Nancy Flanagan is a retired teacher, who is a retired National Board Certified Teacher and a former Teacher of the Year. She read the post about the Gates Foundation listening to teacher voice, if they agree with the Gates Foundation.
She writes:
“I am a member of the NNSTOY (National Network of State Teachers of the Year). The organization was originally called NSTOY–a kind of “same time next year” friendly meet/greet conference organization that provided camaraderie and scholarships. But recently, the renamed organization is getting large Gates grants and singing the Common Core/edTPA/managed “teacher leadership” tune. I have remained a member simply to get access to their plans and publications.
“Recently they sent out a message asking us to renew our dues ($15/yr for retired TOYs), after which we would be sent a survey to share our policy views. I paid my $15 (to New Venture Fund), and waited for the survey link. It never came.
“In a separate mass mailing, there was a reminder–have you taken the survey? I clicked on the link, and got an error message: the moderator has blocked your access to this item.
“So much for hearing the voices of exemplary teachers, eh?
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teacher_in_a_strange_land/2015/11/five_cynical_observations_about_teacher_leadership.html”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Looks like you are going to have to gatecrash the annual conference !!!
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I think you ought to contact NNSTOY and demand that the money you paid to belong to the group grant you access to the survey to which the administrator has blocked you. How dare he/she. That really takes audacity. Thanks for proving yet again that this is how Billy Gates works; he uses his money to silence truth tellers.
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The Kochs are keeping track of all of us here.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/the-koch-brothers-intelligence-agency-215943
Who’s to say Gates isn’t doing the same thing? He has some connections to the Internet. This appears to be online political discrimination. Just sayin.
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These corporate reformers are so thinned skinned. All they want to here is happy talk.
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Gates wants everyone to treat him like an Oracle like all the Ayn Rand nuts (forgive the redumbdancy) do whenever he gives a TED talk.
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jcgrim: as in so many other cases, they project onto others their own feelings and thoughts—
Yes, they only want to hear “happy talk.” Plus they are exceptionally thin-skinned so when it comes to their precious egos and vanity projects they are exemplars of the “touchy-feely” crowd they love to excoriate.
Case in point and why they don’t usually talk on the record except when it’s rigged to let them get away with even the most ridiculous assertions: the Lyndsey Layton interview with Bill Gates.
After reading that, I added the sobriquet “Petulant Bill” to his list of monikers.
If the shoe fits…
😏
Thank you for your comment.
😎
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Has the US Department of Education always included promotions of specific tech and data systems on their website?
“Horne has dedicated troubleshooters on her team. She looks at every report of a problem to determine whether the cause was a system or user error. She meets daily with representatives from Pearson, the company that created the system for Kentucky. Tiffany Collier, a fourth-grade teacher at White’s Tower Elementary in rural Kenton County, said she gets quick responses when she reports a technical problem. “I think they’re working really hard to find all of the glitches,” she said.”
Is this an endorsement of a branded product on a federal government website?
http://sites.ed.gov/progress/2015/10/kentucky-rolls-out-a-one-stop-shop-for-student-and-teacher-data/
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Chiara, it is outrageous and possibly illegal for the US ED to endorse commercial products
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That started with Bush. Think back to the Reading First initiative and how we ended up with DIBELS front and center as THE most valid form of reading assessment. Cronies and those with the right ideologies got their products “approved”, while others did not. It’s continued since then.
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Let the emergence of Gates as a monumentally false prophet in education call into question the whole idea of testing and what intelligence, broad intelligence should be considered to be.
SAT’s and IQ tests do NOT test for broad intelligence. We are only beginning to understand what that means and there will probably never be accurate tests for it, ever. SAT’s and IQ tests are made by people with certain kinds of wiring, and they test for those with similar kinds if wiring, which is why they link so closely to expressed DNA. The whole thing is truly laughable, and reprehensible.
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Unfortunately, I think they’re just switching platforms. “Competency based” evaluations online will make testing much easier and cheaper.
They’ll essentially be testing them constantly. The data reporting will be seamless- it will be so integrated into the (canned) content they can test them in small batches several times a day.
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The same and more can be said about those competency-based evals. This whole era or recurrence of thinking we can evaluate people, in their entirety of potential, whether in academics, careers or life as a whole, has to end. Yes, we can and sometimes must test for skills or perform reality checks. But that’s all we should do, and that’s all it should represent.
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Here’s the US Department of Education selling a product called “Edgenuity”. This reads like an actual advertisement. I wonder if the company helped draft the ad:
“Village Green uses an online curriculum, called “Edgenuity,“ which allows students to move through assignments at their own pace. Every student has a workstation where they log into their own personal Edgenuity portal and choose what to work on. Students take frequent tests and quizzes, and complete practice assignments. A data dashboard displays skills they’ve already mastered in green, those they are on track to master in blue and those they are struggling with in red.
The main things the teachers are freed from at Village Green are quiz and test construction, grading, and designing core lessons. “However, they still have to plan the workshop and plan to re-teach Edgenuity in case a lesson is not grasped,” explained Pilkington.”
Is it ethical (or even legal) for Obama’s ed dept to be selling tech product to public schools? Aren’t there rules or regs about this sort of thing? Where is the line between the public sector and the private sector?
http://sites.ed.gov/progress/2015/11/rhode-island-school-makes-learning-personal-for-students/
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Here is an update on this story. First– the Teacher of the Year program is not sponsored by the US Dept of Ed. It is managed by the CCSSO (Council of Chief State School Officers)—and NNSTOY is independent of either of these. As I noted NSTOY used to be a friendly organization for those who were or are State TOYS. It was only when the organization became Gates-funded that its name and mission changed. Suddenly, there was an executive director, a Board (with half its membership nonTOY wheelers and dealers in Edpolicy world), conferences, and opportunities for TOYS to leave the classroom and use their notoriety to promote Gates-approved initiatives.
WhenI got yet another reminder to take the survey, I posted a message on the NNSTOY Facebook page, saying I had been blocked by the moderator. A couple other TOYs had been blocked, too. Suddenly, there was a new link for those impacted by the “glitch.” So I took the survey. It was very long– took about an hour–and detailed. And–odd.
The questions were carefully worded. Of the “which do you think is more important: accountability or better teacher evaluations?” variety. There was nothing to indicate whether survey-takers were in favor of or against the policies that are damaging public education– standardized testing, CCSS, predatory charterization, teacher evaluation by student test data and so on. They were designed to generate certain kinds of “data”– all of which will bear the TOY imprimatur: Teachers of the Year think accountability is more important than school governance– or whatever.
There were only one or two open-ended questions (and you were 30 minutes into the survey before you got to them). All of this makes me sad more than angry. Most TOYs became Teachers of the Year in their states because of their excellent, innovative, selfless practice. To have their good names and passion for students co-opted by a Gates-funded organization is so unethical. (I feel a blog coming on.)
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In 20015, the Gates Foundation reported it gave $1,000,000 to NNSTOY, via NewVentureFund.org.
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