Archives for category: Billionaires
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Wayne Gersen: To Billionaires, a Contribution of $200,000 is Chump Change

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2017 //
20

Wayne Gersen explains here why billionaires are willing to spend millions of dollars to privatize public schools and to keep their taxes low.

Education is the most expensive item in every state’s budget. Teachers are the most expensive component in the budget of public schools. Reduce the number of teachers, reduce costs, get rid of senior teachers, and no new taxes.

The trick for the billionaires is to fool voters who earn $50,000 a year into believing cutting taxes is good for them, and that they share common ground with the billionaires.

Billionaires don’t care about public schools, don’t worry about class sizes, don’t care if kids are taught by machines, because their children don’t go to public schools.

Clever. Mean. Duplicitous.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

PBS Runs Three-Hour Special Promoting the DeVos-Trump Privatization Agenda

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2017 //
83

I wish that everyone who sees the PBS program “School Inc.”–which airs nationally this month–knew who was funding this error-ridden attack on public education.

Please watch my 10-minute interview with New York City’s PBS affiliate, WNET, where I gave a concise response to this meretricious three-hour program. It airs locally, not nationally.


Public education today faces an existential crisis. Over the past two decades, the movement to transfer public money to private organizations has expanded rapidly. The George W. Bush administration first wrote into federal law the proposal that privately managed charter schools were a remedy for low-scoring public schools, even though no such evidence existed. The Obama administration provided hundreds of millions each year to charter schools, under the control of private boards. Now, the Trump administration, under the leadership of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, wants to expand privatization to include vouchers, virtual schools, cyberschools, homeschooling, and every other possible alternative to public education. DeVos has said that public education is a “dead end,” and that “government sucks.”

DeVos’s agenda finds a ready audience in the majority of states now controlled by Republican governors and legislatures. Most states already have some form of voucher program that allow students to use public money to enroll in private and religious schools, even when their own state constitution prohibits it. The Republicans have skirted their own constitutions by asserting that the public money goes to the family, not the private or religious school. The longstanding tradition of separating church and state in K-12 education is crumbling. And Betsy DeVos can testify with a straight face that she will enforce federal law to “schools that receive federal funding,” because voucher schools allegedly do not receive the money, just the family that chooses religious schools.

Advocates of the privatization movement like DeVos claim that nonpublic schools will “save poor children from failing public schools,” but independent researchers have recently concurred that vouchers actually have had a negative effect on students in the District of Columbia, Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio. Charters, at best, have a mixed record, and many are known for excluding children with disabilities and English language learners and for pushing out students who are troublesome.

This is a time when honest, nonpartisan reporting is needed to inform the American public.

But this month the Public Broadcasting System is broadcasting a “documentary” that tells a one-sided story, the story that Betsy DeVos herself would tell, based on the work of free-market advocate Andrew Coulson. Author of “Market Education,” Coulson narrates “School, Inc., “ a three-hour program, which airs this month nationwide in three weekly broadcasts on PBS.

Uninformed viewers who see this very slickly produced program will learn about the glories of unregulated schooling, for-profit schools, teachers selling their lessons to students on the Internet. They will learn about the “success” of the free market in schooling in Chile, Sweden, and New Orleans. They will hear about the miraculous charter schools across America, and how public school officials selfishly refuse to encourage the transfer of public funds to private institutions. They will see a glowing portrait of South Korea, where students compete to get the highest possible scores on a college entry test that will define the rest of their lives and where families gladly pay for afterschool tutoring programs and online lessons to boost test scores. They will hear that the free market is more innovative than public schools.

What they will not see or hear is the other side of the story. They will not hear scholars discuss the high levels of social segregation in Chile, nor will they learn that the students protesting the free-market schools in the streets are not all “Communists,” as Coulson suggests. They will not hear from scholars who blame Sweden’s choice system for the collapse of its international test scores. They will not see any reference to Finland, which far outperforms any other European nation on international tests yet has neither vouchers nor charter schools. They may not notice the absence of any students in wheelchairs or any other evidence of students with disabilities in the highly regarded KIPP charter schools. They will not learn that the acclaimed American Indian Model Charter Schools in Oakland does not enroll any American Indians, but has a student body that is 60% Asian American in a city where that group is 12.8% of the student population. Nor will they see any evidence of greater innovation in voucher schools or charter schools than in properly funded public schools.

Coulson has a nifty way of dismissing the fact that the free market system of schooling was imposed by the dictator Augusto Pinochet. He says that Hitler liked the Hollywood movie “It Happened One Night” (with Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable); should we stop showing or watching the movie? Is that a fair comparison? Pinochet was directly responsible for the free market system of schooling, including for-profit private schools. Hitler neither produced nor directed “It Happened One Night.” Thus does Coulson refer to criticism (like Sweden’s collapsing scores on international tests) and dismiss them as irrelevant.

I watched the documentary twice, preparing to be interviewed by Channel 13, and was repelled by the partisan nature of the presentation. I googled the funders and discovered that the lead funder is the Rose Mary and Jack Anderson Foundation, a very conservative foundation that is a major contributor to the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, which advocates for vouchers. The Anderson Foundation is allied with Donors Trust, whose donors make contributions that cannot be traced to them. “Mother Jones” referred to this foundation as part of “the dark-money ATM of the conservative movement.” Other contributors to Donors Trust include the Koch brothers’ “Americans for Prosperity” and the Richard and Helen DeVos foundation.

The second major funder is the Prometheus Foundation. Its public filings with the IRS show that its largest grant ($2.5 million) went to the Ayn Rand Institute. The third listed funder of “School Inc.” is the Steve and Lana Hardy Foundation, which contributes to free-market libertarian think tanks.

In other words, this program is paid propaganda. It does not search for the truth. It does not present opposing points of view. It is an advertisement for the demolition of public education and for an unregulated free market in education. PBS might have aired a program that debates these issues, but “School Inc.” does not.

It is puzzling that PBS would accept millions of dollars for this lavish and one-sided production from a group of foundations with a singular devotion to the privatization of public services. The PBS decision to air this series is even stranger when you stop to consider that these kinds of anti-government political foundations are likely to advocate for the elimination of public funding for PBS. After all, in a free market of television, where there are so many choices available, why should the federal government pay for a television channel?

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry

DeVos Taps School Choice Advocate for Crucial Position in ED Department

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2017 //
12

Betsy DeVos has chosen Jim Blew, who is a veteran of the privatization movement, for one of the most important positions in the Department of Education.

From Education Week:

“Jim Blew, the director of Student Success California, a 50CAN affiliate, is a top contender to lead the office of planning, evaluation, and policy analysis at the U.S. Department of Education, multiple sources say.

“Blew declined to comment. The U.S. Department of Education did not confirm the information.

“If ultimately nominated by the White House and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Blew would bring significant policy heft to the U.S. Department of Education, multiple sources say.

“Blew was the national president of StudentsFirst, an education redesign organization started by former District of Columbia schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. He took that gig beginning in late 2014, when Rhee stepped down from the organization, serving until mid-2016, when StudentsFirst merged with 50CAN, a network of state advocacy organizations.

“Before that, Blew spent nearly a decade as the Walton Family Foundation’s Director of K-12 Reform, advising the foundation on how to broaden schooling options for low-income communities. He worked in communications before devoting himself to K-12 policy. More in his bio. (Note: Walton provides support for Education Week coverage of parent-engagement and decisionmaking.)”

Jim Blew has dedicated his career to the destruction of public education. He deserves a place on this Blog’s Wall of Shame.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers, Wall of Shame, Walton Foundation

The 96 Billionaires Who Decided to Buy Local School Board Elections

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2017 //
26

In this latest episode of the “Have You Heard” podcast, Jennifer Berkshire and education historian Jack Schneider interview Michigan professor Rebecca Jacobsen about the role of big money in school board elections. Jacobsen has studied this relatively new phenomenon and identified 96 super-rich individuals who have decided that buying local school boards is fun. Others would call it the corruption of democracy.

Here is an excerpt:

For Big Money Donors, School Boards Are the New ‘Must Buy’ Accessory

“Billionaires now buying local influence to push controversial school “reforms.”

“The recent school board election in Los Angeles drew close to $17 million in donations, much of it in the form of untraceable “dark money” from a familiar cast of enormously wealthy donors. In the latest episode of the Have You Heard podcast, co-hosts Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider talk to researcher Rebecca Jacobsen about what—and who—is behind this trend, and how the influence of huge donors threatens to drown out the voices of people who actually live in these communities. You can hear the entire episode here.

“Have You Heard: You’ve been looking into the influence of wealthy donors in school board elections in cities including Los Angeles, Denver, Indianapolis and New Orleans. What most surprised you about what you found?

“Jacobsen: I think I’m just constantly astounded at just how much is being spent. You opened with the recent LA election, and the LA Times reported that $144 was spent for every vote cast on the reform side, and then on the union side it was $81 for every vote received by the teacher union backed candidate. And I just think about how much money that is, you know I would have never dreamt that there would be a 15 million dollar school board election. And so I think that’s probably one of the things that I find most surprising.

“Have You Heard: Tell us a little about the donors who are suddenly so interested in school board elections.

“Jacobsen: In our research we’ve looked at all the different campaign contributions that were given, and exactly who was donating and how much. And we came up with a set of about 96 big national donors, and these are folks that some of us are familiar with, especially when we’re in the education reform world. They’ve often been very influential from a philanthropic perspective. Many of them have created their own education organizations or their education reform groups. These are folks like Reed Hastings of Netflix, who has been really active in sort of reforming education. Laurene Powell Jobs, who is the wife of the late Steve Jobs, who has created her own education reform initiative, Sheryl Sandberg, many of these people are involved in sort of the tech world, and so we see not only connections for regionally, these folks all sort of work and live in the same circles. But then we also see connections that they’re involved in the same charter boards or the same education reform organizations and boards. They often share affiliations beyond just the fact that they’re now donating to the same organizations. And what’s especially striking is that these connections just exploded over a relatively short period of time.

“Have You Heard: I’m guessing some people will hear this and think, ‘well we need some kind of influence to counter the power of the teachers union.’ But one of the surprising findings from your research is that unions are not as involved in these local elections as one might expect.

“Jacobsen: It has long been assumed that the teacher’s union was the most influential interest group in local elections, partially because they’re relatively small cost, they’re not held at a regular time, which enables these interest groups then to, for very little money and very little mobilization, have a particularly out sized influence. And that certainly has been the case, there’s no denying that, however I think that that just sort of universal assumption as truth needs to be challenged by what we’re seeing today. Because at least in the cities that we’ve looked at, union money has been significantly dwarfed by these large outside donors. And increasingly, not just direct donations, but we’re seeing dark money donations.

“So more and more political action committees are being set up, or independent expenditure committees is what they’re sometimes called in the school board world, where there can be sort of unlimited funds and you don’t actually even know where they’re coming from. Now unions have those as well, but there’s just an explosion of these different types of groups and it’s really hard to keep track of where the money’s even coming from.

“Have You Heard: You mention a couple of specific reasons why having wealthy donors try to influence school board races. Start with the part where it turns out that billionaires have different policy priorities than most of us.

“Jacobsen: Unfortunately it’s not so easy to just call up these very wealthy donors and poll them about their opinions on various policy issues. As one academic stated, their gatekeepers have gatekeepers. So this is a population that is very hard to study, and those that have gotten to it have found that they often have distinctly different views than those of us that are sort of more in the mainstream middle class America. And so the same is true in education. I think that right now we’re seeing a huge push for vouchers, a very particular type of education reform, and this is not something that I think we’re seeing overwhelming support from local communities. And I think that this is again where we see a mismatch between those that are very wealthy and those that are actually attending the public schools and using them on a regular basis.

“Have You Heard: The school board race in Los Angeles got a lot of attention, but as you found, the priorities of local voters often got short shrift versus the agenda of the donors you describe: which basically boiled down to charter schools, charter schools and more charter schools.

“Jacobsen: In LA we heard from a few candidates that were very concerned with adult education because of the large immigrant population in LA USD. And the role that adult education plays in supporting student learning. Not just adult learning, but then in turn student learning, and how they could not get that item on the agenda because they simply didn’t have the money to compete. There was no conversation to be had around that issue because they just didn’t have the ability to publicize it in the same way that those that were getting the large outside donations were able to do. We had one candidate who gave the example of getting a picture from a friend of theirs on a cell phone that showed seven mailers that had been received in one day alone, and this candidate was saying I can barely raise enough money to send out one mailer, let alone seven mailers in one day. So we are concerned that this outside money has the potential to really drown out particular voices and particular issues that might be really important to the local community, but aren’t necessarily seen or recognized by this larger national agenda.”

Categories Billionaires, Corporate Reformers

How Jared Kushner’s Daddy Bought Him a Spot at Harvard

By dianeravitch
June 12, 2017 //
41

In 2006, reporter Daniel Golden wrote a book called “The Price of Admission” about how uber-rich families buy places for their children at elite colleges.

In this article published in ProPublica, Goldren says that the Kushner story was included in his book. He never dreamed that the Jared Kushner story would one day be a big deal.

He writes:

“My book exposed a grubby secret of American higher education: that the rich buy their under-achieving children’s way into elite universities with massive, tax-deductible donations. It reported that New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University in 1998, not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school. At the time, Harvard accepted about one of every nine applicants. (Nowadays, it only takes one out of twenty.)

“I also quoted administrators at Jared’s high school, who described him as a less than stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard’s decision.

“There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard,” a former official at The Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey, told me. “His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not.”

Categories Billionaires, Higher Education

Exposed: Wall Street Money Pays Democratic Clique to Help GOP Control State Senate

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2017 //
25

New York is a blue state but has a divided legislature. Democrats control the Assembly, and Republicans control the State Senate. Republicans are not the majority of the State Senate. They are in power because of a small group of renegade Democrats who vote with the Republicans. They are called the Independent Democratic Caucus, and they hold the balance of power. Governor Andrew Cuomo likes the divided legislature, as it enhances his power.

The Alliance for Quality Education (AQE) investigated the IDC and discovered the source of their ample funding: Hedge fund managers and equity investors who favor charter schools and privatization.

Its report, called “Pay to Play: Charter Schools and the IDC,” lays out the political contributions that fuel the IDC campaigns:

“The IDC received $676,850 from charter school political donors.

“Over the past six years, the Independent Democratic Conference, a group of breakaway Democrats who support Republican control of the New York State Senate, have received $676,850 from charter school political donors. These political donors, including hedge fund managers and their political action committees, have been rewarded by the IDC as seen in the 2017 state budget where privately-
run charter schools got much larger funding increases per pupil than public schools. The IDC-Republican advocacy for privately-run charter schools at the expense of public schools runs counter to the IDC’s public pronouncements that they are championing public school funding and the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. The IDC is empowering pro-privatization, pro-Trump Republicans to run the State Senate even though it hurts the more than one million public school students they represent.

“The table below is lists the charter school-af liated individual and political action donations made to IDC members and to committees speci cally bene ting the IDC.

“Senators Hamilton and Peralta are not included in the list of IDC members shown below. Senator Jesse Hamilton joined the IDC on November 7, 2016. Senator Jose Peralta joined in January 2017. The two senators however, have a long history of receiving donations from the charter industry. Over the years, the donations they received come to a total of $ 11,500 for and $26,500 for Peralta. This money is in addition to the total shown in this report.”

Open the link to see the list of donors.

Why does this connection matter?

A Republican Senate can be relied on to prevent tax increases on the wealthy. This matters to them even more than charter schools. Bottom line: the 1% prefer charters instead of tax increases to pay for smaller classes, early childhood education, and the services that would help children and public schools.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, New York

Steve Zimmer’s Chief of Staff Speaks Out About the Complex Issues in LAUSD

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2017 //
33

Claudia Vizcarra’s statement was posted as a comment. Steve Zimmer fought against the Billionaires Boy Club twice, and lost the second time. I strongly supported Steve. It was only after the election that I wrote that I wished he had fought harder against charters and drawn the lines more sharply against privatization. To Steve’s credit, he is a thoughtful, reasonable, open-minded person. If he had been able to match Melvoin dollar for dollar, he would have whipped him. But this is the reality we face: none of us who understand the value and importance of public education can match the BBC dollars. We are many, they are few. That’s the only way to save our schools: people power. Votes.

She writes:

“I feel the need to weigh in at this time. I worked for Steve Zimmer for 7 years, the last 4 I was his Chief of Staff. I appreciate Diane speaking to the complexity of the issues in this election. I want to add a couple of pieces that need to be taken into consideration, in my opinion.

“The first one is that Steve did not come out strongly enough against charter schools. I was there when Steve called for a moratorium for new charters petitions prior to his previous election – which was determined not to be legal and generated a massive campaign against him. Despite this, he prevailed in the election. Steve objected time and again against charters for not serving special education students or a diverse enough populations. Charters have long responded to these issues by saying, we’re trying. Some do and some don’t. Steve also called out the massive expansion of charters that Broad and his billionaire friends were (are) planning.

“And Steve made a strong case for changing the narrative to one that focused on increasing enrollment. He authored resolution after resolution asking Superintendent’s Deasy, Cortines and now King to make strategic investments in the programs that were drawing parents back into our schools.

“And it’s important to look at the issue in its complexity. We can’t forget that like it or not, charter schools parents are also constituents and cannot be flat out ignored. And let’s remember that Districts have to deal with the reality that even when they reject a charter petition at the onset, charters have the right to appeal both at the County level and at the State level again. So, a charter can be denied by the local Board and still have a right to be co-located in District schools that have available classrooms. Consider the complexity of this.

“Some people have argued that Steve lost his election because he supported the resolution that called for supporting SB 808 – which asks that an appeal at the county level can only be denied on the basis of the local Board committing a procedural violation. Whether this is the right fix or not, is an open question. Consider again, the complexity of this.

“Others have argued that the more appropriate arena for local Boards to engage in is the difficult conversation of defining what a ‘sound educational plan’. The LAUSD Board of Education began this conversation, and would have continued it if Steve had been re-elected. But consider how complex this conversation, is, if you will.

“My point is not to be a Zimmer apologist. We all know that like all of us, Steve is human and made mistakes. Our democracy does not require perfection from our leaders. But we are learning, all too painfully, that it requires our leaders to consider matters carefully. And it requires that more people join the conversation and have thoughtful conversations.

“In my opinion, Steve made a valiant effort to make a case for public education. He authored and supported countless resolutions detailing the many elements that make our District schools the best choice in some communities, and supported the District in making the improvements needed to make sure they are the best choice in the communities where parents don’t find them to be so. Anyone who cares to look, will find that his policy legacy is robust, and that we don’t need to start from square one to build progressive policy. There is a lot there to build on for those who want to do this.

“I am not sure if calling charters parasites is the best way to go. But I am sure that in California we have to start by working to repeal Proposition 39. I don’t believe there is a voter that is not shocked to learn that they voted to support the mayhem this has created. Voters across the state need to learn what this looks like on the ground, and we need to consider a better alternative.

“In Los Angeles, I also feel that there has been insufficient attention to making charters accountable. The LA School Report provides a daily dosage of LAUSD’s failings. But I don’t know which media outlet has ever sent a reporter to charter board meetings. No one has studied how many of those Boards have A-G resolutions, or resolutions that promote restorative justice. I am not sure if the civil rights groups in Los Angeles have paid the same attention to the rights of the over 100,000 students in charter schools.”

If charter schools are public schools, entitled to public dollars and public school classrooms, they require the same attention from those committed to social justice.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization

Karen Wolfe: Why the Billionaire Boys Club Won the Los Angeles Election

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2017 //
16

Karen Wolfe is a parent activist and blogger in Los Angeles. She interviewed several of the leading figures in the recent school board elections and shares her thoughts about why the board president Steve Zimmer lost and his billionaire-backed challenger Nick Melvoin won. [Sorry for original error; Freudian slip.]

Back in the distant past, a person could raise $30-50,000 and run for school board. This race cost millions of dollars. The billionaires spent four times as much money as the supporters of Zimmer. Zimmer was backed by UTLA (United Teachers of Los Angeles), Melvoin was backed by billionaires like Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, Alice Walton, Reed Hastings, and others with no connection to the schools other than their desire to put one of their own in control. It was the most expensive school board race in history (as the referendum last fall about the expansion of charter schools was the most expensive ballot question about schools in history–the billionaires hand over a million or two without thinking twice, when charters are involved.)

Melvoin had another advantage besides copious cash for TV and print advertising. He was able to spend full-time campaigning every day for the last 18 months, while Zimmer had a day job.

Melvoin and his campaign also lied shamelessly. They blamed Zimmer for John Deasy’s $1 billion iPad scandal. Deasy is now working for Eli Broad. Now, that’s chutzpah. Or a bald-faced lie.

Karen Wolfe is not as impressed by the power of the money and lies as I am. I think that Melvoin is a puppet of Broad, and his campaign excelled at mud-slinging and succeeded in depressing the vote.

My take: Steve Zimmer, an honorable and decent man, failed to present a sharp alternative to Melvoin. He was always on the defensive. He supported charter schools, but thought they should be held accountable. He did not make a compelling case for the importance of public education and the dangers of privatization. He had one foot in each camp. That’s not good enough. I wish he had come out against charter schools for draining hundreds of millions from the district and luring away the easiest to educate students. I wish he had called them parasites.

Now the new board president is likely to be run by Ref Rodriguez, who runs a charter chain that was recently under investigation. He has contracts with the board. He shouldn’t even be on the board. Doesn’t California have conflict of interest laws? Guess not.

What is the future of public education in Los Angeles? Ask Eli Broad. He considers privately managed and unaccountable charter schools to be “public schools.” There will be many more of them in the near future. That’s why the billionaires invested.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Los Angeles, Privatization

Chan-Zuckerberg Put Their Money on Depersonalized Learning

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2017 //
50

Boy wonder Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Dr. Priscilla Chan are placing their bets on technology to teach children better than humans.

https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2017/6/6/chan-zuckerbergs-personalized-learning-grants

What is ironic about this is that Dr. Chan has often told interviewers that two teachers “changed her life.”

Do you think anyone will ever remember with gratitude the nameless, faceless monitor that changed their life?

Please join me in my personal crusade to refer to machine instruction as Depersonalized Learning. The tech billionaires not only want our money, they want to steal the integrity of language.

NO! Resist!

Categories Billionaires, Teaching, Technology

NY Times: The Tech Billionaires Who Are Remaking America’s Schools

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2017 //
37

This is an important article about the Silicon Valley billionaires who want to remake America’s schools, although none has any deep knowledge of children or cognition or the multiple social issues that affect children and families. Being tech entrepreneurs, most of them think there is a technological fix for every problem.

The article focuses on several billionaires and what they aim to achieve.

The writer, Natasha Singer, is careful to add red flags where necessary and seek out evaluations. She also is alert to the possibility that the tech entrepreneurs are building their portfolios and enriching themselves. And she points out that much of what they are doing challenges democracy itself in the absence of public debate and understanding.

She writes:

“In the space of just a few years, technology giants have begun remaking the very nature of schooling on a vast scale, using some of the same techniques that have made their companies linchpins of the American economy. Through their philanthropy, they are influencing the subjects that schools teach, the classroom tools that teachers choose and fundamental approaches to learning….

“The involvement by some of the wealthiest and most influential titans of the 21st century amounts to a singular experiment in education, with millions of students serving as de facto beta testers for their ideas. Some tech leaders believe that applying an engineering mind-set can improve just about any system, and that their business acumen qualifies them to rethink American education…

“Tech companies and their founders have been rolling out programs in America’s public schools with relatively few checks and balances, The New York Times found in interviews with more than 100 company executives, government officials, school administrators, researchers, teachers, parents and students.

“They have the power to change policy, but no corresponding check on that power,” said Megan Tompkins-Stange, an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “It does subvert the democratic process.”

Furthermore, there is only limited research into whether the tech giants’ programs have actually improved students’ educational results….

“Mr. Hastings of Netflix and other tech executives rejected the idea that they wielded significant influence in education. The mere fact that classroom internet access has improved, Mr. Hastings said, has had a much greater impact in schools than anything tech philanthropists have done.”

Hastings’ Dreambox software depends on constant data-mining:

“DreamBox Learning tracks a student’s every click, correct answer, hesitation and error — collecting about 50,000 data points per student per hour — and uses those details to adjust the math lessons it shows. And it uses data to help teachers pinpoint which math concepts students may be struggling with.”

This is the same Reed Hastings who just spent $5 million helping charter entrepreneurs gain control of the Los Angeles school board.

“Another difference: Some tech moguls are taking a hands-on role in nearly every step of the education supply chain by financing campaigns to alter policy, building learning apps to advance their aims and subsidizing teacher training. This end-to-end influence represents an “almost monopolistic approach to education reform,” said Larry Cuban, an emeritus professor of education at Stanford University. “That is starkly different to earlier generations of philanthropists.”

“These efforts coincide with a larger Silicon Valley push to sell computers and software to American schools, a lucrative market projected to reach $21 billion by 2020. Already, more than half of the primary- and secondary-school students in the United States use Google services like Gmail in school.”

Singer goes through each of the entrepreneurs’ programs. The only one that impressed me was the program in San Francisco that created a Pricipals’ Innovation Fund, “which awards annual unrestricted grants of $100,000 to the principal at each of the district’s 21 middle and K-8 schools.” The key word here is unrestricted.

Mark Zuckerberg’s dream is to sell his digitized approach to enable children to learn via computer and use teachers as moderators. He calls this “personalized learning,” since the computer algorithm adjusts for each student. Singer’s subtitle for Zuckerberg’s dream is: “Student, Teach Thyself.”

““Our hope over the next decade is to help upgrade a majority of these schools to personalized learning and then start working globally as well,” Mr. Zuckerberg told the audience. “Giving a billion students a personalized education is a great thing to do.”

Please, Natasha Singer, do a follow-up that explains that learning from a machine is depersonalized learning.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Data and Data Mining, Democracy, Education Reform, For-Profit, Online Learning, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Technology
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