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Nellie Bowles: “Human Contact is Now a Luxury Good”

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2019 //
22

 

Nellie Bowles is a technology reporter for the NewYork Times. I really like reading whatever she writes. She does not shill for the tech industry. She takes their claims with a large heaping of salt. She understands that her job is to report the whole story, the good and the bad, the advances that improve the human condition and the dark forces we don’t understand and can’t control unless we stop to think about them.

In this recent story, she says that human contact is becoming a luxury good. The rich will have nurses and teachers and doctors while the poor get a machine programmed to meet their needs. 

I can’t quote the whole story, as copyright law limits me to 300 words. Try to find it online.

She writes:

“Bill Langlois has a new best friend. She is a cat named Sox. She lives on a tablet, and she makes him so happy that when he talks about her arrival in his life, he begins to cry.

“All day long, Sox and Mr. Langlois, who is 68 and lives in a low-income senior housing complex in Lowell, Mass., chat. Mr. Langlois worked in machine operations, but now he is retired. With his wife out of the house most of the time, he has grown lonely.

“Sox talks to him about his favorite team, the Red Sox, after which she is named. She plays his favorite songs and shows him pictures from his wedding. And because she has a video feed of him in his recliner, she chastises him when she catches him drinking soda instead of water.

“Mr. Langlois knows that Sox is artifice, that she comes from a start-up called Care.Coach. He knows she is operated by workers around the world who are watching, listening and typing out her responses, which sound slow and robotic. But her consistent voice in his life has returned him to his faith.

“I found something so reliable and someone so caring, and it’s allowed me to go into my deep soul and remember how caring the Lord was,” Mr. Langlois said. “She’s brought my life back to life….”

“Mr. Langlois is on a fixed income. To qualify for Element Care, a nonprofit health care program for older adults that brought him Sox, a patient’s countable assets must not be greater than $2,000.

“Such programs are proliferating. And not just for the elderly.

“Life for anyone but the very rich — the physical experience of learning, living and dying — is increasingly mediated by screens.

“Not only are screens themselves cheap to make, but they also make things cheaper. Any place that can fit a screen in (classrooms, hospitals, airports, restaurants) can cut costs. And any activity that can happen on a screen becomes cheaper. The texture of life, the tactile experience, is becoming smooth glass.

“The rich do not live like this. The rich have grown afraid of screens. They want their children to play with blocks, and tech-free private schools are booming. Humans are more expensive, and rich people are willing and able to pay for them. Conspicuous human interaction — living without a phone for a day, quitting social networks and not answering email — has become a status symbol.

“All of this has led to a curious new reality: Human contact is becoming a luxury good.

“As more screens appear in the lives of the poor, screens are disappearing from the lives of the rich. The richer you are, the more you spend to be offscreen.”

 

Categories Technology

RAND vs. Leonie Haimson on “Teach to One” Evaluation

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2019 //
10

I recently posted Leonie Haimson’s critique of the program called “Teach to One.”

John Pane, one of the authors of the RAND evaluation, wrote to say that he did not agree with Leonie’s characterization. I told him that I would publish his letter and Leonie’s response.

He wrote this letter:

On March 4, 2018 you published this blog entry, “Leonie Haimson: Reality Vs. Hype in “Teach to One” Program,” excerpting from Leonie Haimson’s blog. Your excerpt included this paragraph about my own research (with colleagues) and my public statements:

“The most recent RAND analysis of schools that used personalized learning programs that received funding through the Next Generation Learning initiative, which have included both Summit and Teach to One, concluded there were small and mostly insignificant gains in achievement at these schools, and their students were more likely to feel alienated and unsafe compared to matched students at similar schools. The overall results caused John Pane, the lead RAND researcher, to say to Ed Week that ‘the evidence base [for these schools] is very weak at this point.’“

This paragraph by Haimson has numerous false and misleading statements. Here I summarize my critique, excerpting the original paragraph:

“The most recent RAND analysis of schools that used personalized learning programs that received funding through the Next Generation Learning initiative, which have included both Summit and Teach to One, …”

None of the schools in our sample reported using Teach to One (TtO) among the 194 education technology products they mentioned. Our sample includes schools in the Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) wave IIIa and wave IV programs, a subset of all the NGLC initiatives. Haimson points to blog posts by NGLC about Summit and TtO, but that does not mean our study included them.

“…included both Summit and Teach to One, concluded there were small and mostly insignificant gains in achievement at these schools, …”

Our conclusions were about the whole sample of schools, and did not single out any particular schools as is implied by juxtaposing “Summit and Teach to One” with “these schools.” Our concluding remarks related to achievement did not say “small and mostly insignificant.” What we actually said was, “Students in NGLC schools experienced positive achievement effects in mathematics and reading, although the effects were only statistically significant in mathematics. On average, students overcame gaps relative to national norms after two years in NGLC schools. Students at all levels of achievement relative to grade-level norms appeared to benefit. Results varied widely across schools and appeared strongest in the middle grades.” 

“… and their students were more likely to feel alienated and unsafe compared to matched students at similar schools”

This was not a conclusion of our report. In a supplemental appendix we did compare results from our sample (again, the whole sample of schools in the study, none of which reported using TtO) to a national sample. Our method did not use “matched students at similar schools.” Given data limitations, we were able to make the student samples similar (through weighting) only on grade level, gender, and broad classifications of geographic locale (e.g., urban vs. suburban). Even after weighting, we suspect the high-minority, high-poverty schools in the NGLC sample may be located in more distressed communities than the national survey counterparts, and that this could be related to feelings of safety. Indeed, fewer NGLC students (78 vs. 82 percent) agreed that “I feel safe in this school,” but this small difference cannot be attributed to personalized learning and has no direct relevance to TtO. None of our survey items or reports used the word “alienated.” Possibly related, 77 percent of NGLC students agreed that “at least one adult in this school knows me well” and “I feel good about being in this school,” 76 percent agreed that “I care about this school” and 72 percent agreed “I am an important part of my school community.”

The overall results caused John Pane, the lead RAND researcher, to say to Ed Week that ‘the evidence base [for these schools] is very weak at this point.’“

This EdWeek article clearly states that it is about “what K-12 educators and policymakers need to know about the research on personalized learning” broadly. Quoting accurately, “RAND has found some positive results, including modest achievement gains in some of the Gates-funded personalized-learning schools. But overall, ‘the evidence base is very weak at this point, Pane said.” There is no justification for Haimson to insert “[for these schools]” into my quoted remark. It appears as though Haimson is attempting to give a misleading impression that I was specifically talking about Summit and TtO rather than the entire body of personalized learning research.

I find it very unfortunate that you accepted Haimson’s claims without fact checking, and increased their visibility and attention through your own platform.

I am requesting that you please issue a correction in a way that previous readers of your March 4 post will likely notice. You may include this letter if you wish.

With regards,

John Pane

RAND Corporation

I forwarded John Pane’s letter to Leonie Haimson. She responded as follows:

Hi John – the Rand report was only a small part of my post on TTO which is here – I counted one short paragraph out of nearly one hundred.

Nevertheless, Diane: Please go ahead and print John’s letter in full and I will link to the letter in my blog. It is unfortunate that the specific online program names were left out of the RAND evaluation.  I had wrongly assumed that  TTO was included since it is one of the most heavily funded and promoted of the Next Generation Learning Challenge “personalized learning” programs, by Gates and others.   

I would also like to point out that the following survey stats John includes from the NGLC schools omit the results from the comparison schools, as cited in the appendix of the Rand  report:

Possibly related, 77 percent of NGLC students agreed that “at least one adult in this school knows me well” [compared to 86% of the national sample] and “I feel good about being in this school,” [vs. 89% of the national sample] 76 percent agreed that “I care about this school” [vs. 87% of the national sample] and 72 percent agreed “I am an important part of my school community.” [compared to 79% of the national sample.]

bargraph

In addition, the  students at the personalized learning schools were more likely to say that that “their classes do not keep their attention, and they get bored” compared to the national sample (30% to 23%). Only 35% of students at the NGLC schools said that “learning is enjoyable” compared to 45% of the national sample. With results like this it is very difficult to see support for the claim that students at personalized learning schools are more engaged in their coursework, feel more connected and have more agency, as is often claimed.

Now we know that TTO students aren’t included in these surveys but there is no reason to assume that the responses would be significantly different until and unless New Classrooms releases their own survey results.  And we do have the results from Mountain View school, which showed a 413% increase in the number of students who said they hated math as a result.

Nor does John’s response relate to the larger question of how difficult it is to use MAP scores to evaluate these programs, especially ones that aren’t disaggregated by race or economic status, which also calls into question the conclusions of the MarGready report.  One might expect that with all the data that NWEA has by now they would have done that by now; any thoughts on that, John?

Finally, it is extremely unfortunate that Gates, Zuckerberg etc. haven’t bothered to commission any truly randomized  small-scale evaluation of Summit, TTO or any of the other PL programs they have so heavily funded and promoted before expanding their reach and subjecting hundreds of thousands of students to them.   Summit has rejected  any independent evaluation of its results.  One can only speculate why.

 

Thanks,

Leonie Haimson

 

Categories Education Reform, Research, Technology

Leonie Haimson: Reality Vs. Hype in “Teach to One” Program

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2019 //
29

 

Leonie Haimson, NYC Parent Activist, is blessed with a long memory and deep knowledge.

In this post, she explores the origins and evaluations of a blended learning program called Teach to One.

She writes:

Last week, two different studies came out about the results of the well-known blended learning program originally called “School of One” and now called “Teach to One”, created and sold to schools by an organization named New Classrooms.  If you want to cut to the chase, you can read about the contrasting analyses in Education Week, Chalkbeat or the Hechinger Report.  If you want to know about the history of this much-hyped program that was first developed for use in NYC public schools and uses software programs and algorithms to deliver instruction, read on here. It provides lessons in how insistent the promoters of online learning have hyped programs with little or no evidence behind them, how negative evaluations have been suppressed or discounted and how conflicts of interest have been ignored – all in the service of convincing schools to adopt these programs far and wide.

According to his Linked-in profile, Joel Rose was a Teach for America corps member for three years, until he was hired to work at the headquarters of Edison charter schools in New York City, a national for-profit chain of charters headquartered in NYC.  By 2003, he was running a division of Edison called Newton Learning that provided tutoring to students through the supplementary services program (SES) that was included in No Child Left Behind.  NCLB required public schools with low test scores to pay for their students to receive tutoring services from private companies.  In 2003 alone, Newton Learning was paid more than $5 million by the NYC Department of Education for its tutoring services.

According to NCLB, parents of students at these schools were supposed to be provided with the choice of tutoring companies. Yet in 2005, the NY Post found that in some NYC schools, principals and parent coordinators were incentivized to recruit students for Newton.  In one Bronx school, as a result, the school distributed flyers to parents saying “Newton Learning is your best SES choice. The Newton Learning Adventure offers FUN and EXCITING activity-based lessons.”  Some parents were told by their schools that the only choice was for them to enroll their children in Newton Learning, or they would receive no tutoring at all.

In March 2006, the NYC  Special Investigator of Schools Richard Condon released a report, revealing how several SES providers, including Newton Learning, had engaged in a number of “questionable business practices” in their dealings with DOE officials, parents and students.  These companies had been involved in the “misappropriation and misuse of confidential student information and the offering of self- serving incentive programs”, and Newton staff had been improperly allowed entry into schools to directly solicit students.  In one case, a principal permitted Newton reps to perform skits in front of students during class time to promote their services. 

Newton staff had also improperly obtained student contact information from school staff and had offered financial incentives to principals and teachers if their students signed up.  They had promised gifts to students in exchange for enrolling, including CD players and $100 gift cards.  This sort of chicanery continued even after DOE told Newton to stop these practices, according to Condon’s report. Newton also had failed to carry out required fingerprinting and background checks for the staff they hired as tutors.

According to the DOE rules, Newton and other tutoring companies could use classroom space in the public schools free of charge, if granted a “permit” by the school’s principal.  Yet in return, any company was also supposed to give students a 9% reduction in fees.  Yet every company which had asked for a waiver from this discount was granted one by David Ross, the head of DOE’s Division of Contracts and Services. (Remember that name, David Ross; it will come up later.) Here’s an article  in the NY Times, with more about the special investigator’s findings. 

Condon’s report and news articles about his findings were apparently ignored by DOE, as shown by the fact that a few months later, in December 2006, Joel Klein hired Chris Cerf, to be his Deputy Chancellor, even though Cerf had led Edison schools during this period.  In February 2007, Cerf brought Joel Rose to DOE to be his chief of staff. 

Rose created the School of One pripogram, Which was hailed as the greatest, most revolutionary education program before it was ever implemented.

Read on to learn more about this remarkable job of marketing.

The story of hype and suppressed evaluations is fascinating and well worth reading.

Haimson concludes:

“Teach to One has been the most praised and promoted online learning program in the nation, aside from the Summit Learning platform, which has had its own serious problems.  While Summit has refused to allow any independent evaluations of its efficacy, New Classrooms has suppressed studies with less than stellar results, with the help of the federal government.

“The most recent RAND analysis of schools that used personalized learning programs that received funding through the Next Generation Learning  initiative, which have included both Summit and Teach to One, concluded there were small and mostly insignificant gains in achievement at these schools, and their students were more likely to feel alienated and unsafe compared to matched students at similar schools.  The overall results caused John Pane, the lead RAND researcher, to say to Ed Week that  “the evidence base [for these schools] is very weak at this point. ”

“Yet both Summit and Teach to One, along with other online learning programs, continue to be generously funded and promoted by Gates, Chan-Zuckerberg LLC  and other foundations.  In April, the Dell Foundation gave New Classrooms  another million to expand into high schools. On January 29, New Classrooms announced that Emma Bloomberg had joined its  Board of Directors. How many negative evaluations have to be done before billionaires stop funding and helping these companies experiment on children?”

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, New York City, Technology

Wrench in the Gears: Incentivizing Pre-K Online Gaming

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2019 //
23

 

If you are a parent or grandparent, you know that little children need less screen time, not more.

In this alarming post, blogger Wrench in the Gears quotes from transcripts where some deep thinkers (including Nobelist James Heckman) discuss ways to lure the little ones online, to give them digital badges, and scheme to come up with the right ways to sit them in front of computers.

She begins:

“This is another post with clips culled from talks given at the Center for the Economics of Human Development’s working group, Measuring and Assessing Skills: Real Time Measurement of Cognition, Personality and Behavior. It was held at the University of Chicago in February 2018. I previously shared a segment called from “Math to Marksmanship” with Nobel Prize economist James Heckman, Gregory Chung of UCLA-CRESST and Jeremy Roberts consultant to PBS Kids.

“Below are ten additional excerpts from that talk. I watched all two hours and pulled highlights, so you don’t have to.  Topics covered include: game-based learning for pre-schoolers; how to get pre-readers to create online accounts; how digital games can be used to identify “Big Five” behavior traits; and a real doozy, Dr. Heckman’s half-joking suggestion that gamification and incentives of pornography for adults could encourage parents to have their children use online games more often. No, really.”

 

Incentivizing Pre-K Online Gaming With Digital Sticker Books and Pornography (For The Adults Says Heckman, Half Joking)

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Technology

Forbes: Can AltSchool “Save Itself from Failure”?

By dianeravitch
February 5, 2019 //
31

Susan Adams, an editor at Forbes, took a close look at AltSchool, a billionaire-funded effort to reinvent American education by putting kids on computers. 

Max Ventillaleft Google tolaunch his startup. He’s raised plenty of dough from the billionaires, but success is thus far out of reach. Successmeans making money.

“We’re two intense hours into an interview in a stuffy, glass-paned meeting room in a former 24 Hour Fitness that is now home to one of AltSchool’s two small private schools in San Francisco for grades pre-K through 8. Ventilla, who left Google to launch AltSchool in 2013, has spent $30 million annually over the last several years while trying to find steady footing for his for-profit education startup, which runs four schools; the other two are in New York City.

“AltSchool’s 240 students, including two of Ventilla’s children—Leonardo, 5, and Sabine, 7—are guinea pigs for a software platform that AltSchool is attempting to sell to hundreds of schools both private and public. So far it has 28 customers. Revenue in 2018 was $7 million. “Our whole strategy is to spend more than we make,” he says. Since software is expensive to develop and cheap to distribute, the losses, he believes, will turn into steep profits once AltSchool refines its product and lands enough customers.

Max Ventilla, CEO and cofounder of AltSchool.

Max Ventilla, CEO and cofounder of AltSchool.TIMOTHY ARCHIBALD

“But as Ventilla admits when he lets his guard down, reaching profitability will be quite a stretch. The story of how AltSchool arrived at this point—burning cash in a failed attempt to create a profitable private-school network and fighting to sell an expensive edtech product in a crowded field—shows that the best intentions, an impressive career in tech and an excess of Silicon Valley money and enthusiasm don’t easily translate into success in a tradition-bound marketplace where budgets are tight.

“Ventilla, wearing jeans, scuffed black leather slip-ons, a faded polo shirt with AltSchool’s logo and a black fleece jacket, has been able to hemorrhage cash because, as he has it, “I’m good at telling AltSchool’s story and I’m good at raising money early.” So good that he has raised $174 million in venture capital at a $440 million valuation, according to PitchBook, more than almost any other startup working on K-12 education. That sum includes a personal investment of more than $15 million from Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Zuckerberg initiated two hours-long one-on-one meetings with Ventilla in late 2014, when AltSchool was only 18 months old. “He’s very detail-oriented, and he likes to drill down,” Ventilla says of Zuckerberg.”

The article has little vignettes of a few of the billionaires reinventing education.

 

Categories Billionaires, Technology

Kansas: Students Walk Out to Protest Tech-Based Summit Learning Program

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2019 //
29

 

 

Mark Zuckerberg and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative funded the Summit learning program, which is computer-based online instruction. not personalized learning.

Students in Kansas sent a message to Zuckerberg:

 

Another student #walkout vs #SummitLearning – this time at McPherson MS in Kansas. Like earlier one in Brooklyn, protest was sparked by students’ frustrations about inadequacies of the online Learning program http://midkansasonline.com/news/?id=23280

https://www.mcphersonsentinel.com/news/20190130/mms-students-stage-walkout-to-protest-summit

Waving signs and chanting “No Summit, No Summit, No Summit,” the students spent their afternoon out of class venting their frustration with the changes in their curriculum…. “It’s a learning program that is supposed to be a better way, but you are just on a computer,” said Drake Madden, a seventh grader. “Every time I get home, my head starts hurting.” he said.

Video here: https://www.ksn.com/news/local/mcpherson-students-protest-against-summit-learning-platform-tuesday-afternoon/1738023228

https://www.kwch.com/content/news/Students-at-McPherson-Middle-School-walk-out-to-protest-new-curriculum-505062721.htm

Categories Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Resistance, Students, Technology

Audrey Watters: Fables of School Reform

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2019 //
36

Audrey Watters writes here about the promises and realities of EdTech.

Why the boom in education technology? Is it the pursuit of the total transformation of schooling? Is it marketing, competition and the pursuit of profits? Is it an effort to cut costs by replacing humans with machines?

Watters writes:

OVER THE PAST FIVE YEARS, more than $13 billion in venture capital has been sunk into education technology startups. But in spite of all the money and political capital pouring into the sprawling ed-tech sector, there’s precious little evidence suggesting that its trademark innovations have done anything to improve teaching and learning.

Perhaps, though, that’s never really been the point. Rather, it may be that all the interest in education technology has been an extension of a long-running campaign to make over American schools into the image of corporate endeavor—to transform education into a marketplace for buzzword-friendly apps and instruction plans, while steadily privatizing public institutions of learning for the sake of enhancing the bottom lines of the business interests promoting investment-friendly school “reforms.”

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Technology

Welcome to China’s Coming Digital Dictatorship

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2018 //
31

China is perfecting a system of digitized observation that will track every person every day and monitor every movement they make. Citizens will get “social credit” for good behavior and preferential treatment.

There is no dark corner in which to hide.

This is frightening.

The system is supposed to be ready by 2020.

The death of privacy.

You better be good because they are always watching.

Categories Privacy, Technology

Leonie Haimson Blasts Chalkbeat for Its Biased Coverage of Ed-Tech and “Personalized Learning”

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2018 //
49

Leonie Haimson is one of the nation’s sharpest critic of scams, especially in the area of ed-tech and online learning.

She is outraged that Chalkbeat posted an uncritical article about the scams now sold to schools. He clearly wanted to lump together the critics of Common Core (those “right wingers” [like me]) and the critics of “personalized learning,” who have the retrograde belief that children should be taught by teachers, not computers.

Pay attention to the funders of Chalkbeat (Gates; Walton; Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and others who are pushing online learning and “personalized learning.”) They are listed at the end of this post. Don’t overlook the Anschutz Foundation. He is an evangelical Christian who produced “Waiting for ‘Superman,'” that anti-public school, anti-union propaganda film.

She writes:

Matt Barnum has posted an article at Chalkbeat on the controversy over online learning. I spent nearly an hour talking to him about its myriad problems, including the negative experiences of parents and students in schools where online learning predominates, serious privacy concerns because of all the data-mining by vendors that is involved, and a serious lack of research evidence — but the only quote he used from our conversation is one sentence: that the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy which I co-chair. has worked with allies in right-wing groups on the privacy issue.
Instead, when I spoke to him about this, I emphasized that the concerns about the expansion of online learning and its impact on privacy was shared by groups and individuals of all political persuasion, left right and center, and many parents with little interest in politics at all. That’s why our campaign against inBloom was so successful, and that’s why in NY State and elsewhere, parents and teachers in all nine states and districts that were participating were able to force them from dropping out of the program to share their children’s personal data and make it more accessible to vendors without parental consent. But he left that part out of my quote and his story as a whole, because it did not fit into his pre-ordained narrative.

Indeed, Barnum seemed eager to mischaracterize the opposition to so-called personalized learning as led by conservatives. He is also quick to frame the pushback vs Common Core in a similar fashion –as driven by many of the same right-wing groups — when one of the most successful protests against the standards occurred here in NY state, led by NY State Allies for Public Education, a coalition of mostly left-wing and politically moderate parents and teachers who also oppose the expansion of ed tech.

Barnum didn’t mention any of the other progressive groups, medical associations, and researchers across the country who are very concerned about the expansion of online learning in schools, including Screens and Kids, Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, the ACLU, Commonsense Media, National Education Policy Center, Parents Across America, the Badass Teachers Association and many others.
Nor did he bother to interview any of the many prominent progressive critics of ed tech like Diane Ravitch, Peter Greene or Audrey Watters. Nor did he acknowledge that Silicon Valley parents themselves are increasingly rejecting computerized learning, as reported in the terrific NY Times series by Nellie Bowles.

Instead, he quotes only one non-right wing critic of online learning by name– Merrie Najimy, the President of the Massachusetts teachers – while featuring many paragraphs of rosy spin from defenders of ed tech, like Diane Tavenner of Summit and Bethany Gross of CRPE, both funded by Gates and Zuckerberg.

Barnum cites a CRPE report also paid for by Gates that apparently says, oh yeah, teachers really like personalized learning – while ignoring the survey results in our Educator Toolkit for Teacher and Student Privacy, which showed widespread concern among teachers and administrators alike about the expansion of digital apps and online programs in our schools. He also quotes Randi Weingarten who, surprisingly, has nothing but kind words about the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which has done absolutely nothing that I can think of to earn her confidence.

Amazingly, Barnum also manages to write an entire piece about edtech and personalized learning, Summit, Gates and Zuckerberg without once mentioning the issue of data privacy, the widespread occurrence of breaches, the potential misuse of algorithms, and the over-reach of student surveillance in schools. The only mention of the word “privacy” is in the one sentence that quotes me about working with conservative allies on the issue.

Quite an achievement and yet more evidence of a serious blind spot in Chalkbeat’s education coverage, reminiscent of their failure to cover the parent opposition against inBloom that started here in New York and led to such a firestorm across the country that more than 120 state student privacy laws have been passed as a result of the inBloom controversy since 2013.

There is more to read, and you should open the link to see her many links to other articles and reports.

Chalkbeat should be ashamed. Its sponsors are showing their hands.

Here is a list of Chalkbeat funders.

Ann & Hal Logan via The Denver Foundation*
Anna and John J. Sie Foundation*
Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation
Awesome Without Borders
Azita Raji and Gary Syman
Ben & Lucy Ana Walton*
Better Education Institute, Inc.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Brett Family Foundation
Brooke Brown via the Carson Foundation*
Buell Foundation
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Carson Foundation
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Charles H. Revson Foundation
Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation
Christopher Gabrieli
CME Group
COGEN Co-working
Community Foundation of Greater Memphis
Community Foundation of New Jersey
Democracy Fund
Donnell-Kay Foundation
Doug and Wendy Kreeger
EdChoice
EDU21C Foundation
Elaine Berman
Eli Lilly and Company Foundation, Inc.
Elizabeth Aybar Conti
Elizabeth Haas Edersheim (In Kind)
Emma Bloomberg
Ford Foundation
Fry Foundation
Fund for Nonprofit News at The Miami Foundation
Gail Klapper
Gates Family Foundation
GEM Foundation
George T. Cameron Education Foundation
Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation partnership with the Knight Foundation
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (In Kind)
J.R. Hyde III Family Foundation Donor Advised Fund of the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis
Jim and Marsha McCormick
Kate Kennedy Reinemund and Jim Kennedy
Ken Hirsh
Kresge Foundation
La Vida Feliz Foundation
Lenfest Community Listening and Engagement Fund
Lilly Endowment Inc.
Maher Foundation
Margulf Foundation
Mark Zurack
Memphis Education Fund
Naomi and Michael Rosenfeld
Overdeck Family Foundation
Debra and Paul Appelbaum
Peter and Carmen L. Buck Foundation
Polk Bros. Foundation
Quinn Family Foundation
Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation
Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, Inc.
Rick Smith
Rob Gary and Chris Watney
Rob Gary via the Piton Foundation*
Robert J. Yamartino and Maxine Sclar
Robert R. McCormick Foundation
Rose Community Foundation
Scott Gleason of O’Melveny & Myers (In Kind)
Scott Pearl
Silicon Valley Community Foundation
Skift (In Kind)
Spencer Foundation
Steans Family Foundation
Sue Lehmann
Susan Sawyers
Thalla-Marie and Heeten Choxi
The Assisi Foundation
The Anschutz Foundation
The Barton Family Foundation, a donor-advised fund of The Denver Foundation*
The Caswell Jin Foundation
The Colorado Health Foundation
The Colorado Trust
The Crown Family
The Denver Foundation
The Durst Organization (In Kind)
The Glick Fund, a fund of the Central Indiana Community Foundation
The Indianapolis Foundation, a CICF affiliate
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
The Joyce Foundation
The McGregor Fund
The Moriah Fund
The Skillman Foundation
The Walton Family Foundation
Victoria Foundation
Walentas Foundation Ltd.
Washington Square Legal Services/NYU Business Transactions Clinic (In Kind)
Wend Ventures
Widmeyer, A FinnPartners Company (In Kind)
Will and Christina McConathy*
W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Yoobi (In Kind)

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Media, Technology

Peter Greene: When Artificial Intelligence in the Classroom is Stupid

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2018 //
20

Peter Greene describes here why teachers are way smarter than “artificial intelligence” and why real personalized learning beats depersonalized learning every time.

His bottom line:

“In a real classroom, teachers can gauge student reaction because the teacher is the one the students are reacting to. But if students are busy reacting to algorithm-directed mass customized delivered to their own screen, the teacher is at a disadvantage– particular if the teacher is not an actual teacher, but just a tech there to monitor for student compliance and time on task. Having cut the person out of personalized [sic] learning, the tech wizards have to find ways to put some of the functions of a human back, like, say, paying attention to the student to see how she’s doing.

“The scenario depicted in the video is ridiculous, but then, it’s not the actual goal here. This algorithmic software masquerading as artificial intelligence is just another part of the “solution” to the “problem” of getting rid of teachers without losing some of the utility they provide.

“Intel, like others, insists on repeating a talking point about how great teachers will be aided by tech, not replaced by it, but there is not a single great teacher on the planet who needs what this software claims to provide, let alone what it can actually do. This is some terrible dystopian junk.”

Categories Teachers, Technology
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