A Tennessee court might rule on whether a student has a right to a teacher, and whether computers count as teachers. The district wants the case dismissed.
Do the rights of Tennessee students to a public education extend into the right to have a teacher, and if so, does a computer program count?
Those questions were posed to a state appeals court Tuesday during oral arguments in a case involving a Nashville student, Toni Jones, that could set a statewide framework defining school districts’ obligations to their students.
Jones was a freshman at Pearl-Cohn High School who was pulled out of an algebra class before an end-of-course test and placed into a computer-based credit recovery program, Jones’ lawyer, Gary Blackburn, said. He said the student was struggling in the algebra class but had a passing grade.
The appeal stems from a lawsuit Blackburn filed in 2015, alleging the district was padding test scores by moving Jones and others to the other program. Several teachers who spoke out about the testing practices are suing the district in a separate case, saying they were inappropriately reprimanded by the district.
He said precedent set in Tennessee court cases entitled Jones to a teacher, and that due process protections were violated when she was moved into the other class without notice to Jones or her family.
“The slippery slope so to speak is that if a teacher is not essential, then a school system can be offered entirely by computers,” he said. “Students can be placed in a gymnasium and put a computer on a desk, and say, here is your teacher. And we’re going to have a hall monitor to keep you from acting up. That is basically what happened to Toni Jones. That’s not teaching.”
Does a computer count as a teacher? Is a corporation a person? What do you think?
Nothing can REPLACE a “real-live” classroom teacher. Teachers know better. Teachers have the “real-time” information. The arrogance of those far from the classroom giving us scripts to read is CRAZY. The screen is another script written by those far away from the classroom.
The “TAKE-AWAY” from the movie, “Sully” is that it takes an “experienced person” using real time information” and “making real time decisions” to do the job.
cross-posted at
https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Tennessee-Is-a-Computer-a-in-General_News-Argument_Computers_Diane-Ravitch_Doublespeak-171114-722.html#comment679236
With this comment:
HAVE YOU ever tried to persuade a child to do something complex and difficult?
Would you send YOUR child to be educated in a school that hires ‘traiend’ ’teachers and uses computer to teach?’’
Now the billionaire corporations that sell ‘education’ and MAGIC ELIXIRS https://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html are defunding education, and then promising that computers can take the place of teachers.
This idea that the profession of pedagogy does not exist, and that the ‘marketplace’ should provide computers as teachers, or trained employees to do the difficult job that once fell to dedicated professionals, will end the road to income equality that a real education once provided. Teachers can use computers, but teachers are the CORE OF EDUCATION HUMANS!
The misinformed notion that ANYONE CAN TEACH, and that enabling and facilitating the learning of complex skills and information IN YOUNG HUMAN BRAINS, is easy and does not require education in motivational psychology, or EXPERIENCE in dealing with the psychology (minds and behavior) of CHILDREN.
If there is a paucity of gifted teachers in the sciences, it is because public education has been starved for funds that make it viable. Look how the current tax bill is going to defund college education. https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Robbing-Blue-States-to-Pay-in-General_News-Education_Funding_Politics_Taxes-171114-432.html
Moreover, no talented, educated person wants to enter a profession where there is not a shred of job security or financial remuneration for the skills, energy or expertise required, or support; and indeed, the opposite is true… teachers find themselves under attack from fabricated charges when tenure-time comes around.
Well stated, Susan!
Thank you… and true!
There’s a part of me that can’t wait for the effectiveness of these computer-teachers to be evaluated by standardized tests! (Of course, that’s the part of me that doesn’t mind if I’m gainfully employed.)
I think the popularity of online learning with parents and students is WAY over-stated.
Altschool is the fancy private school that focuses on tech. 30k a year tuition.
But when they asked parents why they liked the school parents said “small class size and good teachers”.
Same as it ever was.
You’ll keep your job.
“Things don’t teach. Teachers teach” – Marva Collins
Diane There is a long history of educational theory that, if understood by those who set policy, would put a halt to the whole idea of “teaching without a teacher,” especially where children are concerned (preK-12). The basic point to understand, and which most if not all teachers already understand, is that children don’t only learn the “what” of education, but also the “who.” Regardless of what these reformers think, and regardless of “what” is being taught, especially in the early grades, students are also developing and learning about how to be a person in a culture.
In this broader case of person-learning, no learning is bad learning. The psychological, social, philosophical-ethical, political, spiritual and cultural development that ALREADY goes on in the teacher-taught classroom is what educators know generally as “the hidden curriculum.” But what is NOT hidden from teachers apparently **IS hidden from the reformers*–so much so that they seem to think students will become cultured, functioning persons without that curriculum.
It’s the same oversight and set of errors (willful or not) that lead tech-heads and reformers to ignore how children’s families and neighborhoods influence children’s learning when they get to the classroom. BOOOO.
In a Christian fundamentalist GOP dominated Kleptocracy ruled by corporations and autocratic billionaires, one corporation counts more than the entire working class.
This is what the corrupted Kleptocrats that worship at the altar of avarice think and want. When they kneel and pray to their god, they are praying to a gold toilet.
Boy I sure hope this court has decent sense. Or a sense of decency. If this case is decided against plaintiffs, things are looking ugly all over for a very long time.
I think it mostly depends on if the judge was elected or appointed and who appointed the judge.
The case also depends on how skilled the attorney making the case is and what the state laws and local statutes have to say.
KnowledgeWorks.org is devoted to the idea that teachers are unnecessary. The future of education is all tech, all the time, with learners on a life-long journey aided by the “swarms of learning agents” identified in two “future of learning” reports. All learning arrangements for underage students require contracts between students and parents (or caregivers) and providers of learning related experiences. Additional contracts are required between providers or networks of providers in the learning-related roles such as these. Almost all learning is competence-based with badges for “mastery” or earned by documented participation.
(1) Learning Pathway Designers work with students, parents, and learning journey mentors (sort of like teachers) to set learning goals, track students’ progress and pacing, and model potential sequences of activities that support learning experiences aligned with competencies.
(2) Competency Trackers tag and map community-based learning opportunities by the competencies they address in order to support the development of reconfigurable personalized learning pathways and school formats.
(3) Pop-Up Reality Producers works with educators, subject matter experts, story developers, and game designers to produce pervasive learning extravaganzas that engage learners in flow states and help them develop relevant skills, academic competencies, and knowhow. (!Burning Man offered as if exemplary!)
(4) Social Innovation Portfolio Directors build networks in support of meaningful service-based learning and community impact by linking student action-learning groups seeking to develop core skills and knowledge with organizations seeking creative solutions.
(5) Learning Naturalists design and deploy assessment protocols that capture evidence of learning in students’ diverse learning environments and contexts.
(6) Micro-Credential Analysts provide trusted, research-based evaluations and audits of micro- credential options and digital portfolio platforms in order to provide learners and institutions with comparative quality assurance metrics.
(7) Data Stewards act as third-party information trustees to ensure responsible and ethical use of personal data and to maintain broader education data system integrity and effective application through purposeful analytics.
8) Learning Journey Mentors (2008) guide learners in working through their learning experiences, helping them execute their learning pathways. This role is closest to that of today’s typical classroom teacher.
(9) Edu-vators (2008) build platform prototypes, experiment with new tools, evaluate new practices, and generally explore innovations in the learning sphere. They will team with learners, who will get credit for being in “edu-vation workshops.”
(10) Community Intelligence Cartographers (2008) tap the collective intelligence of their local communities. They will leverage social networking strategies to develop swarms and smart mobs in order to identify emerging learning opportunities in the community, organize community members, and locate community resources.
(11) Assessment Designers (2008) use social networks and insights into cognitive functioning, to create appropriate methods for evaluating media literacy, learning discovery journeys, and other innovative forms of instruction.
(12) Social Capital Platform Developers (2008) link the social capital infrastructure to teaching and learning practices and outcomes. They use tracking programs to provide an accounting of people’s contributions to open education resources and collaborative processes.
(13) Education Sousveyors (2008) keep the learning process transparent and stimulate public discussion around it. Through mechanisms such as blog posts, pictures, podcasts, and videos, they keep learning on the forefront of stakeholders’ minds. Surveillance is watching from above, sousveillance is watching from below. Education Sousveyors help monitor the state of education from the bottom up.
(14) Learning Partners (2008) Students who test for compatible personalities but who have different cognitive strengths will be matched to support each other throughout the year, maintaining a constant thread amid shifting peer relationships.
(15) Personal Education Advisors (2008) are assigned by certified local education agencies (such as schools, resource centers, museums, and libraries) or such advisors are selected and contracted by families to help them create, nurture, and maintain their personal learning ecologies.
(16) Learning Fitness Instructors (2008) help learners build and strengthen the basic cognitive, emotional, and social abilities essential to learning by using simulations, biofeedback, and hands-on activities to reduce stress, hone mental capabilities, and learn brain-friendly nutrition.
I have yet to find a KnowledgeWorks.org report that discusses financing. The word “teacher” is avoided. These “future ready” reports are filled with a tossed salad mix of words and phrases that are free of logic but rich in snippets of tech talk thrown together. I have lightly edited and merged into one list descriptions of roles from these two reports.
http://www.knowledgeworks.org/sites/default/files/future-ed-workforce-roles-learning-ecosystem.pdf and
http://www.knowledgeworks.org/sites/default/files/2020-Forecast.pdf 2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning (2008)
Let’s see:
All of this is happening right now. And I’m sure this list could be much longer if I knew exactly how many jobs are being replaced by an algorithm or robot.
The list is long. It is so long, that even economists are thinking it might be necessary to give everyone a minimum stipend to live on, no work required. Think welfare made legitimate by the tech-driven and uncertain gig economy with more willing and able workers than jobs for them to do.
If there were no jobs and people got stipends to spend, then for sure, there would be laws that would require them to spend most of that money on consumer crap so corporations survived.
That means humans would have a job to spend money, to be full-time consumers while robots did all the work to make that crap we’d be forced to buy.
The 1% (some of them) will want a few human servants as a status symbol.
Many of the rest of the humans will have no jobs, but hopefully, as Laura indicates, there will be a living stipend for each.
Or, we’ll all be working for the robots. Is it too soon for this Christmas Song?
Twenty years ago, the public high school here offered 3 languages- Spanish, French and German. Real teachers for all of them.
Twenty years later, the public school offers one language with an actual teacher (Spanish). German is gone completely and French is only offered through an online for-profit.
This isn’t “improving education”. It’s worse. It’s a cheaper, shoddier, for-profit replacement for what were solid classes.
No matter how many times Betsy DeVos scolds me for being attached to the “status quo” she will never convince me that this is an improvement. It’s not, and it’s a lie to tell students it is.
The students don’t know any better because this is all they’ve experienced- they don’t know that students who are ten years older got much higher quality language instruction.
The adults have replaced something real and valuable with cheap garbage. It’s a rip-off.
Take it from this real, at the time live, Spanish teacher-those computer programs, even with voice recognition and all the other fancy bells and whistles are worse than worthless, they are a complete waste of time energy and monies.
Heck, we can’t even do voice recognition in English. A big part of my job used to be transcribing tapes. Then we got Dragon software, which was supposed to completely eliminate that, which it did, sort of. Now a big part of my job is listening to the tapes and cleaning up what the software messed up.
Computer engineers (I refuse to call them “scientists”because they ain’t) pursue what is easiest when it comes to “educational” software.
That means software that casts the human in the role of a parrot.
Computer engineers have now “injected” themselves as “experts” into nearly every field purely by virtue of their knowledge of computer technology, rather than on the basis of their knowledge of subject matter.
You even see computer engineers like MIT’s Scott Aaronson pontificating on theoretical physics and trying to force the universe to fit into their computer paradigm.
The whole thing has become rather ridiculous.
My H.S. had French, Spanish, and Latin. I cherished learning French, and developed a sincere love of languages. When I joined the Air Force, I selected linguistics as my career field. Language instruction must be conducted by humans, there is not yet any computer software, that can match the instruction of a human, especially a native speaker.
In many European countries, foreign language instruction is offered at the elementary school level. Another European program, that this nation should emulate.
Truth or deception?
Please let that die. What possible reason would I have to post a falsehood? I stand on my statement.
Stop defending deception and lying or people will see you as a deceiver
How does Lloyd perceive Charles? I suspect he works or worked for the CIA since he says he worked for the government or on government contracts and has had so many short-term jobs around the world in one country after another.
Too late, Diane, most of us already see him as such.
Please let it die. I have never and will never “defend” deception. Deception occurs in war, politics, and other types of human conflict. The fact that “deception and lying” occurs, does not mean that I defend these activities. Be Fair.
Charles If I may, and if you are not deliberately involved in deception, the only other option is that you don’t recognize it when it IS present; and in repeating it, you just pass it on.
I have never worked for the CIA, nor any other intelligence organization. I have served in the US Air Force, the State Department, the Defense Department, and the Commerce Department. I have also done contract work, with the US government, and I served proudly in Iraq/Afghanistan (civilian) . I have also worked for ARAMCO Oil in Saudi Arabia. I am on a military project now, at the Pentagon.
And that work history screams that you are allegedly working for a US intelligence agency (a job that is all about deception and deceit) off the books as a contract employee.
Contract employees are the ones hired to do all the dirty work that is illegal. And if caught, those contract employees are the ones that the intelligence agency will claim they knew nothing about.
What, who is Charles? We don’t know any Charles. We never hired or paid any Charles.
Even an assassin for hire can be proud of his or her accomplishments in that profession.
My father-in-law is a retired Lt. Colonel in the Soviet army. There is no way, that I could get the security clearance, necessary for intelligence work. I am a telecom engineer, and not some spy. Get a life.
Having a Lt. Colonel in the Soviet Army only means you have connections and would make a great double agent.
You know, Lloyd, I was thinking the same thing.
Look at it this way, out of touch billionaires: The human brain is designed to learn from interacting with other humans. Facial expressions, emotions, social hierarchies, creativity… If you put all the kids on computers without teachers, they won’t learn anything and won’t be able to operate your machines to make you a profit! Stop shooting yourselves in the proverbial foot.
Notice that this issue took place against the backdrop of Pearl-Cohn High School being forced by legislative fiat to teach algebra to all students. The high stakes testing is the problem. The idea that a bureaucratic process can take precedence over a teacher’s judgement lies at the base of this issue.
If a machine can do something for a child, we should use the machine. Unfortunately for those who would replace teachers because machines are cheaper, you will need more teachers due to the constraints placed on the system. Remember when computers were going to make paper obsolete? A librarian at a local college recounted the 700% increase in paper usage after periodicals were available only on electronic devices. Computers do not save labor, they create it.
These days when human teachers teach, it’s called malpractice (you’re supposed to be just a guide at the side). But when computers teach, it’s OK. Why aren’t we telling computers to be guides at the side?
“Holographic Teachers”
Holographic teachers
Generous with time
Programmatic features
Virtuely sublime!
Interesting. This year my junior year son because of space issues and teacher issues was told he likely would be put one of his semester blocks into an online class. I called the school and said I am usually not a noise generator but that is not an option. It has been teachers not computers that have sparked his interest in certain subjects and motivate him to learn and do well.