Laura Chapman writes:

 

“I think that charters, along with public schools are becoming captives of the tech industry with online education misrepresented as personalized. There is an effort to deschool education altogether by making everything a matter of choice from a menu of options leaving brick and mortar schools at the margins. Among other tools for moving in this direction are per-pupil cost analyses that include proportionate costs of buildings, maintenance, transportation and so on for specific grades, subjects, and levels of staffing. One conclusion: outsourcing music education is cheaper than offering it in school, so too for foreign languages, and AP courses.

“Charter schools, except for those operating as online schools, are too much like public schools insofar as they require investments in brick and mortar schools and land. That is one reason why so many charter operators are actually more attracted to land deals than education. Even with evidence of massive frauds, online education is marketable as the best way to do education reform with the advantage of being a big cost saver and “personalized.”

“Now add to the opportunities of deschooling education the proliferation of education dollars packaged as scholarships, vouchers, tax deductions or education savings accounts. Amazon is serving as a prototype for thinking about the parent/caregiver/student payments for educational products and services a la carte. Authorized providers would be listed in menus so purchasers see options and prices for “approved” products and service providers. Customers might view recommended interventions for specific students based on big data, prior purchases, and the (dubious) mindset of an artificial intelligence system.

“Of course, no one is talking about who approves the online catalog and the surveillance systems required to conjure recommendations. No one is talking about ways of rigging the whole system as is the case in Ohio’s ECOT online scam, or as Facebook and Amazon are known to do for a fee. No one is talking about the convergence of marketing spaces and platforms into one authorized site for spending the money in education savings accounts. Among those websites just shy of fitting the emerging view of Click it education is Great Schools (leases data to Zillow and others), and TeachThought (pays users of “Affiliate” tech products a fee).

“Florida is rolling out an online payment system for education savings accounts this year. The platform, called MyScholarShop™, will resemble Amazon, complete with parent/caregiver reviews of the authorized fare. The press release says parents: “will simply go online to the pre-approved catalog and ‘Pick It, Click It, Ship It.” The cost will be taken directly from their education savings account. Supplies, if ordered, will be delivered to customer-provided address.

“This project has been in the works with Step Up For Students, the Florida agency that distributes state money earmarked for Gardiner Scholarships for special education—nearly 10,000 students (autism spectrum disorder, muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy and spina bifida) who, on average, are allocated $10,000 each per year. These approved services include private school tuition and fees, private tutoring, occupational therapy, instructional materials and other services.

“Step Up For Students also manages the income-based Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program. Students qualify if they participate in the national free or reduced-price lunch program or if they are homeless, in foster or out-of-home care. These scholarships can offset the transportation cost to an out-of-district public school or for help pay for private school tuition. In 2017-2018, the MyScholarShop™ direct-pay platform will serve about 115,000 students

”The system will include a product and service-provider rating system “ so families can assist each other in making appropriate selections for their children.”

“The MyScholarShop™ platform is described as a Partnership with SAP Ariba and Premikati. SAP Ariba is a cloud-based system of business management, with analytics that track inventory (supplier information), performance (sales), and create digital invoices. Features of SAP Arib are available in four pricing tiers. All tiers have transaction fees, based on the volume of annual financial transactions with customers. All tiers also have a subscription fee, based on the number of documents in annual transactions with customers, and use of the technology. SAP Arib is designed to help “suppliers connect with profitable customers’ among other business services (provided in 190 countries, with three million companies).

“Premikati, Inc. provides services that cut red tape for users of the SAP Arib platform (e.g., planning, financial, contract management, legal). According to the website, Premikati has a new line of business, a national Group Purchasing Organization (GPO) for K-12 education and for non-profits.

“A GPO is designed to secure discounts with select vendors by leveraging the collective purchasing power of its members.

“Betsy Devos, Jeb Bush, and self-proclaimed gurus of disruptive innovation who love edtech are darlings of an industry estimated to be worth $365 billion dollars. Eliminating brick and mortar schools as a social, educational, and a communal asset is part of the new GERM–Global Education Reform Movement. The movement is aided by much talk about the emerging gig ( or jobless) economy where a major function of brick and mortar schools is not needed–child and adolescent care during a typical work day. That function, say entrepreneurs, will be diminished or vanish as child-care is seamlessly integrated into family friendly work facilities. WeWork in NYC is one example, and being planned for a world wide scale up by (you guessed it) an entrepreneurial billionaire.”