This is a very interesting and important graphic about “The Quantified Student.”
If you are concerned about data mining of your child or yourself, you are right to be concerned.
Our government and the corporate sector wants to know everything about us. They want to quantify our lives and use what they know to create Big Data.
Big Data can be useful in tracking public health trends and needs, but it can be destructive in defining solely as our data.
We are humans. We are not robots. Take a look at the graphic.
We must protect our privacy, our individuality, our voice, our uniqueness as human beings.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Excellent article. I have a simple rule for my teaching practice when admin buys into a tech sales pitch and wants me to use a product. Do the students have to have passwords? If yes, the product will not be used. No way. Admin, talk to the union if you insist.
Often, I have to get creative to get around entering reports in the district data system (John Deasy’s MiSiS) when dealing with behavior issues. It’s unfortunately not always possible to avoid entering reports. And I am forced to use online gradebooks and report cards. And standardized tests. Oh, the wretched, worthless standardized tests. Big Data has been made unavoidable.
That’s the possible silver lining of a Trump administration, even with the dark cloud of privatization ominous: With Bill Gates perhaps exiting the Department of Education, Big Data (with Common Core) could possibly be diminished.
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While the information is still pertinent, this article is over 2 years old Diane. I don’t think things have gotten better, but, information in this field does need to be timely.
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Time needn’t trump truths.
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M, I don’t necessarily post things the day or week they appear. I thought this was timely even though two years old. I could post things from the 1930s that are timely today.
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Yes. This is so much like history repeating.
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Every computer is hackable, and parents have a legitimate concern about where’s their child’s information is going and how it will be used. Privacy laws often lag behind the realities of the cyber world. Student identifying information that falls into the wrong hands is a violation of privacy.
I do not believe we can truly know a person by collecting data. The idea that a computer can “define” a person through some magical algorithm is another vainglorious statement from Silicon Valley. Computers may be able to track likes, dislikes and preferences, but computers cannot think, empathize, or strategize in a 3-D world. A skilled teacher that learns from observing students can tell anyone more about a child than any computer. What computer geeks fail to get is that the best learning is social, and it takes place in a community of learners. This is the main reason that cyber instruction has been a wasteful flop. Computers are useful tools, but they cannot replicate the social and emotional components in learning.
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The big data monster is not just about individuals, but institutions, including the use data from students to rate public schools. Follow the money on some of the uses of big data in education.
Start on this short journey at the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) located at the University of Washington. CRPE is funded by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Carnegie Corporation of New York; Laura and John Arnold Foundation; Michael and Susan Dell Foundation; Walton Family Foundation among others.
CRPE, much like the corporate funded American Legislative Exchange Council, develops policies and model legislation for school choice, governance, digital learning, budget cuts and the like.
CRPE has several “partners.” These are really channels for diffusing the idea that market-based education is best, with not an ounce of respect for public schools governed by elected school boards and oversight by citizens in a community, especially those who pay taxes for their public schools.
CRPE has setup Education Cities as a “Partner” operation. In Education Cities, unelected nonprofits, foundations, and civic groups organize for the purposes of controlling the governance of public education, substituting their judgment for policies and practices forwarded by professionals in education, elected school boards, and citizens whose tax dollars are invested in public schools.
The national work of Education Cites is supported by the Broad Foundation, The Walton Family Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. http://education-cities.org/who-we-are/our-contributors/. In late 2016, there were 31 members of the Education Cities network operating in 24 cities. Local foundations also support work in specific cities (e.g., Memphis, TN, Hyde Family Foundation).
In addition to CRPE, Education Cities has a Partnership” with GreatSchools.org. GreatSchools is a well-known website first funded in 2011 by the Walton Family Foundation, $4,775,000; Robertson Foundation, $1,000,000; Goldman Sachs Group, $440,000; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, $265,493; Target Foundation, $250,000 and nine other non-profits. Although GreatSchool.org is technically a non-profit, it organizes school and state-level test data into a rating scheme, and then sells the ratings to for-profit companies, notably the real estate website Zillow. http://www.greatschools.org/gk/advertising/ The ratings of individual schools at GreatSchools pop up next to Zillow, thereby functioning as a means of redlining real estate by rating community schools.
The rating scheme for schools at the GreatSchools website is complicated. The methodology is questionable and made more questionable by a recently announced new rating scheme called the Education Equity Index. The Education Equity Index, funded by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and connected to Education Cities (and back to CREP) will allow the GreatSchools website to tell visitors which schools are serving a high proportion of low-income students (based on eligibility for free and reduced price lunches).
The Education Equity Index also identifies the percentage of students from low-income families that reach proficiency “averaged across test scores on every subject and grade level, with a comparison to the percentage of all students in a given state who reach proficiency averaged across every subject/grade.”
On this Education Equity Index, “Top Schools” are those with small or nonexistent achievement gaps that serve a student population where at least 51 percent of students are from low-income families as measured by the free or reduced price lunch (FRL) program. Schools are rated accordingly, on a 100 point scale.
68-100 = No Achievement Gap. Students from low-income families in a given school, city or state reach proficiency at a higher rate than their peers, on average.
50-67.9 = Small Achievement Gap. Students from low-income families in a given school, city, or state reach proficiency at a similar rate as all students, on average.
38-49.9 = Large Achievement Gap. Students from low-income families in a given school, city, or state reach proficiency at a higher rate than most students from low-income families, but at a lower rate than all students, on average.
0-37.9 = Massive Achievement Gap. Students from low-income families in a given school, city, or state reach proficiency at a lower rate than students from other low-income families, on average. http://educationequalityindex.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/EEI-National-Press-Release-FINAL.pdf
It turns out that The Education Equity Index was so flawed that the states with higher poverty levels received a better “equality” score. That is a ridicule-worthy result. Even so, advocates of the “every-child-can-succeed-in-the-right-school-with-the-right-teachers” proclaim that the Education Equity Index proves “there are hundreds of schools across the nation where low-income students are achieving at levels that match or even exceed their more advantaged peers” as if the definitive proof that “all children can excel in school when given the opportunity.” http://www.educationequalityindex.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/EEI-Oakland-Press-Release-FINAL.pdf
Although The Education Equity Index produced ratings that were deeply flawed, the ratings scheme is still in place with a few disclaimers on its use for comparisons across states. “State-level EEI scores are not the best way to compare states because their absolute EEI scores are highly correlated to the percentage of students in the state who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch. They are helpful when determining how cities within a specific state performed compared to the state average and for noting state trajectories. https://www.the74million.org/article/exclusive-education-cities-and-greatschools-to-admit-flaw-in-statewide-rankings-of-school-inequality
Other indicators of “equity in education” will be pouring into the GreatSchools website. In June 2016, USDE released to GreatSchools a new round of “civil rights” data that will “spotlight access to rigorous coursework, college-readiness milestones, student absenteeism, discipline rates, athletics participation, and counselors-per-student.”
Under the Obama administration, the US Department of Education and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have allowed GreatSchools to expand its ratings of schools by zip code. The HUD data allows families in public housing and rental-assistance voucher programs to learn more about ratings for schools near their residence.
Zip code search— the portal for GreatSchools—makes use of big data on schools to ensure that families have “transparent” information for school choice. The fact that this site markets that data and a host of educational products is suppressed, but those purpose and products are obvious when you go there. Of course,everything there is made to look parent friendly and child friendly even if it is designed around a rating scheme that makes very few schools look good, with a 10 ratings researved for schools that have high test scores.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/District_Dossier/2016/06/greatschools_rankings_to_expan.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news3
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And look who was included by Obama today to be honored in USA Today. The Gates pushed America forward alright……
For the last time in office, President Obama bestowed the nation’s highest civilian honor
on 21 individuals from a varying list of categories from science to sports to entertainment. Honorees included philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates. Obama says the people receiving the medal helped push America forward and inspired millions around the world.:
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