Tom Ultican left the high-tech industry to teach math and physics in high school in California.
He reports with outrage that the 2015 education law called the Every Student Succeeds Act is larded with millions of dollars for the tech industry.
He reviews the evidence and can’t find support for this massive investment in digital learning. The tech lobby prevailed in Washington, D.C.
He writes:
“Bad Education Philosophy is the Source of “Personalized Learning” Failure
“The behaviorist ideology of B.F. Skinner informs “competency based education.” CBE is the computer based approach that replaces the failed 1990’s behaviorist learning method called Outcome Based Education. Outcome Based Education is a renamed attempt to promote the 1970’s “mastery education” theory. Mastery education’s failure was so complete that it had to be renamed. It was quickly derided by educators as “seats and sheets.” These schemes all posit that drilling small skills and mastering them is the best way to teach. It has not worked yet.
“Today’s proponents of behaviorist education hope that technology including artificial intelligence backed by micro-credentials and badges will finally make behaviorism a winner. It will not because little humans are not linear learners. Non-alignment with human nature is a fundamental flaw in this approach. In addition, behaviorism is not known as a path to creativity or original thinking. Those paths are created between teachers and students through human contact; paths undermined by “digital education.”
“Artificial intelligence is more science fiction than reality. Computer scientist Roger Schank, a pioneering researcher in artificial intelligence notes,
“The AI [artificial intelligence] problem is very very hard. It requires people who work in AI understanding the nature of knowledge; how conversation works; how to have an original thought; how to predict the actions of others; how to understand why people do what they do; and a few thousand things like that. In case no one has noticed, scientists aren’t very good at telling you how all that stuff works in people. And until they can there will be no machines that can do any of it.”
“With no unbiased positive proof of concept, hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars which were earmarked for education are being spent on technology. It is likely that much of this spending will cause harm and that schemes like “personalized learning” will not deliver benefit to anyone who is not in a hi-tech industry.
“These dollars could have been spent on better facilities, smaller classes, and better teacher education. Instead, the money is wasted on dubious theories propounded by leaders in hi-tech industries.”
Readers of this blog have noticed that many states spend far more time legislating about school Choice than about the public schools that enroll most students. Once charters and vouchers are introduced, public schools seem to become an afterthought, despite the fact that most students attend them.
Derek Black, a Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina, asks whether there are limits to the preference that states show to school choice programs over public schools.
Here is an abstract of his paper:
“Rapidly expanding charter and voucher programs are establishing a new education paradigm in which access to traditional public schools is no longer guaranteed. In some areas, charter and voucher programs are on a trajectory to phase out traditional public schools altogether. This Article argues that this trend and its effects violate the constitutional right to public education embedded in all fifty state constitutions.
“Importantly, this Article departs from past constitutional arguments against charter and voucher programs. Past arguments have attempted to prohibit such programs entirely and have assumed, with little evidentiary support, that they endanger statewide education systems. Unsurprisingly, litigation and scholarship based on a flawed premise have thus far failed to slow the growth of charter and voucher programs. Without a reframed theory, several recently filed lawsuits are likely to suffer the same fate.
“This Article does not challenge the general constitutionality of choice programs. Instead, the Article identifies two limitations that state constitutional rights to education place on choice policy. The first limitation is that states cannot preference private choice programs over public education. This conclusion flows from the fact that most state constitutions mandate public education as a first-order right for their citizens. Thus, while states may establish choice programs, they cannot systematically advantage choice programs over public education. This Article demonstrates that some states have crossed this line.
“The second limitation that state constitutions place on choice programs is that their practical effect cannot impede educational opportunities in public schools. Education clauses in state constitutions obligate the state to provide adequate and equitable public schools. Any state policy that deprives students of access to those opportunities is therefore unconstitutional. Often-overlooked district level data reveals that choice programs are reducing public education funding, stratifying opportunity, and intensifying segregation in large urban centers. Each of these effects represents a distinct constitutional violation.”
The full article is here.
Tomorrow is the day when we find out whether the millions invested by Dark Money in electing a majority of the school board pays off for charter operators.
The charters want public money without public accountability. They don’t want to be pestered by Investigations of waste, fraud, and abuse. And the LAUSD board decides tomorrow. They want to be called “public schools” when it’s time to get public money, but private schools when it’s time to be accountable.
Donald Cohen writes here about what’s at stake.
“A number of Los Angeles charter schools up for renewal this week are throwing a tantrum if they don’t get their way. Charter school operators have refused to comply with Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) charter school policies and say they won’t include some district standard requirements they don’t like in their charter application. For example, they are refusing to comply with special education rules and the ability of the district to pursue investigations of fraud and other illegal practices.
“They say they should not be subject to basic transparency, accountability and oversight requirements. California charter school operators have plenty of autonomy as the state law grants them. But that doesn’t mean they get to do things that harm education, that allow fraud to go undetected and uninvestigated and allow them to set their own rules on basic educational policies and programs such as school discipline and special education.
“And today in Los Angeles, given the very public problems and investigations related to charter school operators at LAUSD it couldn’t be a worse time to reduce oversight and accountability mechanisms. One recently elected school board member and founder of Partnerships to Uplift Communities (PUC), a charter school network in the region, has been charged with three felonies for campaign finance violations and the school district is asking the PUC’s operators about potential conflicts of interest and delayed reporting of financial transaction.
“Charter operators are objecting to the ability of the district’s inspector general to investigate all possible malfeasance and to limit the scope of investigations they do conduct. The District should be able to pursue any possible violation of the law in the quickest and most effective way. The Office of the Inspector General, upon initial investigation, can determine the full scope needed. But failing to treat allegations as seriously as they could potentially be will inevitably allow problems to go unaddressed.
“Charter operators also want to be allowed to become part of a Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA) that may be hundreds of miles away and that have far less ability to oversee the schools. Several small districts in rural areas of the state welcome distant charters into their SELPA and the fees that come with it. Los Angeles is correct to require local charters to be part of the local SELPA so that special education students and programs in individual schools are tightly integrated into the local school district. Special education students need to be able to access and rely on services and programs that are available district wide. Special education students often change schools as they encounter challenges and seek the best situation for their education; somtimes back and forth between both charter and district schools.
“The charter operators also object to using the district’s student disciplinary processes. We have seen, in California and across the nation, that independent charter schools have used expulsions and suspensions as a way to “push out” under-performing students who may reduce an individual school’s testing averages or require additional resources. To prevent this, disciplinary procedures, including whether to use restorative justice methods, must be fair, transparent and equally established and implemented in all schools. Allowing charter operators to define their own processes is an invitation to discriminate and unfairly treat some students and families.”
Will the board give the charters what they want? Will they split the difference, to avoid the appearance of being the billionaires’ puppets, or will they insist that charter schools accept the accountability that accompanies public money?
All sorts of goodies are tucked away in the GOP tax reform proposal for their base. One of them is a tax plan to put money away tax-free to pay for private school tuition. This is modeled on the current 529 plan, which enables people to save for college tuition. The special treat in the new GOP Proposal is that families can put money away for the “unborn,” thus inserting the language of the anti-abortion groups into federal legislation and recognizing that a fetus is a person. The irony is that these groups are ambivalent about the word “choice.” They favor school choice, but oppose a woman’s choice to have an abortion.
Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education and its Action Fund, writes:
I rarely agree with Fordham’s Mike Petrilli, but this week he nailed the Republican tax reform plan with these two tweets:
Every friend of public education must spring to action this week to oppose the House tax reform bill. That bill is a clever attempt to create a backdoor voucher, and at the same time undermine funding for public schools.
You cannot let this one pass. Act now. Send our NPE Action email to your House member. But that is not enough. Post the link on your Facebook page, send it by email,
pick up the phone and call your representative.
This bill is part of the master plan to destroy public education.
Use this link to send your email, and then share it.
The CATO Institute carries a lot of prestige in rightwing circles, and it came out against the GOP plan to use the 529 accounts for vouchers.
You might be surprised to learn why.
There have been dozens of comments about Donna Brazile, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders in the past several hours. This discussion must end, as it distracts us from the real events happening right now in real time that threaten our country and the world and the future of education, which is the purpose of this blog.
Meanwhile, we as a society have a President and a Congress intent on passing a tax bill that will harm most people (except the 1% and corporations), turn the 529 College Savings Plan into K-12 vouchers, and kill the $250 tax credit that teachers take for buying school supplies out of their own pocket. And that’s the least of it. It will also cap deductions of state and local taxes, which will reduce revenues for public schools.
Our president has said publicly that he wishes he could control both the FBI and the Justice Department.
He has threatened to unleash nuclear war on North Korea, which would lead to attacks on South Korea, Japan, and possibly us as well.
Rumors abound that he will fire Robert Mueller to shut down the investigation of his campaign’s possible collusion with Putin and the Kremlin.
Carry on your claims and counterclaims about the 2016 election elsewhere. All such comments will go into moderation as soon as I see them and may never be posted. It is my blog and I say enough is enough. The only person helped by the prolongation of this discussion is Trump.
Right now, please focus on the Tuesday elections, especially in Virginia and New Jersey.
In Virginia, Republican Ed Gillespie has resorted to racist attacks on Ralph Northam.
Please look to saving what we can and building for the future, not wallowing in events that we can argue about endlessly, without any resolution.
Business Insider reports that the latest new thing, AltSchool, is not making it.
Backed by Mark Zuckerberg and tech entrepreneur-Trump acolyte Peter Thiel, started by a former Google executive, AltSchool was lauded lavishly when it opened. It was supposed to revolutionize education.
AltSchool, an educational software developer and network of “micro-schools” with four locations in California and New York, is shuttering another outpost.
The startup’s schoolhouse in Manhattan’s East Village will close its doors at the end of the academic year, according to an email obtained by Business Insider from vice president of schools at AltSchool, Sam Franklin, to parents of AltSchool students on Thursday night.
It’s the second closure that AltSchool has announced in two days, after the buzzy ed-tech startup revealed it’s closing its location in Silicon Valley. AltSchool appears to be refocusing its energy on licensing its educational software to existing schools, rather than creating new ones.
In an email to parents, Franklin apologized to parents who may have learned about the school closures “in the news rather than hearing it from us.”
AltSchool counted the Oxycontin billionaire family, the Sacklers, among its investors. Also Laurene Powell Jobs. All the really smart and very rich folks.
Sad. Very sad. Just a tax write-off.
