Ivanka Trump and Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, visited Wilder Elementary School to learn about the future of workforce preparation, which of course involves selling iPads to children in a K-6 school!
However, they did not speak to high school students in Wilder, Idaho, who are thoroughly disgusted with (de)personalized learning. Several protested the fraud that Wilder officials were selling to Ivanka and said they were not allowed to speak up.
So instead, they walked outside, stood in the cold for hours and told members of the local media they are concerned about Wilder’s reliance on technology, worry about the district’s low test scores and fear the education they are receiving in Wilder won’t prepare them for college or life after high school.
Nadia, a Wilder sophomore, wanted to make sure the public heard both sides of the iPad story.
“We came out to tell you guys what’s really going on with our school,” Nadia said. “We are not really learning anything. The teachers are not allowed to teach anything. We are learning on iPads all day and we have to wait at least a week or so to get a test unlocked. And a lot of kids have been falling behind and then they cover that up and say everyone’s on target.”
Thomas, a Wilder 11thgrader, agreed with Nadia.
“There are a lot of things going wrong at this school and every time we try to speak out about it we are shut down and kept quiet,” he said.
Thomas and Nadia said they walked out of class once they realized the school was about to be locked down for the visit. They said they were unsure if they would be allowed to return to school.
Student achievement data shows that Wilder lags behind the state average in several academic indicators. This fall, the State Department of Education identified Wilder Middle School as one of the lowest-performing schools in Idaho. At Wilder Elementary, where Trump and Cook checked in Tuesday, just 26.7 percent of students scored “proficient” on math Idaho Standards Achievement Test in 2017-18. At Wilder High School, the go-on rate in 2017 was 25 percent, well below the state average of 45 percent, according to Idaho EdTrends.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s just such a bad deal for the school. Tim Cook and Ivanka Trump got way more out of this than the school did. The school got donated devices. Cook and Trump got tens of thousands of dollars worth of advertising.
The public almost surely paid more for Ivanka Trump’s security to go to the school than the devices cost, even if the school had purchased them individually paying retail.
We could have paid for the devices OUTRIGHT and STILL saved enough money skipping the celebrity visit to pay an additional teacher for a year.
It’s a rip off. A bad deal for the public. Stop accepting these “gifts”. You are paying thru the NOSE for them.
I’d have to say that you can’t put a price on the advertising they got.
Having the school as a backdrop for their ad is something they could never create artificially.
So it is effectively priceless.
I saw an announcement of some cheap garbage Google donated once where they had charter school students in Chicago arrayed on cubes with the Google logo.
I mean, my God, those kids should have been compensated at actor scale for every hour they spent selling product.
The adults in these schools are such bad stewards! Don’t let them get taken advantage of like this! Protect them from these cynical people who are pitching product and refusing to admit that’s what they’re doing.
Also, it’s not just the individual schools and districts who are paying for this stuff.
It is WE the American public because this ad will be used by Apple and other tech companies to worm their way into thousands of other schools across the country.
Make no mistake: this is HIGHLY unethical on Cooks part. But then again, it is hardly his first ethical lapse and will certainly not be his last.
Ethics? Is the word “Ethics” even understood in today’s MONETIZED society?
Seems ETHICS and PROFITS are words which cancel out each other.
how Cook got to be Cook…
“Stop accepting these “gifts”. You are paying thru the NOSE for them.”
You’re expecting adminimals to know better?
If so I’ve still got some beautiful white sand beach ocean front properties for sale over at Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri.
“Stop accepting these ‘gifts’. You are paying thru the NOSE for them” Suddenly I see the tech-invasion game as a Trojan Horse…
Isn’t Tim Cook embarrassed at this slogan-chocked mush he’s reciting? I mean, come on. He knows better.
I would have more respect for these people if they would just do a straight sales pitch for their products instead of burying the sales pitch in layers of ridiculous vaguely “educational” rhetoric.
Just sell the stuff. Stop insulting us by pretending it’s philanthropic.
Maybe the better question is “when will public schools stop buying all the cheap gimmicks ed reformers sell them?” Stop buying. Because she’s rich and he’s a CEO doesn’t mean they know anything about your students or your schools.
Treat them like the salespeople they are. Pretend they’re selling you a food services contract or a school bus, because it is EXACTLY the same thing.
He DOES know better, which makes what he is doing dishonest.
“Maybe the better question is “when will public schools stop buying all the cheap gimmicks ed reformers sell them?”
Answer: Never.
To expect an adminimal to change it’s ingrained, inbred nature is a futile expectation.
Rich people in the United States believe that children will teach THEMSELVES if you give them an Ipad.
The products of the most expensive private schools in this country believe this nonsense.
It’s not an indictment of public schools- public schools don’t produce the Ivanka Trumps of this world. It’s an indictment of expensive private schools, where people are apparently NOT taught critical thinking or they would recognize that this marketing-based goggledygook they spout is meaningless.
I get why the Trumps and Cooks of this world pitch garbage to public schools- HUGE market- but why do public schools swallow everything they sell?
We can do better. We can say “no” to this. It’s not a good deal for us. Get better at saying “no” to ed reformers bearing gifts. They’re not gifts at all.
Posted a t https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Students-at-Wilder-High-Sc-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch_Education_Learning_School-Reform-181129-711.html#comment718132
with this comment (taken from and earlier post)
Who needs teachers anyway? New York Magazine http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/11/summit-education-program-leads-to-brooklyn-student-walkouts.html ” takes notice of the rebellion against Mark Zuckerberg’s Summit Program, Which puts students on computers for hours a day.
It is important when the world beyond education takes notice of really bad ideas. Zuckerberg can ignore parents in Connecticut and students in Brooklyn, but when the bad news seeps into the mainstream media, he notices.
It begins:
“The revolt over the Summit Learning Program, an online learning system partially bankrolled by Mark Zuckerberg and implemented in schools nationwide, has come to Brooklyn. Last week, a group of high-schoolers at Park Slope’s Secondary School for Journalism staged a walkout in the middle of the school day to have the “personalized learning” regimen removed from their classrooms.
“Parents in many other districts throughout the country have also complained, generally with mixed success; in one Connecticut district, parents of middle-schoolers were able to get the program jettisoned after a months-long campaign. (You can read more about the Cheshire revolt against Summit here.) But Brooklyn’s student-led charge is a new phenomenon — perhaps because the program has been concentrated until now in middle schools, not high schools. As it continues expanding to higher grades, more teens may well become the faces of their local opposition.”
Not that it matters because this isn’t about students – it’s about selling product- but Maine actually fell for this scam and invested tens of millions in it:
“Maine’s meltdown matters because the ideas at the core of the state’s efforts are influencing states and school districts across the country. Forty-eight states have adopted policies to promote “competency-based” education to varying degrees, often at the urging of a constellation of influential philanthropies, including the Nellie Mae Foundation, which poured at least $13 million into Maine’s effort.”
Ed reform has already conducted this experiment on tens of thousands of public school students in Maine. It flopped.
Why are they still selling it? So more public schools can waste millions of dollars and years beta-testing Tim Cook’s theories?
https://ny.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2018/10/18/maine-went-all-in-on-proficiency-based-learning-then-rolled-it-back-what-does-that-mean-for-the-rest-of-the-country/
Trojan tablets. Human teachers for the rich, iPads with scripted lessons for the poor.
TRUE!
iTrojan
Trojan Pads
And Trojan friends
Trojan fads
And Trojan ends
I believe that young people that live in more rural areas of the country are accustomed to accepting authority. It is the land of “Yes Sir” and “Yes Mam.” Coastal students are more likely to revolt against oppression. While there may be a few critical thinkers like Thomas, many of the students will accept this faux education because they have been told to do so. I hope more students will join the resistance. The appearance of Cook and Ivanka is a staged dog and pony show to promote public relations for what is a deadly, dull, dim witted exercise in behaviorism. This is not authentic education; it is a poor robotic substitute.
I’m not sure “personalized learning” is at all popular among students here.
It’s very popular among middle aged socialites and tech company CEO’s but if my son and his friends are representative of students they are less then hugely impressed.
They grew up being sold tech product. They’re savvier about the sales pitch.
Ed reformers had a political strategy meeting :
“Democrats flipped statehouses, won governorships, and gained control of the House this month, even as a handful of the most high-profile contests slipped from their grasp.
But the blue wave swept in a number of politicians who campaigned against key elements of the education reform agenda, including charter schools and test-based accountability for schools and teachers.
That, along with the unpopularity of charter supporter Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on the left, makes it a precarious moment for Democrats who support this particular brand of education reform. Many of them gathered in Boulder, Colorado, this week at the annual Philos Conference put on by a group affiliated with Democrats For Education Reform.”
Not one mention of what ed reform does for PUBLIC schools. Their entire focus is on how to make privatization more appealing.
It’s amazing- a room full of political experts and not one of them suggests “hey- what if we tried actually doing something positive for the schools 90% of people attend?”
THAT’S how much of an echo chamber it is- public schools don’t exist in this world, unless they’re selling us ed tech garbage.
Have any of you seen these personalized learning platforms in real life?
It’s a dashboard with endless metrics displayed about the students progress, and that’s ALL it is. They plod thru the sections and take tests. Over and over and over. When they [pass one of the thousands of tests they may move on to the next level, where they repeat the same process over again.
It is EXACTLY like the SRA reading program I had in public school 40 years ago, except it requires an expensive device.
You don’t need a device to do this and you don’t need a consultant either.
I hated SRA
Stupid Reading Assignments
At one point I had to help a reading teacher that used SRA materials with the color coded levels. I can still remember the glazed look on the students’ faces as they plowed through this garbage. Like the CCSS, it was decontextualized programmed reading with multiple choice questions. I thought we had evolved beyond this junk when we switched to real literature with real connections to thinking, content and humanity. Now young people are being subjected to the electronic version of the same nonsense so their data can be sold.
It’s interesting.
The primary purpose of SRA when I was in elementary school was to give the teachers a break from a class of 25 or 30 rambunctious kids.
It had nothing at all to do with learning and everyone knew that, particularly the teachers.
I too was an SRA vet. The endless cycle of read and test drove me away. The lack of connection to other overarching thematic material made it impossible to benefit from the content. Other report more positive experiences, but I could not abide it at all.
Pur$e-onalized learning
Pur$e-onalized learning
Filling up the pur$e
Monetarized yearning
Nothing could be worse
Monetarized burning
“Ivanka Trump
Visiting the Wilder School District today with Tim Cook to learn firsthand how they are preparing America’s future workforce using Apple technology to transform the learning environment and personalize students’ educational experiences based on their unique needs and strengths!”
Indistinguishable from a product advertisement.
You-all just paid tens of thousands of dollars to transport Ivanka Trump to Idaho so she could sell product for Apple.
Sell product to public schools, which you will also pay for.
We’re subsidizing rich people so they can use our kids for advertising campaigns.
What did the kids get out of it? A tablet. That was the bribe.
Having access to devices and the internet is now a civil right…
I kid you not.
I am getting this into a longer post, but these matters are part of the nation’s bizarre Civil Rights Data Collection from every school and district every two years. The overall shape of that data collection is the result of lobbying, evident in absurd assumptions about “college and career readiness” and enrollment in specific courses in certain grades among other corrupting ideas about civil rights in our nation’s schools.
Why does it seem like politicians only visit elementary schools???
Ooh, I would pay big money to have a politician attempt a visit to the middle school I teach at.
Elementary kids won’t usually talk back, they’re pretty pliable, and they’re cute.
My middle school students would tell politicians what they feel and how education is being treated–and they would not be shy about stating their cases (with “colorful metaphors,” if necessary). Plus, they’re not really “cute” at that age.
Politicans don’t WANT to be held to account, and the best people in the world to hold them to account are junior high and high school students.
That’s why district administrators never visit secondary schools, either.
“Politicans don’t WANT to be held to account, and the best people in the world to hold them to account are junior high and high school students.”
I agree. If kids say, they do not like adults’ pitch for personalized learning, the argument is over. What are they gonna say? That “but you are wrong, personalized learning is good for you, and you do like staring at an ipad all day long”? After all, they advertise personalized learning as something kids are excited about.
The fact is, very few kids want to go at their own pace, and public education is about what’s good for the majority of the kids.
In this case the middle-high school was actually put on lock down so more students couldn’t leave. Elementary students are cute and don’t know any different about how they are being educated and it is very easy to showcase fun technology projects when you don’t have to worry about students having to complete standards associated with credits for graduation.
I have seen SRA books in old bookrooms but it was before my time. What also happens with many of these programs is this fidelity objective. So besides the program being insufficient, they ask you to only teach it and nothing else. This is true of these technology programs that are now pushed on students. They ask you to only teach with the program. Sometimes I have heard language that is almost cult like.
Though the Wilder ID students are doing poorly on standardized tests… they are doing VERY well in Democracy 101. And… SURPRISE… the Trump administration did not pay attention to details, like the test results at the end of this post… If I were an Apple shareholder I’d be concerned about the CEO who also ignored those facts….
It takes good teachers and strong community support to educate a child…NOT flashy technology. Technology is only one tool at the teacher’s disposal…and NOT the main one!
It sounds like the students had to proceed through a canned curriculum delivered on the iPads. Important details about the program are missing here, and I would caution rushing to judgment without knowing all the facts. If teachers are using some sort of “personalized learning” product instead of being allowed to create their own curriculum taking advantage of the creative affordances of the IPads, that is a problem. We need to know more about the curriculum, the professional development provided to the teachers, and the overall strategy employed by the school to integrate technology. And for the record, I am not an Ivanka fan, so I’m not attempting to defend this program… I just want to know more.
Just like every story on the internet, there is a different side to this. The iPads aren’t the enemy here. The real issue is a small district with no checks or balances allowing one person to be in power. If you want an inside look at what this district is going through, please continue reading otherwise please understand the iPads started out and were intended to offer amazing opportunities for the students. I’m not here to sell iPads but what they did for this community was very positive until one man with all the power decided to jump on a band wagon without doing his due diligence and researching the affects.
These iPads were granted to the district through the ConnectEd grant. The way the grant was written the iPads were going to help the students connect with the local community doing real life projects and helping in the community. They came with a complete overhaul of the infastructure, and the ability for students to be connected to the internet at home, while traveling for sports or their long FFA trips. Teachers were trained through a certified teacher trained on Apple product to teach the teachers how to take their lessons and add a new level of thought and creativity using technology.
Then the superintendent who has complete power in the district wanted to run for state superintendent and the Idaho State Department of Education began a personalized learning initiative. He thought if he could be the best in the state and get this started first and be ahead of the game then that would be really all he would need to get the win and become state superintendent. He expected the teachers to completely drop what they were doing and begin teaching this way over night. Teachers were being asked to completely compromise their curriculum and drop standards to make it easier for students to just focus on the “big rocks”. Students were getting Spanish credits in the high school for using DuoLingos app. At the end the students still couldn’t speak or write simple Spanish. If teachers questioned the methods they would receive poor evaluations, have to change classrooms for no reason or be asked to complete tasks that weren’t necessary or that no other teacher was asked to do.
Student and parent frustrations are through the roof. Parents and teachers were being denied the ability to talk to the board. In the high school wing all but two teachers left last year along with the IT guy, the secretary, the migrant/homeless liasion, the ELL teacher, and some sped staff all left. This is a very small district that graduates between 25-30 kids each year. That is a lot of staff turnover. The stress in the building is unhealthy because one man has all the control and he can’t/won’t change now or all that he has been hyping up will look like he is lying. A huge majority of the staff couldn’t stand seeing students having to use the iPads this way. But suggestions, ideas or possible improvements are deemed as insubordination.
I believe it is the superintendent’s connections through the Apple grant that brought Trump and Cook out there. Cook needs Trump to be onboard to continue the “ConnectEd” type initiatives and to stop the tariffs on the company and the local superintendent needs the media to confirm how good he is to the Idaho public as a “I told you we were good but you (public) didn’t listen” . He lost the election by a very large margin.
Not only was I a teacher that left, I was one of the tree people that wrote the middle-high school Apple grant. This isn’t how any of us intended for the iPads to be used, ever. I can’t begin to tell you how proud I am of the students that spoke up. I miss them terribly and felt like I am weak because I’m not mentally strong enough to stay and fight for them and protect their education. Suggestions on ways to fight are greatly appreciated!! These are absolutely amazing students they deserve much better.
Thank you for providing much-needed background information. I suspected something was going along these lines. People should not jump to conclusions before researching this situation further!
You are not weak. Individually he beats us into the ground. However when we speak as a community change is inevitable. Students and parents miss you too!