A reader posed this question about Governor Cuomo’s reason for promoting a $2 billion bond for new technology. He wrote this after seeing that Pearson and AIR are dueling over control of PARCC assessments, which will ultimately provide several BILLIONS in revenue to the testing corporation with the contract. Pearson recently won the PARCC contract, being declared the sole bidder. AIR is suing:
The reader writes:
I hope New York residents who oppose Common Core are astute enough to grasp that Governor Cuomo’s support of a $2B Technology Bond Issue is a requisite to make many districts PARCC ready. If you want to stop Common Core you need to recognize the underlying reason that Cuomo is willing to go into debt to fund a technology bond issue–PARCC! Strange how Cuomo prefers Tax Cuts for the wealthy over aid to local school districts–but promotes a bond issue to support technology. Mr. Tax Cap–and Mr. Tax Freeze is out there promoting $2B for Gates and Google–don’t believe for a second that he does not have ulterior motives that are not good for NY kids!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Duh!
Note that De Blasio’s budget is counting on this bond as a done deal. If it doesn’t pass, there’s a new $800 million hole in the education budget for next year, much of it for non-technology spending.
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If De Blasio spends the city’s slice on non-tech, he will balance karmically with Los Angeles using their construction bond funds on iPads.
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Some of the bond proceeds are earmarked for non-tech spending. Most is earmarked for tech. All the proceeds are financed like the iPad deal in LA, i.e. using long-term borrowing.
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YUP. Gotta get those little red school houses upgraded, both in terms of infrastructure and new computers…. Just so that the system can crash….
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Even money says the underwriters of this bond issue are neck deep in funding so-called reform on other fronts, and will thus congratulate (and delude) themselves by repeating the edu-vulture capitalist mantra of “doing well by doing good (sic).”
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The underwriters will be the same big banks that underwrite every major bond offering, e.g. Goldman, JP Morgan, Barclays, Morgan Stanley.
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Our school district recently passed a capital project for technology and would rather that our Republicrat governor pay us the foundation aid and GEA money NYS owes us.
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Gov. Cuomo is no friend to children or those who love them…
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As everyone here is learning the hard (and expensive) way, once the “technology infrastructure” in installed in real schools in the real world of real children, the operations budget has to include someone or a “team” to maintain and sustain the complex computer systems that will hence be as much a part of each school. And that’s not happening, so the NWEA MAP in Chicago is invalid not only because of its other flaws, but because the systems go “down” during the testing and the kids (who are promoted this year — or NOT — based on NWEA) and teachers (whose ratings) and principals will be screwed if the blown systems simply leave the “data driven” MBAs now in charge with even more garbagey data than they are used to chowing up and down on.
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Pretty well known at Opt Out Long Island.
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You can neither have enough tests nor spend enough for them!
Testing for tots!
Testing, cradle to grave!
All testing all the time!
Nor can you have enough technology, of course.
But hey, as Donald Rumsfeld explained at the beginning of the Iraq War, this will pay for itself. (Remember that? He said that after the war, when the oil started flowing, the cost would more than be recouped. Don’t remember that? Well–six trillion dollars later, no one does)
Here’s why this will pay for itself: because you can have 400 students in a room and a low-level aide walking around to help with problems.
Teaching, there’s an app for that!
And so you can dramatically reduce the number of teachers and turn the training of children of proles over to machines that will monitor those children continually, in real time, to ensure they have gritfully checked off every item on the workforce of the future training list.
In fact, you could probably cut the teaching force by 3/4ths. Replace teachers with low-level aides and a few armed guards.
These are only prole children, after all, and we’re talking low levels of workforce training, here.
Not education like what real children in real schools with real teachers will receive at private schools for the future leaders of those children in the neoFeudal state.
Good thing that we put into place a single, invariant national bullet list of standardsm huh?
For without that set of national “standards,” this lovely future of absolute command and control of the workforce training of prole children would not have been possible.
Vision among our educational leaders. Finally.
And thanks to our teachers’ unions for helping to make this possible. Well done.
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cx: Here’s why this will pay for itself: because you can have 400 students in a room all at tablets doing worksheets on a screen and a low-level aide walking around to help with problems.
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Well, you’ll need to hire some additional workers for the IT department.
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A few.
But this is just the same as replacing human telephone operators with “customer self-service portals” and human cashiers with “self-service checkout technologies.” You can have fewer people and decrease costs.
Now, as I write this, I am waiting for TeachingEconomist to point out that the same thing could have happened with the introduction of the book. After all, that technology also allowed for the transmission for information without a human teacher present. However, here’s the difference: As we transition from delivery of educational materials via print to delivery of those via the Web, the folks pushing the new technology are AT THE SAME TIME pushing the idea of using the technology as replacements for teachers. Listen to Gates talk about his vision for the future of college. Look at all the discussion on educational technology venture capital websites of flipped classrooms and distributed learning.
Here’s my problem with all this:
Education, as I see it, is a handoff. People hand off what matters to them to other, younger people. It is FUNDAMENTALLY a human transaction. That element of it is really, really important. A teacher is, first and foremost, a MODEL to a student of what it is to be a learner. Kids need that model, that person whom they can love and admire–the one they want to be like.
Of course, the teachers’ unions entirely missed the fact that the Common [sic] Core [sic] national bullet list was created in order to have a single list to tag educational technologies and assessments to and the fact that the push for such technologies is largely about reducing the cost of education, over time, by dramatically reducing the number of human teachers.
The folks with the “Teaching, there’s an app for that” vision first thought they could do this via distance learning, and the online virtual charters are a good example of that. But the results from distance learning have been abysmal. Kid perform worse in the classes and drop out a lot more. For a time, as those dismal results rolled in, the ed tech proponents tried to spin them. But eventually, they had to accept the results as definitive, so they are on, now, to a couple different visions:
1. Many, many kids in a room, all working at tablets, doing their online coursework, and a teacher walking among them.
2. Flipped classes that kids listen to at home, and then study sessions as in 1, above.
But still, you reduce the number of teachers. Thus the common Ed Deformer mantra that “class size doesn’t matter.” In their vision, you can use these methods to reduce, dramatically, the teacher-to-student ratios and save a lot of money with which to buy computers and online educational software and assessments.
The biggest cost of education, by far, is in salaries. The Ed Deformers think that they can dramatically reduce that cost without dramatic reductions in educational outcomes.
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It’s like taking out a mortgage to buy a new computer. It’s a bad, desperate idea!
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Yes exactly. Pay it off over the long term with a bond issue, but the Ipad is obsolete in 24 months. Great plan. Worked awesome in LAUSD.
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At the risk of sounding old fashioned, what about the emotional needs of children? How do we teach them to be caring, respectful people? Is there an ap for that?
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How? Wrap around services.
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One might think that it is time to start a dump Cuomo movement. He has done immeasurable harm to pubic education in New York State. He is not beyond being called to task for his disastrous choices,
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He will be called to task in November. His back is up against the wall he built; he has painted himself into a very small and lonely corner. The political winds have shifted aagainst our gutless leader. I will not be surprised if he starts to cave on CCSS and APPR. The parents of Long Island have him quaking in fear.
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I am a HUGE fan of educational technology. If used properly, I think that educational technology can be enormously liberating–that it can dramatically increase access to a range of options for real personalization. It can, for example, make available at low cost options that small schools and districts would not have had for kids who have unique interests and talents and challenges. And educational technologies offer the possibility of bringing to bear on the creation of educational materials crowd sourcing from billions of minds.
But the oligarchs pushing this want command and control. They want one ring to rule them all. They want push technologies, not pull technologies. They want proprietary technologies, not open source ones. They want materials prepared and vetted by centralized monopolists and regulatory agencies, not materials from large numbers of small, competing vendors and materials that are crowd sourced.
And, of course, they want to reduce costs by getting rid of as many of those pesky teachers as they can.
So, these are two very, very different visions for what educational technology can do, leading to two very, very different futures.
Here’s something to watch out for: Almost everywhere you look in ed tech these days, there are startup companies. But when you look at who provided the seed funding and who owns the stock in them, it all comes back to a couple of big players.
And those happen to be the same players to funded the creation of the Common Core and the operations of the CCSSO and Achieve. What a surprise.
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So, for example, there are some kids, some few, who are born with breathtaking mathematical abilities. Little Gausses and Ramanujans. These kids are rare, but they appear from time to time in the oddest places, and it’s very, very valuable to the society as a whole to identify these kids early and to build upon their talent. One of the criticisms that has been leveled at the Common Core is that it is a one-size-fits-all curriculum outline (which it clearly IS in mathematics) that does not make provision for higher-track mathematical training sufficient for entry to scientific and technical programs. But educational technology can make possible offering just such varied tracks even in very remote locations, in schools that don’t have a lot of money. In other words, educational technology could INCREASE THE NUMBER OF OPTIONS and INDIVIDUALIZE instead of STANDARDIZING THOSE.
But built into the use of those technologies must be this human element–the transactional handoff between teacher and pupil and the collaborative learning community.
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Ed tech can be enormously liberating.
But beware of the following:
1. programs that claim to be personalized but only personalize to the extent that they test to find out where to put the kid down in an absolutely predetermined learning progression–programs that call that kind of regimentation “personalization”
2. educational materials portals and gateways purchased by districts and state departments from providers who will then use these to push only those materials that they own or in which they have a financial stake.
3. tablets that are locked–that provide access only to preloaded materials from a particular vendor
4. multi-year contracts that involve a huge initial investment and that lock you into using a single vendors’ materials and making moving from those very, very costly
5. technologies that replace or reduce the number of teachers
6. technologies that are very, very flashy graphically but that are actually extremely dumbed down in terms of actual information content–ones that are little more than Powerpoint bullet lists and worksheets on a screen with a lot of flashy media added–what Edward Tufte, in his great work on Powerpoint, has called “chart junk”; there is a LOT of this crap being produced, these days
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I have not resided in New York in many years. The last I heard, Cuomo was proposing a $2B bonding for technology and 4K classrooms.
Borrowing to purchase computers that have a replacement cycle measured in years is a bad idea.
Borrowing at the current low rates to invest in broadband infrastructure and constructing 4K classrooms would be a good long term capital investment.
My assumption is that there is a significant gap between the bandwidth NY schools have and the SETDA recommendations. http://www.setda.org/priorities/equity-of-access/the-broadband-imperative/
Technology access is about a lot more than testing. At least it should be.
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For NYC, there’s two components of spending that would be authorized under the proposed bond. The first is a technology component, which would include stuff like computers, tablets, software, and broadband infrastructure. The second is a construction component, which would include building and upgrading pre-K facilities (does “4K” mean “pre-K” these days?) and construction that would help transition students from trailers to actual classrooms.
A three-person panel is advising NY state on its purchases under the bond: Eric Schmidt, Geoffrey Canada, and Constance Evelyn (a district superintendent).
http://www.governor.ny.gov/press/04172014-smart-schools-commission
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FLERP, Eric Schmidt is CEO of Google. Do you think he favors more spending for technology?
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The bond proceeds that he’s advising on are earmarked for technology. So if it passes, the money will be spent on technology to the extent mandated by the legislation. The better question is whether Schmidt favors spending on technology that benefits Google.
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An infrastructure for constant testing (and one requiring constant upgrading/replacement), micro-surveillance of students and teachers, big underwriting fees for Wall Street, long term debt for taxpayers: what’s not to like?
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Our regional, NY QUESTAR/BOCES program has just switched to computer based, on-line Summer School program. Probably because our struggling learners are so self directed.
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Have you seen this? Dept of Ed. Nominations for superintendents who advocate tech.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/15VjL6AWkwLBjF9BzEmQc9otjlP_xibjF3TBPTkkPWHo/viewform
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There is a clear political agenda to Cuomo’s plan. When he spoke of the technology bond issue in his State of the State–and Budget speech–he referenced “some schools where the most advanced technology in the building is the metal detector.” That is a direct appeal to large city, minority voters–that often do not turn out to vote in mid-term elections. This bond act increases the chance that minority voters will turn out and cast a ballot for Lil’ Mario.
I need to say that I would normally be supportive of efforts to expand technology availability–but I distrust this Governor! This obvious ploy has been overlooked for too long–the vocal opponents of Common Core need to be made aware of Cuomo’s Cuomo’s underlying agenda! It makes no sense to buy items like technology utilizing costly long term financing–that in itself should be enough reason to vote this down, Cuomo’s cynical attempt at political manipulation and his quiet promotion of a key PARCC requirement demand this bond be defeated.
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Cuomo’s take one duration is incredibly disappointing
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