Laura Chapman read Andy Hargreaves’ provocative article about the educational technology we will need in the future, and she responded with this comment:
Andy Hargreaves says: “We need to create conditions for technologically enhanced learning that are universal, public and free to those who need it.”
Yes. But that is unlikely to happen in the United States, even if available elsewhere. In our market-based economy, the expression “digital learning,” should be understood as the opportunity for tech companies to learn as much as they wish about the users of their devices and software. The best we seem able to do is offer legislation that attempts to limit exploitation of data being gathered by technologies.
For example, The National Biometric Information Privacy Act, proposed by U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Jeff Merkley, is not likely to pass. The Act would require a business to secure prior written consent from individuals before the business could use any of their immutable characteristics captured by facial recognition or any other biometric systems. See https://www.biometricupdate.com/202008/broad-biometric-protections-in-senate-bill-with-slim-prospects
Also dead in the water is S. 1341 (114th Congress): Student Privacy Protection Act, introduced May 15, 2015, read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. This bill was intended to prohibit the use of federal funds for tech-based data gathering enabled by technology. Here is a small sample of the intended prohibitions:
—No federal funds for analysis of facial expressions, EEG brain wave patterns, skin conductance, galvanic skin response, heart-rate variability, pulse, blood volume, posture, and eye-tracking.
—No measures or data about psychological resources, mindsets, learning strategies, effortful control, attributes, dispositions, social skills, attitudes, intrapersonal and interpersonal resources, or any other type of social, emotional, or psychological parameter.
—A special rule exempts data collection required by the Disabilities Education Act.
But there was more.
—No federal funds can be used for video monitoring of classrooms in the school, for any purpose, including for teacher evaluation, without the approval of the local educational agency after a public hearing and the written consent of the teacher and the parents of all students in the classroom. These restrictions apply to outside parties (e.g., researchers) as well.
—No federal funds for computing devices with remote camera surveillance software without the approval of the local educational agency after a public hearing, and for teachers or students without the written consent of the teacher and the parent of each affected student.
—Section 5 of the bill defines PII, personally identifiable information, and prohibited data-gathering that could reveal, without authorization, the identity of a student (e.g., SSNs, student numbers, biometric records), indirect identifiers (e.g., date of birth, place of birth, mother’s maiden name). As far as I know, that bill is the only legislation that has come close to putting some brakes on rampant data-gathering enabled by ed-tech.
It is easy to suppose that edtech will thrive in the midst of our COVID-19 pandemic. Not so fast warns Mark Schneiderman, the senior director of education policy for the Software & Information Industry Association. He claims the ed tech industry is facing downsizing from the pandemic’s crunch on school budgets. He says “Communication and information sharing platforms like Google, Zoom, and SchoolMessenger are among the big ‘winners’” but thousands of software companies may be in trouble. He offers predictions about the market for edtech and repeats talking points about the importance of edtech on behalf of the profit-seekers whom is represents.
Meanwhile the Gates-funded Data Quality Campaign, the major non-profit preoccupied with data-gathering on a large scale claims that data from edtech is necessary for “student success.” It postures about student privacy issues, but this “campaign” is eager to see more data gathering on students and teachers at scale and longitudinally, including results from the Common Core and associated state tests. https://dataqualitycampaign.org/why-education-data/make-data-work-students/
The Data Quality Campaign has just released a new messaging brief with two partners known for promoting the Common Core standards and testing–the Alliance for Excellent Education and the Collaborative for Student Success. The brief tells states how they should measure “student growth” in 2021, given that most states have no 2020 statewide assessment data.”
This brief is an effort to keep statewide testing (and the Common Core) alive through messaging and marketing. The brief cites and exaggerates the importance of three “push surveys” designed to asset that teachers and parents really want so-called “growth scores.” A growth scores is a euphemism for year-to-year gains in test scores. This brief also cites and promotes SAS, the marketers of discredited value-added calculations known as EVASS (Education Value-Added Assessment System). In other words, the drumbeat for terrible policies goes on and from unelected policy shapers who use their non-profit status for lobbying.
https://dataqualitycampaign.org/news/states-can-and-should-measure-student-growth-in-2021/
It is no surprise that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded the three organizations claiming credit for this brief. The Gates Foundation has sent the Data Quality Campaign $25.3 million in 15 grants and The Alliance for Excellent Education $27 million in 15 grants. The Collaborative for Student Success is described as “a multi-donor fund” investing in “messaging efforts that build support for high standards, high-quality aligned assessments, and systems of accountability that promote success for all students.” The Collaborative is funded by ExxonMobil and five major foundations, among them the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as detailed by Mercedes Schneider here. https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2014/11/12/gates-is-at-it-again-the-common-core-centered-collaborative-for-student-success/
This is to say that market forces are not just operating in public education but that the wealth of nonprofits is well-organized to push ed-tech.
We are not now, or in the foreseeable future likely to see anything close to “conditions for technologically enhanced learning that are universal, public and free to those who need it.”
Our national and state policies are designed to subsidize profit-seeking from education.
Disagree with many of these. Capturing data on students learning behavior is essential to help build software that adapts to the student. And I personally think that all classrooms should be captured on video, primarily for improving instruction, but also for research purposes and in case of disputes between teacher & student. Finally, the sharing of PII is already one of the most difficult challenges behind tracking student performance across educational institutions, so I hate to see it made harder.
Haaaa!!! Mr. Esres, you have drunk the Koolaid!
Data-driven education is, typically, purest numerology.
pseudoscience
So the students are in school to serve the interests of software developers and these developers know learning when they see it on a video? Give me a break.
The thing that kills me, Laura, is that these folks actually think that our current standardized tests in ELA are at all valid. Makes me think that they’ve never actually read one.
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/03/17/a-warning-to-parents-about-online-learning-programs/
Greg Esres I don’t know how to reach you to communicate the problems with your view as expressed in your note. But I would begin by asking you if you have children of your own?
One of the glaring conflicts about many who share your view is the difference between (a) those views and (b) what they know is best for their own children. So it’s at least a good place to start . . . to bring that hypocrisy out of the gated educational closet. I’ve yet to hear it explained, especially where class size and qualified teaching are concerned.
Also, I think the pandemic has revealed for us, like no other, both the importance of technology (if used well) AND also its fatal flaws that will affect children who are exposed/submitted to such thinking as yours as it further permeates policy and practice in education.
You sound like an intelligent person . . . please try to think further and deeper about it. We are often snarky here, but we have a good portion of the truth where education is concerned, especially in a democracy. CBK
ADDENDUM To Greg Esres: The most important thing in education is the thing that is SYSTEMATICALLY overlooked by the ed-tech people: The concrete, changing, everyday personal relationship between the teacher, the student, and the students.
As concrete and moving, tech cannot “capture” that relationship . . . on principle . . .any more than they could capture what occurs when you have a heart-to-heart with your friend, spouse, or child. It happens, its supremely influential for the child/student, and often for the teacher; not to mention it’s both self-affirming and implicitly a call-to and engagement-with personal responsibility. To give it a name, it’s genuineness and it’s of the moment which, as an historical reality, is not available to tech-capture. Teachers do it all the time–it’s often WHY they teach; but it cannot be put on a report without losing the fullness of its meaning.
Though much is good about tech and “the numbers,” you cannot “capture” the experience of genuineness, on principle. It’s how human history actually works; and the more tech tries to either capture or duplicate it, especially for children, the more they encroach-on and so poison the experience. CBK
Greg Esres….I hope you are not a teacher! I would hate for you to be a teacher of one of my children.
Software doesn’t adapt to the student, Greg Esres. Let’s put aside the little fact that living organisms adapt while software algorithms make formulaic predictions. Like someone wrote in a post yesterday, determining whether a student wants dogs or cupcakes in her math problems is not adaptation. Education software creates predetermined paths for students to follow, and not suitable ones at that. Software will never be as powerful as the living.
Had to read in this one spurts while working today and this evening, so it took a while, but I really appreciated every word and link in this comment turned post, Dr Chapman, irrefutable research. The purpose of education technology is simply not education. It’s money.
Edit: …read this one in spurts…
And by the way, William Gates III, you can’t have a win-win. You either care about money or people. You can’t charitably make money. Sorry.
It’s really interesting how dense the technology advocates are, and I say that as someone with two degrees in technology, not as a Luddite. I’m not against technology I just see that for a century now people who advocate technology just keep on coming up with new arguments and proposals that claim to improve teaching and learning but ignore the simple fact that the biggest unmet needs are not even remotely about having more technology or more data and so called student performance, especially in schools that are under great strain from austerity and poor treatment of teachers. Enough already. Bill Gates has done more harm to education than anyone alive right now. We don’t need his money that has significant strings attached to it, nor do we need more technology that’s simply going to be used to club teachers.
Agreed. A pencil is a great piece of technology, but don’t try to do eye surgery with it!
These online programs are not intrinsically motivating. And our prime directive as teachers is to build intrinsic motivation and so create self-directed, life-long learners.
I don’t know how much money investors have to loose on ed tech instruction before they get this. These folks are very slow learners.
My daughter noted that on-line instruction is simply an electronic workbook with flashing lights to try to make the content palatable to children. Too many young teachers are willing to cede responsibility over to a machine, and some other them do not know how to teach any other way. So sad.
The tech industry folks have no clue about how kids learn. So sick of these armchair people telling us teachers what to do and all for their profits, no less.
Agree, retired teacher, “These folks are slow learners.” Why? To make profits off the back of kids and teachers.
My husband was a classroom teacher for 8 years who went back to school and became an aerospace engineer. My husband DISAGREES what Greg Esres wrote.
Laura Chapman is a national treasure.
Ah, the beginning of the school year! How wonderful to see all these little data sets come into class, ready to begin their year of test prep! Hello there, Human Capital 286xB1! Nice to see you again, Human Capital 834zB3!
We shall find out soon enough which of you is sufficiently gritful.
Now, I’ll be available to make sure your computer is working as you begin the Module 1 diagnostic. Don’t worry, I’ve had five weeks of TFA training, so I am a fully competent Module completion facilitator!
BINGO!
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2020/01/06/stopping-by-school-on-a-disruptive-afternoon/
Laura: A common complaint among the well-off is that, if you give “the workers” too much, they’ll become lazy and not want to do their jobs. I know this is true–in some cases–but (need I go on).
However, rarely do we hear of what happens (similarly) when the well-off actually grow their bank accounts, or become powerful through social or family connections, again, through becoming wealthy, or by fame, or other means.
If it’s not necessary, but all-to-easy for “the poor to become lazy,” so it’s not necessary, but all-too-easy for the rich to become corrupt and careless of broader human concerns . . . .concerns that might tweak a person’s conscience to implemented action under other circumstances. A case in point is reported in the LA Times today:
“— Their employer got a forgivable loan through the federal Paycheck Protection Program. So why are they still unemployed? Experts say the program created a situation in which employers could take the aid and leave many of their workers jobless.”
My point? The silence about the corruption that happens in the thinking those for whom capitalism and the “bottom line” are the ONLY considerations . . . is becoming deafening. CBK
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-09-05/layoffs-despite-payroll-protection-program-ppp-loans?utm_source=sfmc_100035609&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=30759+Today%27s+Headlines+9%2f08%2f20&utm_term=https%3a%2f%2fwww.latimes.com%2fbusiness%2fstory%2f2020-09-05%2flayoffs-despite-payroll-protection-program-ppp-loans&utm_id=13437&sfmc_id=639504
The important thing, CBK, is to teach the children of the rabble to sit down, shut up, and gritfully apply themselves to whatever test preppy exercise on standard LALA.w.666 is put in front of them. Programming for prole kids. And it generates a lot of $$$$$$.
It’s a win-win.
Bob Oh, sheesh . . . I forgot. Thanks for reminding me! CBK
Maybe in the private sector perhaps people become lazy when they have a say, but I have not found this to be true in education. Many of my colleagues and I spent years serving on committees or attending events after school for no extra pay. Our only reward was the notion was that we were contributing to making instruction better for our students. We were stakeholders, not “losers or suckers.”
retired . . . exactly my point. The complaint is about the lowest common denominator of SOME; falsely interpreted to cover ALL; and then used as an excuse to set policy for all concerned. CBK
I will never understand why ed tech was treated as anything OTHER than a product.
How ed reformers looked at these giant tech companies and what was CLEARLY a huge marketing campaign and continued to insist it was somehow not marketing products is a mystery to me.
There’s nothing really wrong with selling it to schools. What’s wrong is tricking people into thinking they’re doing something other than selling it to schools. What’s wrong is having an entire fawning cheerleading team mindlessly promoting the products as something more than products.
Would these products and services been treated like this if tech billionaires didn’t fund the ed reform “movement”? That’s a fair question and ed reformers should answer it.
The cyclical ed tech learning curve:
LOTS OF HYPE. This is going to REVOLUTIONIZE EVERYTHING!!! (High)
Lots of issues during onboarding of students. Bad internet connections. Overloaded system. Outdated computers and software. (Low)
Kids on the computers. Excited because this is something new. Lasts for about two days. (High but falling rapidly)
Kids would rather have every hair on their bodies pulled out with tweezers than fire up the educational software again. (Abysmal)
School throws out the program and purchases another one.
LOTS OF HYPE. . . .
Bob “tweezers” and “School throws out the program and purchases another one.”
. . . all when a good teacher in a small classroom with lots of one-on-one communications and and small-group experiences will do.
They apparently have done more to lessen or kill kid’s interest in tech than any old-school educator could ever do. CBK
Contrary to DeVos, there is nothing good about the pandemic, which has taken nearly 200,000 lives in this country, and millions around the world.
But it has definitely showed the tedium of remote learning. The bloom is off that rose.
Ed tech has so much money behind that it is not “just another ed product.” Some companies are scheming and bribing their way into school districts. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mollyhensleyclancy/school-districts-are-really-bad-at-buying-technology
And why was the federal government pushing these products? Is that a proper role for government? Pushing public schools to purchase billions of dollars of ed tech products?
Why were they cheerleading this? They were so impressed with these celebrity billionaires they volunteered to promote sales? They really think the public is paying them to act as de facto salespeople for Google?
Of course, public schools share some responsibility too- just because trend-following “experts” tell you to buy something does not mean you have to buy it, particularly if all the experts are on the payroll of the tech companies.
Gates paid for the backward, childish, bankrupt Common Core so that there would be a single national bullet list to key educational software to. Why? School costs are in facilities and teachers’ salaries. Eliminate those. Replace with computerized instruction. Make bank.
Why do you think ed deform prefers, young minimally trained facilitators? They are cheap and less likely to revolt. They are malleable putty in the hands on deformers. Old dogs will fight for their right to teach, and deformers seek a easy road to profit.
cx: of deformers
Yup. And the whole idea is to decrease costs and increase profits while producing a more malleable workforce.
One thing that horrified me on returning to teaching after spending almost three decades in educational publishing was how much autonomy teachers had given up–the breathtaking extent to which they allowed themselves to me micromanaged these days.
I think Florida is one of the worst micromanaged places to teach. I have heard it from teachers that are quitting because there is no autonomy. My New York public school friends are not voicing this same frustration with micromanagement. I don’t know if the difference is individual school districts or state policy.
When I was first teaching, in the 1980s, we had department meetings, and at those meetings, we made the major decisions about the texts we would use, the pedagogical strategies we would employ, what supplemental works we would teach, and so on. When I returned to teaching in the 2010s, those meetings consisted of the department chair reading the latest mandates from the district and the administration. This could have been done in an email. So much that has been lost!!!!
People don’t do their best work in conditions of low autonomy.
But now parents are really getting to see what goes on in school with Gates’ Common Core. Many well educated parents are having to go online to figure out how to “do the math”. Many are just teaching their children how to do it the “old fashioned way” and telling the kids to ignore the CC way because it’s ridiculous. When schools shut down, it was test prep season and school systems threw together a mish mash of busy work to keep the kids occupied for the rest of the school year….no learning, only review. This is supposed to be the “learning” part of the year….. and parents are being tasked with adding more duties into their own busy day. It’s not going to be very good for CC and it’s “rebranded’ kin.
that crucial understanding: he pushed and helped pay for the Common Core because of its connections to computers
Oh, no, Ciedie, it was entirely coincidental that he derived the world’s greatest fortune from computing. LOL. And that he started a company, InBloom, to serve as the nation’s gradebook, which would have forced anyone who wanted to market educational materials to strike up a “relationship” with his company, making that company the default gatekeeper of the industry.
Fortunately, that Orwellian play was thwarted.
The ridiculous cheerleading is just amazing:
“Simply signing the Future Ready pledge doesn’t mean you’ve become a paragon of digital learning. It does mean that you have committed to this direction. That was the message Richard Culatta, director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Education Technology, delivered during a session at ISTE 2015.
Culatta and others took the podium to discuss the Obama Administration’s Future Ready program, aimed at getting districts to recognize the importance of building human capacity along with digital connectivity within schools and districts to transform teaching and learning.
District leaders who take the pledge agree to move toward a shared vision of preparing students for success in college, careers and citizenship. So far, 2,000 superintendents have signed on.”
Thousands of public employees working full time to sell ed tech to public schools.
And boy did they sell it! We don’t have internet access for low income children but we have billions of dollars worth of ed tech that schools purchased, all on the advice of the “experts” of ed reform.
Stop taking their advice. It’s bad advice.
Arne Duncan was a huge fan of EdTech, data collection, charters, privatization, and high-stakes testing. He prepare the ground for DeVos.
“U.S. Department of Education
It’s #BackToSchool today for a lot of students, families, and teachers! We know school looks and feels different this year, but we believe in you and know you’ll persevere! We’re in this together”
See, I don’t think “we’re in this together”. I think the only “contribution” any of these folks have made to public schools in handling the pandemic is criticizing them.
Perhaps the United States needs a federal agency filled with employees who act as full time public school critics, but I don’t think that’s the public understanding of why we’re paying them. I think they were supposed to do some work for public schools. They did nothing and public schools opened without their help, leaving the obvious question- why do we need them at all?
“Secretary Betsy DeVos
This #BackToSchool season may be different than any other, but we’re all in this together. To all the parents, students and educators rising to meet the challenge in new ways and places, you’ve got this! Let’s make it a great year!”
Well, we know we’ve “got this”. We did it entirely by ourselves. The question now becomes why do we need you and your hundreds of political appointees?
I suppose it’s unfair to say that ed reformers offered nothing for public schools and public school students and families in the pandemic.
They did lobby for and get this:
“U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos last week suggested that Ohio may not have the option, telling state school chiefs that the administration is not likely to lift federal requirements that mandate all but two of the roughly 20 standardized tests given to Ohio students during their K-12 career.”
They didn’t offer any support or advocacy for our students and schools, and they didn’t get us any funding, but they did manage to get a testing mandate in place.
NCLB, RttT, The Common Core, and now the pandemic. Every single ed reform effort ends the same way- public school students get testing and nothing else.
The same greed that is politely called “the profit motive” may also be partly responsible for all the wildfires in California this summer.
“fire suppression in California is big business, with impressive year-over-year growth. Before 1999, Cal Fire never spent more than $100 million a year. In 2007-08, it spent $524 million. In 2017-18, $773 million. Could this be Cal Fire’s first $1 billion season?” …
“This whole system is exacerbated by the fact that it’s not just contracts for privately owned aircraft. Much of the fire-suppression apparatus — the crews themselves, the infrastructure that supports them — is contracted out to private firms. “The Halliburton model from the Middle East is kind of in effect for all the infrastructure that comes into fire camps,” Beasley said, referencing the Iraq war. “The catering, the trucks that you can sleep in that are air-conditioned…”
https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-megafires-why-wont-anybody-listen
Wait a minute. There was a Biometric Privacy Act and it didn’t pass? After two days of shock, it hit me.