Archives for category: Corporate Reformers
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Tech Companies Sign Pledge to Respect Student Privacy; Critics Skeptical

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2014 //
25

Several major technology companies signed a pledge not to sell or misuse private student data. Critics were not reassured.

 

According to a story in Education Week,

 

K-12 student-privacy pledge released Tuesday and signed by prominent ed-tech providers prompted immediate statements of concern from some advocacy groups about whether self-regulation will do the job of protecting student data.

 

The voluntary Pledge to Safeguard Student Privacy, co-authored by the Software and Information Industry Association or SIIA, and the Future of Privacy Forum, and signed initially by 13 companies and one non-profit, includes six “do’s” and six “don’ts” of handling student data. The signers—including Amplify, DreamBox Learning, Edmodo, Follett, Knewton, Knovation, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Microsoft, and Think Through Math—agree to abide by the provisions of the pledge effective January 1, 2015.

 

Among key elements of the pledge are promises to:

 

Not sell student information
Not behaviorally target advertising (which means targeting advertising based on a student’s web-browsing behavior)
Use data for authorized education purposes only
Not change privacy policies without notice and choice
Enforce strict limits on data retention
Support parental access to, and correction of errors in, their children’s information
Provide comprehensive security standards
Be transparent about collection and use of data
The pledge was created as parents’ worries about the privacy and security of their students’ data have resonated in state legislatures, and as the state of California enacted a strict privacy law last month. It also follows the collapse of inBloom, a controversial data management company that was striving to be a single repository for up to 400 pieces of information about each student whose data were uploaded to the cloud—but that fell under the weight of protests from parents, some educators, and others.

 

Software companies selling products to K-12 schools have been concerned, too, that their mission to collect and use student data to help educators better teach their students will not be permitted by law. “Without data, we are flying blind,” said Aimee Rogstad Guidera, founder and executive director of Data Quality Campaign, a national nonprofit that advocates for the effective use of education data to improve student achievement, in a statement in support of the pledge.

 

Range of Reactions to Pledge

 

The National School Boards Association and the National PTA joined the organizations that released the pledge with their endorsements in the launch announcement. Keith Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking, said he thinks the pledge is helpful. “It states, pretty clearly and crisply—in language a non-lawyer can understand—what’s not going to happen with your data,” he said. Schools and districts are looking for that kind of assurance in an industry standard about the collection, management, and use of personal information, he said.

 

But Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters based in New York City and co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, said in a statement that “we need legally enforceable provisions requiring parental notification and consent for the disclosure and redisclosure of personal student data, as well as rigorous security standards.” She predicted that the pledge would not reassure parents about data sharing, data-mining and data breaches.

 

Mark Schneiderman, the senior director of education policy at SIIA, said that, when companies make public pledges like this one, it is enforceable by the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC.

 

It is worth remembering that the CEO of Knewton, working with Pearson, boasted that education is the most data-minable sector of the economy. Data mining is big business.  Can we trust them?

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform

Pelto: Malloy Pledges to “Stay the Course” with Corporate Education Reform

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2014 //
8

Jonathan Pelto reports that Governor Dannel Malloy of Connecticut announced he will stay the course on his corporate education reform policies, despite the huge scandal associated with the Jumoke charter school. Jumoke was one of the governor’s star charters until it was revealed that its CEO had a criminal past and a fake doctorate. Malloy supports tying teacher evaluation to test scores, despite the fact that this method has worked nowhere. And as Pelto reminds us, he proposed eliminating (not reforming but eliminating) teachers’ due process rights. He also advocated a no-union policy in the state’s poorest schools. He seems to have bought hook, line, and sinker the reformer claim that unions and tenure depress student test scores, even though the highest performing schools in the state have unions and tenure.

Why would a Democratic governor advocate for the failed policies of corporate reform? One guess. Connecticut has a large concentration of hedge fund managers, whose ideology and campaign contributions are aligned. In their highly speculative business, no one has unions or tenure. When stocks or investments go bad, they dump them. They think that schools should live by their principles. They should read Jamie Vollmer’s famous blueberry story. You can’t throw away the bad blueberries. Unless you run a charter school. Then you can exclude bad blueberries and kick out other bad blueberries.

Categories Charter Schools, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Unions

Kristen Buras: Nashville Should Not Copy the Disaster in New Orleans

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2014 //
1

Kristen Buras, a professor at Georgia State University who recently published a book about “education reform” in New Orleans, here warns the people of Nashville not to copy the New Orleans model.

 

This is what happened in New Orleans, according to Buras:

 

 

The attempt to turn around neighborhood schools by closing them and opening charters caused greater harm than Hurricane Katrina. I fear the same destructive “reforms” will strike Nashville.

In 2005, Louisiana’s state-run Recovery School District (RSD) assumed control of most public schools in New Orleans and handed them over for private management and profit making by “nonprofit” charter school operators.

Experienced veteran teachers in New Orleans were unlawfully fired and replaced by transient, inexperienced recruits from beyond the city, with most departing after two years. Teach For America stood ready to supply new teachers. Most of all, it stood to profit.

Neighborhood schools were closed without genuine community input. Meanwhile, charter school operators have paid themselves six-figure salaries, used public money without transparency and appointed unelected boards to govern the schools.

Community members have filed civil rights lawsuits, including one by Southern Poverty Law Center alleging thousands of disabled children were denied access to schools and federally mandated services in violation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Moreover, there are charter schools in New Orleans with out-of-school suspension rates approximating 70 percent.

Charter school operators in New Orleans do not care about children — they care about making money. They do not want to serve children who are “expensive” or may compromise the business venture.

 

It is the same story in city after city that takes New Orleans as its model.

 

Good news about Buras’ book: Originally published in hardcover for $125, it is now available in softcover for $43. It is a must-read to learn about what happened in New Orleans from the perspective of families and students, not entrepreneurs and politicians.

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New Orleans, Privatization, Tennessee

Daniel S. Katz: How to Spot a Fake Grassroots Reform Group

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2014 //
5

Daniel S. Katz, a professor of education at Seton Hall University, explains on his blog how to recognize a phony education reform group.

The key is, as always, follow the money. If the group is funded by the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Walton Foundation, the John Arnold Foundation, or the Helmsley Foundation (among others), you can bet there are no grassroots. If they not only have said funding but an expensive location and grow rapidly, and if they advocate for charter schools and test-based evaluation of teachers, there are no grassroots, only faux reform roots that are part of the movement to privatize public education. The “reform” movement likes to pretend that it has a broad base so it funds numerous “front” groups. We have not seen so many front groups since the 1930s. Today, as then, they represent no community, no one but the funders and the elites and those with a hidden but anti-democratic agenda.

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Walton Foundation

Bob Herbert on “The Plot Against Public Education: How Millionaires and Billionaires Are Ruining Our Schools”

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2014 //
34

Readers of this blog understand the corporate assault on public education. With few exceptions, you know of Bill Gates’ belief that metrics can solve all the world’s problems. You are aware from the events in your state or district that corporate raiders look at the public schools as a way to get rich with their sales pitch for a charter school, a charter chain, a cyberschool, a professional development gig, or new technology.

 

Again and again, the question arises: How do we get the story to the mainstream media when media giants are cashing in on testing and technology? How can we make the voices of parents and teachers heard?

 

Here it is. Bob Herbert, who was a columnist for the New York Times, tells the story in his new book, Losing Our Way: An Intimate Portrait of a Troubled America (Doubleday).

 

Herbert’ explains “The Plot Against Public Education: How Millionaires and Billionaires Are Ruining Our Schools” in politico.com.

 

 

Here is Bob Herbert on the reformers’ favorite reform:

 

“This hit-or-miss attitude—let’s try this, let’s try that—has been a hallmark of school reform efforts in recent years. The experiments trotted out by the big-money crowd have been all over the map. But if there is one broad approach (in addition to the importance of testing) that the corporate-style reformers and privatization advocates have united around, it’s the efficacy of charter schools. Charter schools were supposed to prove beyond a doubt that poverty didn’t matter, that all you had to do was free up schools from the rigidities of the traditional public system and the kids would flourish, no matter how poor they were or how chaotic their home environments.

 

“Corporate leaders, hedge fund managers and foundations with fabulous sums of money at their disposal lined up in support of charter schools, and politicians were quick to follow. They argued that charters would not only boost test scores and close achievement gaps but also make headway on the vexing problem of racial isolation in schools.

 

“None of it was true. Charters never came close to living up to the hype. After several years of experimentation and the expenditure of billions of dollars, charter schools and their teachers proved, on the whole, to be no more effective than traditional schools. In many cases, the charters produced worse outcomes. And the levels of racial segregation and isolation in charter schools were often scandalous. While originally conceived a way for teachers to seek new ways to reach the kids who were having the most difficult time, the charter school system instead ended up leaving behind the most disadvantaged youngsters.”

 

This is a lucid and compelling account of the corporate-driven effort to replace public education–a basic democratic institution–with a market-based, data-driven system of choice and metrics. Herbert sees through the subterfuge s and the double talk. This is an article you should read and a book I plan to order right now.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

Peter Greene: Reformers Want a New Conversation about Accountability

By dianeravitch
October 6, 2014 //
13

As you may have noticed, we are getting swamped with messages from the corporate reformers about how it is time to restart the conversation. Presumably that is a recognition that the previous conversation wasn’t working. The American public is fed up with high-stakes testing and increasingly suspicious of the grandiose promises about the miracles that privately managed charter schools will accomplish. Having noticed that the charter schools don’t want children with disabilities, don’t want English language learners, and are likely to encourage kids with low test scores to find another school, the public is waking up to the game played by corporate charters. It’s all about the test score, which takes us back to the overuse and misuse of standardized testing. This failed conversation seems to have gotten mixed up, inevitably, with the Common Core, and the public is overwhelmingly opposed to CCSS and federal takeover of state and local decision-making.

 

So, in the face of a growing public resistance to their plans, we hear more and more about starting over.

 

In this post, Peter Greene deconstructs the latest effort to begin again, this one from the Center for Reinventing Public Education in Washington State. CRPE was founded by Paul Hill and has been an advocate for “portfolio districts” made up of charter schools, public schools, and other types of management. The basic idea of the portfolio is that district boards should act like stockbrokers, keeping the winning stocks and selling the losers. But the losers, in this case, are public schools that would be closed and replaced by charters.

 

The authors of the proposal that Greene dissects are our friend Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (a relentless advocate for Common Core), Paul Hill, and Robin Lake of CPRE.

 

As you can imagine, Greene is critical of the report, but he does see some useful issues raised. The proposal says:

 

States should hold schools, not individual teachers, accountable for student progress.

 

Hey look! Something that is, in fact, different. Not new, actually– threatening to punish just schools is what we tried under NCLB, and it didn’t work. Not to mention that we don’t know how to do it, just as we don’t know how to hold individual teachers accountable. This is no more useful than saying “Santa should lend us his naughty and nice list for accountability purposes.”

 

The article also provides a list of Things To Worry About While Pursuing Accountability.

 

How to avoid specifying outcomes so exhaustively that schools are unable to innovate and solve problems.
How to drive continuous improvement in all schools, not just the lowest-performing.
How to coordinate and limit federal, state, and district demands for data.
How to prevent cheating on tests and other outcome measures.
How to motivate students to do their best in school and on assessments.
How to give children at risk new options without causing a constant churn in their educational experience.
How to adjust measurement and accountability to innovations in instruction and technology.
This list is actually the best thing about the whole article. There is nothing remotely new about the list of Things To Do– it’s the same old, same old reformster stuff we’ve heard before.

 

But this list of problem areas? That’s a good piece of work, because it does in fact recognize a host of obstacles that generally go ignored and unrecognized. These are “problems” in the sense that gravity is a problem for people who want to jump naked off high buildings, flap their arms, and not get hurt. I don’t know that CRPE, given its clear focus on charters, finance, and high stakes standardized testing, has goals and objectives any different from a few dozen other reformy iterations. But the recognition of obstacles shows some grasp of reality, and that’s always a nice sign.

 

Greene actually sees a hopeful sign in this proposal. The writers say:

 

“These problems are solvable, but they require serious work, not sniping among rival camps. It is time to start working through the problems of accountability, with discipline, open-mindedness, and flexibility.

 

“We—all the co-signers of the September 24 statement—are eager to work with others, including critics of tests and accountability. Issues of measurement, system design, and implementation must be addressed, carefully and through disciplined trials.”

 

And Greene responds:

 

I’ll accept that from a step up from, “Shut up and do as you’re told. We totally know exactly what we’re doing.” I’m not seeing much in CRPE’s ideas that represent a new direction on the issue; it’s basically reframing and repackaging. But the recognition of real-world obstacles is more than a simple shift of tone. (And there’s still the Whose Party Is This problem). But keep talking CRPE. I’m still listening.

 

My guess is that the September 24 statement is a recognition that parents and educators are rising up to fight the test mania that has gripped policymakers and state education departments. More and more of the public is saying: “Enough is enough! Stop the testing madness!”

 

In the face of the growing tide of anti-testing sentiment–which is not so much anti-testing as it is opposition to the sheer quantity of time devoted to testing, and the billions stolen from schools to fund Pearson and McGraw-Hill–the reformers are regrouping, trying to find a way to save testing and accountability from a rising public anger. I don’t think it will work. After all, a statement from CPRE is not exactly a big newsworthy deal. The public, quite rightly, will keep on protesting, the government will keep on sending billions to the testing and technology companies, and kids will still be subjected to take tests for many hours each year for no purpose other than evaluating their teachers by failed methods.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Testing

Peter Greene: Marshall Tuck Will Destroy Public Education in California and Then What?

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2014 //
35

Peter Greene has a very engaging post about the insanity of Marshall Tuck’s run for State Superintendent of California.

 

Greene can’t believe that Tuck believes what he is saying and promising. If he delivers, he will destroy public education in California, get rid of experienced teachers, somehow find inexperienced replacements for them, and then what? Then Californians will know that the whole reformster agenda is a fraud. Maybe, just maybe, Greene thinks, it would be a good thing to have this expose happen.

 

What qualifies Tuck to run the state education department? Well, he was an investment banker. The rich and powerful like him. He has friends in Hollywood. He thinks no teacher should have tenure. He failed as leader of Green Dot. He failed running the mayor’s takeover schools. That means he is an expert on reform.

 

Greene writes:

 

Tuck is popular with the Let’s Kick Teachers’ Asses crowd, which is why this election matters. Current Superintendent Tom Torlakson pissed off a lot of powerful people by deciding to challenge the Vergara ruling, and if elected Tuck will put an end to that toot suite.

 

I confess to being a little fascinated by the Tuck candidacy, because what is the end game here? I mean, unless he’s an idiot, he has to know that the same smoke and mirrors that create the illusion of success for charter schools cannot be scaled to the state level, and his bold claims that he can raise California’s educational standings will fail hugely. “Throw out difficult students who make school look less successful” only works if there are other schools to send them to. Maybe he has figured out how to scale charter success with, say, a plan to push all low-performing California students into Nevada. But I’m doubtful. He has to know that he cannot deliver any of the results he is promising.

 

So if he’s not an idiot, what’s the plan here? Just get in there and strip as much money as possible out of the system and walk away? Destroy the teaching profession and public education and just hope nobody notices or cares? The usual reformster profile is to find yourself a job where you aren’t accountable to much of anybody and where the reporting of results is entirely under your control. But Tuck wants to be responsible to the state voters for an entire state system whose results will be pretty hard to hide.

 

If this guy is elected, shame on the voters of California. Their children will get what they don’t deserve.

 

 

Categories California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Teacher Tenure

Mercedes Schneider Connects the Dots about the Real Purpose of “Reform”

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2014 //
37

Mercedes Schneider has put together the pieces and figured out what lies behind “reform.”

It is not about better education. It is about converting our schools into an assembly-line to produce workers for the economy. It is not about helping schools meet the needs and develop the interests of students. It is about fitting children into the slots where the economy needs them. Their purposes, interests, and personal goals don’t matter.

To make her case, she looks at three representative documents. One comes from Indiana Governor Mike Pence, who created a “Department of Workforce Development” to compete with and supplant the state’s Department of Education. Of course, we know that Pence will do anything to cut down State Commissioner of Education Glenda Ritz. But it is revealing that he sees the noble profession of education solely as “workforce development.”

Then she looks at a 1992 document by Marc Tucker, who envisioned “labor market boards” to align curriculum and jobs. Of course, that was more than two decades ago. Does he still see education solely in economic terms? I for one would not want to be held strictly accountable for things I wrote in 1992.

Schneider then considers an article written by a South Korean teacher who described the cruel and inhumane pressures endured by South Korean students in pursuit of high test scores. Yet, harsh as it is, Arne Duncan looks longingly at this system because of its results.

Schneider has anephany:

“After reading and meditating on these three articles today, I had an epiphany of sorts regarding privatizing utility of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

“Now, I know a lot about CCSS. This summer I wrote a book on its history, development, and promotion. However, what occurred to me this afternoon is the reason for the business push for CCSS particularly and the spectrum of privatizing reforms in general.

“It has nothing to do with “competing in the global economy.” That’s just a distractor.

“The goal of business in aggressively promoting CCSS while bashing the teaching profession into false, test-score-riddled “accountability” is to reshape the purpose of education into streamlined, assembly-line-to-market service.

“Yes, CCSS is about corporate profits, but it is about more than companies like Pearson making potential billions off of selling CCSS products and services.

“The true business goal behind CCSS and other market-driven “reforms” is to make American education completely economic — which means completely dehumanized in its purpose.

“It is about corporate America funneling the nation’s youth into predetermined, objectified service of the corporate, gluttonous market needs. And a crucial component of that goal is to break the spirit of teachers and make us nothing more than the trainers of What the Market Requires.”

She concludes:

“There is certainly money to be made in promoting “reforms” that, ahem, “benefit the economy.” But we must recognize this “cradle to grave” shaping of the American education system for what it is: A purposed effort to separate America into two groups, the privileged and the serfs. Indeed, the privileged are trying to finesse the message of serfdom as one that “concerned citizens” seemingly cannot say no to: a falsified image of national economic health that, if ingested by the American consciousness, will prove to be nothing more than caustic gluttony that dehumanizes most members of our society and corrodes our democratic foundation.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Economy

Joseph Ricciotti Explains the War on Teachers

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2014 //
21

Joseph Ricciotti, a former professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut, wrote a powerful article in which he describes the sinking morale of teachers, weighed down by the dehumanizing and demoralizing policies of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Barack Obama’s Race to the Top.

He writes:

“The war on teachers began with the “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) program when George W. Bush was president and has continued with “Race to the Top” (RTTT) with President Obama and his non-educator, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Basically both programs are what is commonly referred to by public school educators as “test and punish” testing programs that are used primarily for closing schools, ranking students, demonizing teachers and for assessing teacher effectiveness. These programs have now morphed into the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in which the federal government has, in essence, usurped local control of education in the United States.

“Hence, the purpose of these so-called education reform movement with its high-stakes tests has been to rank students, not to educate them. The ranking consists of “winners”and “losers” which extends beyond the students to also include schools that are “successes” and “failures.”

Why the teacher-bashing?

“Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama as well as the political establishment in Washington, D.C. realized that the true culprit in the achievement gap of many urban schools and their suburban counterparts was poverty. Moreover, both presidents decided that a war on teachers would be cheaper than a war on poverty. At a time when poverty of children in the country has reached epic proportions and has become a national crisis, politicians from both parties have refused to deal with poverty in a meaningful manner and have, instead, decided to scapegoat teachers.”

The attacks on teachers by the corporate reformers is a smokescreen for their unwillingness to do anything meaningful about poverty. Under steady attack from the reformers, the professionalism of teachers was steadily eroded. Reformers, they of high status in the world of politics and philanthropy, never really understood why anyone became teachers and often suggested that teachers were drawn from the lowest academic rungs, an outright falsehood:

“Public school teachers today are considered by the corporate education reformers as merely “clerks” whose expertise, craft and artistry are no longer valued. As an outgrowth of Common Core, teachers no longer have any say or voice in the curriculum and can no longer function as reflective practitioners as the corporations and testing companies now determine what is taught and how it is taught. Educators realize that Common Core is a top-down reform movement developed by non-educators and supported by Bill Gates. It is, in essence, sheer politics with no chance of succeeding. Is it any wonder why teaching has been dehumanized when teachers must adhere to the mandates of the corporate reformers even though they know that these mandates run counter to the interests and needs of their students? It is time for teachers and parents to push back against these corporate education reformers and to help restore the dignity of teaching and public education.”

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Teachers and Teaching

STOP Online Testing in K-2: Florida Parents Demand Sanity

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2014 //
10

Franziska Raeber describes how parents in Florida are organizing resistance to online testing of children in K-2. Please be aware that the purpose of online testing is to enrich the testing industry and tech corporations. The best tests are written and evaluated by teachers, who know what they taught and can use the tests for instant feedback, not to rank students, but to help them. This is true not just in K-2, but throughout education, whether K-12 or higher education.

Raeber writes:

“We are the parents of Kindergartners and 2nd graders. After Susan Bowles from our school district (Alachua County FL) made national headlines by refusing to administer a computerized test, we felt it was time to get our voices as parents heard.
The whole process has been a truly eye opening experience. We never realized how excessive testing is and how much miscommunication is happening. During a town hall meeting teachers brought examples of tests and result print outs to the meeting. Shocking for us all.

“On September 8 we launched a petition (Say NO to computer testing in K-2nd grades) and we have collected over 390 signatures so far, but we don’t want to stop. We have been actively lobbing newspapers, spoke out at town meetings, talked and contacted legislators, PTAs (district as well as state). We have also launched a FB page and trying to get our message out. We are now reaching out to other similar minded groups here in FL, but also within the United States as we believe this problem is not a local issue, but is and should be a national concern.

“When we asked the school-board representatives and administrators what we should do and how to keep this discussion going the message was clear: Speak up! Write letters, emails, call legislators and sign/launch petitions.

“And that is exactly what we are doing, we parents are tired of sending our kids to schools, where great teachers become test facilitators and computer technicians. We want our kids to have fun learning. We strongly believe that in early years good experiences with school will lay the foundation for a life long interest in education, learning and personal growth.

“We have now launched a petition and invite you to sign it.
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/say-no-to-computer-testing?source=c.em.cp&r_by=11297164

“We have launched a Facebook page and are posting articles/resources to it as we come across.
https://www.facebook.com/Notocomputertesting”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Florida, Technology, Computers, Testing
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »