Nancy Bailey reports on Betsy DeVos’ trip to Europe and what she learned: Nothing. She returned convinced that American education sucks, which is what she thought before she left for Europe.
She returned convinced that education is workplace preparation, that public schools must be destroyed along with the teaching profession.
Can this GERM be quarantined?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As usual, she offers absolutely nothing to improve or in any way support any US public school, anywhere.
Instead we get another shallow, slogan-filled campaign release promoting her ideological goals that one could read at any of the ed reform lobbying shops or any conservative newspapers editorial page.
Not one worthwhile suggestion, positive program, or beneficial idea for PUBLIC schools, other than to turn them all into charter or private schools.
Ed reform offers no benefit, no value-added, no positive agenda for PUBLIC schools. Yet they absolutely dominate in the federal government, in a country where 90% of families use public schools.
How did this happen? How did 90% of families end up without any representation, voice or advocates in their own federal government?
Shouldn’t they have to offer SOMETHING to public school families, other than encouraging us to abandon public schools and attend the schools they prefer and support? Why is there such a low standard, that scolding us over and over and over to adopt their ideological preferences counts as “working”?
Now that she and her huge and expensive entourage have concluded their summer vacation tour of Europe maybe they could see their way to offering something of value to public schools in this country?
Maybe they could do some actual work on behalf of the 90% of families and students who attend the public schools that are excluded from all of their boilerplate ed reform sloganeering?
Why are we paying these people? What value do they add? They are professional scolds? We hired and pay them to lecture public school leaders and families on the superiority of private and charter schools? We already have an entire billionaire funded ed reform lobby infrastructure who fill that role. Why do we need to replicate the same thing with publicly-paid employees?
With the huge anti-labor win ed reformers just secured at the supreme court, expect more of these editorials that ignore public schools.
Public schools lost a seat at the table in DC. Now the debate will be absolutely dominated by anti-public school voices, like DeVos.
Notice how DeVos’ op ed includes not a single reference to or mention of a public school? Most of her speeches ignore public schools too, unless she’s using a “bad” public school to promote a “good” charter or private school.
That’s DC from now on. Public schools will be deliberately excluded from all policy discussions. Lawmakers will hear ONLY from the same 150 charter and voucher lobbyists. They shut down the one powerful, organized advocacy group we had. Now we’re left with boilerplate ed reform slogans on “choice” and nothing and no one for public schools.
This is a really dangerous period for public schools. Now that they;ve gutted labor unions we lost the one advocate we had who could reach lawmakers and remind them that our schools and families exist and should be valued. Hundreds of charter and voucher advocates will still be lobbying DC, but public school lobbyists will disappear.
They want one opinion, one voice, one plan, and it’s the privatization plan. Nothing else will even be debated. Public schools lose in that scenario as we know from looking at the decline and neglect of public schools in states where ed reformers dominate. Now it’s the whole country.
so directly true: small elite groups now deciding the “future” of a community, a district, a city, with no educators — but so much educator-bashing — allowed a seat at the table.
Our public schools have produced the greatest economy in history. However, oligarchs, like DeVos, the Waltons, Trumps, etc., want all the wealth for themselves. The 98% are being robbed of their fair share.
Everyone that watches how DeVos operates should understand that she is a GERMaphile as it is a way for the wealthy to exploit the working class and poor. Our country has a lot more billionaires than most other countries which makes it hard for us to combat the expansiveness of their reach. We also still have a significant middle class that, if organized, can resist and use their votes to choose those that represent the interests of the people.
Privatization does not save money, and it often costs us more to provide a less efficient and effective service. Privatization is also an assault on the middle class as privatized jobs pay less and offer reduced benefits. When the right talks about small government, they want a government that stay out of their way so the rich can do as they please. As Diane has said, “Conservatives want to conserve, not destroy.” DeVos is not a conservative. She is a biased free marketeer. In Trumplandia the goal is to privatize en masse to make a mad dash for the cash regardless of consequences. This link shows how privatization does not save money as numerous private contractors step in to pick up the slack and the cash. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/study-privatizing-government-doesnt-actually-save-money/2011/09/15/gIQA2rpZUK_blog.html?utm_term=.6af369122f55
Just a warning:
“Amid all the bellowing about charters, school choice and vouchers, a potentially more revolutionary reform movement is bubbling up. Philanthropists, state education officials, reform advocates — even charter school leaders — are examining personalized learning.”
Ed reform is going bonkers for personalized learning. The huge tech giants who are also ed reform donors are all pushing it into schools.
Soon every politician in Congress will be reciting the ed reform line on it.
They’re already shaming and scolding teachers who resist plunking kids down in front of screens for hours a day- the smear is they are old-fashioned and resistant to new ideas.
They are WILDLY overselling this, like they wildly oversell all their ideas. Please don’t let your public school be bullied into adopting this garbage that came right out of ed tech marketing department. They are selling product. They’re salespeople. Their goal is to get your public school to spend tens of thousands of dollars on their products.
The goal is to replace teachers with screens. If you read the proposals carefully and skip past the touchy-feely language cooked up in Silicon Valley marketing departments ALL personalized learning plans include huge classes and fewer teachers. They hope to get class sizes to 60 and they can do that if 30 of the 60 are in front a screen for half the day.
Please don’t fall for this.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/is-the-new-education-reform-hiding-in-plain-sight/2018/07/01/65fe6330-7b07-11e8-80be-6d32e182a3bc_story.html?utm_term=.84d764aad0cd
The US gov/Bel Biv Dental Floss
is coming out on the flip side (re: Ivy League) of the whole specialized high school diversity debate going on in NYC.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/07/03/politics/trump-administration-college-admissions/index.html
I read the article by Ms. Bailey, and the original article by Secretary DeVos. I am convinced that there is a lot that USA education can learn from the Europeans. The Finns have some terrific concepts, many of which could be emulated on this side of the Atlantic. I am especially impressed by the Swiss/German apprenticeship programs. I would like to see more public/private partnerships in education.
Betsy does not approve of Finnish education. No standardized tests. No publicly funded vouchers.
Long. Chiara has a point about the new GERM.
The promotions of “personalized learning” are unrelenting and they play on the fear that students in public schools will not be sufficiently tech-savvy to compete in the global economy–the singular and official mission of the USDE since 2007-2008. That mission corresponds to the financial melt down and aggressive marketing of STEM.
The marketing campaigns for tech are international in scope. In the United States, the marketers focus on superintendents and brand ambassadors. Brand ambassadors are usually teachers who are given free products, serve as customer reviewers, and they are called co-creators when they suggest any tweaks that improve sales. Brand ambassadors also get invited to corporate sponsored meetings to build brand loyalty. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/02/technology/silicon-valley-teachers-tech.html
The Superintendent’s version of this marketing effort has the high-minded name of the ”Education Research and Development Institute (ERDI). It says it “empowers school districts and their leaders throughout the United States to directly examine, evaluate and fundamentally influence the design and scope of educational products and services offered to American schools and their students.” Baloney and also big red flags for conflict of interest.
ERDI members get all-expenses-paid trips to trade shows and extra fees for participating in face-to-face marketing pitches dubbed “product consultations.” Superintendents in the largest districts are the source of lucrative contracts with lucrative pay-to-play arrangements (leading some to jail). https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2018/01/14/erdi-paying-school-admin-to-review-ed-products-that-those-admin-could-then-purchase/
Personalized learning is a branding label for computer delivered instruction and decision-making by algorithms, usually within an “instructional management system” designed to be plug and play. Plug and play means class rosters are uploaded with one click, so non-stop data gathering begins. The plug and play feature is being developed and marketed by IMS Global for products and services it will “certify” as interoperable. The interoperability standard is wanted to avoid the need for passwords and also in most cases, to by-pass requirements for privacy of student-level information. IMS wants all instructional modules are competency-based, with digital badges replacing grades, diplomas, and the like.
A conspicuous “platinum-level” funder of IMS Global is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Another is eLumen, a system currently marketed to higher education but expanding to elementary and secondary education. The eLumen system claims to integrate curriculum and tests, with learning outcomes monitored for individual students.
IMS Global is also supported by about 180 vendors in education, including Google, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle. Add to this list many buyers of IMS Certified products, including school districts–Houston, Texas; Volusia County, Florida; Gwinnett County, Georgia among others. IMS Global has relationships with computer-centric education agencies in Japan, the Netherlands, the EU, UK, Canada, Norway, Sweden, and Spain.
In other words, a future for education is being written as if online platforms will be the new normal, unconstrained by national or state policies and borders. That also means less opportunity for working and thinking about education in the contexts of local schools, communities, and institutions of higher education.
So far, tech-centric education in brick and mortar schools is not really personalized with the exception of student initiated projects—and these do not necessarily implicate computers.
The preferred subjects for computer-centric instructional delivery are mathematics and subjects for which there are conventional rules and paths to right answers, easy to test, and linked to a system of prerequisites and problems of different types (Formulaic essay writing, computer scoreable). Among the more sophisticated systems are those linking standards, tests, and resources for instruction with a system to monitor student and teacher performance and recommended “interventions.” For an example, see the circular diagram at https://certicasolutions.com as well as Certica’s acquisitions of existing databases and current clients.
For a bizzare example of computer-centric instructional delivery, consider Teach to One, a middle school math-only franchise offering multi-grade paths to right answers for math. Here’s the gist of how it works. A school signs a contract that requires it to provide a dedicated space (e.g., a library), Chromebooks, and other resources, including large video panels connected to the internet (like airline departure/arrival displays).
Computers decide what each student will learn, in what sequence, for the whole year, based on diagnostic tests. Every day, students check video panels to find their own “play list” of tasks and “exit slips.” At the end of the 90-minute class, their exit slips go to the central server in New York City. Computers grade the tests, then choose and post a next-day playlist of tasks and tests for each student.
In a dedicated space (typically once used as the library), students rotate among computer-assigned “learning modalities” every 30 minutes (large or small group instruction, worksheets, online). Two teachers and two aides manage over 50 students who must raise hands to ask questions or risk a penalty. Teach to One markets this as personalized learning. The priority is getting a proof of concept that can be scaled up. So far, more than 25% of 53 schools have dropped the program. “Personalized” is a marketing term for computer-centric classrooms with a large component of instructional delivery and management outsourced to computers. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/02/teach_to_one_what
_happens_when_computers_pick_what_students_learn.html
Consider the Rockership franchise, with twelve charter schools, K to grade 5. A typical day includes: Humanities, STEM, Learning Lab (practice in the 3R’s), and Enrichment (art is one of several). A typical classroom has about 37 students, two teachers and several aides. Teachers of math also teach STEM. Teachers of ELA also teach the Humanities. Students spend from 80 to 100 minutes a day at computers. Software tracks each student for their minutes online and the percentage of completed tasks.
The Rocketship day begins with a “launch” in a gym-like space, with reminders, cheerleading, and follow-the-leader activity (while dodging backpacks). Quiet time is enforced most of the day. Rocketship markets this as personalized learning. The franchise seeks profits and plans to expand, aided by a $12.6 million grant for “replication” from Secretary DeVos. http://progressive.org/public-school-shakedown/betsy-devos-just-gave-12-6-million-grant-to-rocketship-chart/
In a recent exchange with a former student, I discovered that the University of Cincinnati has a lab with two education projects. The first is being conducted with an unnamed “industry partner” to determine how 6 to 8-year-old children respond to virtual reality programming with a (vague) relationship to STEM. https://ucsim.uc.edu/blog/portfolio-item/study-virtual-reality-children/
In an another project, this center is working with a local school district to design an avatar-based training program for new teachers with performance metrics for evaluation. You can see components of the system here. https://ucsim.uc.edu/blog/portfolio-item/oak-hills-school-district-pre-service-teacher-training-and-evaluation-using-opensimulator/
Another version of avatar-based teacher training and competency testing has been developed by Education Testing Service (ETS). The ETS system, called NOTE, requires a candidate to teach a “virtual class” of five to six avatar students for six to seven minutes with evidence of ability to use “high leverage” skills, such as presenting content, leading a group discussion, and interacting with each avatar. NOTE is marketed as an “advanced technology” developed by the US Military with “simulated students and trained, calibrated human ‘inter-actors’ who use standardized protocols.” https://www.ets.org/note
In other words, the distinction between education and training has been made to vanish in favor of securing data for a teaching test with programmable avatars.
For much more on this issue, subscribe to Wrench in the Gears. You will be rewarded with mind-numbing Orwellian examples of tech in education, amazing data-based graphics, analyses that show who is pushing specific projects and products. Best of all is this savvy parent’s understanding of the values and entitlements claimed by the tech magnates. https://wrenchinthegears.com