When I worked in the U.S. Department of Education in the early 1990s, there was a strict code of ethics. The Inspector General’s office scrutinized every employee and transaction for any hint of personal or commercial gain. But now the Department itself is hawking products.
Reader Chiara sent this comment:
“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/
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If I dare park my students on a computer for “learning” that is not sanctioned, trademark3d and paid for, say a short quiz on Edmodo, I run the risk of being called ineffective. If the government mandates I park them in fron if Achieve 3000 or this Edgenuity mess, this is innovation, and the automation “frees” teachers. This is a LIE. Endorsing a product is bad ethics but pushing toward park em in front of computers teaching is bad pedagogy. I teach English Language Learners and they must engage with the language, talk, exchange and conmunicate. What happens when I bring them to the computer lab for achieve 3000? They go on youtube and facebook, if not that, they go on google translate and defeat the entire purpose of the activity by translating everything. I have colleagues that won’t fight this because “Hey, its less for me to do.” Is that the kind of attitude we should be encouraging teachers to have? To be disengaged as the kid “does it online” ?
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It seemed to me, as the article continues, that it becomes clear Edgneuity is no magic bullet. In fact, they found that with a 17:1 staffing ratio that they still needed MORE teachers, and they needed to offer REAL instruction to help students learn to ‘proficiency’. The self-paced ‘personalized’ computer system was not enough.
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But that’s a “best case”, is it not? Are all school districts ready to invest in this and do it the absolute best way or is cost a factor that we’re blithely ignoring but school districts can’t and won’t ignore?
Wouldn’t the state agencies role be the people who look for unintended consequences and question the private sector initiatives rather than cheerlead experiments?
We have a private sector. They’re really good at selling stuff. We don’t need public sector actors joining the sales team. That isn’t their job.
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It’s complicated. As teachers and coordinators we often do workshops on in orating certain products. In math I did this with specific graphing calculators, with manipulative-based programs, and now even iPads.
So this could be called an endorsement (yes, that’s illegal in many states), but it’s also almost impossible to be generic when these are the things we are implementing.
But a federal agency is misusing (illegally I think) when it uses its pulpit to endorse or push products.
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I agree, I see your point, but teachers and coordinators aren’t a government agency.
It reads like an endorsement of this specific product. The assumption is they’re “honest brokers”- they don’t have a financial interest where (obviously) sales people do have a financial interest. There’s nothing wrong with sales people having a financial interest- that’s how sales works- but if the state is endorsing a specific system I think they’re really close to crossing a line.
How far can these “public private partnerships” go before “private” trumps “public”, particularly with the “revolving door” problem we have in government? Can I rely on their analysis if they seem to be selling something?
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Chiara: as I see it, rheephormsters do an “end around” your objections because they consider a seamless joining of the US DofE (along with other public ed entities) with huge corporations [and their associated malanthropies] as being “obviously” necessary if one wants to be innovative and creative and efficient. From their POV, it also puts the most powerful incentive for “good” known to man aka “the profit motive” behind best business/management practices.
Hence they regard comments such as yours as quibbles (at best) and an evil defense of a failing status quo (at worst) that are only worthy of contempt, whether benign or crude.
Just raising the question of ethical behavior in such situations seems to them a deflection from the real problems at hand, e.g., how many eduproducts can be pushed into classrooms at what cost and just how far can they go in ensuring that they have an expiration date [think of the old term “planned obsolescence”] that comes sooner rather than later.
The merest suggestion that they systematically engage in worst pedagogical & business & management practices gets them clutching their pearls and falling on their fainting couches, feeling all “swarmed” and unappreciative. Hence recent billionaire-backed initiatives to make us be more “civil” in our descriptions of their shameless behaviors and hypocritical words.
If I may, I encourage you to continue making them feel the need to clutch them pearls and fall on them couches and get all petulant [see the Lyndsey Layton interview with Bill Gates]. You continue in the best American tradition:
“Truth is powerful and it prevails.” [Sojourner Truth]
Thank you for your comments.
😎
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We’ve now got a US DOE full of former ed tech and tech executives. I’m sure they don’t see any problems at all in hawking ed tech wares. The foxes are living in the chicken coop. It’s a national shame.
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Shame is right. It cheapens the office. Next thing you know, the State of the Union will have a Brought to You By Foxconn banner. Your government: sponsored by… I don’t know the laws governing the POTUS, but on an ethical level this behavior is far from unimpeachable.
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I get more cynical about the revolving door every day. I’m still waiting to see what charter network or tech company hires Arne. Worst case is Rahm dummies up a position for him.
I don’t get what’s so hard to understand that tech cannot meet all needs for children. They need social interaction, they need role models, they need people who care about them. The skinner box attention getter of computer programs with their endless repeat the question buttons with video game like punishments and rewards simply are not sophisticated enough to develop a full human being.
Digital pellets are not enough to sustain a child through school yet products like edgenuity posit exactly that – that children want to learn so badly that if you set up a positive/negative feedback loop they’ll push themselves through it.
Is it a surprise we’re seeing that human beings are not that simple?
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There is no way to be too cynical about the revolving door. There is example after example after example in the executive branch, Congress and every single statehouse. We just had a chair switch in Ohio- literally. One lawmaker went to a charter lobbying group and another came from a charter lobbying group.
If they want people not to be cynical about the revolving door they are doing a very bad job making their case.
I think it goes back to a kind of arrogance- “I am SUCH an inherently ethical person I will not be swayed by money or influence, unlike ordinary mortals who have to follow conflict of interest ‘rules’ and such”.
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To borrow from another of your posts, Diane, I can’t help but wonder if this creeping right up to the line of what is and isn’t legal in the DOE is part of the Chicago way?
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When the federal government fails to enforce laws, conflicts of interest no longer give corporations any pause. They just call it “partnerships” and go about their business of making money. When it comes to a question of ethics, most of our legislators are morally bankrupt. There is little difference between a campaign contribution and a bribe; it is really that the laws favor the powerful, oligarchy, not the typical citizen.https://www.google.com/search?q=the+holocaust+was+legal&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwieyLe3h7bJAhWBQT4KHRzODZEQ_AUIBygB&biw=1696&bih=914#imgrc=V0FkAbx5fajzkM%3A
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It’s also baloney that it’s a “model” that they’re “testing”. They’re pushing it into every public school in the state without ANY evidence that it is a good value for public schools.
“And they are well on their way to making this vision a reality. In the 2014–2015 school year, almost half (14 out of 32) of districts in the State started to implement 1:1 blended learning models, and all schools had the high-speed wireless Internet access blended learning requires. The State also hosts an annual digital learning conference and partnered with Village Green to chronicle its model and lessons learned.”
Why is the US Department of Education endorsing such reckless behavior? Schools have limited budgets. When they spend on one thing they don’t spend on another. Why would they expand this experiment statewide with no evidence?
Are they pushing this model because it’s promoted by yet another well-connected member of the ed reform “movement”?
I’m sick of sales pitches and slick, sophisticated marketing campaigns disguised as research or public policy.
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I agree. All the fake “research” coming out of conservative think tanks is being used to justify their money grab. That is why I appreciate Jersey Jazzman when he calls them out on their “research” because he understands real, unbiased methodology.
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When I went into teaching in 1975-76, the teachers in that district were in charge of curriculum and textbook selection—if there was enough money to buy new textbooks.
And there wasn’t any money for new texts when I started teaching full time under contract in 1978-79, and as the student population grew and sections were added and new teachers hired, those new teachers were given one copy of a textbook and teamed with a veteran teacher who had one class set. The books were old and worn with damaged covers and graffiti inside—much of it was whited out.
I was one of those new teachers. I did not have a class set of textbooks. I did not have a class set of dictionaries. I had to create all the material I used and used Ditto masters to copy class sets or worksheets. I used the Ditto machine (one machine shared by every teacher in the building) so much that the fluid that got on my hands turned my fingers purple. The veteran teachers tagged me with the nick name Ditto Man. To grab the machine I had to arrive sometimes as early as 6 AM but my first class didn’t start until after 8 AM.
We had old overheads and the images on the screen were fuzzy and difficult to read. I tried to put stories on overheads so the kids could read them from the screen.
Years later when the state legislature and governor boosted the education budget in California and the schools finally had enough money to buy new textbooks and even have copies for every student, the teachers spent an entire year piloting several choices and then met to discuss the one text we would adopt. The district did not interfere. The teachers decided the text they wanted to use. How to teach and what curriculum to use and methods to use were still in the hands of teachers and their department teams.
That all started to change in the late 1990s. First there were the competency tests. Kids could not graduate from high school without passing those tests.
Prior to the CAHSEE, the high school exit exams in California were known as the High School Competency Exams and were developed by each district pursuant to California law. In 1999, California policy-makers voted to create the CAHSEE in order to have a state exam that was linked to the state’s new academic content standards
Next, there was the STAR testing and the results were used to compare and rank schools and the legislature required those results to be made public. The STAR Program is the cornerstone of the California Public Schools Accountability Act of 1999 (PSAA). The primary objective of the PSAA is to help schools improve the academic achievement of all students.
The further the state went into this testing madness, the less power teacher had over textbook section, curriculum and teaching methods, and today, you can use Google to find the rep rot card and comapriosns of ever public school in California. When you discover low ranking schools, you will also find high rates of poverty and if you check crime reports for the areas were those schools are located you will see much higher rates of crime than the communities with the highest rated schools.
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Your experience is similar to mine. When I started teaching ESL, I had one grammar book and a set of dictionaries. I was the sole ESL teacher and had to invent the wheel. It was exhausting and liberating. The kids made great progress, and the discipline problems the school had had with these students disappeared. As the years went by annual testing from the state at first just in ESL appeared. By the time I left the district thirty plus years later, we devoted twenty-eight mornings to testing in reading, math, and content areas in addition to ESL. Testing took on a life of its own.
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I enjoyed hearing your experience Lloyd. When I began my LAUSD experience in the winter of 1979, there were no current textbooks left for my ninth grade English class. But I found a set of texts from 1954 and used them. I had used the 1958 version when I began high school. Now for the great part. No markings in any of these books! No gang signs. No obscenities! No comments, good or bad. No initials!
No, I did not walk ten miles to school in the snow.
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No snow walks for me to school either since I lived and worked in the valleys of Southern California. But I have skied downhill—-just not to school. I was thirty the first time I hit the slopes and literally hit them repeatedly as I learned to ski properly.
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Other examples of products pushed by USDE can be found at the USDE Blog:
“A blog highlighting innovative ideas, promising practices, lessons learned and resources informed by the implementation of K-12 reforms to improve education for all students.”
Another version of USDE’s promotional work is a newsletter called PROGRESS. PROGRESS is described as “a U.S. Department of Education resource.” It “highlights state and local innovative ideas, promising practices, lessons learned and resources informed by the implementation of K-12 education reforms. These lessons from the field showcase reforms in action spurred by programs such as Race to the Top, Investing in Innovation, School Improvement Grants, Promise Neighborhoods, and ESEA Flexibility.”
The lessons/resources “are intended to provide insight into the exciting transformations taking place in classrooms, schools, and systems across the country through the leadership of teachers, school, district and state leaders and their partners.”
“Partners” is word that should function as a red flag on anything promoted by USDE. Same for “transformations.”
Here is the escape clause on pushing commercial products/services:
“PROGRESS does not recommend or endorse any particular approach. It is intended to share information that can be of use to educators, parents, learners, leaders, and other stakeholders in their efforts to ensure that every student is provided with the highest quality education and expanded opportunities to succeed.”
“PROGRESS also contains information about and from public and private entities and organizations related to U.S. Department of Education investments and policy priorities. Inclusion does not constitute an endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education of any entity or organization or the products or services offered or views expressed.”
“Most of these resources come from the Reform Support Network, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, which supports Race to the Top grantees as they implement education reforms, builds their capacity to sustain them, and shares promising practices and lessons learned with other States attempting similar reforms.”
“This newsletter contains information about and from public and private entities and organizations for the reader’s information. Inclusion does not constitute an endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education of any entity or organization or the products or services offered or views expressed. This publication also contains hyperlinks and URLs created and maintained by outside organizations. They are provided for the reader’s convenience; however, the Department is not responsible for the accuracy of this information.”
I have done a lot of research on the promotional materials from the Reform Support Network (RSN). RSN was created to push RTT mandates to all states, not just those winning competitive grants. For example, publications in the library of the Reform Support Network pushed SLOs as the alternative to VAM for teachers of “untested subjects.”
Among many RSN publications at least four were devoted to seeking compliance with aspects of RTT via communications, such as choosing the “right words” to market pay-for-performance schemes, enlisting teacher “swat teams” to fend off criticism of RTT initiatives, and so on. Most of these publications were free of any author identifications other than “Reform Support Network.”
Contracts for RSN’s work relieved USDE from any responsibility for the content. Several of the contracts went to firms set up by people who had worked for the Gates Foundation.
I concluded that the USDE propaganda machine was necessary because the Obama/Duncan policies were terrible—intended to manage teachers as if they were employees of a federal superintendent of schools. The policies were so odious, so clearly designed to ignore research (including pay-for performance, VAM and SLOs), so free of any respect for teachers as professionals that propaganda became the tool of choice to seek compliance.
The latest enthusiasm of USDE is for online programs targeting middle school students so they will acquire “Skills for Success,” meaning that they will acquire the proper “mindset” to succeed in academics and life, learn the power of positive thinking and value of repeated practice to achieve mastery—all without sermonizing from the late Reverend Norman Vincent Peale. The new authorities on proper getting the right “mindset for success” are psychologists and others associated with The Stanford University Project for Education Research (PERTS). Among the most famous is Dr. Carol Dweck. If you have not yet encountered Carol Dweck’s Mindset products, including “Brainology” you are not up to date on USDE’s latest enthusiasms for “this-is-not-really-character education.”
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Follow the money –
http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapid=78905655
Dr. Margaret Honey, Ph.D served as Senior Vice President of Strategic Initiatives and Research of Amplify Education, Inc (also known as Wireless Generation, Inc) since May 3, 2007 and served as its Advisor. Dr. Honey oversaw the Wireless Generation’s research and program evaluation activities. Dr. Honey served as Vice President of the Education Development Center (EDC) and Director of EDC’s Center for Children and Technology (CCT), where she supervised numerous large-scale projects funded by organizations including the National Science Foundation, the Institute for Education Sciences, The Carnegie Corporation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the U.S. Department of Energy. She served as Co-Director of the Northeast and Islands Regional Education Laboratory, the federally funded organization designed to help educators, policy makers, and communities improve schools by helping them access and leverage the most current and important education research findings. Dr. Honey serves as a Director of NYC & Company, Inc. She serves as a Member of Advisory Board at Edgenuity, Inc. She serves as a Director of The Concord Consortium Inc. She is among the nation’s foremost education technology research, evaluation, and policy leaders. During her 25-year career, Dr. Honey published scores of papers in the most prestigious education journals; overseen numerous multi-million dollar, multi-year grant-funded projects and initiatives developing, implementing, and evaluating creative applications of digital technology and media to K-12 school environments; and testified before Congress, state legislatures, and federal panels on education technology policy. Dr. Honey is recognized for her work using digital technologies to support STEM learning and other 21st century coursework. Dr. Honey holds a Doctorate in Developmental Psychology from Columbia University.
Edgenuity Board Members
Janis Bulgren
Edgenuity, Inc.
Margaret Honey Ph.D.
Edgenuity, Inc.
Kemi Jona
School Town, LLC
Todd Rose
Edgenuity, Inc.
Steven J. Berger
Weld North LLC
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Dr. Honey may have the pedigree, but what is the research that underpins her initiative? Before it is adopted by a state, there should be evidence that this personalized approach actually works. Shouldn’t they do a pilot first? I can’t imagine parents would be too happy with using their children as guinea pigs.
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If superintendents decide to hand over children’s education to for-profit companies, there must be full disclosure.
Parents and educators need to demand that all contracts that superintendents or their designees sign for junk like Edgenuity, Amplify, Wireless Generation, etc. are posted on line. Additionally, the names of the board members of these companies must be disclosed.
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Here is the most telling: “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.” Teachers need to be freed from teaching…so they can walk the aisles to check that the scholars are plugged in and getting green lights from the computer screen. Sad indeed. Will the teacher be replaced by a technician, and a disciplinarian be brought in to dole out the detentions and infractions for fidgeting, not sitting straight, not tracking the computer generated speaker, uniform discrepancies and the like?
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Why do the monitors (I won’t call them teachers) have to re-teach. That sounds as if a teacher still needs to plan, present, and develop a test. Why can’t the computer be prorammed to re-teach? You mean it isn’t sophisticated enough to read the students’ minds?
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I don’t know about anyone else, but I was horrified by this description. It seems to require defining education as a set of facts and skills to be mastered. There is no description of the group lessons beyond the reteaching of material on the computer. Where is the creative and critical thinking? Where is the group interaction? Where is the discussion of ideas? Does anyone ever do a science lab or write a research paper? Tell me a teacher who may be asked a question about medieval social structure and the Vietnam War back to back is really prepared to “add value” to that “learning experience.”
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My son had both cyber and traditional courses in college. While he did well with both types of courses, his opinion of the cyber courses was that they were tedious and boring.
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I hope his cyber courses were a bit more intellectually challenging than what is being presented at the high school level. Admittedly I am not familiar with the particular program presented, but it did strike me as closer to old fashioned programmed learning.
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The cyber courses were mostly in computers and business; his liberal arts were the traditional courses. I recall for his business law course, he had to go on line, and discussion was a web chat that was evaluated by a live teacher. It’s still not the same as a vibrant class discussion.
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Computers and business would be the most logical places. Computers for obvious reasons and business with their love of metrics.
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Edgenuity is a controversial solution. Consider this: http://www.kennylaketalon.com/edgenuity-what-is-happening-by-elias.html
The Feds should research outcomes and check with more than one charter school before publishing such a puff piece.
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Thanks for this link. It confirmed all of my concerns.
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edreports.org doesn’t care much for edgenuity:
http://www.edreports.org/reports/series/edgenuity.html
While edreports.org is a shill for reformers and CCSS proponents*, it’s interesting that it contradicts what the Feds are saying. Can’t these folks all get on the same page?
*Funders are: Broadcom Corporation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Helmsley Charitable Trust, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Samueli Foundation, the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, and the Stuart Foundation.
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Apparently, another thing from which teachers will be freed is correct grammar.
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Teachers should be freed from a lot of what they think is correct grammar, including the stranded preposition “rule.”
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At what point do the Dept. of Ed.’s actions become crimes against the nation?
Hostile mandates and profligate spending ($71 million to Ohio for charter school expansion), which forces outcomes, unwanted by the majority of citizens, are examples.
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Plug the kids in. Sickening. A familiar refrain is …follow the money. Who does the company or principals and partners contribute to and vote for. Do they have kids and are their kids subjected to this new fangled learning system. Reminds me of the SRA wheels of the late 60’s and 70’s. We learned how to game them. I’s sure it won’t be long before this machines are gamed or hacked by the students.
https://gamesweplayed.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/journey-back-to-sra-reading-labs-from-the-1970s/
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so much for proofing today. : “I’m sure it won’t be long before these machines are gamed or hacked by the students.”
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