Peter Greene notes that the corporate reformers are still pressing for more data on each student. There can never be enough data. When there is more than enough, then you have Big Data, where government and corporations can analyze mega-trends. But reformers don’t say that this is what they want; they insist that this data is what parents want and need, even if they don’t say so themselves.
He writes:
Over at Getting Smart, a website devoted to selling educational product, guest writer Aimee Rogstad Guidera makes her case for more data collection for each student– because it’s what parents want.
“Parents are eager for information about their child’s education. As a mom, I want to know if my daughter is struggling in math before she comes home in tears. I need information to support my child’s learning at home, and to support my child and her teacher in making the best decisions for her learning in the classroom.”
Maybe I just don’t get it, but I’m inclined to think that if you didn’t know your child was having trouble in math before the coming-home-in-tears part, you’re just not paying attention. I have heard this pitch enough times to make me occasionally wonder if there is, in fact, some place where teachers keep every scrap of information carefully hoarded, students never speak to their parents about school, parents never ask about school, and all parent requests for conferences and information are denied by all school personnel. Maybe there is some place where parents are so deeply clueless and helpless that they have no idea how their students are doing.
Or maybe Guidera is the CEO and President of the Data Quality Campaign, a group interested in student data and funded by the Gates Foundation, the Waltons, the Dells, and the Ford Foundation. They do have some rules about how such data should be kept in a safe lockbox, but they are clearly Big Data fans.
Guidera is advocating for student data backpacks– little (or not so little) bundles of data that just follow students around, providing parents with all sorts of longitudinal data (because, again, parents don’t know much about their own children).
Greene has some advice for parents who want more information about how their child is doing: pick up the phone and call the teacher.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My child coming home in tears is precisely the time I want to learn he Is having trouble in math. This is when we sit down at the dining room table and work on it together. And our RELATIONSHIP grows because of it. I do not want to keep up with my son’s scores as if I’m handicapping a horse race.
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Yes Karen…this is the essence of good parenting. You have lucky children whose parents nurture them. Would that all parents were so disposed and able to act as their children’s teachers.
In the old days of ‘cum cards’ when written records followed each student, it was already known that those who acted out in class were often ADD/ADHD but had never been tested for learning disorders, with the excuse that it was “too expensive” to test everyone in early grades. So these ‘acts of defiance’ were recorded and followed the student for all of his/her school career, much to the detriment of the student. But the cum cards were not available to all comers in perpetuity.
With the onset of technology, these records now reside in ‘the cloud’ forever, and records are available to not only hackers, but to employers and others who might not have good intentions…even to aggressive merchandisers. Much of this information (including that which was negative) is now coded, but it is there. Why?
And Murdoch wanted not only all this student data recorded, but he added parent data such as Social Security numbers, health records, Marriage records, etc. Why?
As much as tech has opened the world of knowledge to us, it has become a demon of unnecessary data search…just because it can be done.
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Ellen, I just saw this. You give me too much credit.
I have a friend who teaches at a local art college and she said she makes a ritual of the grade book, turning in assignments, etc. it conditions the students. She could write a paper about this. It’s fascinating and I cannot retell all that she explained to me.
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**** SPECIAL BULLETIN ***
**** WE INTERRUPT YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING to bring you the latest on the pedophilia scandal swirling around Kevin Johnson, the current Mayor of Sacramento and prominent proponent of school privatization and union-busting … oh yeah, and the husband of Michelle Rhee.***
BELOW is the recently-released police interview video — conducted during the 1996 investigation — with the alleged victim Mandi Koba herself. Here she recounts the horror of being molested by Michelle Rhee’s husband Kevin Johnson, the current mayor of Sacramento and a prominent proponent of busting teacher unions, and replacing public schools with privately-run charter schools.
Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson is the same man who has no court-mandated limits on his access to the two daughters of his current wife Michelle Rhee (who are also, of course, the daughters of her ex-husband and former Tennessee Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman.) Conceivably, these two daughters, when visiting their mother Michelle Rhee and their step-father Kevin Johnson in Sacramento, could be left alone with this perv, without any supervision whatsoever.
Scary stuff. (Mr. Huffman, if you’re reading this, what are you going to do about this?)
Watch the video and judge for yourself.
Keep in mind, folks, that this is a sixteen-year-old girl, recounting events of a few months prior when she was just fifteen. The video is even dated July 19, 1996 ( “7-19-1996” )
———————————————————————-
( 00:37 – 01:35 )
( 00:37 – 01:35 )
PHOENIX P.D. DETECTIVE: “What … what specific areas (of your body did Kevin Johnson fondle)?”
MANDI KOBA: “My stomach. My breasts. My butt… ”
PHOENIX P.D. DETECTIVE: (almost whispering) “Anywhere else?”
MANDI KOBA: “As it progressed.”
PHOENIX P.D. DETECTIVE: “Where ELSE did it progress?”
MANDI KOBA: “Between my legs.”
PHOENIX P.D. DETECTIVE: “Okay, and what do we call that area?”
MANDI KOBA: “My vagina.”
PHOENIX P.D. DETECTIVE: “And – and I know some of the questions sound stupid. Okay? And I apologize for it, but there are certain things I’m looking for. Unless I know these things, then…
MANDI KOBA: “I understand.”
PHOENIX P.D. DETECTIVE: ” … then I don’t know what’s going on.”
— (PAUSE)
“He (Kevin Johnson) had HIS clothes off?”
MANDI KOBA: “Yes.”
PHOENIX P.D. DETECTIVE: “What happened after the fondling?”
MANDI KOBA: “That’s … we didn’t have intercourse… It was… just a lot of THAT. I don’t know how long it lasted, and then… ummm ”
CLIP ENDS
———————————–
(ONE SIDE NOTE: what’s up with choosing a male detective to conduct this incredibly sensitive and delicated interview? Wouldn’t this be better handled by a female detective? Just askin’.)
There’s so much to be asked here.
If this video were about the predations of a prominent teacher—especially one in the anti-corporate reform movement, or perhaps a prominent teacher union leader…
—what do think Campbell Brown would be doing in response to this video?
What would Ben Austin would be doing in response to this video?
What would Michelle Rhee be doing in response to this video?
The same question goes for Eli Broad, Mike Petrilli, Wendy Kopp, Richard Barth and the rest.
Before she went on her campaign to take away all teachers’ rights and job protections, Campbell Brown first came to prominence with her accusations that among the unionized teachers of New York City were hundreds of pedophiles on the loose, thanks to their being protected by their union. When all of that was proven to be nonsense, she simply moved on to her current crusade.
Now that Ms. Brown and the rest of the corporate reform world have video proof that one of their pro-charter, union-hating allies Kevin Johnson (and also the husband of one of their most prominent allies) is a pedophile, the question must be asked:
What is Campbell Brown doing now? SILENCE
Where is Kevin Huffman doing now? SILENCE
From this shameful silence, they communicate to the world that they apparently view this girl in the video above — and Johnson’s other victims — as collateral damage in the movement to bust unions and privatize the public school system. Now that Kevin Johnson has successfully pulled off a hostile takeover of that Black Mayors’ association, he will be instrumental in privatizing hundreds of schools in those cities run by black mayors in the organization. Since the ends justify the means, someone like Johnson who is that key in the anti-union movement to privatize public schools must be given a pass for his fondness of teenage female flesh.
To watch the entirety of this video in context, watch here:
There’s more about Johnson rubbing his … against her leg. I’m not doing any more transcribing, as this is seriously creeping me out.
ONE MORE THING: the reason for “SPECIAL BULLETIN” parody at the top of this post is that this in actually four-days old, having been released by DEADSPIN four days ago… and there has been ASBOLUTELY NO COVERAGE OF THIS WHATSOEVER FROM THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA.
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Pick up the phone and call the teacher or teachers every year. For most states, each child will have 30 to 50 teachers K through 12. Parents should talk to and meet with every teacher at least two to three times every school year.
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While great in theory, most of the teachers at my school have over 300 students per year. I can’t imagine trying to meet with that many parents that frequently.
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I was told by administration repeatedly through the years that I made more phone calls to parents than any other teacher on the staff, but half of the calls I attempted never made contact because of no answer or the phone was disconnected. A lot of lunch and after school time went into making those phone calls.
No matter how many phone calls I made, the failure rate stayed between 30% to 50%. I often talked to parents who said they’d help but nothing changed. Their kids still came to school unwilling to learn. The motivation wasn’t there. Many of the failing kids didn’t want to be there.
I don’t care what any of the psychopathic, fraudulent corporate reformers allege about public school teachers. Without support from parents, a child who isn’t engaged for whatever reason is probably not going to change.
For instance, when parent conference night came, if 15% of the parents of my students came, that was amazing but most of those parents were from the students who were passing my class. Imagine having about 200 students and 100 of them are failing and only one or two of the parents of failing students showed up at parent conferences even after you attempted to reach all of them by phone to get them to come in.
And then what often happened? Many of those same parents either promised that their child would do the work and get their grade up or the parent blamed me for the child not reading the assignments and doing the work in class and at home. Oh, and most of the parents of failing children, who were failing, not because of test scores but because they weren’t doing the work at all, who promised the kid would start working—-well, seldom did anything change.
I HATED and DESPISED, and still do, the critics of public education who are always blaming teachers for children and parents who weren’t doing their part, and when I was teaching, I went out of my way often working 60 to 100 hours a week to make as many contacts with parents as possible and I documented every attempt and every contact in detail to what I said and what the parent or guardian said.
The horrid and criminal blame-the-public-school-teachers environment in this country didn’t exist in 1975 when I started teaching. That horrid environment blossomed after President Reagan’s fraudulent and flawed A Nation at Risk Report came out and then the crooks and frauds crawled out of the woodwork and started attacking teachers and their unions for a fraudulent manufactured crises that never was. That was in 1983 and the attacks have never stopped—they intensified.
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300 per year is insane. I thought I had it rough when I had 175 on my roster each semester (mostly the same kids for first and second semester).
Lloyd: you explained my experience on your post, even the failure rate (and I literally did everything I could to alleviate that by offering students other options)!
It’s called expectations, but the expectations are achievable. Period. Do your part, get help when necessary, and use all of the resources I’m providing. It’s not brain science, and it’s not data. It’s being a student. It’s learning. It takes time and work.
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The high school offered after school tutoring in the library—few took advantage of it, and even many of the kids who were told they had to go to tutoring didn’t.
Teachers had office hours before and after school—no students came.
I stayed in my class at lunch and let all my students know it was an open door policy if they wanted help—no one came. I don’t remember even one student taking advantage of that.
There was extra work offered in my class to help improve a grade or catch up—few if any ever did it.
Kids who turned the monthly book reports early could do it over as many times as they wanted to bring the grade up. Out of 200+ kids, maybe less than five in an entire school year took me up on this offer.
Less than 5% of my 200+ students did the homework and turned it in. Many of them claimed I lost it or didn’t collect it. But I made it a point to walk up and down the aisles and stop at every desk for every student and ask for the homework. I did this for every homework assignment at the beginning of class while the kids were doing a short warm up assignment—well, for those who did the warm up assignment. I seldom if ever asked anyone else to do that for me, because then kids would claim they’d turned the assignment in and blame the other student.
A large number of students came to class without books, paper, pens, pencils. They had no intention to work. They were only there because the law said they had to be there.
Lie, lie, lie or just refuse to cooperate. Kids would stand up and say throw me out of class. Send me to the office. I don’t want to be here.
And the “F*****g psychopathic fraudulent greedy corporate reformers are punishing teachers for this—-because teachers couldn’t force kids to do what kids refused to do!!!!!!!!!!
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In most school districts, parents can monitor student progress on daily basis with on-line grades. They have email communication and every five weeks they get a progress report or report mailed to them. What more do the reformers think they need? Real time brain wave monitoring systems. Responsible parents know exactly how well their kids are doing using all of the feedback that schools supply and when they sit down at night to help with homework. Parents that are too busy, too overwhelmed by life, or just disinterested have the same opportunities for monitoring their kids progress, they simply choose not make use of the information. Being a concerned parent is a part-time job that not all are capable or willing to take on. Corporate reformers just want to sell more silver bullets and magic elixirs. Snake oil now comes in the form of silicon chips.
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Exactly. You explained it perfectly.
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“Big brother is watching you.” I seriously doubt privacy laws would be upheld, and the marketeers would be looking to “sell” parents various products. If your child gets sent to the office, you would get emails or calls from psychologists, or French tutors, personal trainers, etc, depending what the data reveal. It would be a way for companies to try to commercialize education one step further. To steal from Gloria Steinem, students need data packs, like a fish needs a bicycle. Parents, just pick up the phone.
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It would also be most helpful if we could see the tests. I have no idea if the questions are insipid, inane, out of context, bizarre or really heat questions that demonstrate mastery (or lack there of). The only tests I have seen for the last six years are spelling tests and I can predict those results just by reviewing then with my child.
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If you mean you would like to see teacher written classroom tests and quizzes just ask. Most teachers will have no problem sending home graded tests, some may want them returned for obvious reasons. It’s a great idea and wish more parents would ask about classroom tests.
One of the dirty little secrets of teaching is that we get virtually no training in writing test items. I was fortunate enough to work as a test writing consultant (part time while teaching) and was trained in item writing. It frightened me just how little I knew. Definitely one of the weak links of teacher prep programs (at least back in my day). Most teachers don’t have the training or time to craft well written tests so they use canned material from textbook companies or they simply try their best. Student feedback over the years can help improve teacher written tests.
The other thing you should get a handle on is the specific grading system used by different teachers. They can vary considerably – from vague, arbitrary and inaccurate to very concrete, fair, and consistent.
If you have young children try to find out about criteria for accelerated math, honor roll, NJHS/NHS, honors classes, AP classes, etc. Too often parents find out after its too late because we tend to advertise poorly. If you advocate vocally – you can usually get what you want.
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Every Test/Quiz I give is returned corrected to my students ASAP. Isn’t that standard procedure?
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I had to take a class on how to write tests when I was in my undergraduate work. Don’t all teachers? I always write my own tests. I never use canned stuff, and none of the teachers that I know used canned tests once they’ve taught more than a year or two.
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In 38 years in education, I never worked in a school that refused a conference or any parent request. As a parent, I knew exactly how each of my sons were doing even before I met with a teacher. Often, by looking at my child’s work, I knew there was a problem before the teacher.
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Do you think that is because, as an educator yourself, that is the type of parenting and involvement you wish every one of your students could have? I’m not being argumentative, I just wonder if that was a factor?
I know it doesn’t have to be. In my case, by the time I began teaching my daughter was almost graduated from HS. My wife and I were involved in her education and, like you, knew how well she was doing long before we met her teachers. Now as an educator, I urge parents to be involved, use my website as a resource, contact me by email or even call me at home (few take me up on that, thankfully!).
It’s difficult for me to understand how clueless some parents are about their own kids, with so many resources available to them before that dreaded parent-teacher conference to discuss their child’s academic progress.
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You are not wrong what you say. Teachers are more sophisticated. It is a job of a teacher to also teach parents how to help their children obviously based on the parent’s level of sophistication and ability.
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Little League Baseball and Apple Pie
The Major League Baseball playoffs just got underway. My team lost game one. Oh well. That’s professional baseball. One team wins, the other not so much. What I can’t believe is that little league baseball is now broadcast and even betted upon as if the players were getting paid for the corporate revenue they’re attracting. And they’re children! They are children, for crying out loud, little, impressionable, unassuming, runny nosed children. They should not be placed in a pressure cooker of competition so media magnified, no way.
The high stakes must be removed from little league contesting. No one in their right mind should ever have even considered publishing the scores. There should be no way to privately analyze batting average little big data as, for example, at http://www.bettingoddssports.com/2015/08/18/little-league-world-series-2015-dates-bracket-live-stream-and-tv-schedule/. Sponsorships must be removed, now that the Fortune 400 and their mass media are involved. If high stakes cannot be removed because ESPN and others, or Betting Odds Sports and others require hitting and fielding accountability, then implementing wider grade span testing — I mean teaming — is the very least we grownups can do to ease the undue, unhelpful, unhealthy pressure on these kids, their parents, and teachers — I mean coaches.
Furthermore, baseball parks and stadiums are mostly publicly funded, privately managed facilities. (55.55%.) Teams that play on these fields of American dreams can recruit and cut players to and from their rosters if they so choose. This makes the competitions, at times, unfair. Various aspects of many baseball programs are loosely regulated by local governments. Data analytics are, therefore, unstable and unreliable.
Data analytics are a huge part of baseball. “Moneyball” was a 2003 book turned Hollywood movie of fiction that suggested baseball computer data analytics were responsible for the Boston Red Sox overcoming the 86 year Curse of the Bambino and winning the World Series. There was another Hollywood movie of fiction called “Waiting Superman”. It was about charter school lotteries. Now, speaking of charter school lotteries, and sorry for the series of loose and strange transitions but, I started writing this baseball thing after watching “Last Week Tonight” with John Oliver on YouTube while eating a slice of apple pie. I conclude with John Oliver on awarding immigration visas to Afghan and Iraqi translators who risk their lives for the U.S. military, “…it should not be like a lottery where the odds are terrible… It should be more like a little league awards ceremony where everyone’s a winner because they’re all a part of the [bleeping] team!”
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I meant the 2011 movie Moneyball made the suggestion. The book was published before the Sox won in 2004.
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And think Big Brother isn’t real? Seconds after writing Little League and Apple Pie about data analytics and clicking “post”, I got this message from my wireless carrier: We use anonymous subscriber location data in our Reporting & Analytics program. Go to [our] website for Privacy information.
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Wow…now that is scary stuff, Left Coast. All our comments are registered and instantly replies are forthcoming. How many lists are triggered by our comments on blog sites? Beyond Big Brother!!!
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Yogi Berra, former Yankees and Mets manager didn’t believe in data. “You can observe a lot just by watching.” I’ll listen to Yogi.
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Well placed, Benton, meaningful and memorable. Well said, Yogi in heaven. But, the LA Dodgers will beat the NY Mets back to Queens tonight.
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The “backpack” metaphor for stored data is more intimate than the “cloud” metaphor.
Both are misleading.
People who think that the data hounds are only operating in the hope of making profits should note that the National Assessment of Educational Progress is not only set up to deliver secondary analyses of data to selected groups, using the “backpack” metaphor.
The NAEP Governing Board has become an echo chamber for this era’s truncated view of education as college and career prep.
In fact, the lead writer of the ELA Common Core Standards, Susan Pimenthal, has served on the NAEP governing board since 2007, rising to vice chair in 2012, completing her term this year 2015. She is hardly the only board member who has deep ties to the Common Core. https://www.nagb.org/content/nagb/assets/documents/what-we-do/databackpack/back-to-school-one-pager.pdf
I continue to be amazed at the nearly complete takeover of once independent agencies and associations by the campaign to impose standardized education on all public schools, with data mongering forwarded especially by Bill Gates’ Teacher Student Data Link project and USDE’s Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) Grant Program for early learning through the workforce (P-20), including individual student records. Those records can be used by approved “stakeholders,” not necessarily the educators working directly with individual students.
The assumption that data-informed decisions will improve student learning and outcomes is ridiculous. Data, treated as if facts, do not speak for themselves.
In a recent study of how teachers interpret data, researchers concluded there was a definite “messiness of data use,” especially if teachers are working in a school that has not met accountability targets,” and instructional coaches are certain teachers can and should use the data derived from questions on the test for one purpose: to raise test scores. Bertrand, M., & Marsh, J. A. (2015). Teachers’ Sensemaking of Data and Implications for Equity. American Educational Research Journal, 0002831215599251.
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i think we’d all agree that teaching is more of an art than a science.
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Unfortunately for all, art is something Eli Broad only pretends to understand.
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“Pick up the phone and call the teacher” to know how your child is doing… WOULDN’T THAT BE SO REFRESHING. Imagine that! Sadly if a parent picked up the phone to see how his/her child was doing nowadays, the teacher would have to put down their I -pad or laptop and stop with the data entry (yes it seems to be a 24-7 … okay 18 – 7 hour task if allowing 6 hours of sleep ). Teachers cannot even be “present” with their students in the classroom because they must be constantly collecting data. If your nose is on the keyboard you are not able to see that student right in front of you who looked like he was going to raise his hand but put it down! And to ensure the school day is all about data with a “side of students”, administrators in the far reaches have hired 6 figure salaried folk dreaming up new ways for teachers to amass data and setting mandatory data meeting collaborations at each and every school. So, give your child’s teacher a call but do let the phone ring a while and if it cuts to voicemail, call back again as the teacher needed time to put down their stats and reach for the phone!
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Womb to tomb is what the InBloom people were ranting about in Chicago a few years ago to the area ed. tech people (myself included as a tech coordinator/technology teacher)…even then I thought this is soooo creepy
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Womb to tomb, huh? Wow, that reminds me of something. I really hate to do this so close to election season, but here…
http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/marc_tucker/
Bern or bust.
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