Laura Chapman reviewed the Gates-Zuckerberg alliance and their thoughts about next steps for reformers:
Forget charter schools but not test scores.
Here is where a big pot of money is going next.
“Forget crumbling schools” and “decades old teaching materials.”
That is the wisdom coming from Bob Hughes education leader for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Jim Shelton leader of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in education collaborators on a new project: Advanced Research and Development on three areas of interest.
Citing the mediocre NAEP tests scores in math and ELA, these hired hands of billionaires say they want to “meaningfully put more students on paths to success after high school. The truth is that we need to dramatically accelerate learning, and to do that, we need to understand it more deeply in order to design teaching environments and support systems that can deliver much better outcomes”
In addition to completely ignoring the crumbling schools and decades old instructional materials to say nothing of pre-judging teachers are too lethargic and muddled in getting students ready for “success” after high school, these two Quick Draw McGraw data-hungry fans of computers and artificial intelligence want to invest in proofs of the efficacy of their interests in 1. Mathematics, 2. Nonfiction writing, and
3. Executive function (the skill set concerning memory, self-control, attention, and flexible thinking). In the press release and invitation to researchers, each of these topics is presented with a brief rationale for inquiry along with the specific interests of these funders—interests that researchers should address.
The program called: Improving Writing: Developing the Requisite Habits, Skills and Strategies is introduced with some moaning about the low “proficiency” scores in writing on NAEP tests presented in a graph with breakouts for sub-groups. That graph is followed by a 2004 claim from a College Board Report that American companies spend about $3.1 billion annually for “writing remediation.” So, the education funders begin with a misunderstanding of “proficient” on NAEP tests, plus an outdated quote about the cost to businesses of remedial writing. That claim also comes from a dubious source of information, the College Board. Apparently a good reason to teach writing faster and better is to save money for business.
The brief rationale ends with a list of ten topics of interest for funding. Researchers are to address one or more of them. Here are a few:
—-“Support for writing planning – Efficient, technology-enhanced approaches to guide the planning of writing projects, for both teachers and students.”
—-“Intelligent tutoring systems for writing – Support processes (including teacher involvement) to develop narrative, descriptive, expository, and/or persuasive writing models that meet or exceed the impact of 1:1 human tutors.”
—-“Artificial Intelligence – Writing-focused AI that can provide analytics and feedback to teachers and students for context, syntax, sentiment or other analytics to improve writing skills.”
—-“’Learning Engineered’ professional development – Professional development and support for writing instruction that is grounded in evidence-based principles of human learning and motivation. “
—-“Writing mindset and motivation – Developing and measuring positive mindsets and motivation around writing capabilities.”
I conclude that tech-oriented proposals are of great interest and viewed as potentially more perfect, precise, intelligent and efficient (time and cost) than human teachers.
For “Improving Mathematical Understanding, Application, and Related Mindsets” the draft proposal begins in the same way, bemoaning NAEP scores but with the expectation that rapid improvement can be gained by computer-assisted approaches that would scale up practices of the “best 1:1 tutors.”
Ten topics of interest for research are outlined, all reeking with jargon about personalized, actionable, and scalable this and that.
—-“Performance-based measures and analytics – New and novel methods for measuring mastery, both procedural and conceptual, and providing immediate, actionable feedback for students and teachers.”
—-“Intelligent tutoring systems – Highly personalized, engaging math tutoring systems that take a whole-student approach and provide actionable information to students and teachers.”
—-“Artificial intelligence – Includes algorithms to improve personalization and/or real-time feedback to the student, virtual assistant technologies to improve engagement and interactivity with students, and support tools for teachers.”
—-“Technology-enhanced content – Innovative and engaging content to integrate in an intelligent tutoring system including, but not limited to, Augmented Reality, (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), games, comics, lecture, laboratories, etc., together with tools to connect teachers into these activities and student progress within them.”
—-“Neuroscience-based measures – Scalable technologies to provide measures of engagement, attention, and comprehension, delivering actionable information to students and teachers while safeguarding student privacy. “
I judge that the funders intend to pursue biometric monitoring of students with devices that give real-time, immediate, actionable feedback to students and teachers. See for example https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-10-26-this-company-wants-to-gather-student-brainwave-data-to-measure-engagement
The final area of interest is Measuring and Improving Executive Function (EF). Because there are no NAEP or other test scores for EF, the funders include references for three studies is support of their desire to improve the development of the executive function (EF) in children, students, teachers and other adults. The funders cite some research to claim that skills for EF—working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control—if strong in childhood, “predict higher socio-economic status, better physical health, and fewer drug-related problems and criminal convictions in adulthood.”
In my opinion, the research citations (three) allow the funders to sidestep the profound influence of poverty on outcomes, shifting attention instead to initiatives that are “scalable, precise, and effective ways to track progress or kinds of interventions to improve EF; ” and to “affordable cost to implement (solutions)- below current market pricing for existing solutions and attainable at a variety of per-student funding levels.” Should we be surprised that the billionaires want low cost and precise interventions at several tiers of per-student funding?
The specific areas of interest for proposals are presented as
—“Tracking progress of student executive function, PreK-12,” especially with unobtrustive, real-time measures of performance;
—“Student-facing interventions/programs/practices/tools to support EF development and use,” including “Technology-enhanced programs in or outside of school: Games, simulations, or other engaging content paired with teacher and family supports…”
—”Measures of educator EF and environmental EF supports,” including…”scalable, valid and reliable, repeatable, pragmatic measures of … (an) educator’s own EF within student learning contexts;” “Adult capacity to support EF growth in students, and technology-enhanced programs for these.”
—-“Critical field-building research topics, including, EF precursor skills”…such as “autonomy, supportive teaching and caregiving;” neuroscience connections such as “neural underpinnings of EF intervention effects, neural developmental progressions, compensatory pathways vs. EF improvement in the brain” and interactions between EF and other factors (e.g., stress, biology, motivation) toward academic and nonacademic outcomes/behaviors.” WHEW.
I conclude that this last area of interest is intended to increase the use of surveillance systems in classrooms with these devices targeted to capture student behavior and teacher behavior without them being aware of the data-gathering. There is clearly a desire to get data and issue judgments about teachers and adults as more or less competent that technologies in supporting improved EF. Surveillance systems are built into games and mobile technologies. These are also of interest as sources of data for improving EF—self control, delayed gratification, and cognitive flexibility. In addition, the funders have an interest in neurology— a medical understanding of EF and intervention effects, captured with biometric monitoring.
It is worth noting that all of these research interests call for a data-gathering on individual students (and teachers). All three initiatives ask researchers to “ identify ”possible privacy implications and strategies for ensuring the privacy and security of information.” Meanwhile Gates is among many others who are marketing tech-centric personalized learning and leading initiatives to get rid of FERPA constraints for any research intended to improve student outcomes.
Welcome to the brave new world of tech-mediated interventions and hope for “precise” solutions to accelerated learning of the kind these billionaires want to invest in.
Click to access FERPA%20Exceptions_HANDOUT_horizontal_0_0.pdf
http://k12education.gatesfoundation.org/researchanddevelopment/
