James Shelton has a storied history as a reformer. He led the education program at the Gates Foundation. He was East Coast leader of the NewSchools Venture Fund, which underwrites charters. He co-founded a company that was acquired by Edison Learning. He worked for McKinsey. He was Arne Duncan’s Deputy Secretary, where he oversaw the i3 program, which was part of Race to the Top.
Then he moved to the digital start-up 2U, which was a roaring success and is now valued at $2 Billion, according to the Los Angeles Times. 2U is the company that built the online platform for USC’s Graduate School of Social Work. The latter became the biggest graduate program in social work in the world. But the program ballooned by lowering entry standards and has become so costly that a large proportion of the USC social work staff is likely to be terminated.
Shelton explained here why he was leaving 2U, even though he loves the company.
He then ran the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, a major promoter of online learning and charter schools.
He left CZI last summer.
Being a reformer brings great rewards, though not necessarily to students, teachers, or public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Shelton left CZI last summer and was replaced by Sandra Liu Huang
see https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-07-11-jim-shelton-to-leave-chan-zuckerberg-initiative
https://chanzuckerberg.com/about/leaders/
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
LikeLike
That leaving sounds like there is something else going on.
Although it says he is still an “advisor”. Still, the comment from Chan and Zuckerberg seems to offer very limited praise:
“When we started our work together, we were a small team of four working above the Hoot ‘n Toot dry cleaners!” they wrote. “Since then, you’ve helped redefine student success in ways that go beyond academics and made learning science more accessible to teachers.”
That is so vague as to be something I could say about a typical high school principal.
It is people outside CZI who are praising him a lot more than the comment by Chan and Zuckerberg: “Jim has really helped [Priscilla and Mark] set the vision for CZI—personalized, whole-child education,” which includes physical, academic, mental, and emotional learning, noted Linda Darling-Hammond, an emeritus professor at Stanford University and co-founder of the Learning Policy Institute.
LikeLike
Does Darling-Hammond’s praise explain Facebook hiring a Republican strategy firm? Does it explain Facebook hiring Peter Thiel, who described women voting in a capitalistic democracy as an oxymoron, Marc Andreesen, a man who said India was better off under colonialism and Reed Hastings, who called for an end to democratically elected school boards, to oversee the Z-berg firm?
Did Shelton’s praised vision include a plan to stop the crushing economic effects of concentrated wealth so that there were resources for a “whole child” ?
LikeLike
Someone should ask Darling-Hammond how a computer can teach the “whole child.”
LikeLike
Linda,
Facebook didn’t “hire” Peter Thiel. Thiel was an early investor in Facebook, and clearly saw early how Facebook data could be used to further his right wing political goals. Zuckerberg seemed to kowtow to Thiel, not the other way around.
I doubt very much that it is any coincidence that people from Peter Thiel’s company Palantir worked with Cambridge Analytica on the Facebook data and that the data of facebook users was mined to target fake posts to mislead them about the election so Trump could win. I’m shocked that this illegal data mining happened when a powerful (right wing Trump supporting) Facebook board member’s company was involved and no one in America asked any questions. Thiel left the country soon after the two companies which he was very involved with helped Trump win and destroy all that is good about America.
Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and the rest of the top facebook administration sold their ethics and morals and probably destroyed this great country for their children because they were so terribly greedy and kept drooling over more and more money. They never knew when enough money was enough and they convinced themselves that their own greed was in service to something bigger. It never was.
And none of that money will compensate their children for the country they destroyed. I suppose their children might have enough to move to a different country if Thiel and his band of proto fascists take over.
LikeLike
Linda, here’s a link to an article about the ties between Thiel and Cambridge Analytica. It’s amazing to me that this was barely investigated. The House should be holding hearings.
LikeLike
CZI: a small team with only $45 million
Sigh…
LikeLike
Top 6 Facebook shareholders- Thiel not among them (4-21-2019).
Z-berg has 53.3% voting rights. If he wants a board member gone, the person’s gone.
LikeLike
Linda,
Thiel sold most of his Facebook shares in November 2017. But he was on the board from his early investment.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/22/peter-thiel-sells-majority-of-facebook-shares-but-2012-was-bigger.html
I doubt it was a coincidence that Thiel was on Facebook’s board from early on and his own data mining company worked with Cambridge Analytica. Thiel was a HUGE Trump supporter and even spoke at the RNC convention.
LikeLike
This post is the most all encompassing, far reaching and fear-provoking story about the barbarians at the gate that can be imagined.
Shelton uses the words “with sincerity” as if he’s not amoral/immoral and, as if the others around him don’t suffer from the same affliction.
LikeLiked by 1 person
an interesting thing to ponder: immorality as an affliction
LikeLike
Diane, can you send us more information on the Chan-Zuckerberg Foundation and on-line charters, especially Summit Learning?
LikeLike
Google Leonie Haimson and Summit.
She has written numerous critiques of Summit and CZI
LikeLike
Sharon,
Leonie Haimson sent this for you:
Check out my piece here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/12/20/why-parents-students-are-protesting-an-online-learning-program-backed-by-mark-zuckerberg-facebook/
And fact sheet here:
Click to access Summit-fact-sheet-4.22.19-1.pdf
If they want more they can info they can email us at info@studentprivacymatters.org
LikeLike
The privatizers go round and round and where they stop usually involves lots of $$$. Let’s take the public out of public education, and let’s take the social out of social work. It is all about lowering standards and costs in the name of ROI in our standardized, digitized dystopia.
LikeLike
I looked at the many participating universities and those offering degrees in education. Here is one indication of what’s up with 2U partners.
USC is where Deans in the “Relay Graduate School of Education” are going to get one of two online doctoral degrees (of sorts). Look at the online degree requirements. https://rossier.usc.edu/programs/doctoral/ed-leadership-online/curriculum-and-dissertation/
At USC, Morgan Polikoff is a promoter of this program. He also circulated a petition to get FERPA modified to guarantee that researchers and many others could use data with Personally Identifiable Information (PII). FERPA and a prohibition against a Student Unit Data System in the Higher Education Act are serious obstacles to fans of personalized instructional delivery and surveillance of students and educators. https://morganpolikoff.com/2017/10/20/researcher-recommendations-on-ferpa-legislation/
LikeLike
USC’s Dean of Education is a Pahara Fellow. She finally updated her bio. to show it. Pahara is funded by Gates.
LikeLike
And I did all that work to earn a PhD at Penn State when I could have just done this.
/s
LikeLike
A person becomes educated by exposure to environments which are rich in interactions with faculty, other students, diverse opinions, research that has been vetted for validity and reliability, and by the opportunity to observe and model scholars…. Critics may argue Relay is not education., it is training.
LikeLike
Or you could be come a kid in a Success Academy charter school where kindergarteners are called scholars.
LikeLike
Laura,
You just hit my sore spot. “Scholars”
are not in grade school. It is a hard earned achievement
LikeLike
“A person becomes educated by exposure to environments which are rich in interactions with faculty, other students, diverse opinions,”
a
This completely sums up why online education is not an education!
LikeLike
Early mental development is incompatible with “scholars” in primary grades. Deliberate ignorance of that fact is part of the PR scam.
LikeLike
It’s all marketing, like false claims of a waiting list.
Nothing as appealing as creating a scarcity mindset.
LikeLike
The touting of children as scholars can be likened to a salesman declaring fields of grain are one and the same with bottles of whiskey judged as superior based on aging over decades as they developed properties reflecting the expertise of master distillers.
But then, when Gates is a college dropout, what’s expected?
LikeLike
A new site, Academic Capture Warning System, will be introduced soon. The takeover of the academy by vested interests deserves intense scrutiny.
Gates’ Frontier Set is an abomination.
LikeLike