Emily Talmage describes her years as a beginning teacher: only 22, having no background in education, she was assigned to teach severely disabled students.
Now she sees a movement to put these kinds of children in front of computers and let them practice their skills online, with digital, game-based avatars. The bottom line, as it so often is, is profits…
“There really are people out there – powerful, absurdly wealthy people – who think that the best way to help hurting kids like A.J. is to isolate them on a computer, ask them to choose “thought options” from a drop-down menu, and then to collect data on their “growth.”
“Ultimately, the goal is to monetize the “evidence” they’ve gathered….
“A.J., and millions of kids like him, don’t need digital avatars. They don’t need drop-down thought-menus to choose from while they are plugged in, alone, to an electronic device. And they don’t need data-wells built on their backs that are designed to make the rich even richer.
“What they need is grown-ups – like us – to demand that the exploitation stops.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is great. Thanks for sharing. You might be interested in this also. http://www.screenfreeparenting.com/rich-get-smart-poor-get-technology-new-digital-divide-school-choice/
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“It’s all about the kids.”
What’s left unsaid is the “and how we can get rich off of them” part.
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I am not certain if your question is serious or a critique of the video presentation. In any case, you get rich by setting targets for performance of the social service, and ensure these targets can be met on a plan that guarantees a return on investment to those who put money in the pot so the social service can be offered.
You also cherry-pick who can be in the program, a feature of the preschool SIBs in Utah and Chicago where children are screened out of the program–not allowed to participate if they have severe learning problems For example,screening is done by administering the Peabody Picture Test.
You also make sure that the SIB requires a representative of the investors to sit on the board of the service provider, and in some contracts, has the power to hire and fire persons who are “not meeting expectations”–those set by the investors. Some marketing materials for SIBs promise investors a 6% to 7% return on investments.
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Well said, Michael.
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I agree. The piece is awful.
They adore Summit charter schools. Summit is the new Rocketship and it’s over-hyped exactly like Rocketship was.
Ed reformers have an entire BOOK about Rocketship. A dedicated hagiography.
They all promote pushing the Facebook platform into public schools. They have no earthly idea if it has ANY value for students yet they market it constantly.
It’s more arrogant undemocratic overreach. They believe they are the Best and Brightest and the rest of us are idiot guinea pigs.
The US Department of Ed is one of the worst offenders. They are pushing ed tech product as much or more than any vendor. it’s appalling behavior.
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All I ask is that public schools resist these sales jobs and use your own judgment.
Ed reformers are wrong. An Ivy League degree DOES NOT MEAN they know more about local schools than locals do. There are PLENTY of dumb ideas pushed by people who are supposedly brilliant.
Don’t be bullied into buying expensive garbage. Say “no”. Your local public will thank you for it and THAT’S who you serve. Not Facebook. The public.
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I could pull up 15 ed reform pieces lauding Rocketship – these same people told us classes of 100 kids with 15 dollar an hour aides was “revolutionary”
That’s the track record. Question this. DeVos and Co will smear you as “standing in the way of innovation”. Who cares? Question it anyway. That’s what we pay you for.
They’re pushing this in every school district in the country and they have no idea if it’s valuable. Don’t be bamboozled. People aren’t “digital natives”. That’s a nonsense marketing term.
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This article reminded me of my first teaching experience in a suburban jr. high school in Pennsylvania. It may also explain why I dropped teaching French. I was hired to teach an audio-lingual-visual approach using a film strip, tape recorder and a very rigid protocol which mostly amounted to playing a game of charades with adolescents as I could only use target language in the instruction. I enjoyed the students, but hated being a robot. I almost left teaching; instead, I started my masters in TESOL and never looked back. I went to work with students that really needed me, where I had autonomy, and where I achieved satisfaction because I could see the fruits of my labor
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http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/education-scam-171127083819848.html
I apologize for dropping this here Diane. I couldn’t find your email address and wanted to send you this link.
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The best teacher of human beings is another human being. I am a technologist that is against using technology to teach CAI (Computer Aided Instruction). Any enhancement can be done on DVD and a TV set. You can show a simulation on a DVD. But I would rather not use the imagination of someone else instead the kids using their own. Any simulation is using the author’s imagination and the kids not using their own.
We do not need to have everyone with his or her own laptop racing to get to the website that he teacher said, nor surfing the web during class time.
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Well stated. From what I have read total CAI has its limits. It seems to work only with motivated, older middle class students, Even then, the humanities and social sciences are far better in the hands of humans. My son took some CAI courses at a community college, and did well, but found the courses boring and one dimentional.
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yes yes yes
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