In response to an earlier post about the U.S. Department of Education setting “measurable and rigorous targets” for children with disabilities, ages 0-3, Laura H. Chapman writes:
“This is nothing more than an extension of the Data Quality campaign that Bill Gates has funded since 2005 along with USDE– initially limited to Pre-K through college, but now clearly starting at birth, and likely in a race to get as much data into “the cloud” on each cohort of kids ASAP along with some hard-wired policies such as do this or we will gut the health and human services funding and IDEA funding for your state.
“Comply or else.
“Of course, closing the achievement gap will be easy enough if you just demand more of the parents and hand over all of the “evidence-based interventions” to instant experts. They will have conjured all of the necessary and sufficient measures for ratings of “infant and toddler and parent effectiveness.”
“Don’t forget checklists for observation, with rubrics for properly identifying all-purpose and specialized remedies for every condition, Instant experts on “disabilities” are sure to be ready (for a fee) to share their power points and modules for corrective action.
“Let’s see, let’s have some infant and toddler SLOs with targets to reach every three months, so quarterly reports can be filed at the state level. Or some VAM calculations with grand inferential leaps from scores on cognitive function, locomotion, eye-hand coordination, new scores for versions of the old Piaget experiments. Add some body sensors to pick up rigorous data on pee and poop and tantrum control, a measure of infant and toddler grit in retaining gas or vomit.
“Perhaps the real aim is to privatize the US Census, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, etc., etc., etc.
“I think that Arne Duncan and Bill Gates have never been in the presence of infants and toddlers and adults who are struggling to make sense out of the booming buzzing confusion that marks you as alive and human and doing your best even if you are not blessed from birth with “the right stuff,” plenty of money and connections with people who give you a bunch of tax dollars and discretionary authority to spend these at will..
“I hope the over-reach on this idiotic plan makes big news.
“My fear is that it will not.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
next step…. forced monitoring of pregnant women to ensure fetuses are healthy and well-grown… babies handed over at birth to nurseries to be raised to ‘optimum’ performance in health, fitness, education, social integration and compliance, sorted from their first days into ‘career and college-ready’ tracks according to ‘aptitude’…
or we could just stop the pretence, bypass all the fuss and go straight to the commercial manufacturing process, test-tubing the creation, growth and harvesting of our next generation of workers…
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Did you just read “The Giver?” I am beginning to wonder if Lois Lowry(?) was prophetic.
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Holy cow, I had the same thought. I only read it recently, tho it is a Junior reader (certainly wasn’t available when I was a kid to read it). Great (frightening) book (disappointing ending) but….
America is becoming the new Germany. The Reich will tell all human beings what occupations they will have. In the Giver, its even worse.
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pesky things… women, biological clocks, babies…. all get in the way of productivity and economic growth…
News stories out today say Facebook and Apple will pay up to $20k for a woman employee to freeze her eggs.
Offering this benefit “can help women be more productive human beings.” – spokesperson of egg-freezing service company….
“Egg freezing has even been described as a key to “leveling the playing field” between men and women: Without the CRUSHING PRESSURE OF A TICKING BIOLOGICAL CLOCK, women have more freedom in making life choices, say advocates. A Bloomberg Businessweek magazine cover story earlier this year asked: Will freezing your eggs free your career? “Not since the birth control pill has a medical technology had such potential to change family and career planning,” wrote author Emma Rosenblum.”
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/perk-facebook-apple-now-pay-women-freeze-eggs-n225011
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just had this idle thought float on by…. imagine…. break-in at egg storage facility….. thousands of frozen eggs stolen…. frozen eggs fertilised with sperm obtained from a sperm bank…. embryos growing in test tubes…. implanted into artificial wombs (http://motherboard.vice.com/read/artificial-wombs-are-coming-and-the-controversys-already-here)….. babies born…. babies raised in nursery ‘farms’….
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freeze your eggs and close the academic achievement gap!
freeze your eggs and all kids will be career and college ready!
freeze your eggs and close the income inequality gap!
freeze your eggs and eradicate poverty!
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Nations will fight over frozen eggs too. Nations will go to war over getting the eggs of female geniuses or females who meet all “super egg producer” specifications designated on a specified but top secret RUBRIC. Some eggs will mutate and be destructive of the human race… oh wait… my story is “kind of” but not quite a version of Mikhail Bulgakov’s, “Fatal Eggs”… This author’s story has parallels for our current world. Just thinking… maybe Bill Gates should be forced to read as much satire as is available and we can give him a rubric so “we” and “he” can gauge understanding. I think it would take A LOT OF WORK to help him understand satire. He is an example of what literary satire geniuses of this genre have created generation after generation only sadly he is the real deal! Gates biography sadly will be a new genre of literature – REALISTIC SATIRE.
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you are most likely correct in saying he would not understand satire….when he speaks of “railroad gauge” and the “plug in” those are the mechanistic views he holds….. they don’t apply to human beings or human relationships….so his analogy leaves out a lot of information that teachers know…
my library has a book called “Shortcuts” about how metaphors are constructed…. the marketing types construct completely different metaphors from the people in human services, teachers, social work etc… kind of the “two worlds” theory and we don’t live in their’s
brief descriptive of “Shortcuts””Anyone who wants to avoid making things worse by using the wrong analogy should read this insightful book.” book’s author is John Pollack…. Gates makes things worse when he reduces it down to a “railroad gauge”…. but then “life is a box of chocolates” will only go so far”…. (said in good humor)
understand satire. He is an example of what literary satire geniuses of this genre have created generation after generation only sadly he is the real deal! Gates biography sadly will be a new genre of literature – REALISTIC SATIRE.
jeanhaverhill@aol.com
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Brave New World was written by Aldous Huxley and describes just such a test-tube baby manufacturing world. Keep in mind his brother was Julian Huxley, who was the first Director General of UNESCO, as well as the founder and president of the British Eugenics Society.
Sir Julian Huxley wrote a paper entitled UNESCO Its Purpose and Its Philosophy (1946) in which he outlined his vision. According to Huxley, the guiding philosophy of UNESCO should be what he termed, World Evolutionary Humanism. The following article describes this philosophy and its relation to eugenics.
“There are instances of biological inequality which are so gross that they cannot be reconciled at all with the principle of equal opportunity. Thus low-grade mental defectives cannot be offered equality of educational opportunity, nor are the insane equal with the sane before the law or in respect of most freedoms. However, the full implications of the fact of human inequality have not often been drawn and certainly need to be brought out here, as they are very relevant to Unesco’s task.”
in 2004, Bill Gates signed an agreement with UNESCO to develop a world-wide curriculum using MIcrosoft as a platform to disseminate the goals of UNESCO. Thus the Common Core, as yet another incarnation of outcome based education, was born. Bill Gates father was the head of Planned Parenthood, which was previously Margaret Sanger’s American Birth Control League. Sanger associate and board member for her group, spoke of purifying America’s human “breeding stock” and purging America’s “bad strains.”
What people fail to acknowledge is that Bill Gates is an avowed depopulation guy. Like father, like son. The Common Core has very murky beginnings which can lead to highly objectionable ends.
The UN wants to inventory and control all human capital in the world. The Common Core provides a uniform tagging system as Peter Greene points out for data mining purposes. Bill Gates and his eugenics buddies, Ted Turner, Mike Bloomberg, and Oprah Winfrey all think that 7 billion is too many people to inhabit the earth. Bill wants to be the one to create the system that will identify who should be eliminated. Sick but true.
And as teachers tag all their lessons and worksheets to specific CC standards they are laying the groundwork for this data mining system which will be used to inventory and ultimately control our children. Do not comply.
Oh, that’s right, the Danielson evaluation rubric, as shown on teachscape.com will easily “reflect” how perfectly teachers will in fact comply or else.
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So true Dawn… frighteningly true!
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You should see the questions and demands that the state makes upon my brother in law who takes care of his 61 year old blind brother with the learning capacity of a 5 year old. Since both parents died, his brother who us 11 years younger is his caretaker. He is partially trainable but not educable. Yet, some of the requirements they would like met are things like opportunities to date, to count change, and some other things that have never been a possibility for him. They treat him wonderfully and he is very happy, but these checklist are generally ridiculous. There is a lot of turnover in the underfunded social services departments. What a world we live in.
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Big Data is coming…..
Montgomery County Public Schools parent coalition has this description
“…..Who is Dr. Michael Perich in MCPS
Anyone know? We are sending him to Florida to speak about the “organizational improvement strategies” that he has implemented in MCPS.
And if he works for MCPS, why is he selling MCPS documents on the side for $15 (plus shipping and handling)?
The 2012 Summit also features presentations on school process improvements made by Dr. Brian Marchman, the Florida Virtual School; and Dr. Michael Perich, Montgomery County Public Schools. Both of these professionals have implemented organizational improvement strategies to identify and validate leading indicators for student learning outcomes.”
there are a lot of entrepreneurs and corporations that are waiting in the wings to jump on the available funding that Arne Duncan is tossing around….. I came across this listing when I looked into the data gathering ….
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“. . . validate leading indicators for student learning outcomes.”
They can try till hell freezes over to “validate” those LI’s for SLO’s and won’t be able to do so. Noel Wilson has proven the invalidities of the fundamental epistemological and ontological basis of these educational malpractices and no amount of “fudging” and/or bloviating about “validity” will prove otherwise. Snake oil anyone???
100% pure grade AA FDA approved bovine excrement anyone????
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I had never heard of this one before: Michael and Susan Dell Foundation …. grants awarded in FL for “ED-FI” solutions….. using the technology to gather more data on the schools, students, teachers….. in Florida and this one in Chicago a grant award: LEAP Innovations – Launch
Grantee:Chicago Community Trust
Date:May 2014
Amount:$1,149,734
To support the launch of LEAP Innovations (LEAP) effort to launch a more effective educational technology marketplace by breaking down silos between entrepreneurs, educators, and researchers.
———————————-
these aren’t all pertinent to early childhood….. but I wanted to point out the “entrepreneurs” and coming for the financial incentives — in this case from a Foundation….. and of course Arne Duncan is probably networking with all of these “philanthropists”….
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again, this is not specific to early childhood….. it illustrates that this is a Humungous effort … example Orange County FL schools….. Corporate firms bid on these specs to put all of the data gathered into “dashboards”…. InBloom was just a massive collection… these are data “clouds” that are in some of the larger cities or counties….. Large firms with computers bid on the specs….. in the classrooms teachers are expected to gather “formative assessments”…..
If this is the way the world is headed with entrepreneurs collecting large sums, how will taxpayers be able to keep schools open? It seems like a drain on the system…
2.0 Construct and Maintain School Improvement and Executive Dashboards in Support of Integration with the SIS.
2.1
Construct and Continuously Update School Improvement Plan and Executive dashboards that display all School Improvement Plan and related data in the Educational Data Warehouse to include the following:
a)
Create data dashboards that display data elements in charts and graphs sortable by area, school and subgroup for all data elements of Florida’s School Improvement Plan(s) and additional identified data elements to be used in executive dashboards. These elements are subject to change at any time by statute, board rule, FDOE guidance, and district decision and must be updated at
RFP1403042
2.2
that time. These dashboards must include the capacity to view progress toward yearly goals to date.
b) Create additional dashboards at benchmark assessment windows that include the results from all benchmark assessments throughout the year. Data dashboards for School Improvement Plan elements must display accurate data before the beginning of the School Improvement Plan process each year.
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Teacher Student Data Link — TSDL
funded by none other than Bill & Melinda.
http://www.tsdl.org
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One sad point among many you mention Laura is that Gates and Duncan have certainly been in the presence of “infants and toddlers and adults who are struggling to make sense out of the booming buzzing confusion that marks you as alive and human…”. They both have children and KNOW BETTER! So much so that their own children are completely sheltered from the drivel they spew. As for pee, poop and vomit you reference, perhaps teachers should be provided with gloves so that they can collect and send this to Gates and Duncan so they can cull data from this too!
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With all these data on kids 0-3, Microsoft has an algorithm to tell who is a good parent, and who is a bad parent. These data can be sold to states, who can then get rid of Child Protective Services employees and just use the data to target parents for arrest and orders to sever parent-child relationships.
Very efficient, very quick, very cheap. So cheap it would make Jack Benny scream.
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Let’s take a step back here. I know many of these comments are tongue in cheek and deliberately hyperbolic but lest we loose our focus and thus our credibility, I think it’s imperative to put this in the correct context. I work with the special needs 0-3 population as a PT and I’ve seen my fair share of horrific and amazing things so I undertand Ms. Chapman’s concern. We are already “on the hook” to produce results with these kids regardless of his or her diagnosis or prognosis. I struggle every day to justify continued treatment for my most involved patients some of whom have degenerative and ultimately deadly diseases because the insurance company requires me to demonstrate progress. So really, this is nothing new for us in the healthcare field; however, the dept of ed has no reason to stick it’s fingers in this pot too. We are already accountable.
I’m on the front lines and I know how hard we all work to give these babies the best possible life. The cold hard facts are that not every child will walk, talk, or be able to feed himself. Some will be dependent on caregivers indefinitely. This idea that all children can acheive some perfect ideal is ludacris and more damaging to the children and families than if we could just sit down and talk frankly about the abilities the child has and how to make that life as good as we can. That does not mean we throw in the towel and give up on these kids. It means we stop giving families false hope. The sooner we can help families come to terms with a child’s different abilities, the sooner we can focus on what can be done NOW rather than that (in some cases) unreachable goal of walking, talking, etc. We are so reluctant to be the bearer of bad news for fear of a lawsuit that we leave these families thinking anything is possible. They are free to pray for a miracle but I have yet to see one granted.
I don’t think the point of this initiative is to interfere with the parents’ rights. I do think it is a misguided attempt to help people based on an incorrect assumption that everyone in the lower socioeconimc classes have no clue how to monitor and assist their children’s development. Plus, since the DofE has, by definition, no clue about healthcare, they assume we are lazy freeloaders who are just passing the buck and collecting lucrative salaries and they can come in and “fix” these kids where we have failed them. It’s a power grab to be sure but as is the case with most power grabs, it’s becuase they think they can do a better job than those who are in charge now.
Stick to what you know DofE, I’ll be down here in the trenches doing what I’ve been doing for 12 years: helping children with disabilities and their families make as much progress as possible. I don’t need another boss, thanks.
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NC Mom. You said: “So really, this is nothing new for us in the healthcare field; however, the dept of ed has no reason to stick it’s fingers in this pot too. We are already accountable.” I agree. Unfortunately the sticky fingers are there, and they have formed a fist attached to the strong arm tactics perfected in USDE for more than a decade and a half.
Since my post this morning, I have spent some time looking at the UDSE requirements for accountability. Under IDEA ,vintage 1998, states had to provide for: (a) “a timely, comprehensive, multidisciplinary evaluation of each child, birth through age two, referred for evaluation (referral process noted below) and (b) a family-directed identification of the needs of each child’s family to appropriately assist in the development of the child.”
The multidisciplinary evaluation had to produce an “informed clinical opinion” about the child’s status based on records—the child’s current health status and medical history and “the child’s level of functioning” in each of the following developmental areas: Cognitive; Physical, including vision and hearing; Communication; Social or emotional; Adaptive ability.”
The evaluation had to identify services “appropriate to meet those needs.” In the 2004 reauthorization, these services also had to include an educational component that promotes school readiness and incorporates preliteracy, language and numeracy skills.
The second part of compliance with IDEA required a “voluntary” and family-directed assessment “to determine the resources, priorities, and concerns of the family.” That assessment had to be conduced by trained personnel in order to identify the “supports and services necessary to enhance the family’s capacity to meet the developmental needs of the child.” That assessment, had to include “information provided by the family through a personal interview;” and “incorporate the family’s description of its resources, priorities, and concerns related to enhancing the child’s development.”
Referrals into these IDEA evaluations could be initiated by “Hospitals, including prenatal and postnatal care facilities; Physicians; Parents; Day care programs; Local educational agencies; Public health facilities; Other social service agencies; and Other health care providers.”
The values that supported IDEA– as a social safety net and affirmation of equity in opportunity to learn for all children– is being compromised by conservative pressures to cut costs and by hard-nosed “outcomes only” accountability.
Here is a very small sample of new accountability measures projected out to 2020,
and how USDE says states must meet them. Teachers, principals, and other administrators will be familiar with variants of these Obama/Duncan/Gates “accountability imperatives.”
“Instructions for the Indicator Measurement: State Systematic Improvement Plan (SSIP) for Federal Fiscal years 2013-2020.(lightly edited to reduce jargon)
1. Baseline Data: The State must provide 2013 baseline data that must be expressed as a percentage and which is aligned with the State-identified Measurable Result(s) for Infants and Toddlers with Disabilities and their Families.
2. Targets: The State must provide measurable and rigorous targets (expressed as percentages) for each of the five years from 2014 through 2018. The State’s 2018 target must demonstrate improvement over the State’s 2013 baseline data.
3. Updated data: For 2014 through 2018 the State Performance Plan and Annual Performance Report (due February 2016 through February 2020), must provide updated data for each year (expressed as percentages) and that data must be aligned with the State-identified Measurable Result(s) for Infants and Toddlers with Disabilities and their Families. In its reports for 2014 through 2018, the State must indicate whether it met its targets. ”
“The State-identified Measurable Result(s) for Infants and Toddlers with Disabilities and their Families must be clearly based on the Data and State Infrastructure Analyses and must be a child- or family-level outcome in contrast to a process outcome.” (In this dangerous philosophical reasoning. USDE is disconnecting outcomes (ends) from the process of reaching them (means).
The State may select a single result (e.g., increase the rate of growth in infants and toddlers demonstrating positive social-emotional skills) or a cluster of related results (e.g., increase the percentage reported under child outcome (e.g., knowledge and skills) and increase the percentage trend reported for families (e.g., helping their child develop and learn).
As I understand the federal legislatio, USDE is directing states to do a lot more coordination of services from different agencies, “early intervention service providers,” and programs (e.g., Head Start, Early Learning). There is a huge amount of sludge and paperwork, and very complex rules on confidentiality of information, parental rights, and definitions of “disability.” The state data systems under development since 2005 with Gates and USDE funding will need to be in overdrive. Look for huge gitches and errors.
Find more of this accountability system at ectacenter.org/~calls/2014/ssip/ssip.asp
For state “expectations” for improvement, very much like SLOs with norms age groups that identify “above” and “below” expectations n achievement see http://ectacenter.org/eco/assets/pdfs/childoutcomeshighlights.pdf’
For issues addressed in the courts see resources at http://www.wrightslaw.com/law.articles.htm
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Conference schedule: “Procurement and Implementation of Administrative and Instructional Improvement Systems”
these are by invitation only and are attended by the business managers and the IT corporations . College professors, school faculties are not part of this lucrative …. and I don’t personally know how much funding that Arne Duncan has propped up in these activities. I was more comfortable when the feds would give a grant to Pat Suppes in California, or a grant to the University in my state…. these are a whole different kind of “being” and to me it represents the banks that are too big to fail …
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Arne was given the largest discretionary budget in the history of USDE. Big piggy bank of our money. The pigs at the trough are well known to many on this blog.
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Ms. Chapman,
Thank you for that information. I will admit that I am not completely up to date with all the legislation but I’m happy that some are. I get lost when I try to read all that legal stuff so I just do my treatments and jump through the hoops, relying on people like you to keep it all straight.
In my original response, I was not suggesting that you were incorrect. My admonition was aimed at the responders who were getting off track and extrapolating. While that is fun and gets a good laugh, it also has a tendency to pull our focus from what is actually being said and done thus decreasing the validity of our points.
Healthcare providers have always had to show progress and in the past few years, we’ve been asked to do more and more paperwork to justify our treatments. I feel like I am being treated like a criminal who everyone expects to be working the system, falsifying treatments and raking in a big pay check. I can assure you, therapists are not raking in big pay checks! I haven’t gotten a raise in almost 10 years. I can also assure you that we work hard, we love our jobs and we are very skilled at what we do.
The state is stingy as it is just dealing with medicaid. I have no great wish to be accountable to the USDE too. Once they get their say and cut of the money, I’ll be doing 2x as much paper work for 1/2 the money! This whole thing is ridiculous and quite insulting as a licensed PT. I do my job and I do it well. USDE needs to leave me alone so I can continue to provide my patients with the highest quality care.
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quote: ” Unfortunately the sticky fingers are there, and they have formed a fist attached to the strong arm tactics perfected in USDE for more than a decade and a half.”
As NC mom was describing, my colleagues and I were trained in the days when institutions housed the deaf/blind children from the rubella epidemic and one of my friends did her training living there in the institution. We thought that things were improving in the 60s when we had some efforts with head start; we had a grant in Greater Boston where personnel with training would visit the home with books to share and “Toys” in the Karnes toy lending library. This was the Merle Karnes initiative. My colleagueLinda went on to Yeshiva and worked in the developmental testing lab to provide better resources into the schools. Rosemarie went on to teaching language development and reading assessments with clinical settings. The nurse training programs to visit homes of newborns were later and were quite effective. The only effort I know of today that shares these values is the Comer program ; Comer was appointed to one of Obama’s committees but I don’t know if he has significant power given all of the other people he has to work with.
As NCmom described many talented people were creating and designing these efforts. I can support everything NCmom has said in that direction.
About 1990 everything changed. Large corporations with computers had room left over and space in the computer where they had to create profit centers so they branched further into education. The whole IT industry developed with the business managers and the personnel offices ; it is a humungous undertaking. There are whole conferences now dedicated to the purchasing office and “procurement” of IT services and “architecture” . I assume the same thing has happened to the hospital practitioners. The professional practitioners and the autonomy of the profession have suffered as a result…. Federal dollars have gone into this kind of “R&D” in the IT firms and the “philanthropy” of foundations (just came across the Dell Foundation this week) are managing a global effort that some believe is “progress” . None of these things are good for democracy or local control or professional autonomy.
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Jean,
Your post resonates. When I entered teaching, institutionalization in state facilities was common, including children with Down’s syndrome.
I taught at “Roosevelt School for the Handicapped.” Students were bussed in. The school was a converted 1920s hotel with a small swimming pool still in use for physical therapy and water safety for some students.
One of the most sophisticated “technologies” for students who had cerebral palsy was a metal plate fastened over the keyboard of a typewriter (not electric) to reduce the number of times that students would hit the space between two keys.
Also high tech for students with cerebral palsy: taping a tongue depressor to the back of a kindergarten crayon, then using an elastic loop to keep the crayon in the palm of a hand if a spastic movement opened the palm. This simple device permitted some students with cerebral palsy to draw pictures with recognizable imagery–a memorable one titled “I am in the water at the beach” with plenty of wave action. That student graduated from high school and set up a non-profit for adults called “Get out and live.” The organization secured “free” anything they could and got those goodies to people that needed them, including field trips.
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