Please watch the 10-second video at the end of this post. You will love it!
Emily Talmadge, a teacher-blogger in Maine, used to worry about the dangers inherent in a Clinton administration. Now she warns that the threat of competency based education–delivered online, all the time, profiting a few, bad for humans–will thrive in a Trump Administration.
“The real agenda – the ongoing march toward a cradle-to-grave system of human capital development that relies on the most sophisticated data collection and tracking technologies to serve its unthinkably profitable end – is fueled and directed by a multi-billion dollar education-industrial-complex that has been built over the course of decades.
“It’s an absolute beast, an army of epic scale, and it’s a system that has the same uncanny ability to blend in with its surroundings as a chameleon.
“Take, for example, the new “innovative assessment systems” that are being thrust on us every which way in the wake of ESSA. Under the banner of free market ideology, the far-right American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is promoting the very same assessment policies that far-left groups like the national unions and the National Center for Fair and Open Testing are now pushing. And though some claim that one ideology is merely “co-opting” the ideas of the other, the reality is that they lead to the same data-mining, cradle-to-career tracking end.
“Consider, too, the massive push for blended, competency-based, and digital learning – all unproven methods of educating children, but highly favored by ed-tech providers and data-miners.
“Most of these corporate-backed policies were cooked up in Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, and then made their way not only to the far-right ALEC, but also to left-leaning groups like the Center for Collaborative Education, the Coalition for Essential Schools, and the Great Schools Partnership. Depending on what sort of population each group is targeting, these wolves will dress themselves up in sheep’s clothing and make appeals to different values. For the right, they will package their policies in the language of the free market and choice; for the left, they will wrap them in a blanket of social-justice terminology.
“Pull back the curtain far enough, however, and you will see they are selling the same thing.”
Emily lives in Maine, whose Tea Party Governor Paul LePage was one of the first to jump on the Jeb Bush “Digital Learning Now!” bandwagon.
It was exposed in a wonderful, prize-winning “follow the money” investigative report.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Fantastic post. Thank you for sharing it widely.
I agree with you. The challenge ahead will be putting this in plain language for people who don’t understand these issues and explain what it means to them. We haven’t done a good job of that yet.
Diane, do you agree that, as a blogger you quote asserts,
“Under the banner of free market ideology, the far-right American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is promoting the very same assessment policies that far-left groups like the national unions and the National Center for Fair and Open Testing are now pushing.”
I ask because of great respect for Monty and the National Center for Fair and Open Testing. While we sometimes disagree, I think Monty and Robert have a very thoughtful view of multiple forms of assessment
http://fairtest.org/k-12/authentic%20assessment.
Joe,
I do not agree. Not one bit. The National Center for Fair and Open Testing is an ally, not a foe. FAIRTEST has fought against the abuse and misuse of standardized testing for more than 40 years. Count me among their admirers and friends.
Joe,
Fair Test (Bob S. in particular) has rejected my critique of standardized testing and dismissed it out of hand with the usual flair of arms stating that “Well we have to have these tests, they aren’t going away, what else are we going to do?”
That attitude is part of the problem, not the solution. It’s the GAGA Good German attitude. When confronted with the evil inherent in the standards and standardized testing regime they throw up their hands “Well that’s the way it is. We’re trying to minimize the damage”. And that’s what Eichmann told Arendt about what he was doing-trying to save as many as he could within the demanded context. When what needs to be done is to reject those educational malpractices and not mitigate damage.
As usual, Emily is spot on!
A full account of the digital/online/screen-based/canned curriculum mislabeled personalized learning would be a dissertation. This account fails to mention the federal role in pushing digital everything, or a slew of foundations. Consider these players.
Digital Promise is a nonprofit organization, authorized by Congress in 2008 as the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies, through Section 802 of the Higher Education Opportunity Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush.
The center was to be funded for five years with a clear stipulation that the Center “shall not be an agency or establishment of the Federal Government.” Even so, the Center could receive public funds from the Department of Education and other federal agencies in addition to private funds from corporations, individuals, and foundations.
President Obama formally launched Digital Promise in September 2011. Startup support came from the U.S. Department of Education, Carnegie Corporation of New York, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. For a history of Digital Promise see https://www.carnegie.org/media/filer_public/b1/ac/b1ac409e-b10a-4252-87c4-17d1d8019165/ccny_cresults_2010_promise.pdf
Since 2011, Digital Promise.org has expanded. It receives funding from the original funders and new supporters. Digital Promise.org has one aim: Making tech the center of education, marketing that concept to unelected tech-friendly “intermediaries” in cities and large metro areas.”
The pushers of this initiative want to use the federal money for education as venture capital for new “digital” products and services and create “new governance” schemes for education.
Students and teachers and other educators are enlisted to field-test and to buy digital products and services. The sense of entitlement to treat schools as more or less useful to business has been moving along at a faster pace than the expansion of charter schools, all aided by tons of money for “innovation in education.”
Here are some funders of Digital Promise.org, and its special programs.
General operations. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York.
League of Innovative Schools. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (87 school districts in 33 states) engaged in field testing and marketing technology. The superintendents who join the Digital Promise League of Innovative Schools say they want to use technology, agree to lobby for greater use of technology, and also allow their schools to serve as a “test-bed” for entrepreneurs and researchers in educational technology. Members are selected through a peer-reviewed application. Superintendents must sign “the membership charter” upon joining.“By signing this charter, members show their support for the League’s mission and agree to be a collaborative partner.” See http://digitalpromise.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/leaguecharter.pdf
Education Innovation Clusters. EIC’s (EdClusters) launched with some US DE funding. Currently intended to bring together in one network entrepreneurs, funders, researchers, educators, and other community stakeholders (families, local government, non-profits) to “design, launch, iterate on, and disseminate breakthrough learning practices and tools.” See USDE website here http://tech.ed.gov/innovationclusters/ USDE appears to have outsourced this program http://nextgenlearning.org/blog/education-innovation-clusters-help-way. Also funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, The Grable Foundation with additional district and regional support for annual conferences of about 100 “innovators in education” in about 36 regions. See: http://digitalpromise.org/2015/08/18/education-innovation-clusters-convening
Research@Work. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funds marketing and procurement research; Carnegie Corporation of New York funds research summaries, conferences; Overdeck Family Foundation funds marketing research about ed-tech products. Startup: Education subsidies the production of videos to market research findings from Research@Work.
Maker Promise. Chevron funds this, with a focus on school-based makerspaces and safety but also others see at http://digitalpromise.org/maker-promise/. Note that the signup includes a “promise” and also gathers information of interest in marketing.
Maker Learning. The Grable Foundation focus on STEAM, also many other funders at http://makered.org/about-us/sponsors/
Micro-credentialing Programs. Michael & Susan Dell Foundation funds micro-credentialing system for teacher data literacy skills; PricewaterhouseCoopers funds competency-based financial literacy micro-credentials; William and Flora Hewlett Foundation funds marketing of micro-credentialing systems for educators. Carnegie Corporation of New York funds research and marketing anytime anywhere professional development with 56 topics and micro-credentials;
Mobile Learning: Verizon funds a startup middle school program in 46 schools, 19 districts with data-sharing about the use of the mobile system shared online.
Other: Joyce Foundation for tech-based learning for adults;
Corporate “Partners” of Digital Promise include: Amazon; Apple, Inc.; CODE to the Future; Education Elements; EMC2; Facebook; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Knovation; McGraw Hill Education; Promethian; and University of San Diego School of Leadership and Education Sciences, Mobile Technology Learning VCenter.
That is a brief summary of the ventures being funded under the umbrella of “Digital Promise.” Some of these “promise initiatives” enlist educators on the condition that they sign a variant of a promissory note, literally “I promise to …” document, signed and submitted on behalf or their students, offering them as if there were no issues in field testing products and services, no issues of privacy, no problem in serving the interests of commercial products, no problem in funneling information into the data-gathering systems that are native to all things digital.
Just like Opt-Out, parents and informed educators should reject digital instruction as a substitute for human instruction. Informed people must spread the word against data mining and students’ right to privacy. As far as micro-credentialing goes,teachers and unions are going to have to get state DOE to reject these fake credentials. Just like other licenses, a license to teach should not be diminished or reduced in anyway to please Silicon Valley.
EmilyTalmadge is flat out wrong in claiming that FairTest supports the proposals of Jeb Bush and ALEC for, let us call it for want of a clearer term, digitized learning. Why she made up this falsehood we do not know. If people do not believe us, please read our materials in which we explicitly warn against the digitized curriculum+instruction+testing packages that she warns against. (See for example our recent work on performance assessment models, including our fact sheet http://www.fairtest.org/overhauling-assessment-improve-teaching-and-learni and our report http://www.fairtest.org/assessment-matters-constructing-model-state-system). In just the past week we’ve been on the phone and on emails about how to fight back against these package products, such as iReady.
Readers should recognize that terms such as personalized learning and competency-based education have a history that predates current corporate use. Our advice is to look beneath the labels to see the actual content. Some who use these terms mean teacher empowerment and student-focused schooling that builds in extended project-based work – not the digitized packages Talmadge attacks.
To see what FairTest supports, take a look at the schools we hold up as models, for example in our “model assessment” report, such as the NY Performance Standards Consortium, Rollinsford Elementary School in NH, or Mission Hill School in Boston. BTW, we know of no evidence that Bush or ALEC or their ilk are promoting the kind of schooling or assessing exemplified by these schools.
Talmadge is correct that promotion of digitized learning that replaces human interactions is likely to get a big push under Trump. We have a tough fight ahead – or perhaps many fights given how ESSA decentralized significant power back to the states. That also means there is more room for testing resisters at the state, district and school levels to struggle and win. It does not help to cast false aspersions of make points of division of varying uses of a few terms.