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Linda McNeill: The Tyranny of Testing Companies: Privacy or Proprietary?

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2016 //
14

Linda McNeill is a well-known scholar of high-stakes testing at Rice University in Houston.

She writes here about the ominous role of testing companies in data mining students as they are studying or taking tests online. They gather confidential data about every child. That data may later be used for commercial purposes.

Even as they regularly invade the privacy of unknowing children, they fiercely resist any attempts to make public their tests, on which the fate of students, educators, and schools hinge.

Any discussion of the test content will lead to claims of copyright infringement and threats of legal action. And as we have seen in recent weeks, the test publishers contact Twitter, Facebook, and other social media and lodge complaints that lead to the deletion of tweets, posts, and comments. The testing companies assert the right to censor other people’s products, while shielding their own from public scrutiny.

McNeill writes:

Corporations – from testing companies to third-party marketers to unknown (and perhaps international) vendors – can scoop up personal information on young children and teenagers to use for their own profit. And parents have few ways to find out what these strangers know about their children and how the data collected from year to year will be used to manipulate their children lives.

So are the testing companies advocates willing to have their “data” open to outsiders? It would seem the answer is a clear and resounding NO!….

We’re learning that questioning the tests can put the questioner in jeopardy. Anyone – including teachers – who wants more public scrutiny of the mandated standardized tests that so dominate our schools these days, may be “surveilled.” A teacher or blogger who raises questions about the tests is in danger of being threatened by – yes, the testing companies that have no problem gathering and selling data on young children but do not want anyone to know what they are doing.

What is sauce for the goose is definitely not sauce for the gander. They have a right to collect data about us without our knowledge, but we have no right to know how they are spying on us and data mining our children.

Categories Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, Standardized Testing, Technology, Computers

Sign the NPE Action Proposal to the Democratic Party Platform Committee

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2016 //
38

The Network for Public Education Action Fund has drafted a proposal for consideration by the Democratic Party’s Platform Committee.

We call for the elimination of federal mandates for annual testing; for a declaration of support for public schools; for a ban on for-profit charters; for regulation of charters that receive federal funds to assure that they serve the same children as the public schools; for revision and strengthening of the FERPA privacy laws to protect our children’s data from commercial data mining; for full funding of special education; for support of early childhood education; and for other means of improving the federal role in education.

The proposal is in draft form. We will be making revisions. If you see something you think needs fixing, let us know.

Please read our draft proposal. And if you agree, add your name of our petition to the Democratic party. We plan to make the same appeal to the Republican party.

Both parties, we hope, will support the public schools, which educate nearly 90% of the nation’s children. Public schools are a bedrock of our society, in the past, now, and in the future.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, NPE Action Fund, Parents, Privatization, Resistance, Standardized Testing, Vouchers

Laura Chapman on the Data Monster That Devours Privacy

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2016 //
11

I recently posted about a new partnership between the National PTA and the Data Quality Campaign. In response, our wonderful reader-researcher Laura Chapman dug deep into the money flow and produced this commentary:

 

 

Ah data. You can be sure the PTA is uninformed about the data being collected with their tax dollars. Here are some not widely publicized facts.

 

Between 2005 and early 2011, the Gates’ Foundation invested $75 million in a major advocacy campaign for data gathering, aided by the National Governor’s Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, Achieve, and The Education Trust—most of these groups recipients of Gates money. During the same period, the Gates Foundation also awarded grants totaling $390,493,545 for projects to gather data and build systems for reporting on teacher effectiveness. This multi-faceted campaign, called the Teacher Student Data Link (TSDL) envisioned the linked data serving eight purposes:
1. Determine which teachers help students become college-ready and successful,
2. Determine characteristics of effective educators,
3. Identify programs that prepare highly qualified and effective teachers,
4. Assess the value of non-traditional teacher preparation programs,

 

5. Evaluate professional development programs,
6. Determine variables that help or hinder student learning,
7. Plan effective assistance for teachers early in their career, and
8. Inform policy makers of best value practices, including compensation.
Gates and his friends intended to document and rate the work of teachers and a bit more: They wanted data that required major restructuring of the work of teachers so everything about the new system of education would be based on data-gathering and surveillance.

 

The TSDL system ( in use in many states) required that all courses be identified by standards for achievement and alphanumeric codes for data-entry. All responsibilities for learning had to be assigned to one or more “teachers of record” in charge of a student or class. A teacher of record was assigned a unique identifier (think barcode) for an entire career in teaching. A record would be generated whenever a teacher of record has some specified proportion of responsibility for a student’s learning activities.

 

Learning activities had to be defined by the performance measures (e.g., cut scores for proficiency) for each particular standard for every subject and grade level. The TSDL system was designed to enable period-by-period tracking of teachers and students every day; including “tests, quizzes, projects, homework, classroom participation, or other forms of day-to-day assessments and progress measures”—a level of surveillance that proponents claimed was comparable to business practices (TSDL, 2011, “Key Components”).

 

The system was and is intended to keep current and longitudinal data on the performance of teachers and individual students, as well schools, districts, states, and educators ranging from principals to higher education faculty. Why? All of this data could be used to determine the “best value” investments to make in education, with monitoring and changes in policies to ensure improvements in outcomes. Data analyses would include as many demographic factors as possible, including health records for preschoolers.

 

The Gates-funded TSDL campaign added resources to a parallel federal initiative. Between 2006 and 2015, the US Department of Education (USDE) has invested nearly $900 million in the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) Grant Program. Almost every state has received multi-year grants to standardize data on education. Operated by the Institute of Education Sciences, the SLDS program is: “designed to aid state education agencies in developing and implementing longitudinal data systems.

 

What is the point of the SLDS program? “These systems are intended to enhance the ability of States to efficiently and accurately manage, analyze, and use education data, including individual student records…to help States, districts, schools, and teachers make data-driven decisions to improve student learning, as well as facilitate research to increase student achievement and close achievement gaps” (USDE, 2011, Overview).

 

The most recent data-mongering activity from USDE, rationalized as “helping keep students safe and improving their learning environments” is a suite of on-line School Climate Surveys (EDSCLS). The surveys will allow states, districts, and schools to “collect and act on reliable, nationally-validated school climate data in real-time,” (as soon as it is entered).

 

The School Climate Surveys are for students in grades 5-12, instructional staff, non-instructional staff in the schools they attend and parents/guardians. Data is stored on local data systems, not by USDE. Even so, but the aim is to have national “benchmarks” online by 2017 for local and state comparisons with national scores.

 

Student surveys (73 questions) offer scores for the entire school disaggregated by gender, grade level, ethnicity (Hispanic/Latino or not), and race (five mentioned, combinations allowed).
The Instructional Staff Survey has 82 Questions. Responses can be disaggregated by gender, grade level assignment, ethnicity, race, teaching assignment (special education or not), years working at this school (1-3, 4-9, 10-19, 20 or more).
The Non-instructional Staff Survey has 103 questions, but 21 are only for the principal. Demographic information for disaggregated scores is the same as for s instructional staff)
The Parent Survey has 43 questions, for item-by-item analysis, without any sub-scores or and summary scores. Demographic information is requested for gender, ethnicity, and race.

 

These four surveys address three domains of school climate: Engagement, Safety, and Environment, and thirteen topics (constructs).
Engagement topics are: 1. Cultural and linguistic competence, 2. Relationships, and 3. School participation.
Safety topics are: 4. Emotional safety, 5. Physical safety, 6. Bullying/cyberbullying, 7. Substance abuse, and 8. Emergency readiness/management (item-by-item analysis, no summary score)

 

Environment topics are: 9. Physical environment, 10. Instructional environment, 11. Physical health (information for staff, but no scores for students) 12. Mental health, and 13. Discipline.

 

Almost all questions call for marking answers “yes” or “no,” or with the scale “strongly agree,” agree,” ”disagree” “strongly disagree.” Some questions about drug, alcohol and tobacco abuse ask for one of these responses: “Not a problem,” Small problem,” “ Somewhat a problem,” “Large problem.” None of the questions can be answered “Do not know.”

 

 

I have looked at the survey questions, developed by the American Institutes for Research (AIR), and concluded they are not ready for prime time. Here are a few of the problems.

 

This whole project looks like a rush job. The time for public comment about this project was extremely short. USDE did not change flaws in the piloted surveys, claiming that there was no budget for revisions.

 

The flaws are numerous. Many of the survey questions assume that respondents have an all encompassing and informed basis for offering judgments about school practices and policies. Some questions are so poorly crafted they incorporate several well-known problems in survey design–including more than one important idea, referring to abstract concepts, and assuming responders have sufficient knowledge. Here is an example from the student survey with all three problems. “Question 8. This school provides instructional materials (e.g., textbooks, handouts) that reflect my cultural background, ethnicity, and identity.”

 

 

Many questions have no frame of reference for a personal judgment:

 

 

From the student survey:

 

“17. Students respect one another.”

“18. Students like one another.“
Other questions call for inferences about the thinking of others.

 

“50. Students at this school think it is okay to get drunk.”

 

Some questions assert values, then ask for agreement or disagreement.

 

In the parents survey,

 

“7. This school communicates how important it is to respect students of all sexual orientations.”
Others assume omniscience:

 

“41. School rules are applied equally to all students.” Some questions seem to hold staff responsible for circumstances beyond their immediate control. 74. [Principal Only] The following are a problem in the neighborhood where this school is located: garbage, litter, or broken glass in the street or road, on the sidewalks, or in yards. ( Strongly agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly disagree).

 

 

Overall, the surveys and the examples of data analysis they provides are unlikely to produce “actionable interventions” as intended. The questions are so poorly crafted that they are likely to generate misleading data with many schools cast in a very bad light. See, for example, page 26 data from this source. https://safesupportivelearning.ed.gov/sites/default/files/EDSCLS%20Pilot%20Debrief_FINAL.pdf

 

 

The responsibility for privacy rests with the schools, districts and states, but everything in on line. A brief inspection of the background questions should raise major questions about privacy, especially for students who identify themselves with enough detail–gender, ethnicity, race, grade level (20 data points minimum)–to produce survey answers that match only one person or a very few individuals.

 

 

My advice, not just to the PTA: Stay away from these data monsters. They drown everyone in data points. Results from the School Climate Surveys are processed to make colorful charts and graphs, but they are based of fuzzy and flawed “perceptions” and unwarranted assumptions. The surveys offer 63 data points for profiling the participants, but only four possible responses to each of 283 questions of dubious technical merit.

 

 

Perhaps most important for parents: Some questions seem to breech the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) for topics in student surveys, especially questions pertaining to “illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating, or demeaning behavior.” More on FERPA at http://www.ed.gov/offices/OM/fpco/ppra/index.html

 

It would be nice to think that FERPA really protects student privacy. But former Secretary Duncan loosened the FERPA protections in 2011, to make it easier for outsiders to obtain student data. That was the premise behind the Gates’ Foundation’s inBloom project, which was set to collect personally identifiable data from several states and districts and store it in a cloud managed by Amazon. That project was brought down by parental objections, which caused the states and districts to back out.

Categories Data, Data and Data Mining, Privacy

NEPC: Who Is Watching Your Child Online?

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2016 //
7

The National Education Policy Center recently published its 18th annual report on schoolhouse commercialism. When these reports began, the focus was usually the intrusion of advertising and other selling of products via textbooks, videos, and other means of communication.

 

Now the commercialism is different: when children are online, corporations are watching them and mining their data.

 

 

Faith Boninger and Alex Molnar’s report is called: “Learning to Be Watched: Surveillance Culture at School.”

 

 

They summarize it thus:

 

 

“Schools now routinely direct children online to do their schoolwork, thereby exposing them to tracking of their online behavior and subsequent targeted marketing. This is part of the evolution of how marketing companies use digital marketing, ensuring that children and adolescents are constantly connected and available to them. Moreover, because digital technologies enable extensive personalization, they amplify opportunities for marketers to control what children see in the private world of their digital devices as well as what they see in public spaces. This year’s annual report on schoolhouse commercialism trends considers how schools facilitate the work of digital marketers and examines the consequent threats to children’s privacy, their physical and psychological well-being, and the integrity of the education they receive. Constant digital surveillance and marketing at school combine to normalize for children the unquestioned role that corporations play in their education and in their lives more generally.”

 

 

 

Key Takeaway: 18th Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercialism Trends explores the use of digital marketing in schools

Categories Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, Education Reform, National Education Policy Center, Online Education, Privacy

Peter Greene: The PTA Sells Out (Again)

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2016 //
8

Big news! The National PTA has joined forces with the Data Quality Campaign! What does this mean for your child? Nothing good. They have agreed that all children are data points, whose data can be mined by corporate entities. Who are those guys (as Butch Cassidy once asked)?

 

Peter Greene explains it here. He explains what all of this means, but only the National PTA can explain why they have joined forces with the Inside-the-Beltway Crowd, who see children as abstractions.

Categories Data and Data Mining, Education Reform, Parent Groups

Mercedes Schneider: My Three Big Concerns about ESSA

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2016 //
7

Mercedes Schneider has read the new Every Student Succeeds Act, every word of it.

 

She has three major concerns:

 

First, the bill requires 95% participation in state tests. It is vague about parents’ rights to opt their children out of the test. States can ask for waivers, but this puts them, as she puts it, “at the mercy of” the Secretary of Education.

 

Second, she is worried about the security of data that the U.S. Department of Education collects. It has confidential data on every student and teacher. In a recent hearing, Congressmen mentioned that the Department’s data system had been hacked in the past. Why trust them now?

 

Third, ESSA is as charter-friendly as NCLB. Certainly, the Department is eager to shovel millions, hundreds of millions to charters. Mercedes cites the recent decision of ED to give $71 million to Ohio charters, even as the state’s charter industry was experienced a series of charter scandals. Clearly, the Department is good at talking standards, but its own standards are mighty low.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Data and Data Mining, Delaware, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Privatization, Testing, U.S. Department of Education

Laura Chapman: Grit and Data Mining

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2016 //
16

Our reader Laura Chapman has unearthed another tentacle of corporate reform, in the business of rating schools and data mining.

She writes:

“Here is another example of the problem.

“Angela Duckworth of Grit fame is on the National Advisory Boardof GreatSchools.org, funded by Gates, Walton, Robertson, Arnold Foundations and 19 others, including the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, Goldman Sachs Gives.

“This nonprofit is a huge “red lining” operation with opportunities to license ads using data about schools which, coincidentally, has been gathered through other projects that are not what they seem to be on the surface, like the CORE district program in Californa reaching 11 million students, with data gathering well beyond what that state requires for accountability, including surveys of school climate and social-emotional well-being.

“I am working on some chunks of information that show how deeply this organization is involved in redlining real estate, leveraging data on schools and “choice” options, parent profiles and so on.

“GreatSchools.org offers licenses and ads. These are marketed with “base” and “local” modules set up to push enrollment in specific schools. The scary part is that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Devlopment and Fannie Mae have paid for a license,

“The website boasts that it has one million customer ratings, on 200,000 schools, with more in the pipeline. I discovered this operation by looking at one school evaluation in Oakland CA, one of the 10 CORE districts that have a new system of data gathering on “school quality.” When I clicked on the rating, I was sent to the GreatSchools website. None of the PR about the CORE districts disclosed this commercial data mining operation operating under the auspices of a distant non-profit, funded by foundations known to be seeking market- based education with initiatives in dominating media outlets, and surveys that pretend to be research.”

Categories Corporate Reform, Data and Data Mining

Obama Will Nominate John King Formally as Secretary of Education

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2016 //
74

John King is currently Acting Secretary of Education. President Obama will formally nominate him to serve as Secretary. 

King’s autocratic behavior as state commissioner of education spurred a massive parent opt out from state testing. King adamantly supports testing, VAM, Common Core, and charter schools. He taught in a “no excuses” Uncommon Schools charter with one of the highest suspension rates in Massachusetts. 

As commissioner, King defended inBloom, a Gates-funded data-mining project. After other states had withdrawn due to parent protests, King supported inBloom. The state legislature listened to parents and passed a law forcing the state to drop inBloom. After NY’s withdrawal, inBloom collapsed. 

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, Education Reform

CONNECT THE DOTS: Competency-Based Education, Digitized Instruction, Data Mining, The Vanishing Teacher, and Profit

By dianeravitch
February 4, 2016 //
27

This post appears on a Florida blog called Accountabaloney. The blog was started by two parents in southern Florida, a retired pediatrician and a graphic designer. They are Sue Woltanski and Suzette Lopez.

This is the planned statement I presented to the Monroe County School Board, my local district board, on Tuesday, January 26, 2015. In it, I called the alarm regarding Competency Based Education (CBE), data mining and the planned destruction of public school as we know it. Please read it, study the attached links and additional reading, and share the information. We hope it will inspire parents and educators to speak out against efforts to destroy public schools while profiting off our children.

We believe Florida’s accountabaloney system is deeply entangled in this move to CBE. Schools and teachers must be labeled as failing, otherwise there is no political will to completely overhaul them. Years of underfunding public schools has hastened their demise. Voucher programs highlight the concocted need for students to flee failing schools while nothing is done towards funding needed public school improvements. State mandated remediation programs have brought CBE and data mining into our classrooms.

It must be stopped.

Mr. Chairman, Board Members, Mr. Superintendent,

Almost 2 years ago, I first spoke to this board about concerns regarding standardized testing. At that time I quoted State Representative Keith Perry who, during a House Education committee meeting had described the current state of education as a period of “Creative Destruction” in which only by destroying our schools will we emerge in the future with something better. He called this “the American Way.” At last fall’s Excellence in Education Summit, Miami Representative Erik Fresen publicly repeated the need to completely destroy public schools (at 54:45).

“Policy is what matters… The most courageous policy of all, which is: take the entire system that exists right now and disrupt it completely. That will require policy changes.”

Today, I am here to, once again, sound the alarm and to inform you that the complete destruction of our public schools is closer than you think. It goes by the name of Competency Based Education and it has already infiltrated Monroe County Public Schools. Multiple bills are currently being pushed through the Florida legislature this session allowing the unbridled expansion of the policies Mr. Fresen needs to “take down the entire system.”

I will try to outline what is happening:

In this modern computer era, digital personal data is gold, currently being traded like currency. You know when you search for something on Amazon and Google and then you start seeing ads related to that search in your feed? That is the result of data mining.

In a video I have linked, the CEO of Knewton explains how Education is today’s most data mined industry. He explains “the name of the game is data per user.” From Amazon or Netflix they get 1 data point per user per day. Google and Facebook 10 data points per user per day. In education, Knewton gets 5-10 million actionable data points per student per day! Apparently, every sentence of every passage in digital content has a data tag and they can tell how interested a child is in a certain topic, how difficult it was, etc., etc. Ten million data points a day! This data grab is a gold mine to companies that want to market and design products. For venture capitalists, Education is the new hot commodity.

This is probably why last year’s FSA had a reading passage straight out of American Girl… Not only is this, clearly, product placement advertising on our state mandated test, which should be questioned, but, by using a data tagged American Girl passage, data can be collected to see just what parts of the story is most interesting to boys and girls and marketing strategies can be developed.

This is also why, though paper and pencil tests would dramatically reduce testing time, there is an insistence on computer based testing. On a computer based test, more data than just marked answers can and is being collected and shared.

This also explains why state approved remedial reading and math programs have essentially all been computer based. State tests can be created, and cut scores manipulated, in order to fail large numbers of students and state law can mandate each failing student participate in a digital remediation program, ensuring a steady stream of data points to third party participants.

Keep in mind that student test scores are digitally linked to personal identification data, including student address, IEP, free lunch status, health records, and discipline records and god knows what else. What if your “permanent record” went viral? Last November, a U.S. Congressional committee criticized the USDOE, exposing how vulnerable its information systems are to security threats. I encourage you to watch the proceeding. Currently, federal student data is NOT secure.

Monroe County already participates in the sharing of student data through associations with Certi-port, Achieve 3000, iReady, iStation, and more. These are vendors that are known to collect and distribute student data. Can they guarantee our student’s privacy is protected? Who are they sharing the data with? Do we know? We do not.

Last week, the Senate Education Committee voted favorably on SB1714. This bill allows for Competency Based Education pilot programs, funded by massive grants from the Gates Foundation, in Lake and Pinellas County and at P.K. Yonge. An amendment was added allowing Commissioner Stewart to expand the program to other counties. They are expanding the program before they have any data on its effectiveness. By 2022 every single school in Lake County will be converted to CBE.

In Florida, to my knowledge, There has never been a legislative workshop devoted to even discussing what CBE involves. CBE is a data driven education system that follows a set of prescribed standards and requires demonstration of “competency” before advancement. It has embedded testing within the curriculum that collects hidden streams of data via unknown algorithms. Stealth, continuous data–collected by vendors, can be shared with third parties–parental consent not needed.

The goal is to digitalize education so data can be collected and, remember, data is gold.

According to Edweek, researchers are busy developing computerized tutoring systems that gather information on students’ facial expressions, heart rate, posture, pupil dilation, and more. Those data are then analyzed for signs of student engagement, boredom, or confusion, leading a computer avatar to respond with encouragement, empathy, or maybe a helpful hint.” Creepy…

The measurement of social and emotional competencies, like grit, perseverance and tenacity, is a stated goal of the USDOE . Measurement of these non-cognitive competencies is already embedded into education programs.

Monroe has spent millions of dollars increasing our technology capabilities under mandates from the state. Initially we were concerned that all these computers were used for little more than testing and test prep. The mandates may, actually, have been in preparation for CBE.

The good news is that, with CBE, end of course exams and the FSA will become obsolete. When data on student progress can be collected every minute of every day, the “BIG” test is no longer necessary.

The bad news… teachers won’t be necessary, either. Current pilot programs include teachers as facilitators but soon taxpayers will wonder why we need to pay a professional to monitor students engaged in primarily an online education and a move will be made to hire a less expensive substitute. By then high quality teachers, stripped of all professional decision making, will have already left the profession in droves.

Why even have brick and mortar buildings for an education that mostly takes place on line?

Why even call it education anymore when it is really the harvesting of student data?

Consider this the alarm.

In hindsight, it becomes clear that this was the goal all along. We have been allowing our children to participate in this huge data gathering scheme which has the ultimate goal of destroying public school as we know it. Students need face to face interactions with humans. No computer algorithm can allow and encourage the creative mind. America has prospered because of creativity and ingenuity. We must fight to keep that in our schools. We need to stop participating in the system designed to destroy our schools. This is not about accountability and it is certainly not about what is best “for the kids.” What is best for the kids is that everyone stands up and says “our children are not data points for you to profit from.”

Competency Based Education is NOT the answer for the type of quality public education I want my children to have. It IS the complete destruction of public schools that Representatives Fresen and Perry have envisioned. Do not expect prestigious private schools to institute it. CBE is designed for “other people’s children” and it has already infiltrated our schools. And it will make a few people ultra rich.

SB 1714 allows for CBE expansion without any evidence it even works.

It is the start of a Brave New World and we need to keep it out of Monroe County until and unless long term data from these pilot studies demonstrates its effectiveness.

In the meantime, I ask that you protect our children from the data grab. Achieve 3000, iReady, iStation, and other CBE data mining programs are already being used throughout Monroe. There should be significant discussions regarding whether their risks outweigh their benefits.

The alarm has been sounded. Please heed this warning.

Thank you.

ADDENDUM:

While asking for input in writing these remarks, these two remarks were particularly worthy of repeating in full:

From an Electrical Engineer by training, Information Security Professional by career choice and Software Engineer, having developed many commercial applications. He has first hand experienced developing applications for education – and has witnessed the “lure of data data data”:

Your definition of CBE is far too generous and idealistic. Let me just say that CBE and CBT crap has been around for a very, very long time.. The essence of it really comes down to nothing more than one long series of IF THEN ELSE statements preprogrammed to provide the illusion that you are advancing or retracting.

In other words this is just a three letter word that represents a profession (teaching) being codified into a linear progression of computer steps.

There is far too much faith that this will somehow magically create a more learned student than what a dedicated human being can. CBE and CBT are all about removing the need for professional teachers — fast forward 20 years…

If we let them use our kids to perfect this technology: teachers will look and act more like electronic librarians or proctors. All the courses and supporting standards will have been written I eve, debugged (at the cost of your children’s education) and shrink wrapped into a tidy downloadable virtual machine. Going to school will look a whole lot more like Startreck the search for Spock when Spock was brought back as a boy and forced to relearn a lifetime of knowledge downloaded into computer based CBT and CBE.

This stuff will make a lot if people very very rich, but until it’s fully functional we will loose generations of children to poor education through this grand technological dissection of the educational process. Computer Programmers are quite prone to being godlike – in commanding and getting their own way – after all they are creating their own alternate reality through their profession. That is CBE and CBT – a codified alternate reality that we won’t know if it’s good or bad until we put a classroom if kids through it !

From Peggy Robertson (www.pegwithpen.com)

People truly are not getting what is happening because mainstream media is keeping this very very quiet. Look at Colorado. One of the advanced states. Consequentially, CBE “advanced” states will also be the fastest to move towards alt. certified/fake teachers who stick around for a couple years. Because…… when you have 150 kids on computers and the computer creates the curriculum and the computer assesses students daily and plans for the next day’s instruction, well, golly, it seems there’s no need for a teacher in that picture. All that is needed is facilitators and a teacher here and there when it’s necessary to round up the kids for a computer lesson that the COMPUTER decides a human might actually need to teach. Don’t believe me? Check out Teach to One Math. Check out Carpe Diem. Check out Hickenlooper’s executive order for badges and Relay’s current foothold in Colorado. Check out my blogs that discuss this at http://www.pegwithpen.com. Check out the ESSA which GIVES FUNDING TO MAKE ALL THIS HAPPEN. And they will sell it as inquiry project/performance based that allows children to move and advance at their own pace – and let me tell you what it will really be…..mundane, skill,drill instruction that is tied to standards that will have many many data tags that will be used to track and manage children and make changes within the curriculum based on the shifts and demands within the market – NOT based on needs of children. If they want to, they can tell the public that suddenly we need a flood of pharmacists (for example), they can direct students into this profession via online classes, flood the market, therefore knock down salaries and benefit the corporate regime. Don’t think for a second that this was ever about the common good.

Peggy

ADDITIONAL READING:

The first four are “must reads” but really you should read it all, and more. They are talking about profiting off the total destruction of public school.:

CBE Online is Neither Personalized Nor Higher-Order Thinking!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/11/12/the-astonishing-amount-of-data-being-collected-about-your-children/

http://missourieducationwatchdog.com/the-business-of-badging-and-predicting-childrens-futures/

http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2016/01/personalized-learning

http://emilytalmage.com She documents CBE which is being instituted in Maine Schools

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/01/07/new-student-database-slammed-by-privacy-experts/

In top performing nations, teachers – not students- use technology. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/09/22/study-students-who-use-computers-often-in-school-have-lower-test-scores

https://epic.org/2016/01/epic-warns-education-departmen.html

http://kcur.org/post/missouri-auditor-finds-student-social-security-information-risk#stream/0

http://missourieducationwatchdog.com/data-breaches-and-ostriches/

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/internet-companies-confusing-consumers-profit

https://www.facebook.com/notes/alison-hawver-mcdowell/a-troubling-scenario-cbehigher-edindustrystudent-debttechinternet-providers/415669021959739?hc_location=ufi

http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/02/20/how-to-foster-grit-tenacity-and-perseverance-an-educators-guide/

Are Monroe County’s Chromebooks protected?

“Google’s Chromebooks as used in schools also come with “Chrome Sync” enabled by default, a feature that sends the student users’ entire browsing trail to Google, linking the data collected to the students’ accounts which often include their names and dates of birth. Google notes that the tracking behavior can be turned off by the student or even at a district level. But as shipped, students’ Chromebooks are configured to send every student’s entire browsing history back to Google, in near real time. That’s true even despite Google’s signature on the “Student Privacy Pledge” which includes a commitment to “not collect student personal information beyond that needed for authorized educational/school purposes, or as authorized by the parent/student.”

This is important: Google becomes school official if Chrome books used in classroom, meaning that FERPA rules do not apply. http://www.local15tv.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/Google-Becomes-a-39-School-Official-39-if-Chromebooks-Used-in-Classrooms-248827.shtml#.VqLG8sdYfSc

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/12/30/google-a-school-official-this-regulatory-quirk-can-leave-parents-in-the-dark/

Categories Data and Data Mining, Florida, For-Profit, Technology, Computers

My Best Resource for Historical Facts About American Education: LINK FIXED!

By dianeravitch
November 24, 2015 //
27

When I was a young historian, back in the 1970s, I would occasionally search for a fact about American education in the nineteenth or early twentieth century to help me write an article or book. There was no Internet. I wasn’t sure which books had the right statistics. So I invariably called the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which is the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Education (actually there was no Department of Education until 1980 [Congress passed the legislation in 1979, and the Department became operational in 1980]; the NCES was the longstanding research and statistics arm of the U.S. Office of Education). The federal role in education began in 1867 under President Andrew Johnson with the creation of a Department of Education, whose sole mission was to collect and disseminate information on the condition and progress of education in the United States. In 1868, however, due to fears that the new Department might eventually seek to exert control over state and local education policy, the Department was demoted to the U.S. Office of Education. Its central purpose, the collection and dissemination of accurate information, is today the role of the NCES.

 

When I called for information, there was one person who knew where to find whatever I was looking for. Not opinion or interpretation, just the facts. His name was Vance Grant. He invariably took my calls and just as invariably found the answer, if it existed in federal records.

 

In 1991, I became Assistant Secretary in charge of OERI (the Office of Education Research and Improvement) and NCES was part of my agency–the most important part. I met Vance Grant, and I had an idea. Why not assemble all the historical data into a publication? With the help of the very able career staff at NCES, especially Tom Snyder and Vince Grant, and with the help of historian Maris Vinovskis, who had taken a leave at my request from the University of Michigan to work with OERI staff, the publication became a reality.

 

It is called 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait.

 

I can say now in retrospect that this publication was the most useful thing I did during my two years in the federal government.

 

You too can browse its pages and charts and graphs via the Internet to see the growth of education in the United States.

 

Although not many people know of its existence, it is still the only reliable source of historical data on American education.

Categories Data and Data Mining, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. education
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