Two Los Angeles teachers write with pride about the accomplishments of the recent strike. They note that the strike proved two things: one, the teachers’ demands were just and had overwhelming support from stakeholders: students, parent, and teachers; two, Superintendent Austin Beutner is out of his depth and lac is the trust of those he serves: he should go.
He came to disrupt thedistrict but demonstrated his lack of readiness for the job he holds.
This is a shocking development: The infamous billionaire Koch brothers have a plan to disrupt American education, beginning with five states.
Their goal is to break up the public education system and enable public funding to flow to every kind of school, whether religious, private, homeschooling, for-profit, anything and everything. They call it “educational pluralism.” At the Koch Conference last year (700 people who paid $100,000 to attend), they declared that K-12 schooling was “the lowest hanging fruit,” and they planned to enter the field to disrupt public schools. Their ally Betsy DeVos paved the way.
The Koch brothers are living proof that this country needs a new tax structure to disrupt their billions, which they use to destroy whatever belongs to the public.
The Washington Post reports:
INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — The donor network led by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch will launch a new organization next month to focus on changing K-12 education as we know it.
The effort will begin as a pilot project focused on five states with a combined school-age population of 16 million kids, but officials said Monday that they aren’t ready to identify them yet because they’re still finalizing partnerships with some of the country’s leading educational organizations.
The still-unnamed entity purportedly plans to focus on three buckets: changing public policy to address “the root causes” of failing schools, developing new technologies to promote individualized learning, and investing in teachers and classrooms.
The announcement came Monday at the end of a three-day seminar where 634 donors who have each committed to contribute at least $100,000 annually to Koch-linked groups gathered under palm trees at a luxury resort in the Coachella Valley.
The Koch team is modeling its amped-up education efforts on its successful overhaul of the criminal justice system, which began in friendly states before moving to the federal level. In that case, Koch World sought out unlikely allies and played the long game for years before any big legislation passed.
In the past, most conversations about education at these twice-annual Koch confabs have quickly turned into bashing teachers unions. So it was notable when Brian Hooks, the chairman of the Koch network, went out of his way to praise teachers and acknowledge that many have been picketing recently.
“For too long, this issue has been framed unnecessarily as us vs. them, public vs. private, teacher vs. student, parent vs. administrator,” Hooks told a ballroom of donors. “The teachers who have expressed frustration in the past several months are good people. I mean, they’re teachers. We all remember the positive impact that a teacher or several teachers have had on our lives. They’re expressing legitimate concerns. But the current approach means that nobody wins, so they need better options.”
Hooks recognizes that many will question their motives, but he said the goal is to “really shake things up” by “coming alongside concerned teachers” to “find a better way.” Teachers union leaders, who are closely aligned with the Democratic Party, have accused the Koch groups of trying to undermine traditional public schools. Koch and his allies say the system is broken and requires wholesale changes. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been a longtime ally of the network.
“This is a tough one, no doubt,” Hooks said. “It’s a challenge that a whole lot of people look at and say is impossible. But we see a tremendous opportunity to unite people to help ensure that every kid has the opportunity to succeed.”
Philanthropist Stacy Hock of Austin, a major Koch donor who has been funding education efforts at the state level in Texas for years, says that traditional forms of classroom instruction encourage “soul-crushing” conformity, and she has emerged as an outspoken advocate of “personalized learning.”
“Families are getting more and more comfortable with experimenting and taking risks,” she said on the sidelines of the meeting. “Education should be getting way, way better and way, way cheaper, but the opposite is happening.”
Hock said the new Koch initiative, as it ramps up, will identify what’s working at the local level and push for those things to be replicated elsewhere. “What we’re seeing all across the country are little flames,” she said. “What I don’t yet know is how to throw gasoline on all those flames….
— Previewing their K-12 push, Koch strategists pointed to research being conducted with their financial support by Ashley Berner at Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for Education Policy. Her main interest is expanding what she calls “educational pluralism,” which is when the government funds all types of schools, including explicitly religious ones, but does not necessarily run them.
“Berner points to examples such as the Netherlands, which funds 36 different types of schools, from Islamic to Jewish Orthodox to socialist,” the Charles Koch Foundation notes in a summary of her work. “Alberta, Canada, funds homeschooling along with Inuit, Jewish, and secular schools. In Australia, the central government is the nation’s top funder of independent schools. Other countries with plural school systems include Denmark, Finland, Germany, and Sweden.”
“It’s the democratic norm around the world. In pluralism, choice and accountability are two sides of the same coin,” said Berner, who wrote a book in 2017 called “Pluralism and American Public Education: No One Way to School.” “We’ve got to start supporting politicians who are willing to make compromises. Americans are tired of the battles between charters and district schools; these take up too much energy and resources. A pluralistic system doesn’t pit entire sectors against one another.”
Reformers are desperate for good news. Everything they have tried hasflopped. Their exemplary district, New Orleans, is highly stratified. Forty percent of its charter schools are rated Dor Fby the state, and they are overwhelmingly segregated black. The New Orleans scores on state test are below the state average. This, in a state whose NAEP scores are rock-bottom. On NAEP, the only jurisdiction that Louisiana is better than is Puerto Rico.
But Reformer Propaganda neverrests. Their latest miracle district is Denver. Retired physics/AP Math Teacher Tom Ultican took a look at Denver’s celebrated portfolio model, and concludes that it is a hoax, a failure.
He begins:
Here is a predictable outcome from the portfolio district. On Jan. 18, 2019, a press release from the Denver Classroom Teachers Association (DCTA) says,
“After ten hours of negotiations today, the Denver Classroom Teachers Association and Denver Public Schools were unable to reach an agreement on a fair compensation system for 5,700 teachers and special service providers. DCTA members will vote Saturday and Tuesday on whether or not to strike.”
The portfolio model which promotes disruption as a virtue is anti-union. It is not conducive to stable harmonious relations with either labor or communities and it is anti-democratic. Denver is held up as an exemplar of school reform; however the outcomes look more like a warning. Increasing achievement gaps; a bloating administration; significantly increasing segregation; ending stable community schools; and stripping citizens of their democratic rights are among the many jarring results.
I read this story with a growing sense of disgust. A businessman in Oklahoma opened a charter school in a small town to focus on career readiness and job training, functions already offered by the local public school.
This man, with no experience in education, lured 29 students to share his vision and abandon the community public school. He did so over the objections of the local school district.
Within the walls of the Academy of Seminole, eight rented rooms in a community college library, it can be hard to see why the little school has kicked up so much dust in this former oil boomtown, population 7,300. On a recent Friday, businessman and school founder Paul Campbell addressed the students, just 29 freshmen and sophomores, to tell them what it’s like to run a business.
What he dislikes? Making small talk at political events and “firing people.” What he enjoys? “I love doing something that no one thinks can be done. That’s why we’re sitting in this school.”
Campbell said the “thesis” of the school is that “on day one of your ninth grade, literally hour one … we start talking about what you want to do with your life.” Speakers have included a health care CEO, professional dancers and a speech pathologist. Academy students mapped out various careers they might pursue, and spent their first semester doing a research project on their chosen path. That focus on jobs is a direction in which more schools are headed, amid rising concern that young people are graduating unprepared for the workforce, especially in rural towns like this one. Last year Oklahoma joined a growing list of states requiring students to develop a career plan in order to graduate. And, in a sense, Campbell’s can-do, pro-business attitude fits in with the ethos of this working class, Trump-supporting town.
But while Campbell may dislike politicking, he’s had to do a lot of it to get his school off the ground and keep it going in the face of a chorus of concern from local residents. That’s because the Academy of Seminole is a rural charter school; its establishment is part of a small movement to bring this taxpayer-funded version of school choice to more remote corners of the country.
How much money will the local district lose to this charter?Will the public school lose a teacher or two? Will class sizes increase?
Oklahoma was singled out by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities as the state where general per-student funding had fallen more than any other state—by 28.2% from 2008-2018.
Because of low funding, many districts in Oklahoma offer only four days a week of school.
And we are supposed to be impressed that some egotistical businessman in Seminole, Oklahoma, has opened a charter school for 29 students?
Mike Petrilli, writing from the comfort of his think-tank perch in D.C., is delighted about the opening of a charter in a town of less than 8,000 people, where the school budget is tight. “More power to him,” says Mike.
But others say residents are right to worry about the sprouting of charters in their hometowns. Schools often play an integral role in the life of a small community, offering a central meeting place, social services and additional support. If a charter grew popular enough to draw hundreds of kids and capture those students’ share of funding allocated by the state, it could erode not just schools but the fabric of communities. Bryan Mann, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama’s college of education, has studied charter schools in Pennsylvania and noted that, while the research on rural charters is still new, these schools could pose a threat to public education.
“Choice is great, but if having choice is undermining the dominant choice that the majority of families rely on and have relied on for decades or longer, then what good ultimately is that doing?” he said.
The original proposal envisioned that the school would open with 60 students and grow to 500. It opened with 32 and three dropped out. The owner plans to expand to become a Pre-K-12 school. Imagine those three- and four-year-olds, planning their futures as workers!
The funding for the charter school comes from the districts that lost students.
But guess who else paid to open a rural school with 29 students? We did.
The academy has had to make a number of changes since Campbell first pitched his idea. Not only has the school’s approach to career preparation been refined, but Campbell decided to forego the services of the charter operator, whose use was core to his application, instead relying on Hawthorne, the head of school, in part to save costs. While the charter received $600,000 in federal start-up money and $325,000 from the Walton Family Foundation, the school’s viability will depend on additional fundraising.
Betsy DeVos supplied $600,000 in federal funds to create this job-training institution to suck money out of underfunded public schools.
Here’s a reform that would make charter schools viable: no charter should be authorized over the objections of the local school board.
Are you surprised to learn that Muriel Bowser, Mayor of the District of Columbia, has chosen a superintendent who is a graduate of the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, known for its multiple failed superintendrncies and its devotion to closing public schools and turning them over to private management?
Mayor Bowser is intent on remaining loyal to the disastrous legacy of Michelle Rhee, to high teacher-turnover, and to disruption.
The District of Columbia, which has been wholly controlled by Reforners since 2007, continues to be one of the lowest-scoring districts in the nation on NAEP. It holds the dubious distinction of having the largest achievement gaps of any city or state in the nation, about double the national average. Yet Reformers still point to it as a “success” story, despite the gaps, despite the cheating scandal, despite the graduation rate scandal, despite the absence of any indecently verified data. Oh, and yes, the Mayor wants to take control of the data to be sure it reflects well on “Reform” and her.
Valerie Jablow has the story here.
Mayor Bowser must have a close relationship with Secretary DeVos.
Ed Johnson, one of the most astute analysts of education in the nation, has offered a plan to rate the leadership of the Atlanta Public Schools. Please read his linked document. He frequently sends letters to the Atlanta Public School board and they regularly ignore his sound advice. The president and vice-president of the Atlanta board are TFA. The board is determined to disrupt the district and impose charters wherever possible, despite parents’ objections. His following comment describes a rating system for APSL (Atlanta Public School Leadership). Given that we already have ample evidence that corporate Reform is ineffective (see, for example, the $100 million spent and wasted on the Achievement School District in Tennessee), why do leaders of Atlanta persist in their demand for disruption? Because they can.
He commented:
Kindly forgive my intruding with the following long post broken into three parts to offer more perspective, but it’s a desperate situation here in Atlanta. Please help as you see best.
Part 1 of 3 from my “APSL design to rate schools, public design to rate APSL,” emailed 14 November 2018 (original email at https://tinyurl.com/ybk2e9u5):
APSL stands for Atlanta Public Schools leadership. The abbreviation distinguishes understanding the leadership of APS as being different from APS, the district, itself.
The APSL are the currently serving Atlanta Board of Education members, collectively and severally, and the Harvard-trained Meria Joel Carstarphen, Ed.D., as Superintendent.
Right after civil society of Austin, Texas, effectively dismissed Dr. Carstarphen, effective school year end 2014, for imposing school choice and charter schools upon their Austin Independent School District in opposition to the public’s interests, the Atlanta school board’s Superintendent Search Committee, chaired by Ann Cramer, saw fit, for some unfathomable reason, to select Carstarphen as the search committee’s sole finalist.
Consequently, in April 2014, the Atlanta school board approved hiring Carstarphen to succeed Interim Superintendent Erroll Davis. Carstarphen is now in her fifth year as Atlanta superintendent, and APS is now nearly a decade removed from Dr. Beverly L. Hall’s tenue in that position and the history-making test cheating crisis Hall’s behavioristic practices applied to teachers and their administrators spawned.
Always generally busy with some manner of rushed, attention-grabbing, self-aggrandizing activity about “moving forward” with change, but never effecting improvement, the APSL are now busy with “Creating a System of Excellent Schools” under the auspices of their “Excellent Schools Project.” An aspect of the project is the involvement of a 57-person Advisory Committee comprising top-level APS administrators, some APS principals, and mostly other persons said to be representing “the community.”
The APSL Excellent Schools Project Advisory Committee met most recently … on Monday, 12 November 2018. The facilitated work of the committee in this meeting was that of responding to, and giving feedback on, the 18-page DRAFT Excellent Schools Action Framework (“DRAFT”). A scanned copy of the DRAFT, in PDF format, can be viewed and downloaded from my Adobe Document Cloud space, at this link (light blue highlights on the PDF are mine):
First, see in the DRAFT that pages nine (9) through 18 present action items to “Rate on a scale of 1-10 your belief that this action will help increase access to excellent schools across APS.”
When, at the end of their Monday meeting and after having concluded their facilitated work, the Advisory Committee asked for input from members of the public present. I was the only member of the public present.
In rising to the floor to speak, I respectfully and humbly introduced myself as someone who has been called “that Deming guy” and then offered this feedback on rating the DRAFT action items:
On a scale from 1 to 10, I would rate every action item zero (0). Unfortunately, your allowing me to deliver just a two-minute monologue is not enough time to explain, why zero. Thank you.”
(Note that in keeping with the APSL practice of legally ending public meetings immediately prior to allowing public members to speak for two minutes maximum, so the APSL will have no legal obligation to dialogue with the public nor to legally include public input and feedback in meeting minutes and in the public record, the Advisory Committee Meeting asked to hear from the public only after having concluded the meeting’s work.)
Part 2 of 3 from my “APSL design to rate schools, public design to rate APSL,” emailed 14 November 2018 (original email at https://tinyurl.com/ybk2e9u5):
Now, be alarmed by the DRAFT. Be very alarmed, if not angered.
Be alarmed by the DRAFT because it embodies what students, researchers, and practitioners of continual quality improvement (not “continuous improvement”), such as that of Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s humanistic philosophy and teachings applicable to education, readily recognize to be what Deming calls “Evil Practices” and “Forces of Destruction” operating.
• DRAFT Evil Practices: “Institute performance-based incentive pay,” “Performance-based contract,” etc.
• DRAFT Forces of Destruction: School “Leadership transition,” “Merge” schools, “Close” school, etc.
Be alarmed by the DRAFT because its committee of creators and the APSL clearly aim to slink into parents minds and behavior selfish, consumerist school choice and charter schools expansion ideology that says, “It does not matter what kind of school it is – public, charter, or other – just as long as the school is an excellent school regardless of neighborhood.” In other words, the means don’t matter, just as long as one can get the end one wants regardless of the harm doing so will inflict upon others, even children, but just not “my” child.
Be alarmed by the DRAFT because it brazenly intends to lead to codifying behaviorism and Taylorism in greatly expansive ways even Beverly Hall did not do. Understanding that Hall’s practice of behaviorism and Taylorism as continuous improvement, with attendant numerical goals and targets for test score gains, is what drove APS to experience the greatest systemic test cheating crisis in U. S. history, then just imagine the damage and destruction the DRAFT portends.
Be alarmed by the DRAFT because it is so reductive and regressive in the extreme in going so far backward into the 20th century that it is reasonable to say the DRAFT makes behaviorism’s B. F. Skinner (life, 1904-1990; Harvard Professor, 1958-1974) and Taylorism’s Fredrick W. Taylor (1856-1918) rise from the grave to applaud it.
Be alarmed by the DRAFT because, intentional or not, its committee of creators and the APSL aim to seal the fate of current and future generations of Atlanta children, especially those labeled “black,” in being generally submissive and compliant cogs in a “college and career ready,” simplified, algorithm-driven, amoral and selfish and greedy world of corporatocracy (yes, it’s a word; see definition below), when the reality is that the world comprises a completely interdependent and interacting network of systems created by both Nature and man that gives rise to ever greater complexity, unceasingly.
Be alarmed by the DRAFT because it offers nothing, absolutely nothing, for working on learning to improve the internal capabilities of Atlanta public schools as a system that aims to prepare all students for complexities that will unfold, and have already unfolded, into the world, including public schools and other public institutions in service to sustaining and advancing democracy to benefit civil society.
Be alarmed by the DRAFT because it signals its committee of creators and the APSL, ironically, do not have even a Martin Luther King Jr kind of Systems Thinking wisdom and knowledge of what a system is nor of how systems give rise to complexity.
MLK Jr: “As nations and individuals, we are interdependent. … That whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. … This is the way our Universe is structured.”
To see an example of an MLK Jr kind of Systems Thinking in action, freely play around with my qualitative simulation of “Why APS cannot improve and why it can,” at this entirely self-contained link, shortened:
Part 3 of 3 from my “APSL design to rate schools, public design to rate APSL,” emailed 14 November 2018 (original email at https://tinyurl.com/ybk2e9u5):
Atlanta school board members who have no understanding of systems, nor of Taylorism, nor of behaviorism, nor of Carstarphen’s known bent for behaviorism and Taylorism, in the style she practiced in Austin, and now in Atlanta, are an inherent risk and danger to the moral and ethical development, education, and welfare of especially children labeled “black.” They should not be school board members. They should have the wherewithal to know to step down. They simply are not qualified for leadership in the ever more complexifying 21st century.
For this reason, now see in the DRAFT that pages seven (7) through eight (8) present the following APSL Excellent Schools Framework Rating design:
• Exceeds Expectations (also 5-stars or “A”)
• Meets Expectations (also 4-stars or “B”)
• Approaching Expectations (also 3-stars or “C”)
• Beginning (also 2-stars or “D”)
• Needs Improvement (also 1-star or “F”)
But then, in the sense “what is good for the goose is good for the gander,” the APSL DRAFT design for rating the level of a school’s excellence suggests the public might also have a similar design for rating the maturity of APSL quality.
Accordingly, the following design is offered for rating the maturity of APSL quality:
• Great APSL Quality
• Good APSL Quality
• Middling APSL Quality
• Fair APSL Quality
• Poor APSL Quality
Then taking the design for rating the maturity of APSL quality into considering that the APSL DRAFT Excellent Schools Action Framework, and the APSL Excellent Schools Project, clearly signal that the APSL aim to codify behaviorism and Taylorism as well as school choice and charter schools expansion, the rating “Poor APSL Quality” is justified, and so is hereby attributed to the APSL.
Therefore, let it be known: Poor APSL Quality is the situation hobbling improvement of Atlanta Public Schools as a public educational institution and system of public schools.
Moreover, the Poor APSL Quality rating begs asking: What was it in the general minds, hearts, and souls of Austin civil society that came to reject Carstarphen and stand up for public education that seems lacking in the general minds, hearts, and souls of Atlanta civil society that has embraced Carstarphen and is amenable to destroying public education using the rationale that attaining an “excellent schools” end justifies any “school choice and charter schools expansion” means?
Again, freely play around with my qualitative simulation of “Why APS cannot improve and way it can,” as you wish. It will be interesting to vary P.Superintendency (public superintendency) quality and P.BOE (public board of education) quality. See below for definitions of the interdependent and interacting entities the simulation involves.
Ed Johnson
Advocate for Quality in Public Education
Atlanta GA | (404) 505-81776 | edwjohnson@aol.com
I sat in the Green Room at the Washington Post and watched Rahm Emanuel boast about his education accomplishments as his chancellor Janice Jackson smiled and agreed that he was the best mayor ever.
I had a hard time watching because I was sick to my stomach thinking about Rahm’s decision to close 50 public schools in one day, which I considered to be a major tragedy.
Jonathan Capehart, the moderator, asked about that decision, but Rahm spun it into a personal triumph.
Nothing was said about the dramatic decline of Chicago’s black population since 2000. About 200,000 people of color left Chicago The city blew up public housing, closed public schools, all in the segregated black community. Was this a policy of ethnic cleansing?
It worked!
Mike Klonsky reviewed Rahm’s lies here, at least it’s his part one.
Eve Ewing wrote the human and inhuman cost of school closings in her book, “Ghosts in the Schoolyard.” She taught in one of the schools he closed.
A Chicago station tallied the number of schools closed:
Chicago has closed or fired staff at 200 public schools since 2002, nearly 1/3 of entire district, affecting 70,160 children. Many new schools opened as replacements have already closed. https://interactive.wbez.org/generation-school-closings
This is nothing to boast about. This is disruption on a grand scale, treating black children and families like tissue paper.
Corporate reformers managed to gain control of the Atlanta School Board hired America Carstarphen as its superintendent; she previously worked in Austin, where voters ousted the charter-friendly board.
Now Atlanta has ambitious plans to turn itself into a portfolio district and disrupt schools across the city. Reformers say that when they are finished with their mass disruption, every student will attend an excellent school.
Sadly, they can’t point to a district anywhere in the nation where this has happened. In New Orleans, the Star Reform District, 40% of schools are rated D or F by the reform-loving Dtate Education Department, and these schools are almost completely segregated black.
This is the key exchange:
School board chairman Jason Esteves acknowledges the work will lead to “tough decisions,” but says it’s necessary to create excellent schools for every child.
Over the coming months, the district will develop a rating system to grade its schools as well as determine how to respond when schools excel or fail. The board that will consider any changes includes several members who joined after the 2016 turnaround plan was approved.
“The vast majority of the community has seen the progress that we’ve made, has endorsed the work that we’ve done, and … wants to see more of it,” he said. “The electorate has generally been supportive in the face of pretty significant changes.”
But there are critics, and they say the district needs to shift priorities, not redesign its structure.
Shawnna Hayes-Tavares, president of Southwest and Northwest Atlanta Parents and Partners for Schools, fears officials want to bring in more charter schools or charter operators to run neighborhood schools, especially in those parts of the city.
“We’ve had the most change on this side of town. It’s like trauma,” she said. “The parents are just tired. They can’t take it anymore.”
Promises and lies.
I received the following message from Beto O’Rourke. I’m on his mailing list because I contributed to his campaign for the Senate. He makes so much sense that I wonder why the Trump administration doesn’t lead to him. I have to conclude that Trump wants the Crisis, as red meat to feed his base. He thrives on crisis and needs to look like he alone is holding back the brown hordes at the border.
Beto wrote:
It should tell us something about her home country that a mother is willing to travel 2,000 miles with her 4-month-old son to come here. Should tell us something about our country that we only respond to this desperate need once she is at our border. So far, in this administration, that response has included taking kids from their parents, locking them up in cages, and now tear gassing them at the border.
People are leaving violent countries where they fear for their lives. Without money, they are subsisting on hope for their kids, for themselves, that they can get to safety. After being denied the ability to lawfully petition for asylum for the last 10 days, they are desperate.
We choose how to respond to this challenge.
Let’s do this the right way and follow our own laws. Allow asylum seekers to petition for asylum at our ports of entry. They must do so peacefully and follow our laws; but we must also ensure the capacity to effectively and timely process those claims (right now 5,000 waiting in Tijuana and only 40 to 100 are processed a day).
Those who have a credible fear of returning to their home country (as determined by a U.S. judge) will be able stay until their full asylum request has been determined. Those applicants ultimately granted asylum will then live in the U.S., make us a better country for being here, and those who are not granted asylum will be returned to their home country.
Longer term: work with the people of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to address underlying conditions that are causing them to flee in the first place. That means addressing effects of our failed past involvement in those countries (in their civil wars, drug trade and drug wars) and the institutional failings in those countries (rule of law).
It won’t be easy and will involve a much greater investment of time, focus and resources. Or we can continue to ignore those countries and their people until they show up at our border.
– Beto
Veteran teacher Nancy Bailey warns about the danger that technology poses to child development. In her post, she reviews the various efforts to “disrupt” learning and reviews NancyCarlsson-Paige’s newly released toolkit on technology and early childhood education.
She writes:
Public schools continuously change to keep up with progress. Technology has much to offer. But the idea that instruction should be disrupted using technology is putting students and the country at risk. It destroys the public school curriculum that has managed to educate the masses for decades.
Disruption is a troubling word when referring to public schooling.
Gradual change works better with students. Schools should be warm places where students can positively interact with other children and caring adults. Changes implemented gradually are more comfortable for teachers and students.
Technology is a helpful tool, but it won’t provide that sense of stability. It’s a cold machine. School districts push technology over teachers. They don’t stop to think about what it will mean to children and their development.
We don’t know what the future effects of technology will be. How will students learn what they need for college and career when they’ve experienced little but online instruction?
Most people recognize that continuous screen use is problematic. Transforming public schools to where students face even more online time all day makes little sense.
Early childhood teachers express concern that tech is invading preschool education. We know that free play is the heart of learning.
But programs, like Waterford Early Learning, advertise online instruction including assessment for K-2. Their Upstart program advertises, At-home, online kindergarten readiness program that gives 4- and 5-year-old children early reading, math, and science lessons.
Technology is directed towards babies too! What will it mean to a child’s development if they stare at screens instead of picture books?
Diane Ravitch's blog 