A reader recently noted that the multi-billion dollar Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative had hired Dr. Bror Saxberg to lead their efforts “to improve and accelerate the use of learning science and ‘learning engineering.” Before joining the CZI in 2017, Saxberg was “Chief Learning Officer” at the for-profit Online Kaplan “University,” where he worked for eight years. Before that, he was “Chief Learning Officer” for nine years at Michael Milken’s for-profit virtual charter chain K12 Inc., which is notorious for high atttrition and poor results. He also co-authored a book with Rick Hess of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. The announcement said that he is “widely known through education for his work on the science of learning,” but I confess I never heard of him until now.
What is a “learning engineer?” Let Bror Saxberg explain it.
Read the article to understand. Here is a nugget.
“We need learning engineers. By this phrase (first used, as far as I am aware, in the 1960’s by Herbert Simon, the computer-scientist and Nobel-prize winning economist), we mean people who are deliberately trained and focused on designing and systematically improving learning environments at scale in measurable ways. They make use of the current and new science of how learning and motivation work, and they do collect careful measurements, but the focus is on improving success and impact at scale, within constraints (economic, regulatory, practical), not research per se.
“If we are designing a new chemical factory, we very likely don’t want chemists designing that plant: they’re neither experienced nor interested in regulatory, safety, or economic issues, nor do they possess the mix of mechanical and other skills needed to do the job. That’s why there’s a demand for a large group of chemical engineers: approximately 30 thousand of them currently (rounding to the nearest thousand or so) work in the US.
“There are approximately zero thousand true learning engineers working in the US, rounding to the nearest thousand, who are trained and following learning science, and also working at scale within real-world constraints to design, build, and measurably iterate based on outcomes. The lack of folks like this will hold back the entire enterprise of implementing more efficient, effective, higher-yield learning environments: we will miss targeting learning efforts on what experts actually decide and do (versus what they merely say they decide and do); we will continue to include inefficient methods for learning that cause many to fail unnecessarily; we will use technology in more arbitrary rather than targeted ways (which, in failing to produce intended outcomes while being “cool”, will cause investment to continue to cycle from boom to bust); we will not generate valid and reliable evidence that we could use to target interventions early and effectively (and, indeed, we may drown in bad data that we “should” be using).
“We can do better than this. We can begin to train more people on learning engineering fundamentals, to improve their own decision-making as teachers, teacher-trainers (teachers have minds too, so this is its own learning engineering challenge), purchasing decision-makers, publishers, edtech developers, venture and other funders, philanthropists, policymakers and more. We can begin laying out more clearly what learning environments would look like if they had been well-designed as learning engineered environments, and hold folks increasingly accountable to reach that standard. We can become more alert to the quality and use of learning and learning interventions data, so that we are aware of what evidence is “good enough” to make real decisions about learning environments, either at scale or for individual students.”
Well, you would not want chemists to design a new chemical factory, nor would you want teachers to design a school of the future.
Get ready for the Learning Engineers. They are coming to redesign your workplace and your life.
Can we ask for a practical demonstration of “Learning Engineering” before we unleash this new wave of innovation on our children, teachers, and schools? In one state, school district, in one school? Anywhere?
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Zuckerbergs speech patterns are bot like in that one wonders…where the heck did this kid come from? Listening to this fluke I was trying to visualize what this person would look like if I did not know who was speaking.
You cannot tell if Zuckerberg is from the northeast or the flaky west coast. The kid has a speech pattern that spells fake news and he has now learned the game of deception
Zuckerberg speaking to Chan must be like listening to my audio scope hoping to hear aliens but instead its really the zuckerbergs!
Zuckerberg is so FULL of HIMSELF and he has NO CLUE, too.
I read it all.
This is 80% BS and 20% wishful thinking !
I read it, too. It’s just BS wrapped in tech language to deceive.
Id say it’s 100% BS
Lots of wishful thinking is BS
But I think it’s more than wishful thinking, unless you mean wishful in the sense of the people running shams like k12 Inc wishing they had more profits.
Reblogged this on Nonpartisan Education Group.
Saxborg is chief of learning, all right.
Learning how to engineer a higher and higher salary for himself each time he moves from a failed venture.
Milken ever more money from from the public schools.
The Learning Engineer
The Learning Engineer
Is learning, have no fear,
That schools are where it$ at
The way of getting fat
The Learning Engineer
Is Milken public schools
With software and with gear
A load of techy tools
The Learning Engineer
Is engineering job
That has a Milken peer
With tendancy to rob
BINGO. Love your poem, SomeDAM Poet.
Thanks.
Glad you like it.
Is there ever going to be a recognition in ed reform circles that ed tech salespeople are self-interested?
It’s not an attack. It’s just the nature of selling product.
This is childish. It’s childish to pretend that Zuckerberg has no business interest in selling ed tech to public schools. He does. It doesn’t mean he’s “bad”. He could actually believe this is the most amazing magic ever on the face of the planet- good salespeople always do believe.
But adults have an obligation to not pretend it’s all from the goodness of his heart. That’s a fairy tale.
An Atlanta area school district just paid 4.5 million dollars to consultants for personalized learning. Can we stop pretending these people are volunteers? It’s not true.
The US Department of Education ESPECIALLY needs to stop promoting this to school districts as fact. It’s sales and marketing and I’m not paying them to sell product to my son’s school. Back off. Stop with the hard sell. Be honest brokers. Do your jobs.
What do you mean by “recognition”? I have no doubt at all that ed rephormers know perfectly well that ed tech peddlers are self-interested. But will they admit that out loud? Hope you’re not holding your breath.
I don’t think they all do. Tech companies have been very, very good at branding. There’s a reluctance to see them as ordinary businesses.
Apple did a marketing promotion the other day in a public school. It wasn’t even subtle. They’re selling devices. Ask yourself if a food service contractor would be treated like that. Ask yourself if a school would basically shut down for a day to promote Gordon Foods and all of media would go along with it as if it’s some magical “gift” to the unwashed masses who are yearning to breathe free.
KIDS aren’t even this gullible about this.
Actually, when people like Zuckerberg misrepresent their motives, it does mean they are bad — if one considers dishonesty bad.
I think then you get into “he’s bad”, “no, he’s good!” and you’ve left the realm of selling product, which is what this IS.
This to me is the problem. They set this up as “bad or good” when that should never have been the issue because that can never be resolved or determined.
They can have “good”. I don’t know if they’re good- I don’t know them. The thing is I shouldn’t rely on testimonials to their goodness, especially from their employees, and especially when making decisions that involve billions of dollars and thousands of hours of work from teachers and students.
Ed reformers are wrong. Student and teacher time and work has value. Experiments involve downside risk. Always have and always will. Arne Duncan is wrong. It isn’t, actually, “plus/and”. It’s often “either/or”.
My son is in a “personalized learning” science class. He doesn’t get two science classes. He gets one- the experimental one. He doesn’t have TIME for two even if they had a spare teacher.
If you point out that Zuckerberg is dishonest, you haven’t left the realm of selling product.
All you have done is point out that his claimed rationale (in this case for his education ventures) is not actually the true one.
As we saw recently when Zuckerberg was forced to testify, it has a big effect when the public discovers that Zuckerbeg has not been honest.
I think most people understand –and accept –that he is trying to make money. What a lot of people have failed to grasp until fairly recently is that the fellow has not been honest about either his operations or his motives.
Ignorance in the White House reflected in the 30’s something billionaire. The top “learning engineer” is still Socrates but I guess Z doesn’t care to learn anything about the history of education and educational psychology.
What’s a “learning engineer?”
An arrogant know-nothing who never taught a day in their life
What’s a learning Engineer?
Someone who was too dumb to become either a teacher or a real engineer.
Good one, SDP, and they earn more than a teacher and real engineer combined.
Another good one from you, SDP. You’re brilliant!
YES!
Ed reformers move in and out of these jobs in a tight circle. They go from the public side to the private side to the “philanthropic” side over and over and over. It’s the same people.
That doesn’t mean they are per se discredited. But if you’re spending public school district money based solely on their advice you are a fool. You need more than that. You should DEMAND more than that. You are the customer. They have the burden.
We have been sold this idea that we somehow have to grateful to the Best and Brightest for deigning to enter our schools and get in front of our kids and pitch product. We don’t. Our kids are doing THEM a favor. It’s THEIR time and THEIR work that is being used to hone these products. And we’re paying for the product.
Public schools are a HUGE market. Use that leverage. Any other customer would.
Frankly they should be GIVING you the devices because you’re giving them the students. Trust me, they’ll make it up on the content and platform side. They’re not in the charity business. They’ll “monetize” something- they always do.
Smells like charlatan.
Just finished reading the article. Somebody should do an audio version in the voice of Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove. Or the voice of Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz.
Engineers can build all types of neat gadgets. Some of them are useful, and others are a waste. The sooner products reach the market the potential profit is greater. School districts that jump on the bandwagon too soon may be putting their young people in educational “peril,” which is unfair to young people that the state has the responsibility to educate. Our young people are entitled to a free public education. They did not sign up to be guinea pigs for tech companies. Shortchanged students should consider filing lawsuits. This may curb some of the reckless adoption policies of school districts. Tech companies are taking advantage of all of us because our laws lag behind the growth of new products.
Is is at least possible, if not probable, that collective lawsuits against test companies or VAM legislation, or charter invaders, etc., could force the law to catch up…
ALL THIS technology has really “NARROWED the MINDS and SOULS” of so many. It’s scary.
Narrowing is a good word for what he’s after. This guy is definitely out to redefine education. It isn’t just about selling edtech. It’s about reconceptualizing the “learning environment” to emphasize “efficiency and scale.” All of his recent jobs in the education business have been based on education as “delivery.” It’s a reductive approach, like the standards/test/punish approach of Arne Duncan and friends, only worse. His philosophy of education is all about downloading knowledge and decision-making ability into a BRAIN. He isn’t really interested in educating people, just preparing their brains to do something–preferably something useful in meeting current social and economic needs. That’s the impression I get from listening to ten minutes of one of his keynote speeches on YouTube. In addition to founding the category of “learning engineer,” he’s trying to make the world look at education as a simple matter of no-nonsense transfer of expertise. That’s where the edtech comes in.
>
“Efficiency and scale” may work for robots and even some sequential learning tasks, but I remain a sceptic of any assertions of value of tech in “big idea” subjects” and the quality of instruction with humans long term.
Agreed. This guy’s interested in TRAINING, not education. It looks like I spoke too soon when I said he wants to completely reconceptualize education for the worse. That’s only partly true–the “for the worse” part is still true. But I listened to his TedX talk on YouTube and it turns out he’s just using bits and pieces of cognitive science and research on expertise to promote educational technology.
In the talk he pays lip service to deliberate practice and feedback, but he immediately funnels those legitimate concepts into a spiel about how technology can vastly enable both to achieve desired learning outcomes. Practice and assessment are merged. This is the basis of the non-personal personalized learning that’s coming into vogue. He implies that “tedious” deliberate practice in real life can be replaced by more efficient online learning that will take less time and guarantee better outcomes.
Bottom line: He really is just an edtech shill.
He does have a skewed view of what real education is, but that’s completely beside the point of justifying online programming to replace teachers.
The education reform movement was never about learning. The charlatans who led this ‘movement’ were — one and all —sycophants of the billionaire oligarchs that knew that an informed public who KNOWS history and shares the knowledge of the past IS necessary for a democracy to thrive. http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/hirsch.pdf
Make no mistake about what occurs when LIARS RUN THE SHOW!
It IS the ruling cabal’s MOST IMPORTANT GOAL— to dumb the country down! It is not just about raking in the money that the Federal government gives to promote the “common good,” — although the priviazation of our LEARNING institutions would line their pocket$!
Now — like they did to destroy our schools — they offer magic elixirs, NO EVIDENCE of real learning skills required! https://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html All the ‘experts’ put in charge of “change”, do the OPPOSITE !
THEY IMPEDE learning THE SKILLS that our people NEED to do any job. INCOME EQUALITY WILL WORSEN, and that is what they want — An Ignorant ,unskilled population what will serve them. They REQUIRE an unskilled citizenry, — stressed and frightened, who will be desperate for ‘change’ and will elect leaders who promise, and promise and promise…
Empty promises and lies, and ‘Orwellian’ names like “Chief Learning Officer” is all we can expect at a time when at the TOP OF THE HEAP, is a consummate swindler, who is filing the MOST CRUCIAL GOVERNMENT departments that provide information and services to our people— with the worst, unqualified and corrupt people to do the job. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/opinion/trumps-best-people-are-the-worst.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion-editorials NO EVIDENCE of qualifications or knowledge necessary.(Betsy DeVos is not even mentioned here:)
Look who he picked to run the Department of Veterans Affairs, which provides health care to more than nine million vets and is the largest federal department after the Pentagon. Look who he picked to run the important Office of Management and Budget and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau..Mick Mulvaney clearly shows his intentions, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/mulvaney-consumer-financial-protection-bureau.html. At a speech before the American Bankers Association on Tuesday, Mulvaney extolled the practice of pay-to-play public service! Proud of his unethical behavior he actually BRAGGED that “he would only meet with lobbyists who gave money to his campaign. He also encouraged bankers — many of whom have given generously to him — to let their needs be known to lawmakers.”
The liar-in-chief, this swindler who promised to empty the swamp is doing the opposite.
HE IS THE MODEL!
How different is it when the ‘expert’ that the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative choses has worked for for nine years at a failed for-profit virtual charter chain.which is notorious for high attrition and poor results and writes for the American Enterprise Institute.!!!
Sorry it went up twice. It did not appear when Ifirst posted it.
Unless I miss my guess (which is entirely possible!) parents and public schools will push back against the hard sell, inevitably.
So we really don’t need ed reformers to do critical analysis. Someone else will.
Then we’ll get the same shocked and amazed response we got from them when they crazily over-reach on privatization or the Common Core or testing or literally all their other projects. Because they never learn anything.
This cycle has become as regular as rain. They go crazily off a cliff and “the public” in public schools call a halt and they call us all “Luddites” or “defenders of the status quo”, or coddled and over-protective “moms” or some other insult that goes to their complete contempt for the “public” part of publlic schools.. Then they do it again.
Talk about “Frederick Tayloring” education! Hasn’t this been tried before and proven to have failed miserably…scalably, and measurably! Can’t they find someone who actually understands how learning works to run things like this?
If they actually found such a person, that person would never work for them.
But they were never even looking for such a person.
Saxberg is precisely the person they were looking for.
Ian, excellent point about the return of Taylorism, the social engineer who pioneered time and motion studies a century ago.
“We can begin laying out more clearly what learning environments would look like if they had been well-designed as learning engineered environments, and hold folks increasingly accountable to reach that standard. ”
I think I’ll throw up. This is getting way too far away from the idea that teachers are professionals. More worthless accountability is just what teachers need before everyone quits. Announcement: Teacher shortage is getting worse and nobody knows why!!
It’s all about replacing teachers with bots
Pearsonalized Learning
When teachers all are gone
The bots will teach the children
Shock them when they’re wrong
Like Dr. Stanley Milgram
“We can begin laying out more clearly what learning environments would look like if they had been well-designed as learning engineered environments, and hold folks increasingly accountable to reach that standard. ”
Huh? We could define what they looked like if we had designed what they look like. Does this explanation sound circular to anyone else? What the heck is a “learning engineered environment”?
I find this so fascinating… both the proposition that there be people dedicated to designing new learning environments and our community’s response to the proposition. And I say “our” community because I consider myself very much in alignment with Diane’s attack on misguided corporate reform. But every now and then, I feel that our community shuts down dialogue on an issue simply because the messenger wrote a book with Rick Hess or because the message is tainted with some reformy rhetoric.
So I will start out by stating a bunch of things that I think we all agree on:
1) schools are not factories and should not be compared to chemical factories
2) as Diane alludes, if I were building a new chemical factory, I probably wouldn’t want a chemical engineer designing it who has no experience working in a factory as a chemist.
3) the hubris that only outsiders can “fix” education is very problematic
4) the notion that public education is so “broken” that there is a crisis is also problematic.
5) the proposition that learning engineers will “generate valid and reliable evidence” to guide innovation is a tough sell when time and time again we have seen invalid and unreliable data spun by reformers to promote private agendas?
But I also found a lot of the proposition to be spot on… and have to ask a bunch of questions of our community:
1) Who are the learning engineers today? I expect the answer is every classroom teacher, university folks, home grown district folks, textbook manufacturers
2) Is the argument that our current approach seems “arbitrary” worth discussing?
3) Do most districts currently have a healthy decision making process that implements changes in a healthy, sustainable way? Do they include the teacher voice at every step? Do they include a plan to pilot the change first? Do they transparently monitor progress? Do they transparently assess the change at the end of implementation?
4) Do most districts have very capable people trained and able to lead change?
5) Do the accelerating changes in technology assisted living make massive changes in education inevitable?
6) If so, who will be involved in designing and implementing those changes?
7) Is it important to discuss this?
8) If so, how do progressive minded people reclaim ownership over innovation and change while rejecting privatization and profiteering?
I appreciated Diane’s last line asking for a demonstration of where learning engineering is working… I hope that this isn’t disingenuous sarcasm. I expect there are well run districts out there who are embracing innovation and change, who are transparent in their change management, who allow it to be driven by teachers and other educators, who are not arbitrary, who are not operating in crisis mode all the time. I expect there are already “learning engineers” out there doing their thing. I would LOVE to see more stories about such districts.
” I expect there are well run districts out there who are embracing innovation and change, who are transparent in their change management, who allow it to be driven by teachers and other educators, who are not arbitrary, who are not operating in crisis mode all the time. I expect there are already “learning engineers” out there doing their thing. I would LOVE to see more stories about such districts.”
Let’s take this a step back, Denis.
Why the big need for “change”, even if that “change” is “transparent” and “driven by teachers”?
There is an old saying “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”
I believe you’ll find that in the “successful” districts, i.e., usually the middle to upper SES districts but not always, change comes very slowly, and for a very good reason. They stick with what works and seek to continue with what they know works. One had better have pretty good proof of the benefits of any kind of change before the attempting a pilot of the change. Now, little changes by the teachers will always be occurring in the classroom, I’m talking major changes. Major changes just don’t happen very often. Again for a good reason.
Go with what you know works.
And no, it hasn’t resulted in schools being the same now as they were 100 years ago, that’s a load of crap, a big lie, like so many other big lies put out by those who seek to destroy public education, but that’s for another post.
What you said.
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback Duane, I think we agree that a rush to change is not good practice and that the premise created by the reform movement that our system is failing is self-serving non-sense.
But I believe that change is both needed and desired on two fronts: 1) the nature of work is changing and requires changes to our curriculum (and not in the direction that we have been going for the last 18 years) and 2) the nature of the tools available to teachers and students is changing and we want to take advantage of them.
And, in part thanks to the reform movement, upper SES districts are not managing this change well at all. I have too many friends teaching in “good” districts complaining about a barrage of crappy, top down, wasteful changes. So this is why I would love to highlight the districts that are not reactionary. What are they doing well and how?
Pure baloney.
“Now that mastery matters much more economically and socially, we need accurate and frequent indications of where each learner is and where the issues are so we can intervene sooner, before learners are far off their path to mastery. This means our evidence gathering (likely less and less about assessments, and more and more about other data collected about practice, feedback, and interactions) has to become more frequent, and more accurately tied to what experts decide and do (i.e., valid and reliable).”
Mastery is being used as if there is one right answer to every question in education and in life. Add the hope for efficient and effective paths to interventions and you have a screwed up view of learning, cognition, and “success.”
The author gives lip service to informed “citizenship” as a main purpose of education, dumping that for enthusiasms for career prep.
Reverse engineering was tried as a methodology for dreadful Common Core/College-Career-ready Standards. The writer does not know or does not care about the difference between education and training.
I was reminded of the arguments of Jerome Bruner in the Process of Education back in the sixties who thought everything about education should be grounded in world-class expertise in the “disciplines.”
I am finding an effort to revive those general ideas about expertise and mastery in this pitch for “learning engineers.” The pitch is designed to build support some combination of social and mechanical engineering as the basis for education. There is no room for studies in the arts and humanities in this proposed panacea for education, no room for learning to ask questions question not just master answers.
Meanwhile, the forthcoming July Education Summit sponsored by Relay Graduate School of Education and Angela Duckworth’s Character Lab is also making much of “expertise” as the master concept for thinking about education, with motivation, drive, grit, growth mindset, zest and the rest essential for “success.” The models of success for these two sponsors are: (a) athletes at the top of their game, (b) people in business who listen to the authors of best selling books, (c) Doug Lemov for his “championship” no-nonsense ideas about securing absolute compliance to his rules for students and teachers and (d) Duckworth whose scientific credentials are impeccable, but whose inventory of Character Lab playlists for students omits truth-telling.
“. . .but whose inventory of Character Lab playlists for students omits truth-telling.”
Ain’t that the truth!
As usual excellent commentary, Laura!
EEk! I like to refer to teaching as engineering because, as a trained engineer, I see the same creative problem solving skills of an engineer based on a combination of good science and contextual information applied by a skillful teacher . That is not what I see in the information about this learning engineer.
His quip about the difference between a chemical engineer and a chemist is true to a degree, but the chem engineer does not tell the chemist how to do their job. The chem engineer scales up the reaction to industrial levels. The analogy also does not work in teaching because the scaling up problem has to do with applying ideas in one socioeconomic / emotive situation into one that is vastly different with little tailoring. That scaling up may work with substituting one Pyrex vessel with another but not working with substituting humans!
Tanks for illuminating that analogy. Maybe the best engineers design with humans in mind, but even then it’s the people who use those designs that make the difference. Seems like he’s trying to remove the human element from education.
Aside from seeing The Social Network, I’d been reading up quite a bit about Zuckerberg, & pegged him as not to be trusted from the get-go (Bill Gates Jr., as it were).
Never got on Facebook, never trusted it (sadly, another time proven right when I’d rather be wrong). & look at that big photo-Oprah in Newark w/our favorites: Cory Booker & Chris Christie; precisely, what did all Zuckerberg’s money buy the Newark public schools &–more to the point–how were they actually improved for the good of the students & the community?
The last is a rhetorical question; you all know the answer.
The term” Learning Engineer” is rebranding the age-old term “propagandist” in an attempt to legitimize evil, old-fashioned brainwashing and propaganda.
During Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China, a similar attempt changed the names of brutal concentration camps to “Re-education Camps”.
“The camps had a significant effect on China during and after the Revolution. So many university and primary school teachers were sent to the camps that the Chinese educational system almost ground to a complete stop. Illiteracy rates skyrocketed after the Revolution, especially in rural areas, and many schools had to rely on certain gifted students to take over the work of their absent teachers.”
http://www.pwf.cz/archivy/texts/articles/china-re-education-camps_2198.html
Anchee Min grew up in Mao’s China. She lived through all of this crap and wrote about it in her 1992 New York Times Notable Book of the Year and Carl Sandburg award-winning memoir “Red Azalea”.
And it depresses and angers her that the same thing is happening in the United States today. She left China for the US back in the 1980’s to escape the mind-numbing insanity that is now sweeping across America.
http://www.ancheemin.com/
I tend to think that another reader was very perceptive in likening Bror Saxberg to Frederick Winslow Taylor, the noted innovator of time-and-motion studies that sought to evaluate workers by their speed and accuracy at performing menial tasks and thus to set an arbitrary standard for what all workers should do. Taylor was an efficiency expert and he had a profound impact on education, leading the way to standardization.
No question he’s a disciple of Taylor. His role at Kaplan apparently included figuring out ways the company could reduce costs by minimizing instructional inputs (e.g., replacing a workbook and hour-long professionally produced video with eight Power Point slides to produce the same test scores). Reducing waste in a company isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but even some big corporations reject Taylorism these days.
Applying it to schools is even trickier. His notion of efficiency, scalability, and training systems completely bypasses the idea of educating children. From what I gather, even the highly systematized Prussian education reforms that still hold sway after more than two hundred years were founded on human values and the child’s personal development. His approach ignores the child, except as a skill accumulator and career seeker.
Is learning engineer someone who implements the health, safety and ergonomics requirements? Oh, who am I kidding, there are no national requirements for safety and ergonomics in schools. In California the best they came up with is at least 960 sq.ft. rooms, but if this cannot be provided, then, well, ok. And “adequate” lightning. Nothing about desks or chairs or ventilation or heating. Barns are created with better specs than schools.
Saxberg’s analogy of the chemical factory-chemist and chemical engineer is exactly what we should expect from an ed-reformer. The chemical factory produces a product; something you can touch or eat or put in a bottle. The product is subject to stringent quality rules. The ingredients of the chemical product are also subject to stringent quality rules. If an ingredient doesn’t meet specifications; it is rejected at the factory. This analogy is, of course, the exact opposite of what should happen when we talk about kids. They are not uniform products when they graduate. When they enter school they are not subject to a list of specifications prior to acceptance.
I think you are exactly right.
It’s a manufacturing or production mentality –the same mentality that other techies like Bill Gates have.
Gates thing was to standardize the schools and students with Common Core.
When Saxberg says learning engineering what he has in mind is as a model is industrial engineering which is meant to optimize the manufacturing or production process.
The whole manufacturing/production model is just wrong for education.
“We need learning engineers. By this phrase (first used, as far as I am aware, in the 1960’s by Herbert Simon, the computer-scientist and Nobel-prize winning economist), we mean people who are deliberately trained and focused on designing and systematically improving learning environments at scale in measurable ways.”
Well, let me help that “learning engineer” out. The first step in the process of measuring anything is to determine the standard unit of measurement of the thing being measured. So figure that standard unit of measurement of learning out and you’ve got that scalability made!
Good luck!
Hell be freezing over before you figure that out.
Why am I not surpirised that the term learning engineer was invented by an economist? (one with a fake Nobel Prize to boot
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-economics-nobel-isnt-really-a-nobel/
)
Computer scientists like Saxborg actually have a lot in common with economists. Both claim/pretend to be scientists but are not. And both know nothing about real measurement.
Interesting, SDP! Thanks for the link!
The descendants of Nobel are actually very ticked off about the way the Swedish bank latched onto the Nobel name.
https://www.alternet.org/economy/there-no-nobel-prize-economics
The point made by von Hayek is a very good one. The award lends economists an air of authority that they do not deserve, which they parlay into money and influence over economic policy (in the White house, for example) that effects millions of people, sometimes quite negatively.
As Bill Black has pointed out, the Econ award has been given over the years (in one case simultaneously!) to people who claimed contradictory things.
It really is just a joke, especially compared to the real Nobel prize in physics, chemistry, medicine and physiology and literature.
Saxborg (intentional spelling) has contempt for education experts.
At the beginning of one of his talks on learning engineering, he says
You do expect your chemical engineers to work with modern chemistry. If the guy you’re hiring to work on your new pharmaceutical factory is really excited about phlogiston theory, the latest 17th century innovation, you will back away screaming. It is not a good environment.
Of course, the clear implication is that education experts are stuck back in the 17th century touting the wonders of phlogiston theory.
This fellow is a pompous blowhard who is pontificating on stuff that is far outside his own area of expertise (computer science(sic))
When non doctor’s pretend to be doctors, we call them quacks. What a surprise that someone like Saxborg once worked for Michael Milken (who spent time in jail for felony securities fraud) at Milkens K12, Inc company.
Just like David Coleman, who said publicly that he was proud of being unqualified. Yet people like them get influential, high paying jobs and stay in them for years. It’s enough to make your head swim.
I think teachers and teacher organizations like teacher unions need to be much more aggressive in going after the charlatans who are attacking and undermining their profession, much the way doctors have gone after and rooted out quacks in their own profession.
Teachers have been far too nice and accommodating to the education quacks.
These people need to be exposed for who they are, who they work for ( eg, that they have worked for convicted fraudsters like Milken) and who they are not.
SDP: “Teachers have been far too nice and accommodating to the education quacks.”
I agree, however, doctors make a good salary. They have a strong medical association behind them. Teachers are barely surviving and are afraid of loosing their jobs if they speak the truth of what is happening or what needs to change. That is one reason that I continuously send emails to my state senator and representative. I feel a need to speak out for those who are afraid to do so.
You are right that individual teachers can’t speak up, which makes it all the more important that their union reps do.
Unfortunately, many if the union reps (would are not really representing the unions at all) have been in bed with the quacks, accepting money from Gates and other billionaires and acting as early cheerleaders for Common Core , standardized testing and VAM. These people are a major part of the problem and are actually worse than the quacks because they normalize the quackery.
When ever anyone criticizes a teachers’ union my hackles stand up, because it is obvious that the critic knows little to nothing about the complexity of one of the major democratic teachers’ union.
Teachers’ unions are layered. There are the local branches (for each school district that has a teachers’ union), then there is the state level, and last is the national level.
In school districts that have local branches, the members vote for their reps at each school and those reps are working teachers that attend (after the school day ends) the monthly rep meetings of the local to discuss issues at the local level and vote on the options to act or not act on these issues — the dues members pay do not all go to the national level.
The dues are divided up between the locals, states, and the national level. Sometimes, the local’s rep council also votes to support or oppose something the state or national wants to do about an issue — how to spend money to fight something that might be bad for teachers and/or children.
Example:
For thirty years, I belonged to ARE (local level), CTA (state level), NEA (national level) … all one labor union with a little less than three million members spread across the country.
For a few years, I was one of the elected reps at the high school where I taught and I went to ARE’s monthly rep council meetings. I think I was also one of the elected reps for one of the two middle schools where I taught before I transferred to the high school.
ARE = Association of Rowland Educators (one local in one school district – each local negotiations the control for the teachers they represent in that one district). When I was there, ARE had about 700 members in a district with 19,000 students.
CTA = California Teachers Association
NEA = National Education Association
NEA gets most if not all of the criticism and complaints for not doing what someone teaching at a local level don’t like. or someone that no longer belongs to that teachers’ union, or someone that belongs to one of NEA’s rivals or never belonged to a labor union and hates all labor unions because they follow FOX news or Sinclare Media and have been programmed to blame labor unions for everything that happens in the country or the world.
Every local branch (in each school district) of the union has its own elected president. At the local level, the president is a teacher who is still teaching. They don’t stop teaching when they are elected the president of a local.
Each state level has its own elected president and California’s CTA president is Erick C. Heins. If you want to know who the NEA’s presidents are for all the other states, you can Google that info.
The national level, NEA, only has one elected president and that is Randi Weingarten.
For anyone that reads this comment, I’d appreciate it if when you criticize a teachers’ union, please mention what level you are complaining about and realize that even if Randi does something you don’t like, that doesn’t mean the other almost 3 million members and thousands of locals (ther are more than 13,000 school districts in the US) and 50 state branches (if NEA is in all 50 states) doesn’t always agree, but Randi might have the majority of union members that support her because she’s doing what the majority thinks is right and if Randi isn’t supported by the majority, she can be voted out in the next election for NEA’s president.
In addition, a local can vote to do the opposite or something else that is completely different than what the state and national level is doing. If what a local votes to do is not legal, a lawyer for the state branch will offer advice that what the local plans to do is illegal and the local rep council should sit down and discuss it more.
Lloyd
Here is specifically what I was referring to
NEA, AFT, Common Core, and VAM
https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/11/09/nea-aft-common-core-and-vam/
I don’t know a lot about the unions, but I think Mercedes Schneider probably does.
But I don’t believe one has to know much to recognize that the policies in question did not represent the interests of the union members.
IMHO, these policies actually sold teachers out –quite literally, given that money was accepted from Gates .
I don’t understand that and probably never will.
Lord Acton said it best, “Power corrupts, Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
NEA and AFT are the national levels of the two largest teachers’ unions. IF we apply Lord Action’s quote, then what is happening at the top is easily explained.
The power that comes with being the presidents of the NEA and AFT has corrupted them.
Does a Learning Engineer occupy an EdLab?
Yes, indeed he does
Roland ‘Nobel-less Ed lab’ Fryer” (apologies to the late great Warren Zevon, RIP)
Roland was a warrior from the land of the Crimson sun
An econ man for hire, fighting to be done
The deal was made at Harvard on a dark and stormy day
So he set out for the White House to join the Edu-fray
Through merit pay and testing he fought the Edu-wars
With his finger on the figure, knee-deep in the scores
For days and nights he battled, the unions and their ties
He tried to earn his living, with some help from Condi Rice
Roland the Ed Lab Fryer
Roland the Ed Lab Fryer
His comrades fought beside him, Raj Chetty and the rest
But of all the Ed Lab hires, Roland was the best
But his merit-pay experiment went belly-up to hell
That son-of-a-gun experiment, blew up his Nobel
Roland “Nobel-less Ed Lab” Fryer, Harvard’s bravest hire
They can still see his Nobel-less body stalking through the night
In the brilliant flash in Roland’s Ed Lab fryer
In the brilliant flash in Roland’s Ed Lab fryer
Roland “Nobel-less Ed Lab” Fryer
Roland “Nobel-less Ed Lab” Fryer
Roland “Nobel-less Ed Lab” Fryer
Talkin’ about the man, Roland “Nobel-less Ed Lab” Fryer
SDP,
Do you have a Chetty poem? I know you have posted a few here.
Do I have a Chetty poem?
Is Bill Gates rich? Is the sky blue? Did Arne Duncan get his gig at DOE cuz he shoots hoops?
“Chetty Pie”
To bake a Chetty pie
You pick the ripest cherries
Enticing folks to buy
“The Chetty Data Queries”
“Standard Deviations”
The Chetty-picker’s standard
Is lower than Death Valley
And even for a VAM nerd
That’s quite a lowly tally
“For Whom No bell Tolls”
A Nobel Prize in Hubris
Is what I do deserve
And though it may sound hum’rous
I’ve really got some nerve
I won’t let major sticking
Points get in my way
My trademarked Chetty-picking
Will surely win the day
And the following one was sort of made with Chetty in mind, cuz Obama loved his DAM work (although it also refers to William Sanders and his cattle model. But all these economists are basically the same)
“A way for a Manager”
A way for a manager, a plan for his
sham,
The little Economist laid down His sweet
VAM.
The stars in the White House look down
where He lies,
The little Economist, with powerful ties.
The cattle are lowing, Economist
awakes,
And little Economist, a model He makes;
I love Thee, Economist, look down from
the sky
And stay by thy cattle till morning is nigh
And Chetty also made an appearance in The Night They Drove Statricksy Down
Back with my colleague, Raj Chet-ty, when one day he called to me,
“Thomas, quick, come see, there goes the Gatesly Billee!”
Now I don’t mind I’m choppin’ stats, and I don’t care if I’m paid by the brats
You take what you need and leave the rest,
But they should never have taken the VAMmy best.
But you know that, of course
I know Diane knows what Chetty picking refers to, but for anyone who is not familiar with Chettys work, see the critique that Moshe Adler produced, which is quite devastating
http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/moshe-adler-chetty
starting at
As per Chetty et al.’s study #2:
In a nutshell, Chettys famous claims (the ones that got him all the attention, including in the White House)were dependent upon Chetty picking, which renders them invalid.