Parents Across America reported on an appalling abuse of a New Jersey parent’s privacy.
“Heather Hicks, leader of our newest PAA chapter, PAA-Ocean County NJ, has just posted a devastating video showing how the chief operating officer of iNACOL (the International Association of K-12 Online Learning) gave a workshop at a Pearson conference focusing on her as the prime example of how parents must be managed so that they don’t get in the way of the blended learning steamroller.”
-[ See more at: http://parentsacrossamerica.org/blended-learning-bombshell-mom-inacol-target/#sthash.3fdrDg1O.dpuf%5D
Hicks is a mother and a teacher of elementary special education. She didn’t like the Pearson program her son used in school. She went to a school board meeting and explained what she didn’t like. The board investigated and agreed with her. They canceled the program.
She thought that was the end of the matter but it was not. A year later, she learned that a tech executive spoke at a conference and used her as an example of how to handle recalcitrant parents. He included her image in his presentation. Apparently she was a case of a parent who needed to be managed in the future.
What nerve! Imagine if you went into a store to look for a new pair of shoes. You tried on several but decided you didn’t want any of them. Later you hear that the company is using you as part of a workshop to train its salespeople in how to deal with a reluctant shopper.
You would think from this encounter that districts are obliged to buy Pearson product and that parents are not permitted to disagree. Whose children are they, anyway?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Tech Exec needs to be an Ex Tech Exec …
She needs to sue for slander or whatever legal grounds she can find. People need to fight back, and the courts are one way to do that.
Of course these corporatists are trying to separate parents from lucrative educational initiatives. Parents are the only ones who can and will stop them.
Diane please endorse Democrat Todd Kaminsky for NY state senate for the special election April 19th. It will put a stop to the pro common core and pro charter schools movement . Here are some details
http://www.nystateofpolitics.com/2016/04/dems-knock-charter-support-for-mcgrath-in-sd-9/
Please look into it . Public Education of ny needs your help
Cheap online courses for credit recovery not such a great idea after all:
http://www.air.org/project/back-track-study-using-online-courses-credit-recovery#.VwfAJWpFlL4.twitter
This uppity tech “exec” needs to have his image posted across the entire social media networks, and his face should be one of the faces attached to the Common Core, for all parents, and their children to see.
We are living in an age where morals, common sense, decency, and humanity have been thrown out the window.
Three hundred years ago, if a person overstepped their legal boundaries, they would have been punished and paraded around the community for all to see. Today, they are rewarded as the corporate world that this tech exec comes from knows only how to profit off the miseries of others.
Our children belong to us…we will not allow these execs to use them, or ourselves, for either advancement, or For mockery.
This corporate executive should be shown the door…the corporation that markets the products that he peddles should be boycotted, until he is terminated from his current position, and prevented from ever being entrusted with a “gig” that allows him to violate and trespass over the rights of parents.
Shame on this executive…shame on the corporation that writes his pay checks.
An attack against one parent…is an attack against every parent in the United States.
Retribution should be swift and severe.
One would hope the politicians who are pushing this are getting information from outside the industry, but I don’t have any faith they’ll do any due diligence at all.
It’s really up to schools to ignore the hype and the hard sell and act responsibly.
This is a video of the same story
You can watch the presentation for yourself here. It’s quite a horror show.
The name of the jerk who trashed Heather Hicks is Bruce Friend, COO of iNACOL.
I don’t know about have an overwhelming urge ask my hubby to punch this guy’s face inside-out.
at 7:17 of the video, Bruce Friend says,
“Her microphone should have been shut off.”
This, folks, is why Reed Hastings and the rest of the corporate reform crowd want to wipe out all school boards. Democratic school boards elected by the people get in the way of their profiteering. They want to make sure that someone like Mrs(/Ms.?) Hicks does not have a forum where she can fight back against profit-minded edu-predators like Bruce Friend.
Once they’ve achieved this, people like Hicks will just have to shut up and accept the new world where live teachers are partially or totally replaced by pre-packaged videos projected on a screen. They’ll have no way of stopping this.
Wow!
This is what can be expected when public education is turned into a private good so that students and parents are clients and customers to be milked for $tudent $ucce$$.
From the POV of the tech exec this posting and thread will seem incomprehensible. All he did was defend the brand and ROI from a scurrilous detractor that must be pushing some ‘special interest.’
And missing from all this: where oh where is Peter Cunningham and his plaintive bleats for “civil conversation”?
Apparently that only applies to those trying to ensure a “better education for all”…
😎
“This parent was horrified when Mr. Friend projected an image of myself, a still shot from the BOE meeting I spoke at, and proceeded to talk about how I ruined 3 years of his efforts as a consultant in the district with a 10 minute presentation to the board.”
http://parentsacrossamerica.org/blended-learning-bombshell-mom-inacol-target/#sthash.3fdrDg1O.dpuf%5D
This must have been one heckava program if it took 3 years for him to sell it and 10 minutes of testimony before the board to get rid of it.
#unnecessary products
Christine Langhoff:
“This must have been one heckava program if it took 3 years for him to sell it and 10 minutes of testimony before the board to get rid of it.”
TARGO!
😎
Christine ~
Everyone take time and review their credentials…barely a Real Educator (from Marketing,MBA to PhD in Ed Admin?) among them & one mother with children under five.
These EduVultures are circling relentlessly above our children and schools. Not a minute of doubt, our children are worth MILLIONS to these EduVultures and we don’t have the weapons to permanently wipe them out and keep them away from exploiting and harming them.
Where and when will this end? Someone should figure out a way to sue these Bast**ds for Child Exploitation BACK PAY! We must hurt them in their buldging wallets. Any ideas?
Stupid.
Like an IT guy who jumps on a national platform to try to humiliate teachers and promote SGP.
I am ECONOMAD. I am perfect That which is imperfect must be sterilized. …Error! Error! Error!
I would think she could take some kind of legal action for using her image w/o permission. I don’t think this is about money but about these companies and this particular person taking these liberties.
How is this humiliation? She should be proud that the tech needs to find away around her. She outsold him in three minutes?! His company must be ready to fire him. He didn’t know anyway to outsell her? Maybe he should look at his product and resign. Needs to look for another company to be a COO of.
This.
To see the whole cast of characters at this Pearson-sponsored conference go to http://www.pearsoned.com/events-and-webinars/cite/speakers/
Note that several speakers are from the disruptive innovation cult. One served at the first education guru for Bill Gates’ foundation.
Here is the video. Great post. One point – Mom (and teacher) is from NJ.
Fixed the error
Grrrr
That’s what happens when I’m writing on cell phone in taxi
I intended to save and check for errors but hit publish
This deserves to be posted on every social media site we can think of!!!
Here’s what I wrote to accompany the brief video:
“You’ve got to see this!!! I’m so angry I could spit.
A predatory education company – who already has a local foot-hold – is attacking parents who call them out on poor quality products. Pearson replaces teacher-made materials with their own and calls it blended learning.
Pearson also started the ten-hour test your kids are taking right now. Speak up before Pearson starts giving sales pitches to your principals, PTO’s and School Boards! This parent’s school board listened.
Corporate sharks don’t care about your kids. They just want your taxpayer $$$$.”
Mr. Friend, you are no friend of education. Also, 1982 called. It wants your turned-up jacket collar back.
Arrogant scumbag. What if that was my wife, my sister, my daughter…I don’t care who. Maybe his picture needs to be put on posters as an example of men who were taught no manners or respect when they were young. And I know I didn’t start out with the best manners/respect here, but that was wrong in all the worst, elitist, thin-skinned and double-down on wrongness ways.
Bruce Friend’s twitter account:
@Bruce_Friend
Bruce is a national leader in the creation, policy development and business operations of online and blended learning schools throughout the United States.
Holly Springs, NC
linkedin.com/in/brucebfriend
Joined January 2011
If you look at Bruce Friend’s LinkedIn page, he’s endorsed by many people that have profited by his work of taking funds from public schools. https://www.linkedin.com/in/brucebfriend.
His phone number and email address are at the bottom of his LinkedIn page.
Despite being a ‘national leader’ in the field of online learning, Friend displays an embarrassing ignorance of his end-users’ social media culture: ‘I have three daughters, and they don’t go around texting the neighbors to say this program sucks.’ (Really?). Did he really imagine that in today’s ‘blended-learning’ world he could lambaste someone openly at a conference, w/o that person (& millions of others) learning about it within minutes?
I thought the customer was always right.
This new form of harassment, personal and of groups, should be actionable.
Set a precedent.
Creepy, nasty deceptive behavior in service of venal ends… and yet also a compliment to Ms. Hicks, who is courageous, effective and obviously hated by the right people.