the essay task will remain constant. The required essay never caught on with most college admissions officers. Few figure the score into the admission decision. And many used the essay only occasionally, as a raw writing sample to help detect how much parents, consultants and counselors had edited and polished the essay submitted with the application.
Starting in the spring of 2016, some of the changes to the SAT will include:
• Instead of arcane “SAT words” (“depreciatory,” “membranous”), the vocabulary words on the new exam will be ones commonly used in college courses, such as “synthesis” and “empirical.”
• The essay, required since 2005, will become optional. Those who choose to write an essay will be asked to read a passage and analyze how its author used evidence, reasoning and stylistic elements to build an argument.
• The guessing penalty, in which points are deducted for incorrect answers, will be eliminated.
• The overall scoring will return to the old 1600 scales, based on a top score of 800 in reading and math. The essay will have a separate score.
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• Math questions will focus on three areas: linear equations; complex equations or functions; and ratios, percentages and proportional reasoning. Calculators will be permitted on only part of the math section.
• Every exam will include, in the reading and writing section, source documents from a broad range of disciplines, including science and social studies, and on some questions, students will be asked to select the quote from the text that supports the answer they have chosen.
• Every exam will include a reading passage from either one of the nation’s “founding documents,” such as the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, or from one of the important discussions of such texts, such as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
Glenn Beck nailed this a while ago.
http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/09/24/did-bill-gates-admit-the-real-purpose-of-common-core/
Does anybody know the law well enough to know if this violates ant-trust laws, or violation of no-bid contracts?
I wondered that. I think there might be an anti-trust angle if Pearson curriculum becomes widespread and only runs on Windows. Maybe the way Microsoft was told they could not put Internet Explorer on as the exclusive browser.
It quite possibly violates laws and regulations regarding use of charitable funds. Charitable funds cannot be used to advance the interests of a corporation. See my post below.
I’m not sure about that, but it sure seems like a huge conflict of interest to have the Gates Foundation pouring millions into Common Core just to have his company make profits on the other end by selling his technical gadgets to all of our schools – with our tax dollars don’t forget! Wow, this is the best scam he has pulled yet, for a guy who didn’t even graduate from college. So why should HE care what or how our kids learn! Hahahahaha – he is laughing all the way to the BANK!!
Reblogged this on Saint Simon Common Core Information and commented:
I’m not at all $urprised by this!
No surprise, but worried. Oh, dear.
Interesting. Pearson just ran into trouble In NY and wound up paying a big fine following investigation by NYS Attorney General Eric Schneiderman for misusing its Pearson foundation charitable assets to influence NYS officials to advance Pearson Corp’s interests.
See http://www.ag.ny.gov/press-release/ag-schneiderman-secures-77-million-settlement-pearson-charitable-foundation-support
or http://tinyurl.com/k5urcjb
Now it appears the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was using its tax-exempt foundation to advance the interests of Microsoft very, very directly. I think NYS Attorney General Schneiderman should take a look, as it appears the Foundation’s whole Common Core push was to create a market for more Microsoft products.
I guess Bill and Melinda weren’t willing to sit on the sidelines and have Microsoft miss out a business opportunity, with folks like LA Superintendent Dea$y willing to spend $1 billion on fragile, soon-to-obscolete Apple products with a short-term software license. Why should Microsoft miss out on all that $tudent $ucce$$..
Wow, talk about creating a market! Spread money around to politicians, unions, not-for-profits. Create some tax-exempt groups of your own. Hire an unqualified group to develop a new national curriculum, and push it through using your influen$e. Next, partner with another for-profit company that is making the national curriculum test, and sell your tablets through your regular corporation. If LA paid $1billion for tablets that have a life of three years, imagine the profits to be had!
Better yet, set up rules that require states to send reams of personal information about students to a national database, that can be used for datamining, with no privacy protections for the kids, set up your own non-profit that establishes the national database, and watch that marketing information roll in!
Now we now the push for the Common Core was actually a push for the common Corp.
I just emailed this link to Mr. Schniederman. We’ll see if anything happens.
Pearson simply payed that small fine to the Carnegie Foundation, its partner in ed deform crime.
I had no idea that’s where the money went! How disappointing. I guess we will need to educate the NSYAG on appropriate recipients of this type of settlement money.
Yeah Brooklyn Mom! You got it! These guys are the sleaziest of the sleazy! What a bunch of CROOKS!! And using our kids as lab rats for their little Rotten to the Core “program”. These people make me sick!! Please tell your representatives how UNhappy you are with all of this, tell your school boards, administrators and OPT OUT of testing, that will piss them off. I’m so upset over all of this – you don’t MESS with our CHILDREN!! Momma Bears will come out!! Errrrrrrrr
It’s too bad people weren’t paying attention back in late 2011.
http://missourieducationwatchdog.blogspot.com/2011/12/symbiotic-relationship-of-bill-gates.html
Good work, Chris. Yes, we were paying attention, and blogs like yours helped us capture the public narrative.
http://sxswedu.com/news/2014/sxswedu-2014-video-highlights-keeping-promise-educational-technology
‘Twas a time when all was not wine and roses bet/ Pearson and Microsoft. Must have been some nice reconciliation. http://www.neowin.net/news/war-of-words-at-pearson-between-microsoft-office-and-google-apps
A number of years ago, if you went into most schools in the US, you would find a computer lab with a few aging machines and no Internet connectivity. People have been talking about a disruptive revolution occurring in education due to the emergence of the Internet for a long, long time now, but the technology wasn’t in place to make such a revolution possible. Now, most schools are wired, thanks to a DOE program to do that, and Arne Duncan has funded these two new online national tests, PARCC and SBAC, and those mean that kids are going to have to have computer access, and so everyone is thinking, “Wow, now this can happen. Now we can make the transition to digital learning.”
The educational materials monopolists see the ed tech revolution as their opportunity to lock in mechanisms that will ensure their monopolies, and they recognize a need to head off a potential challenge to their whole business model from open source educational materials. The national standards and the inBloom database were schemes for ensuring that the monopolies will be secure going forward. So is the promulgation of a particular curriculum via Engage NY that just happens to be the curriculum to be sold by Amplify.
Politicians and education administrators see ed tech as an opportunity to save a lot of money because software is much cheaper than teachers are. Flipped classes and virtual schooling appeal to them for this reason. The unions have seemed oblivious to this current in Deformish thinking and have been falling all over themselves to help the Deformers put in place the mechanisms that will put many millions of their members out of work.
Silicon Valley sees education as THE next big investment opportunity–as an unprecedented opportunity to sell a lot of computers, operating systems, educational software, cloud services, and data management services.
Things are going to change, and they are going to change dramatically. The ed tech revolution is, indeed, upon us, and it would behoove us to be thoughtful about what that means.
The ed tech revolution is being sold as a means
a. to personalize learning
b. to turn around “failed” schools
c. to make better educational decisions by basing these on accurate data
d. to use data systems to drive accountability
All of these claims are deeply problematic if one looks even a little closely at them. Anyone who thinks that data walls and the Powerpointing of curricula are suddenly going to make low SES students into little scholars is a complete idiot.
We are now in a dangerous time, for ed tech has the potential to be either extraordinarily liberating–can lead to dramatic creativity and innovation–or it can be a mechanism for centralized command and control in the hands of a few.
That, I think, is the biggest issue here.
Standardization and centralization will lead to horrific outcomes. By centralizing and distancing power and control, it will kill meaningful innovation, not expand it. And it will make the achievement gap even worse by not providing nuanced, differing solutions for differing kids.
If our politicians were not entirely in the pockets of the oligarchs, then they would be doing everything in their power to open K-12 educational materials markets–to prevent fixing of these in the hands of a few.
They would, for example, be insisting on the autonomy of local school districts to choose among competing standards, frameworks, models, and products, for that would make for real competition and innovation. If an ed tech developer believes that his or her BIG IDEA is going to bring about change we need, then let him or her compete in the marketplace of ideas. Don’t let him or her fix the system so that only his or her product can, as a practical matter, get any purchase. What is happening in New York right now, for example, is an instructive example of precisely what we should not allow. Basically, in New York, the fix is in on behalf of some wealthy, powerful vendors.
What we need in this revolutionary time is local autonomy, for that will enable the promise of the ed tech revolution to be realized. That will enable this to be a liberating experience. But we are heading madly in the opposite direction, and even the teacher’s unions, the organizations that ought to provide defense against autocracy, are doing everything in their power to assist those who seek to centralize and standardize.
The ed tech revolution in education can bring us liberation or totalitarianism. Current trends are all toward the latter–more and more standardization and centralization of power and control.
Liberty or tyranny. That’s what the debate about ed deform is really about. National standards, national tests, state-approved curricula, laptops with preloaded curricula bought under long-term contracts, a single database of student responses–all make for an Orwellian future for education in this country, and all will be opposed by those who care about freedom.
ecologies are healthier and more productive than are monocultures
Standardization and centralization produce monocultures
Technology is not going away, so arguing to rid classrooms of tablets or whatever is a fools errand.
I think the two paths Bob outlines are real. Josh Boger, CEO of Vertex, said we face two competing views of our economy and social order: European feudalism and the Bill of Rights. We know where Bill Gates stands.
I think a third path will evolve, is evolving now: pockets of innovation will develop where communities demand it and resist the takeover by ed reformers. This might be schools and/or districts. This is a good thing – de standardization and decentralization.
But the Gatesian reformers will get the vast market of all those schools and districts that can’t resist, sadly the most disenfranchised.
So inequality get even greater, but you can’t mandate flexibility and innovation from the top down.
We are in violent agreement here, Peter!
You got it Bob! These are scary times! I’m all for learning technology, but with local control. Why should I let some bureaucrat in Washington dictate what my child is learning in Santa Fe, NM?? They don’t have a clue about me or my kids. And frankly, they could give a rats ass. They all want to give each other back door deals and continue to line their own pockets with our hard earned tax dollars!! Remeber how these people are supposed to be doing what is best for us, the people who pay their salaries!! I want my freedom back Bob! I want my kids to learn about the Constitution and about what it means to be an AMERICAN!! What happened to us??
BTW, David Coleman is a rank amateur in the English language arts, but he has unfortunately learned one lesson well from US educrats in our education schools (from the sorts of folks who are writing the new assessments)–that reading well is supposed to be a metacognitive undertaking–that it is about thinking about one’s thinking. So, instead of reading a persuasive essay in order to engage with the issues raised by its author, one is to read it to find out how it works–what kinds of evidence and stylistic tropes the author used, for example, and the effects of these.
Most of the CC$$ in ELA for reading literature and for reading informative texts are descriptions of this sort of metacognitive activity. So is the one prompt that will now be used for all SAT essays.
What a horror!!! Yes, such activity can be valuable. But one must FIRST engage with the work on its own terms before stepping back to analyze its parts and their functions.
One reads John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty PRIMARILY to find out what he has to say about liberty, not PRIMARILY in order to find out what kinds of arguments and examples he employs! It’s time, in ELA, that we remembered that!!!
The “new, higher”CC$$ encourages the kind of terrible teaching of literature and other texts that, oddly, skips over engagement with what the authors are saying.
It’s as though one bought a car in order to examine its parts and how those function rather than, say, to drive it to work and play.
We need to be teaching our kids to climb inside the work and allow it to drive them somewhere.
The functional, metacognitive stuff is properly ancillary. If we put that first, we will not engage students and we will fail in our job of providing opportunities for kids to engage with fascinating, often weird and wonderful ideas of the great thinkers and writers of the past.
You make some good points, Bob. And what would John Stuart Mill say about today’s Common Core? Here’s a quote from his “On Liberty”:
“A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.”
Interesting that the “increasingly personalized learning environment” is so impersonal. What could be less human than being “taught” by a machine running software?
There are 10 million contradictions in Ed Deform City. This has been one of them.
I read “the groundbreaking capabilities of the Windows 8 touchscreen environment.” and almost died laughing. Windows 8????? Worst OS since Vista.