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Eric Brandon: Robot Teachers for the Masses

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2016 //
18

Reader Eric Brandon posted a comment about the Zuckerbergs’ funding of online education. As I have noted in many posts recently, the U.S. Department of Education and many vendors are promoting online education, online testing, and other ways to increase technology in the classroom. He writes that reading on paper is better than reading online. This has been my own personal experience. I have long been an avid consumer of NAEP reports, for example. I used to study each page with care. Now that the NAEP reports are available only online, not on paper, I find it difficult to find information unless I know exactly what to ask for. I have also had trouble reading on e-machines. I sometimes flip 40-50 pages by mistake and have trouble returning to the page I wanted. But more important, there is something about the online experience of print that is not as satisfying as reading on paper. Maybe ten or twenty years from now, no one will read anything on paper and comments like mine will be lost and forgotten.

 

Brandon writes:

 

There is….strong evidence that reading on paper is better for students (and their eyes) than reading on screens. I find that I get a bit lost when reading a book on an e-reader when compared to a paper book. I can’t remember what I read and where to find it as well.

 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/

 

And a very exclusive Silicon Valley school does not allow computers in the classroom.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html?_r=0

 

Machine learning and robot teachers for the masses; paper books and human teachers for the wealthy.

Categories Education Reform, Online Education, Technology, Computers

Walton Foundation Admits that Online Charters Are a Failure

By dianeravitch
February 5, 2016 //
16

The Walton Family Foundation has been a key player in the movement to privatize public education. It recently pledged to pump $200 millions year into new charter schools to compete with public schools and drain away their resources.

Nonetheless, Walton published an editorial in Education Week admitting that online charter schools were a failure. Walton funded the research that showed their negative results.

“The results are, in a word, sobering. The CREDO study found that over the course of a school year, the students in virtual charters learned the equivalent of 180 fewer days in math and 72 fewer days in reading than their peers in traditional charter schools, on average.

“This is stark evidence that most online charters have a negative impact on students’ academic achievement. The results are particularly significant because of the reach and scope of online charters: They currently enroll some 200,000 children in 200 schools operating across 26 states. If virtual charters were grouped together and ranked as a single school district, it would be the ninth-largest in the country and among the worst-performing.

“Funders, educators, policymakers, and parents cannot in good conscience ignore the fact that students are falling a full year behind their peers in math and nearly half a school year in reading, annually. For operators and authorizers of these schools to do nothing would constitute nothing short of educational malpractice.”

Unfortunately, Walton doesn’t promise to stop funding these failed ideas. But it does promise to ask tough questions when the next online charter asks for money.

Fooled me once, shame on you.

Fooled me twice, shame on me.

Categories Charter Schools, Online Education, Technology, Walton Foundation

Reformer Group Hails Online Teacher Education at NYU

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2015 //
23

This is embarrassing. I am on the faculty at the NYU Steinhardt School of Education as a Reseach Professor. But I did not know that the university would be preparing teachers online. However, the Center for Education Reform knew. It is one of the foremost advocates for privatization in the nation. It supports charters, vouchers, for-profit schooling, and every other form of schooling that is not a democratically-controlled public school. 
Here is the press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

December 16, 2015 
 

 

EXCITING INNOVATION IN TEACHER EDUCATION LAUNCHED AT NYU
Education School to Create School-Embedded Masters
 

 

A field marked by continual challenges in delivering rigorous programs to ensure quality teaching for every child is about to undergo a major transformation as the nation’s oldest university-based school of teaching, NYU Steinhardt, launches a path-breaking residency-based online teacher education program.
The yearlong graduate residency program aims to increase the number of teachers prepared for educating students in urban, high-needs public schools. Similar to residency programs in well-respected fields such as medicine, teacher residency programs combine a full-time immersive classroom experience with exhaustive coursework, with resident students gaining more responsibility as they build their expertise.
“We know that teachers, especially teachers going into high-needs schools, need better preparation,” said CER Founder and President Emeritus Jeanne Allen. “Harnessing the power of technology to not only create innovative ways of enhancing teacher development but to do so through such a prestigious institution is incredibly promising on so many fronts. The advent of blended learning programs to enhance both student learning and teacher preparation program is precisely where our nation’s leaders should be moving with policy and practice,” said Allen, who has worked on the program development.
“Now more than ever teachers matter,” said HotChalk CEO and CER board member Edward Fields, whose company has partnered with NYU to create the new school-embedded masters in education. “We are proud to support an outstanding institution with such a clear vision and commitment to educational outcomes.”
Partnering with HotChalk enables Steinhardt to conduct online video observations for teacher residents that provide invaluable real-time feedback, offering a continuous cycle of learning, measuring, and adjusting so that education outcomes are improved not just for teacher residents but their students as well.

 

 

 

The Center for Education Reform
cer@edreform.com ~ http://www.edreform.com
ABOUT CER: The Center for Education Reform (CER), since 1993, aggressively pursues laws that demand flexibility, freedom and innovation, without delay. Visit http://www.edreform.com for more information.
For More Information Contact: Michelle Tigani, 202-750-0016, michelle@edreform.com

 

Categories Education Reform, Online Education, Teachers and Teaching

Kevin Huffman: How I Tried and Failed to Close the Worst School in Tennessee

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2015 //
26

As readers of this blog know, I am not in the Kevin Huffman fan club. Unlike him, I don’t believe in free market solutions to education, nor do I care for the teacher evaluations that have been pioneered and continued in Tennessee over the past 20 years (without, be it noted, vaulting Tennessee to the top of the nation).

 

But I am a fan of this terrific article by Kevin Huffman. Huffman tells the story, in graphic detail, about how he tried to close down the lowest performing school in the state and got outsmarted year after year by the lobbyists for the national corporation that owns the Tennessee Virtual Academy: K12, Inc. That corporation, launched by Michael and Lowell Milken, is the biggest purveyor of online education; it operates for profit. It is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The last time I checked, the CEO was paid $5 million a year. K12 has been criticized repeatedly in studies of its performance but it shrugs off evaluations and keeps going. Recently, CREDO released a study that concluded that students in online charter schools lost ground: 72 days in reading, and 180 days in math. That is, a student who studied math for a year lost the equivalent of a full year of instruction, i.e., learned nothing.

 

Huffman notes that the school ranked dead last in the state in its first year. It showed no gains or tiny gains in every succeeding year. He tried to close it but each time was outfoxed by the lobbyists. He showed them the data, they said it wasn’t true. He offered to give them suggestions about how to improve their performance, but K12 sent lobbyists to meet with him, not educators.

 

Despite his attempts to close the school, it was still in operation when he left office. He reached the conclusion that for-profits are a bad fit in the school marketplace; we agree. If the charter industry is ever to clean up its house, it must distance itself from the for-profit corporations that give charters a bad name.

 

Huffman concludes:

 

This past summer, the state released the school results from the 2014-15 school year. The Tennessee Virtual Academy earned a Level 1 in growth for the fourth year in a row. It clocked in at #1312 out of 1368 elementary and middle schools in the state. It is no longer the most improved lousy school in Tennessee. It is just plain lousy. It is, over a four-year time, arguably the worst school in Tennessee.
K12 Inc. lives on in Tennessee. The Tennessee Virtual Academy opened its online doors again in August. State officials tell me that they aren’t thinking about other legal steps. After all, if and when the school fails again this year, they will close it down.
I will believe it when I see it.

 

The K12 saga raises a lot of difficult questions for me. Is it possible for a for-profit company to run schools? Our very best charters all over the country are non-profits, and I see little evidence of for-profits succeeding in the school management business. I may be platform-agnostic, but the data is telling a compelling story on this one.
How do we encourage innovation while still holding the bar on quality? The virtual school concept almost certainly has a place in the future of American education. But how long should an “innovative” school be allowed to fail?
What is the responsibility of the state as a regulatory enterprise, even in a choice environment? None of the parents signing up for TNVA were forced into the school — it is a school of choice.
And yet, the “marketplace” fails when we are not able to ensure that parents know that the school they are choosing has a running track record of failure. Clearly, there is a critical regulatory role, and we cannot simply assume that an unfettered choice environment will automatically lead to good outcomes.
In theory, K12, Inc’s stock should be hammered by its terrible performance in Tennessee, but it’s actually up in 2015. And why wouldn’t it be? The corporate shareholders aren’t looking for student results — they are looking for K12 to expand and grow and add more students.
Nobody asks me for stock advice, but I say: Buy! Buy K12 Inc.! It is the rarest of breeds — a company utterly impervious to failure. It fails again and again, and yet it lives and breathes!
No doubt, I will have ample opportunity to talk about this with their lobbyists at my next education conference.

 

 

Categories Online Education, Tennessee
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