Archives for category: Technology, Computers
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The All-New Online Common Core PARCC Tests: Not So New After All

By dianeravitch
February 4, 2014 //
115

An early version of the PARCC common Core tests have been released, and bloggers are underwhelmed.

Chris Cerone thinks they look more or less like the same old standardized tests, but way more expensive.

Blogger Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters wrote:

“They just released computer based sample PARCC items.

http://www.parcconline.org/computer-based-samples

Go directly to the test items in grades 3-5, grades 6-8 and high school.

Last night I looked at the sample HS ELA questions and got such a headache! I couldn’t answer the second question, glanced at others, and then quit.

It was based upon a very difficult poem.”

At the end of the day, how many billions of dollars will be spent for new computers, new bandwidth, and professional development? How many arts programs will be eliminated, how many social workers, guidance counselors, and librarians laid off?

And will we wonder if this vast new expenditure was worth it?

Categories Common Core, Technology, Computers, Testing

Good News: Los Angeles Gets Price Cut from Apple, with No Curriculum

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2014 //
52

Los Angeles, which was teaching the nation what not to do with technology, is getting a new deal from Apple for its iPads.

Apple will cut the price.

Apple will sell L.A. new iPads instead of obsolete models.

The iPads will not be loaded with pre-set Pearson curriculum.

Howard Blume of the LA Times writes:

“The Los Angeles Unified School District will pay substantially less for thousands of iPads under the latest deal with Apple. The cost of the tablets that will be used on new state tests will be about $200 less per device, although the computers won’t include curriculum.
The revised price will be $504, compared to $699 for the iPads with curriculum. With taxes and other fees, the full cost of the more fully equipped devices rises to $768.

“The iPads are part of a $1-billion effort to provide a computer to every student, teacher and administrator in the nation’s second-largest school system. In response to concerns and problems, officials have slowed down the districtwide rollout, which began at 47 schools in the fall.

“L.A. Unified has also been under pressure to contain costs; it recently became clear that the district is paying more for devices than most other school systems. The higher price results mainly from L.A. Unified’s decision to purchase relatively costly devices and to include curriculum.

“District officials recently restarted negotiations with Apple and achieved two concessions. The first is that Apple would provide the latest iPad, rather than a discontinued model for which L.A. Unified was paying top dollar. The second is that Apple agreed to consider a lower price on machines for which curriculum was not necessary.”

The reason that L.A. is spending $1 billion on iPads is for Common Core testing. This raises the question as to how much Common Core testing will cost the nation. If Los Angeles alone–with about 670,000 students–will spend $1 billion, how many billions will the nation spend? $80 billion? How often will the tablets and iPads need to be replaced? What will be cut to pay for them? Does this vast new outlay explain the energetic support of the tech industry for Common Core?

Categories Common Core, Los Angeles, Technology, Computers

Houston Learned from Los Angeles What NOT to Do with Technology

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2014 //
16

The Los Angeles iPad program has become a national lesson in what NOT to do.

Other districts, watching the slow-motion disaster in L.A., are taking heed and planning their purchases and implementation of technology with greater care than was exercised in the nation’s second largest district.

L.A. committed to spend $1 billion on iPads, pre-loaded with Pearson content.

The controversies about cost, use, lack of training, theft, loss, misuse of construction bond funds, etc. became an object lesson for other districts, as this post by Education Week reporter Benjamin Herold shows.

Houston is the exemplar district in Herold’s article.

It is starting with 18,000 laptops–not iPads–for its high school students. Eventually all high school teachers and principals will receive training, as will students.

The Houston initiative, known as PowerUp, aims to distribute roughly 65,000 laptops—enough for every high school student and high school teacher in the district—by the 2015-16 school year. Eventually, the initiative is expected to cost about $18 million annually; this year, the Houston ISD is dishing out $6 million, all of it existing funds that were reallocated from other sources. The 2013-14 school year is being devoted to a step-by-step pilot program, and Schad—who previously oversaw implementation of a successful “bring your own device” initiative in Texas’ 66,000-student Katy Independent School District—said the district is entering the 1-to-1 computing fray with eyes wide open.

“We’re really focused on changing instruction,” Schad said, “but it’s important to appreciate how much of a cultural shift this really is.”

Last fall, the 641,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District became the symbol for 1-to-1 initiatives gone awry; almost from its inception, the effort was plagued by security issues, confusion about who is responsible for the tens of thousands of iPads being distributed, criticisms around cost and how the initiative is being financed, and concerns about the readiness and quality of the pre-loaded curriculum meant to become the primary instructional materials for the nation’s second-largest district. Following a series of skirmishes with the district’s board and teachers’ union, Superintendent John Deasy has been forced to slow his ambitious rollout plans.

Houston chose laptops because that is the technology students are most likely to use in college.

Both students and staff will have advance training:

Students at most of the 11 high schools involved in this year’s Houston ISD pilot are just receiving their laptops this month, but Schad said the principals and teachers at those schools received their computers in August and have been receiving consistent professional development ever since. As a baby step to test the district’s deployment plans, laptops were distributed to students at three schools in October, and all students have been required to take a digital citizenship class before receiving a computer. And in November, a group of Houston principals and district administrators took an extended field trip to Mooresville, N.C., to observe first hand one of the most acclaimed 1-to-1 initiatives in the country.

This nifty interactive timeline from Houston ISD details the district’s cautious step-by-step approach. It stands in sharp contrast to L.A., where a contract with Apple was signed in July, teachers received three days of training in August, and distribution of an initial batch of 37,000 iPads to students began later that month.

Another difference from L.A. is that Houston is not buying pre-loaded (and unfinished) Pearson content:

Whereas L.A. Unified elected to purchase a soup-to-nuts digital curriculum from education publishing giant Pearson—one that is still being developed even as it’s rolled out, comes at undetermined cost, and to which access will expire at the end of three years—Schad said Houston ISD is focused on providing students and teachers with a suite of “Web 2.0” tools that can foster content creation, collaboration among students, and project-based learning.

“We want to create that space inside a classroom where kids are answering questions inside the same document, posting their own opinions, and creating videos,” Schad said. “It’s about changing the culture.”

And also unlike L.A., Houston will not take money from bond funds, but is looking for savings in other areas.

It is refreshing to see that districts can learn from the mistakes of other districts. Maybe Houston will get it right and show how technology can “change the culture.”

Categories Houston, Los Angeles, Technology, Computers

Sarah Darer Littman: What Will Connecticut Pay to Implement Common Core Testing?

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2014 //
3

Sarah Darer Littman, a journalist in Connecticut, read that Maryland will spend $100 million for Common Core testing.

This led her to wonder what the Common Core testing will cost in her own state.

She asked the State Education Department to fill in the blanks about costs and about what district will receive, and she was surprised by what she learned:

When I looked at the dollar grant per student on a district by district basis, some anomalies jumped out.

For example, the Interdistrict School for Arts and Communication charter in New London received $474 per pupil, whereas the New London School District received a mere $44 per pupil. I struggle to understand how this makes sense when New London is allegedly an Alliance District.

Similarly, the Park City Prep charter school in Bridgeport received $384 per pupil whereas Bridgeport District Schools received only $45 per pupil.

The Jumoke Academy Charter Schools network, which are operated by an organization called the Family Urban Schools of Excellence (FUSE), received a $260 per pupil grant whereas the districts in which its charters operate, Hartford and Bridgeport, received $30 and $45 respectively.

The Achievement First Charter Schools network in Connecticut received $82 per pupil compared to Hartford’s $30 and Bridgeport’s $45. New Haven, the other city in which Achievement First operates charter schools, did better at $130 per pupil.

Why did New Haven ($130 per pupil) receive almost three times the grant of Bridgeport ($45 per pupil) and more than four times that of Hartford ($30 per pupil)? All three are in District Reference Group I, representing the districts with the highest need in the state. Their Adjusted Equalized Net Grand List per Capita (AENGLC) Rank/Weighted ANGLC Ranks are 167, 166 and 169 respectively. Based on the Education Cost Sharing Town Wealth and Rank, New Haven ranks 165, Bridgeport ranks 164 and Hartford 169.

Donnelly explained that “project proposals were developed at the local level. Project proposals reflect their individual needs and local readiness as determined by the district or school. Every grant request submitted by an Local Education Authority (LEA) was honored in accordance with their respective town wealth measure.” What’s important to note here is that, as defined by federal law, school districts are an LEA, but public charter schools and interdistrict magnet schools are considered LEA’s unto themselves.

She adds:

I’m still struggling to understand why a charter school in New London requires 10 times the grant on the basis of the number of students served than the district schools there. One wonders what guidance was received from the Education Department regarding these grants.

It turns out that the Education Department has not produced, and is not in the process of producing, a report on the full costs of implementing the Common Core in the state. According to the department, on top of the previously announced technology grant for which we are borrowing the money, “the state is investing approximately $8 million this year and $6 million next year to support implementation efforts.” I’m not sure if this includes the $1 million CCSS marketing campaign announced by State Education Commission Stefan Pryor last December, or if that’s a separate line item.

I’m also still struggling to understand why we’re using school construction bonds to finance the purchase of iPads and computers. That controversial practice hasn’t worked so well in Los Angeles.

The bottom line in Connecticut is that no one has figured out–or no one is revealing–what it will cost to install the technology and bandwidth and IT specialists for the Common Core testing.

It would be nice to know.

Categories Common Core, Connecticut, Education Reform, Technology, Computers

EduShyster Takes a Ride on a Rocketship and Finds Miraculous Visions

By dianeravitch
January 23, 2014 //
8

In this post, EduShyster surveys the progress of the Rocketship charter chain, which aspires to enroll 1 million children in its low-cost, high-tech fleet of schools.

She writes:

“The audacious exercise in audaciousness was off to an audacious start. Fueled by an explosive combo of Silicon Valley funding and free advertising from *journalists* who found the use of rocket-related terminology irresistible, the super cool new rocketships blasted off towards the stratosphere. Before long, ground control envisioned a whole fleet—no wait—a whole galaxy of rocketships, each populated by rocketeers excelling like never before. Why not eight schools serving up to 4,000 children in Milwaukee. Why not schools in Tennessee, Louisiana, Indiana and Washington D.C.? Why not 2,000 schools in 50 cities, serving 1 million rocketeers?

“But space colonization turned out to be rather more challenging than expected. For one thing, sending all of those rocketships into orbit was an expensive business, meaning that new rocketships had to be launched continuously in order to pay for the ones that were already soaring. The mothership was a hungry beast too, and required each school to fork over a 20% facility fee and a 15% management fee. In an old school school that $$ would have gone to pay for outmoded freight like teachers and their salaries. But once again the mothership had thought of everything. The space-age solution: Boost student to teacher ratios from 40:1 to 50:1 and *supplement* their numbers with plenty of minimum-wage-ish computer lab aids on hand to oversee the *individualized* instruction.”

But that’s not all. Big plans ahead to expand the empire and reach 2 billion customers, er, students, with programming delivered to cell phones. Really.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Technology, Computers

L.A. Needs Basic Maintenance More Than iPads

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2014 //
11

Ed Liebowitz is a parent of children on the Los Angeles public schools. He describes in this article what the district really needs: not an iPad for every student but basic and essential repairs to its schools and their infrastructure.

When he and other families complained about broken playground equipment, LAUSD didn’t have the money to make the repairs. When he and another family chipped in and bought the missing parts, no crews were available to install them.

Soon the iPads will be obsolete and the license on the Pearson curriculum will expire. What then?

Categories Los Angeles, Technology, Computers

Did LA Schools Get Ripped Off by Apple?

By dianeravitch
January 1, 2014 //
35

Turns out the iPads purchased by LAUSD are way more expensive than what other districts are buying. And they have already been discontinued: obsolete already.

No wonder tech vendors are thrilled with Race to the Top: Ca-Ching !

$$$$$$$$$$

Lots of dough for devices. Not so much for the arts, libraries, small classes.

Categories Los Angeles, On-Line Education, Technology, Computers

Common Core and the Myth of Neutrality

By dianeravitch
December 28, 2013 //
85

Bill Boyle has come to the conclusion that the Common Core standards are “one more step in the decimation of the common good.”

He got into a Twitter debate with an advocate for the standards, then realized that this–like so many other controversial issues–has no neutral ground, no set of facts that will dispassionately settle the questions.

There is a narrative surrounding the Common Core that has been used to sell it: that it was “created by the states”; that the federal government had nothing to do with creating or promoting the CCSS (which would be illegal); that it will benefit all children; that it will close the achievement gap; that it will raise our national test scores and make us “globally competitive.”

Some of these assertions can actually be tested, in the sense that the evidence for the assertions does not exist. We will know in 12 years which–if any–of these assertions are true. Unfortunately, in matters of ideology, true believers have a tendency to stick with failed ideas no matter what the facts are (see, USSR).

In the meanwhile, the most vociferous supporters of Common Core seem to be in the corporate world. I keep wondering how many people at Exxonmobil, State Farm Insurance, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and other cheerleaders have read the standards and how many of their executives could pass the CC tests.

The only path I see out of the present dilemma is to impose a three-five year moratorium on the Common Core tests. Invite experienced teachers from every grade level in every state to revise the standards to make them sound, age-appropriate, and to correct errors of judgment.

That still leaves in solved the staggering cost of implementing the standards: professional development, new resources. And the biggest cost is the budget-killer: the purchase of tablets, laptops, and other technology to administer the tests. Best to put that massive cost off for another’s hte-five years until teachers nd students have had time to make the necessary adjustments.

And then it will be time to assess whether schools should invest in testing or in the arts; testing or social workers and guidance counselors; testing or smaller classes; testing or libraries and librarians; testing or pre-kindergarten.

No, there is no neutrality. There are real costs and real choices to be made.

Categories Budget Cuts, Common Core, Technology, Computers

This is What Real Tech Literacy Looks Like

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2013 //
28

Last Sunday, the Néw York Times had a lengthy editorial lamenting the sorry state of math education in the U.S. the editorial said that our kids find math boring, so they don’t major in math or become engineers. The Times barely mentioned the pernicious effects of standardized testing, which surely mars math tedious.

But the Times writers should visit Pasadena, California, which has developed a model program for the use of technology. It is certainly NOT boring. It demonstrates foresight, planning, vision, and purpose. And it seems to be very exciting!

“In sixth through eighth grade classrooms in Pasadena Unified School District, elective Robotics classes hum with activity as teams of excited kids use laptops to build robots during the school day. Students show off the robots’ abilities in a fun end-of-year “final exam” Expo open to the entire community, and those meeting a basic academic requirement will create and code video game and other apps in the just-launched App Academy at Pasadena High School.

There are no admissions tests, no magnet school attendance restrictions, and no GATE requirements to take the elective Robotics class; interested students simply choose the elective.

For the past three years, Pasadena Unified has offered real technological literacy and computer programming classes for public school children in two out of four high schools (with plans for all) in the district — and yet its big, slow-moving neighbor to the west, Los Angeles Unified, isn’t paying attention. Neither is the rest of California, to its detriment.

Under the direction of a visionary team housed in the Pasadena Education Foundation’s STEM initiative, children in Pasadena Unified’s majority-minority, 68% free-and-reduced lunch schools with many English language learners figure out how to code in hands-on, engaging ways. These students apply math, design, engineering, marketing, and even arts learning to their creations.

The goal is to offer programming and App Academy high school classes across the entire district, and with support from faculty at CalTech, rocket scientists at NASA/JPL, and Pasadena’s burgeoning tech incubator community, they appear on track to achieve this. There’s no reason Silicon Beach on Los Angeles’ westside or Silicon Valley up north can’t help with in-kind assistance — and crucial funding via revenue to the state — to scale this highly effective model to every single school district in California, not just the ones lucky to have a high-tech hub in their backyard.”

How great is that !

The link: http://k12newsnetwork.com/blog/2013/12/09/real-technological-literacy-for-public-school-kids-instead-of-ipads-for-tests-or-code-org/

Categories California, Los Angeles, On-Line Education, Technology, Computers

Do iPads Improve Learning and Raise Test Scores?

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2013 //
59

This article was published earlier this year but remains timely.

Mostly the blog reports on an article by veteran journalist Peg Tyre on the potential value of technology in the classroom.

Tyre knows that the technology boom is accelerating but she offers a few cautions.

Take iPads.

“iPads in the classroom, too, are hardly turning out to be a panacea. Teachers in some schools use iPads to great effect. Most, not. And they are not likely to lead to cost savings. In a widely quoted blog post, Lee Wilson, tech watcher and President & CEO of PCI Education, calculated that once you consider the training, network costs, and software costs, iPads cost school districts 552 percent more than those old-school textbooks.”

Where technology has proved especially popular is in charter schools enrolling low-income students.

Tyre writes:

“The experiments are far-reaching. Currently, there are roughly 275,000 K-12 students from 31 states who are taking classes online. School administrators all over the nation are handing out iPads and asking teachers and students to come up with new ways to learn with them. Some schools are experimenting with flipped classrooms, in which kids read or watch videos of a lecture for homework and work through problems or questions with an instructor during class time.

“Other schools, including a rapidly expanding chain of charter schools that serve low-income children, are employing what they call a “blended learning” model. It works like this: The classroom is broken down into small groups. Some kids work with a qualified, credentialed teacher, while others are shepherded to a computer room, where, under the watchful eye of a paid-by-the-hour supervisor, zoom ahead or redo a lesson using interactive, adaptive software.

“At another chain of charter high schools, kids sit in what resembles a call center, receive videotaped lectures and interactive lessons on a monitor, and get pulled into smaller, teacher-led groups to get a particular lesson refreshed or reinforced.”

The goal, of course, is higher test scores.

In the best suburba, urban, and private schools, technology is used by expert teachers for enrichment of instruction, not to cut costs.

Categories Technology, Computers
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