Rhode Island’s Governor Gina Raimondo is an avid proponent of charter schools and a former hedge fund manager (synonymous terms these days).
Last year, she and the new State Commissioner of Education Ken Wagner announced a campaign for “empowerment schools,” which is an empty slogan meeting that principals have more autonomy and students can ignore district lines and choose whatever school they want.
But the money wasn’t forthcoming for whatever it is they proposed, and empowerment seems to be dead for now.
Watch as Raimondo looks for a way to jump on the DeVos bandwagon while still claiming to be a Democrat.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ken Wagner – a NY discredited suit. One of John King’s former underlings. Toss a grenade and move on.
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“To help educators monitor student progress and understand their skill levels in each subject, Rhode Island vetted and helped districts statewide adopt one of three technologies: Summit’s Personalized Learning Platform, Cortex by InnovateEDU and Agilix’s Buzz.”
Buzz is the product they tested in the Detroit EAA:
“The documents he obtained, however, speak for themselves. There are thousands of them — including the email from Snyder, which asks about Agilix, the School Improvement Network, their relationship with the EAA, and how the whole model might be expanded beyond Detroit.
The dual-crafting of the response to Snyder’s query, involving a back-and-forth between Esselman and company employees with edits taking place at each stop, reflects the close working relationship between the three entities.
Sometimes it’s difficult to tell where the interests of one stops and the other begins.
For example, the response to Snyder points out that Esselman is working with SINET on something called a LumiBook that will describe her vision of the “student-centered” learning process. (A LumiBook, according to the School Improvement Network website, is “the next step in the evolution of the ebook — an online reading platform that lets you become part of the book — developing ideas along with fellow readers and the author that just might become the book’s newest chapters.”)
n terms of Buzz and the School Improvement Network platform it’s been wedded with, the software has “been developed to be agnostic to instructional delivery and resource source, which means it can be used for virtual schools, blended instruction, distance learning, traditional instruction with differentiation, and online assessment,” the governor was told.
A product at the forefront of education in the Internet age — at least as it was portrayed to Michigan’s self-described “nerd” governor.
But in reality, what internal EAA documents reveal is the extent to which teachers and students were, over the course of two school years, used as whetstones to hone a badly flawed product being pitched as cutting-edge technology.”
http://www.aclumich.org/article/guyette-how-eaas-buzz-program-exploited-detroits-most-vulnerable-kids
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I can not express in strong enough terms how the mere mention of these programs make want to barf, gag and throw up. It always turns out to extra work that doesn’t do a thing for your students but makes some higher up feel important like they are doing something. Pay me a million and I will tell you that San Rafael does better than Oakland and Pacific Palisades does better than South Central. ..but trust me, the teachers are working hard in both places. …what does work : smaller class size, decent pay-especially for beginning teachers, prep time paid for, supplies paid for, added prep time before school begins.
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“Now that the bugs have been worked out of the software which never worked properly for the Detroit students who were forced to use it, Agilix is marketing BUZZ nationally and they are using Detroit and the EAA as their “case study”. The long post about the EAA is capped off with these entirely inaccurate claims:
IMPACT
During the 2012-2013 school term, 59% of students achieved 1.5 or more year’s growth in Reading (64% 1+ ) and 58% of student achieved 1.5 or more year’s growth in Math (68% 1+). All six direct run K-8 schools ranked in the top 20 out of 124 K-8 schools across governance models in Detroit (Detroit Public Schools, Charter, Archdiocese and EAA schools).
These numbers have been proven to be completely inaccurate in a comprehensive analysis of EAA students’ MEAP testing results conducted by Professor Tom Pedroni. Recall that MEAP test scores were the metric used to put schools into the EAA in the first place.
Here’s one of their promotional videos that mentions Detroit, one of many on the Agilix Vimeo page”
http://www.eclectablog.com/2015/03/now-that-agilixs-buzz-was-fully-tested-with-detroit-student-guinea-pigs-its-time-to-cash-in.html
“Personalized learning” is gonna be very profitable.
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Gina Raimondo and Ken Wagner…the Age of the Corporate Leech.
Coming to a school, a district, a neighborhood, a town, a city, and a state to suck democracy away… and profits for their masters!
Mr Wagner’s next stop?
Who knows…
Follow the money train…I’m sure Mr Flanagan, the politician from New York who pushes legislation to harm the public education, will be waiting at a future stop after he gets pushed out.
A new suit…a new gig…a new title…and a new position.
Life during the Age of the Corporate Leech.
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Yes. Concerned Educator has it right.
Ken Wagner. His plaque should read: The New York State Education Department’s master stone-waller. Deputy Commissioner under Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch. Aided and abetted her botched implementation of the Common Core. Used techno-speak learned from her Regents Scholars to avoid transparency concerning the State’s testing program and results. Unsuccessfully sought to replace Education Commissioner in Albany when John King was elevated to U.S. Secretary of Education. Lost out to Maryellen Elia. Took his marbles and educational wisdom to Rhode Island.
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“Watch as _________ looks for a way to jump on the DeVos bandwagon while still claiming to be a Democrat,” is the statement of the year.
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States keep jumping on and off bandwagons with the assumption that the “market” will deliver some notion of excellence and success, and it has done neither. “Reformers” are shooting bullets in the dark, hoping they hit the “next big thing.” Business people keep looking for cheap, choices and profit boosting solutions to the complexities of poverty. These projects hit the wall and crash and burn. The sad part is they are also using young people as “whetstones” of experimentation, and they act as though these students do not matter.
I worked in a district that embraced change. The district introduced new adoptions in a controlled, reasoned way. We studied, observed, wrote curriculum, selected and conducted a pilot in one school or one grade level. Then, we evaluated. It was a process that took four to five years. If it didn’t work, we dropped the program or materials. Our process was slow and steady, not frantic and disruptive. When schools are subjected to the whims of business, especially hedge funds, we are submitting our young people to chaos and needless churn. These vulture capitalists have no patience and no understanding of teaching and learning, Their goal is to “sell baby, sell,”and the students are collateral damage. They will always put profit before people. It is reckless and thoughtless to subject poor students to endless experimentation.
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And let’s not forget about Governor Raimondo’s husband, Andy Moffit. Here is info from his LinkedIn profile:
“Director of Industry Learning, McKinsey & Company
September 2013 – Present (3 years 6 months)
Member of the leadership team of Firm Learning, which delivers learning programs and capability-building opportunities to over 10,000 consultants globally, with personal responsibility for the offerings of the firm’s 21 Industry Practices
Current
You may recall that he is also the co-author of Deliverology 101 along with Sir Michael Barber of McKin$ey and Pear$on. We’re in the think of it with these “thought leaders.”
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Andy Moffit (Raimondo’s hubby) and Corey Booker were room mates at Yale.
Booker was the Center for American Progress’ keynote speaker, last year, at its “Progress Party”. From 2013-2015, Gates gave CAP $2.2 mil. and CAP also gets Walton funding. CAP may be the most influential voice in the national Democratic Party.
And, it is the journalists’ go-to, for comments from the left. That explains a lot about the bi-partisan drive to erode American democracy.
Matt Taibbi, in Rolling Stone, described Raimondo’s disgusting hedge fund connections, in an article about the theft of pensions.
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