A group of parents in Baltimore County was very unhappy with their high-flying Superintendent, Dallas Dance. Dance planned a huge investment in technology, and the parents didn’t see the evidence for it. They worried that the schools were investing in a pipe dream…or worse. Dance planned to spend at least $272 million so that every student would have his or her own laptop. Where he saw technological salvation, the parents saw expensive snake oil.
Dance wanted to become a national leader in introducing “personalized” (depersonalized) learning in his schools, and he spent freely for technology to make his dream come true.
Some parents in the county saw what was happening and they criticized it, again and again, in their own blog, as a massive waste of taxpayers’ money and a waste of students’ instructional time.
Dance abruptly resigned last spring, and he is now former superintendent of Baltimore County public schools. He is now under criminal investigation by the Maryland State Prosecutor’s Office.
The parent blog, written in this instance by Joanne C. Simpson, reports on Dance’s problems:
Among issues apparently under review: Dance’s “involvement with SUPES Academy,” which did business with BCPS and for which Dance consulted at the time. “In 2014, school system ethics officials ruled that Dance had violated ethics rules by taking a part time job with SUPES after the company got an $875,000 contract with the school system,” the Sun noted. For other info on SUPES and various linkages to Dance, read also this post.
Dance offered no comment to news of a current state prosecutor investigation, but this very recent video by the resigned superintendent speaks volumes.
Other details: The investigative news story on SUPES, which revealed Dance’s consulting job, was first broken in 2013 by The Chicago Reporter and then followed by the Sun. Dance agreed to drop the outside job.
Former chief of Chicago Public Schools Barbara Byrd-Bennett, once named as a favorite mentor by Dance, was among those embroiled in the SUPES scandal and convicted this year of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks and sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison.
Dance, who promised not to consult again after the ethics finding on SUPES, has been cited for other ethics violations and criticized for various “appearances of conflict of interest,” as well as costly taxpayer-funded travel to numerous edtech conferences and events, among other issues. His limited liability corporation Deliberate Excellence Consulting LLC was listed as Active and “Not In Good Standing” a few months ago, as also reported in this blog—a status which remains.
Many related concerns–including promotional videos Dance did for school system vendors, such as Hewlett-Packard–were first brought up in this op-ed in April 2016.
According to revised financial disclosure forms filed “under penalty of perjury” after the last ethics findings, Dance reported no personal income from his LLC, which according to charter records was formed “to consult and partner with school systems, businesses and organizations around best practices to obtain maximum organizational outcomes.”
Dance unexpectedly announced his resignation in April, partly saying he wanted to spend more time with family. Meanwhile, a few of his post-BCPS consulting positions are no longer listed on those firms’ sites nor on Dance’s LinkedIn profile page, including “Partner, Strategos Group,” and a full-time senior vice president position he announced with MGT Consulting Group when he left the superintendent position on June 30.
Parents who watched carefully were concerned about student privacy, data mining, and balanced use of technology. They worried that Dance had gone overboard. They were right to worry.
More:
“Despite Dance’s departure, STAT [Dance’s program] is still being pursued and expanded under current Interim Superintendent Verletta White, who pressed for a nearly $4 million expansion of just two software contracts, iReady and DreamBox Math, this year (see postscript below), despite questions by school board members about the programs’ high costs and lack of objective evidence of benefits. Via the software programs, elementary school children as young as 6 watch math or English language videos, and do gaming-style lessons, or play video games as “rewards” on the devices during the school day.”
The spending on technology with no evidence of its value goes forward:
“As first reported here in The Baltimore Post: The company e.Republic (which backs the Center for Digital Education) works with over 700 companies – from “Fortune 500s to startups” – to help executives ‘power their public sector sales and marketing success.’ Among those listed: Intel, IBM, Blackboard, Microsoft, Aerohive, Apple, Samsung, Dell and Google.” Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, and other companies are familiar entities at BCPS.
“Also, among a litany of mostly no-bid digital curricula contracts recently implemented at the county’s public school district: the reading/English language software program iReady, which had a $1.2 million BCPS contract spending authority expanded in July to $3.2 million for fewer than 5 years, as approved by the Board of Education and requested by interim superintendent White.
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iReady by Curriculum Associates:
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https://www.bcps.org/apps/bcpscontracts/contractFiles/012015_JMI-618-14%208%20Mod%20Teach%20Resource%20English%20Language.docx
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“DreamBox Math, meanwhile, jumped nearly $2 million more to $3.2 million for just three more years.
If contacts don’t link, can copy and paste this lengthy link: http://www.boarddocs.com/mabe/bcps/Board.nsf/files/AMQQTE6AD435/$file/061317%20JNI-778-14%20Modification%20and%20Extension%20-%20Mathematics%20Supplemental%20Resources.pdf
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“Such price tags total a whopping more than $6 million for two software programs alone in a cash-strapped school system with many pressing needs.
“In the end, many would agree digital technology has a place as a modern tool of learning. But analyses are required when children’s minds and futures are involved. Consider this objective 2017 National Education Policy Center report on “blended and virtual learning,” and a recent Business Insider story on DreamBox, which also questions the tenets of the “personalized-learning” computer-based approach, and points out just how many data points are collected on children–50,000 per hour per student just by DreamBox. There’s also the widespread industry marketing campaigns and venture capitalist profit-margins behind it all.”
There is a moral to this story: Pay attention to ethics rules. Don’t seek or accept outside money from corporations who want to sell stuff or services to your district. Be satisfied with your salary or look for a different job.
There is another moral: the tech companies view the schools as a market, and they are taking taxpayers’ money because they can.
Every school board, every superintendent has a duty to review these contracts carefully and reject those that are unproven. Don’t take the word of the salesmen.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Despite Dance’s departure, STAT [Dance’s program] is still being pursued and expanded under current Interim Superintendent Verletta White, who pressed for a nearly $4 million expansion of just two software contracts, iReady and DreamBox Math, this year (see postscript below), despite questions by school board members about the programs’ high costs and lack of objective evidence of benefits. Via the software programs, elementary school children as young as 6 watch math or English language videos, and do gaming-style lessons, or play video games as “rewards” on the devices during the school day.”
What a shame that they’re all falling for what is a public sector/private sector coordinated sales campaign.
Is this what 6 year olds need? Really? More time spent watching videos? More money diverted from their classrooms and into the pockets of vendors?
Why don’t any of these adults have any common sense?
Superintendents could get ahead of the curve by resisting climbing on this bandwagon.
In five years the superintendents who resist will look like geniuses, and the people who fell for it will look like suckers.
“Personalized learning” doesn’t really mean anything. It means whatever the salesperson wants it to mean.
We’re not this naive and easily led, are we? We’re really all going to fall for this?
I think a big part of the problem is that Superintendents are often focused on the short term. Many of them are trying to get in, make their mark ( and money, of course) and get out before it becomes obvious how much they messed things up.
It’s certainly not true of all of them, but many of them are not in it for the long haul. They see themselves as innovators and disruptors rather than as promoters of continuity and stability.
No one has pushed dumb and reckless technology purchases like the US Department of Education has pushed them.
Does anyone know why we’re paying public employees to sell ed tech product to public schools? Is this really their job? Pitching product?
Ed tech companies can’t sell their own products? We need public employees to do it for them?
The tech companies are not taking the taxpayer money just because they can.
They are taking the taxpayers for a ride.
Companies like Apple are active participant in the scams, as we saw in the case of Deasy in LA.
This is only scratching the surface of what Dallas Dance has done and it was allowed by the school board and the county executive, all of whom should be investigated. Meanwhile, there are crumbling buildings, schools that are not air conditioned (108 degrees in some classrooms!), broken plumbing/toilets, broken and non working windows, lead/and brown water in water fountains….heck, 1 HS last week had to shut down it’s fields because the electricity running underground was broken and a fence was becoming electrified (lack of maintenance). Baltimore County now has a large FARMs population due to overdevelopment and lack of infrastructure upgrades and they think that spending $376 million to put a cheap computer in every child’s back pack is a good idea. Every one should have his name on their radar, because he will be coming to another school system soon. I hope these parents keep digging and digging and they won’t let it go until the BoEd starts scattering like the rats that they are.
You’re right that he will go somewhere else, thinking they won’t check on his history.
And sadly, in many cases, the education boards won’t.
A fellow who was the prime candidate for Superintendent of New London schools in CT got derailed, not by the board who were ready to vote him in, but by a Google searching parent and reporter who decided to look into the parent’s concerns.
It turned he had “exaggerated” his credentials and plagiarized parts of his application.
I live in the next county over from Baltimore Co…..Howard Co. HoCo and BoCo both needed Supers at the same time and Dallas Dance and Renee Foose were prospects in each county. HoCo got Foose and BoCo got Dance. We had similar problems with Foose, and the county citizens elected a new school board so that she could be fired. Nope, the State Super wouldn’t give the OK so it became a mess and Foose decided to start suing the school board. Behind closed doors a deal was brokered (by the County Exec) for her “retirement” with $1.6 million plus health and retirement benefits. Fast forward to last week and the State Superintendent decided to give Foose an assistant Super job at the state level. The Governor got so many calls that he had to act and send a letter that maybe this hire wasn’t a very good idea. Foose publicly declined the position claiming she needed to do what was right for the children (make me vomit). Now, the Gov is very good friends with Finn and Smarick and they hold appointed positions at the State level. The Gov needs to look good for elections next year and this was a good way for him to try and look good for parents since he ran his last election stating he would get rid of CC and our ties to Pearson and PARCC. It just get weirder and weirder here in MD. Looking at private schooling for my rising HS next year since I just can’t take the madness anymore.
And I forgot to add the part that the BoCo County Executive and the Gov have been feuding for years. The Balto Co Executive (he loved Dance) just filed and announced that he will be running for Gov next year. It’s ALL politics in MD.
yes, I recall that Jon Pelto was all over that and I reposted his posts about this escapade.
If there is a lesson, it is that just a few wary parents (or even just one) can make a huge difference and can derail an otherwise water tight candidate.
I recall that there was a parent from CT named Linda who was commenting on this blog at the time of the New London incident.
Though she never came out and said she was the one who exposed the shyster, she knew a great deal about the case, far more than most.
I wrote this at the time
“Dr. of Fullofsophy” (FuD)
I’ve got an FuD
From Craigy’s little list
Was really worth the fee
And really can’t be dissed
It’s got official seal
From Harvardprinceton U
With ivy league appeal
And lots of gold leaf too
I got it for a fifty
They asked for seventy five
The frame is really nifty
Alone was worth the drive
I hung it in my den
Above my other laurels
My EmpD from U Pen
And Noble Prize in Morals
It really comes in handy
When I apply to jobs
The thing is really dandy
And earns me bucks in gobs
I’m really glad I waited
To get my FuD
Cuz Craigslist was just fated
To give the thing to me
And Dr. Joseph left Prince George’s Co to take a post at MNPS as their Super. After he left his PG Co assistant Supe job, the county was called out on child abuse charges and lost it’s Head Start grant. Dr. Joseph (friends with Dallas Dance and Renee Foose) is now wreaking havok in Tennessee. It’s all dirty politics in MD and it doesn’t matter what party one belongs to. Finn and Samrick….along with Petrilli seem to be right in the middle of everything. And we had Lillian Lowry (a Broadie) for a few years at the same time Foose and Dance were hired. It’s all too coincidental. Nothing about education….all politics.
Foose and Dance?
Ha ha ha.
Foose is the German pronunciation of Fuss, which means “foot”
“Dancing bare Foose”
Dance here with me
Foose-loose and free
Follow my leads
Into the weeds
This sounds like a repeat of LA Unified’s IPAD Debacle.
“When Los Angeles schools began handing out iPads in the fall of 2013, it looked like one of the country’s most ambitious rollouts of technology in the classroom. The city’s school district planned to spend $1.3 billion putting iPads, preloaded with the Pearson curriculum, in the hands of every student in every school.
“Less than two years later, that ambitious plan now looks like a spectacularly foolish one …”
https://www.wired.com/2015/05/los-angeles-edtech/
Yes, except the whole tech initiative in Baltimore County is still moving full steam ahead. The interim superintendent and most of the BOE have not started caring about crucial questions about real effectiveness (not spinning of data), value for dollar spent, or opportunity costs when million dollar contracts keep rolling through. It is so discouraging.
Because the school board and KK don’t want to admit that they made a very bad mistake at the expense of children. Election year coming up and KK wants to be the new Gov. They will hang onto this, spending millions to keep it running until the computers crash. In HoCo my son is still at the school that had the IPad pilot and they are still using the same tablets. They are now 6-7 years old and they are a nightmare…connectivity problems, can’t be upgraded anymore, broken parts etc.. They still want to continue to use them and I’ve declined having one come into my home…..he can have it in school, but it stays in school. The scenario in BCo could easily have happened in HoCo….Foose wanted every student to BYOD and I think she got an earful when parents started complaining, hence the pilot and the stock piling of computer equipment at central office.
Top-down control is terminal cancer for not only the United States but for global civilization as we know it. History has repeatedly proven this allegation is a fact and not a conspiracy theory.
For instance, I’m currently reading the September 2017 issue of National Geographic Magazine, and in “A tiny country feeds the world, Agricultural giant Holland is changing the way we farm” I ran into this on page 102:
” … the starting point, she adds emphatically, cannot be the sort of top-down approach that has doomed many well-meaning foreign aid projects. …”
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/
The same principle is true for public education. Finland has already proven this fact.
Micromanagement from the top down is the Star Wars Death Star/
“The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam” by Barbara W. Tuchman documents the damage and suffering caused when ignorant wealth-power corrupted viruses like Trump, Gates, DeVos, the Walton family, the Koch brothers, Eli Broad, Richard Mercer, and many more I don’t want to spend hours adding to this terminal list.
The frenzied pushing of laptops for every elementary student 1-5 in Baltimore County had some big ripples beyond the obvious. It was also tied to purchasing brand new reading and math curricula. Both were horrible, for various reasons. The reading program package came without sufficient quantities of required resources–I had 6 hard-copies of books that 2 reading groups (with 8 students in each) needed to use simultaneously. There were about 6 different titles of books for each of the 6 units, each with only 6 copies. We were supposed to access the texts on the laptops, rather than use the paperbacks. Super! Except that on any given day, our local server would crash from overload, or the county server would crash due to overload, or the power in our building would go down, or some glitch in the program would keep throwing kids out of the program or eating their work… These issues were in addition to a crazy, difficult-to-access, error-riddled, age-inappropriate, never-piloted (!) county-written curriculum that SORT OF followed the Pearson curriculum. There was no writing curriculum until teacher complaints led them to try to stuff one into the reading curriculum. There were no samples of how the kids’ work product should look. The rubrics were vague. Nobody in the county language arts department could reliably answer any of our questions because it was a revolving door there. Oh, and the head of the department when I left was none other than Verletta White. Prior to that she was an area supe for my part of the county.
And that is just some of how crazy language arts was. There were similar issues with the new math curriculum and Pearson program.
In addition to all of these overnight curriculum, software, and hardware changes there were drastic changes in HOW we were expected to teach, interact with, and assess our students. On top of that, we were saddled with the idiotic, easy-to-abuse Charlotte Danielson evaluation system. Anyone who principals or area supes felt couldn’t hack it was forced out. You know–teachers with many years of experience. Some teachers, like a colleague of mine–who were eligible to retire, but wanted to keep teaching–promptly decided retirement looked great all of a sudden.
Others, like me (21 years in!), were not eligible to retire and had to simply resign. I lost my salary which was half my family income. I lost my health benefits, including those that would have followed me into retirement. My pension is frozen. Getting hired in another district would likely be dicey, as I am sure I would be asked why I resigned after 21 years–at the same school, no less!–instead of asking for a transfer. All districts in Maryland were on a similar track with PARCC, so using curricular and methods changes as a reason would not be helpful. (I am still searching for a job in some other field, but employers are not interested in 50+ year old entry level employees.)
This happened at schools all over the county. The school communities–children, parents, neighbors, and colleagues–lost our teaching expertise; our experience working with diverse learners, colleagues, and stakeholders; and our contribution to the continuity of our schools’ institutional culture. The amount of taxpayers’ money wasted for such a rotten outcome is criminal. The only good outcome was for Pearson and Hewlitt Packard. They are still counting their money.
Kathy, thank you for posting this. Suddenly our ELA experience from a couple years ago makes more sense! Thank you for your teaching and service to BCPS kids.
Thanks for the thanks! With the ELA in particular, teachers were left twisting in the breeze. I attended monthly teacher training meetings as the grade rep for my school. 200 primary grade teachers came prepared with serious questions every month. We were often given answers that were incomplete or even incorrect. When we pointed out misprints, inaccuracies, or errors in the curriculum we were ignored or treated as if we were petty for pointing them out. When we were concerned that many of the resources we were meant to use were out of print or websites were age-inappropriate or non-existent, we were told to find some other resources on our own. The ELA department staff were frequently exasperated with us, and when they weren’t exasperated, they were patronizing.
Trying to plan and implement PARCC-oriented lessons with the resources and curriculum we were given was time-consuming and unnecessarily complicated. It ate up my whole life. Working 12 hours a day at school day after day nearly killed me. I developed high blood pressure, gained 20+ pounds, couldn’t sleep… After 20 successful years, the skills I had to offer were no longer appreciated or useful. Looking back, I think I was being actively gaslighted by building and area administration during my last couple of years.
The fresh young teachers who are somehow able to teach “correctly”–or look like it–are not going to hang around for another 10 or 15 years. They are all planning their exit strategies: get certified as a reading specialist or ESOL teacher, become a county resource teacher or media specialist, get pregnant, or get out of teaching altogether. Individual neighborhood schools won’t be able to maintain their institutional culture because they have a revolving door for teachers. Although my school’s population had many challenges (poverty, homelessness, single parents, learning challenges, language challenges…) I NEVER wanted to transfer. The families were amazing–loving, supportive, generous, and willing to help other people’s kids without hesitation. I don’t miss the unbearable stress (crying myself to sleep most nights!), but I really miss the kids and their amazing families. I wish I could have “made it work.” I’d have been there long past retirement age.
Diane should publish your nightmare experience as a post.
Sadly, it sums up very well what is happening in and to America’s public schools.
They are being eaten alive by parasites — introduced in many cases by the very people who should be protected ting them from harm.
I also thank you for your years of service to our children.
It is so good to hear from you what it was like. We tried so hard to partner with our child’s teacher but were told that everything was fine and that we were the problem for having concerns over the way things were being handled. This came from the teacher and the admin at our school. When that teacher started missing a week of school at a time to get a mystery medical problem diagnosed (which I was certain was being made worse by the expectations being put on her), our child had a different substitute everyday and was spending so much time on the tablets- the principal told us that she couldn’t control what the substitutes do. We luckily found a private school that works for us- it’s our first year this year. I know that doesn’t work for everyone but what was more concerning to us than the actual content or the way our child was being taught was the way everyone tried to say everything was okay when it so clearly was not. We even tried talking at the BOE meetings- lottery to be heard and then 3 minutes before being cut off was just ridiculous. We are so glad to not be in the system this year but so frustrated that so many people let this happen. Thank you for your diligence. I hope that things will change course although there has been very little evidence of that. And I hope that things improve for you- we have heard that the Pa elementary schools are a lot better but I’m sure that doesn’t solve your problem with what you earned prior to leaving.
I’m in HoCo and we have decided that it will be best to put our son in a private HS next year. Although we don’t have as much tech as BaltoCo, we are doubled down with Common Bore, and testing madness (AP at the HS level). I have had MS teachers (ELA) insinuate that he is ADD and yet other teachers have no problem at all. He’s not ADD….he’s bored with doing test prep and reading awful informational text that has no meaning. I’m tired of the fight. My daughter will continue in HoCo public schools because she will be a Jr. and she has her art and music and friends that help her survive the boredom. The teachers need to start taking a stand on all of this because going with the flow is only making them look bad. I’m sad that it has to come down to this, but I just can’t stand the warehousing of my children anymore. I want them educated…not tested to death and data mined.
“and she has her art and music and friends that help her survive the boredom”
Until the oligarchs take away the art, music and friends.
For instance, Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy and other corporate charter schools have already done that with their child abusing boot camp style, harsh discipline where children are bullied and forced to sit at attention with their eyes tracking the teacher for fear of being caught, or being forced to walk along a line, in a line, between classes with their cheeks puffed out showing they are not attempting to talk to other children who might have become their friends if they had been in the public school environment that existed before NCLB and the rank and punish Common Core crap and high-stakes tests.
Many teachers are standing up and fighting but in many GOP, Right to Work States, that have destroyed labor unions and stripped teachers of due process rights, fear keeps many teachers quiet — they don’t want to lose their jobs and the paycheck that feeds and shelters them and their families.
Thank you all for your responses to my story–there’s a hell of a lot more, too! You are so very kind. I was lucky to have so many kids with the loveliest parents! I wish I could still be in my classroom today, but I cannot ever go back to being a classroom teacher. Hopefully someone will realize that many of the skills and strengths I used as an elementary classroom teacher (teaching! computer skills! writing! editing! researching! planning! working w/diverse populations! flexibility! resourcefulness!) transfer well to other professions, too! 😉
@Kathy…My sister retired from being a classroom teacher last year. She was in BCPS for 20 yrs and moved to DE and had to do 10 more there. She will never set foot in another public school ever. Her plans after retirement were to sub or be a TA in her early retirement, but not after the last 5 years of her career and how she (and all teachers) were treated. She misses the kids, but not the job. I find it fascinating that she still has contact with many students from her first years teaching elementary school through Facebook…old students look for her and friend request. She has students who will vacation in OC and the DE shore that will come and visit. I’m glad that you can do something constructive with your retirement…even if it is the nasty job of exposing the raw details of ed reform.
I felt the same way when I left teaching in 2005 after 30 years in the classroom. I decided if I couldn’t support myself on my retirement (I left teaching with a 40-percent pay cut and no medical), I’d rather volunteer to fight in Afghanistan and even volunteer to strap bombs on my body and walk into a group of terrorists and blow them up with me.
My first few years of teaching were good ones with a great principal that believed in bottom up management, and then Reagan released his flawed and fraudulent A Nation at Risk Report in 1983 and the good years where a teacher could teach without meddling from the top down ended.
A few years later in 1987, President Ronald Reagan eliminated the Fairness Doctrine that required fairness, balance and honesty in the media, and it got worse because with the birth of the racist, hate filled, lying, conspiracy theory generating Alt-Right media teachers had targets painted on them and the bashing starting where teachers were blamed for everything. Then came the rank and punish testing mania and the downhill slide into stress and anger and an early death became faster.
Every step has been a step to the bottom where the fires and ice of hell are waiting for all of us.
1983 – A Nation at Risk
1987 – end of Fairness Doctrine in the media
2001– No Child Left Behind passed by Congress
I retired in 2005 but the corporate reform of public education designed to destroy the community based, democratic, transparent, non profit public schools kept falling.
2006 – California High School Exit Examination (many states implemented similar tests around the same time)
Common Core Standards were released in 2010 but the history behind the standards started in the 1990s thanks to the fraudulent lying A Nation at Risk Report.
I’m sure others could add to this list timeline that shows the corporate, private sector war based on greed against public education.
How effective has this war been?
I’ll tell you. When I started teaching in 1975 most parents and children were respectful to teachers and children knew that they were responsible to learn what was taught. The effort to quiet a classroom to gain the cooperation of most children was easy compared to what it became as the smear campaign against public education and public teachers grew and spread and continued unabated for decades. In the late 1970s and early 1980s when I assigned homework, more than 80- percent of the students actually did it and turned it in on time.
When I left teaching, few parents and students felt this way and many students didn’t bother to do the work that was necessary to learn what was taught because if they didn’t learn it wasn’t their fault anymore — it was the fault of that lazy, greedy, incompetent teacher. By 2000, when I assigned homework, 5-percent turned it in.
Too many parents shouted at teachers and blamed them for their child not learning even if the child wasn’t doing the work. The parent just accused the teacher of being boring.
The corporate reformers, the Waltons, the Koch brothers, Bill Gates, David Coleman, and all the others created this environment.
Kathy – please message statusbcps@gmail.com if you would like to be connected. We are very confidential! Thanks again for all you did for BCPS kids.
Lisa M, yes there are indeed so many problems in the Baltimore County public school system going unaddressed because tens of millions of $dollars are being siphoned off of “all areas of operation” to fund the laptop-per-student program known as STAT. Here is a blog post by another writer about the dearth of social workers and other issues that are adding to achievement gaps. It is very moving.
http://nancyebailey.com/2017/01/28/priorities-in-a-school-system-where-nearly-half-of-students-live-in-poverty/
The district is feverishly trying to spin the numbers on test ‘scores’, but there’s more cherry picking than not. (Also, some of the MAP scores they cite are pulled from not fully disclosed data provided by a BCPS vendor (NWEA/MAP)—which has a nearly $4 million contract, and counting, and which says it supports “personalized learning.” Hardly unbiased results as used here). Other BCPS watchers are looking closely at those scores and standardized testing to tease out the truth. Overall, teachers, parents, principals, reporters and others need to look beyond the grandiose claims and not let minor tech tools be misused as silver bullets.
Schools boards need to require superintendents to identify a need or problem to be addressed, define the scope of the solution, and then use a transparent open bid process before any consultants are hired or materials purchased. Some of those superintendents who did work for the Supes also have done work for the Educational Research Development Institute where they get paid to sit on panels and school vendors come before them to talk about their products. Not sure why this is even allowed. Google ERDI.