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Larry Cuban Visits Sal Khan’s Innovative Schools in Silicon Valley and Is Impressed

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2018 //
19

Larry Cuban is usually skeptical about technology but he visited Sal Khan’s experimental schools and came away impressed.

He compared them to John Dewey’s Lab School at the University of Chicago, where age-grading was abandoned and teachers had autonomy.

See here and here.

He concludes with what might be considered a caveat:

The tradition of challenging the dominant structure of the age-graded school and its “grammar of schooling” continues to this day with micro-schools in Silicon Valley and elsewhere illustrating anew that such reforms to the traditional “machinery of instruction” have resided, for the most part, in private schools where tuition runs high and students bring many economic and social advantages school. In a profound way, the high cost of these private schools and the resources available to their founders in experienced teachers, aides, technologies, space, and materials show clearly the prior conditions necessary not only to operate such schools in public venues but also what is needed to contest the prevailing “grammar of schooling.”

Categories Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching, Technology

NEPC’s 6th Annual Report on Full-Time Virtual and Blended Schools:

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2018 //
15

The National Education Policy Center released its sixth annual report on full-time virtual and blended learning schools. The report was written by Gary Miron, Christopher Shank, and Caryn Davidson of Western Michigan University.

As in the past, these schools get worse results than traditional public schools. Nevertheless, their enrollments continue to grow.

“Compared to prior years, there has been a shift in source of growth, with more school dis- tricts opening their own virtual schools. However, these district-run schools have typically been small, with limited enrollment. Thus, while large virtual schools operated by for-profit education management organizations (EMOs) have lost considerable market share, they still dominate this sector.”

“This report provides a census of full-time virtual and blended schools. It also includes stu- dent demographics, state-specific school performance ratings, and—where possible—an analysis of school performance measures.

“• In 2016-17, 429 full-time virtual schools enrolled 295,518 students, and 296 blended schools enrolled 116,716. Enrollments in virtual schools increased by 17,000 students between 2015-16 and 2016-17 and enrollments in blended learn- ing schools increased by 80,000 during this same time period.

“• Thirty-four states had full-time virtual schools and 29 states had blended schools. Four states had blended but no full-time virtual schools (Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey and Rhode Island). Nine states had virtual schools but no full-time blended learning schools. The number of states with virtual schools in 2016-17 is the same as in 2015-16, although there was an increase of eight states with full- time blended learning schools over the past two years.

“• Virtual schools operated by for-profit EMOs were three times as large as other virtual schools. They enrolled an average of 1,288 students. In contrast, those op- erated by nonprofit EMOs enrolled an average of 407 students, and independent virtual schools (not affiliated with an EMO) enrolled an average of 411 students.

“• Although private (profit and nonprofit) EMOs operated only 35.9% of full-time virtual schools, those schools enrolled 61.8% of all virtual school students.

“• Just under half of all virtual schools in the inventory were charter schools, but to- gether they accounted for 75.7% of enrollment. While districts have been increas- ingly creating their own virtual schools, those tended to enroll far fewer students.

“• In the blended sector, nonprofit EMOs operated 30.4% and for-profit EMOs op- erated 22.6%. Nearly half (47%) of blended schools were independent. Blend- ed schools operated by nonprofits were most numerous and substantially larger than others in the sector. Rocketship Education remained the largest nonprofit operator, with 16 schools that enrolled just over 7,700 students—almost 7% of all students in blended schools.

“• Blended schools enrolled an average of 394 students, but blended schools man- aged by for-profit EMOs had a far larger average enrollment of 1,288. There were more charter blended schools (68.9%) than district blended schools (31.1%), and they had substantially larger average enrollments (456) than district blended schools (257).”

There is much more, covering student demographics, student-teacher ratios, and student performance.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Technology, Virtual Charter Schools

Peter Greene: What Happens When Gates and Zuckerberg Pool Their Ideas? A Lot of Laughs!

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2018 //
18

Peter Greene has fun dissecting a brainstorming session featuring tech titans and billionaires Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. He says, “They never learn.” Same old, same old, repackaged as new.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative are going to attempt– once again– to change the whole world of education.

Their newly-released Request For Information is looking for “all promising ideas for how to use existing and new knowledge and tools to achieve dramatic results against the challenges we describe.” The list of challenges sadly does not include “the repeated failure of rich amateurs to impose their unproven ideas on the US public school system.”

They want YOUR ideas, but they start out with plenty of their own.

A few nuggets of Peter-Greene-Wisdom:

Here are the areas they believe “require more exploration”

Evidence-based solutions for writing instruction, including mastery of the “spectrum of skills encompassing narrative, descriptive, expository and/or persuasive writing models,” a “spectrum” that I’ll argue endlessly is not an actual thing, but is a fake construct created as a crutch for folks who don’t know how to teach or assess writing.

New proficiency metrics. Can we have “consistent measures of student progress and proficiency”? I’m saying “probably not.” “Can we use technology to support new, valid, efficient, and reliable writing performance measures that are helpful for writing coaching?” No, we can’t.

Educator tools and support. Gates-Zuck correctly notes that “effective” writing instruction requires time and resources, so the hope here is, I don’t know– the invention of a time machine? Hiring administrative assistants for all teachers? Of course not– they want to create “tools” aka more technology trying to accomplish what it’s not very good at accomplishing.

Always looking for ways to get better. Kind of like every decent teacher on the planet. I swear– so much of this rich amateur hour baloney could be helped by having these guys shadow an actual teacher all day every day for a full year. At the very least, it would save these endless versions of “I imagine we could move things more easily if we used round discs attached to an axel. I call it… The Wheeble!”

They want your ideas about “Measuring and Improving Executive Function,” which Peter says should creep you out. It creeps me out!

This is personalized [sic] learning at its worst– a kind of Big Brother on Steroids attempt to take over the minds, hearts, and lives of children for God-knows-what nefarious schemes. Only two things make me feel just the slightest bit better about this.

First of all, I’m not sure that Gates-Zuck are evil mad scientist types, cackling wickedly in their darkened laboratory. I’m more inclined to see them as feckless-but-rich-and-powerful computer nerds, who still believe that education is just an engineering problem that can be solved by properly designed sufficiently powered software. They’re technocrats who think a bigger, better machine is the best way to fix human beings.

Second of all– well, wait a minute. The two guys who have bombarded education with enough money to make a small island and who do not have a single clear-cut success to point to– these guys think they’ve got it figured out this time? They have never yet figured out how to better educate the full range of ordinary students (nor ever figured out what “better educate” means) now think they can unlock the formula for better educating students with larger challenges?

This is like going to a circus and the announcer hollers that Evel Von Wheeble is going to jump his motorcycle over fifty buses, and you get very excited until you read the program and see that Von Wheeble previously attempted to jump over ten, twenty and twenty-five buses– and he failed every time.

Peter Greene is still the only blogger who makes me laugh out loud!

Categories Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Humor, Technology

Nancy Bailey: Beware of Tech Titans Bearing Gifts

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2018 //
8

Nancy Bailey learned that the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative was giving $14 Million to the schools of Chicago to put more students online.

Apparently no one in Chicago ever heard of the Trojan horse.

Read on.

Categories Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Chicago, Online Education, Technology

NEPC: More Evidence that Virtual Schools Are a Waste of Time and Money

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2018 //
19

The National Education Policy Center released its sixth annual report on “virtual education,” including both online schools and blended learning. The overall funding: neither is as effective as traditional schools with human-to-human interaction.

 

BOULDER, CO (May 1, 2018) – NEPC’s Sixth Annual Report on Virtual Education, Full-Time Virtual and Blended Schools: Enrollment, Student Characteristics, and Performance, provides a detailed overview and inventory of full-time virtual schools and of blended learning schools, including student demographics, state-specific school performance ratings, and—where possible—an analysis of school performance measures.

School performance measures for both virtual and blended schools indicate that they are not as successful as traditional public schools. Nevertheless, enrollment growth has continued.

Full-time virtual schools deliver all curriculum and instruction via the Internet and electronic communication, usually asynchronously with students at home and teachers at a remote location. Blended, or hybrid, schools combine virtual instruction with traditional face-to-face instruction in classrooms.

The report, beyond adding to the overwhelming evidence of poor outcomes for online schools, documents an interesting trend in the sector. Compared to prior years, there has been a shift in the type of schools with the most growth. We are now seeing more school districts opening their own virtual schools. These district-run schools have typically been small, with relatively small levels of enrollment. But the trend is nonetheless evident. While large virtual schools operated by for-profit education management organizations (EMOs) still dominate this sector, they have lost considerable market share. 

Find Full-Time Virtual and Blended Schools: Enrollment, Student Characteristics, and Performance, by Gary Miron, Christopher Shank, and Caryn Davidson, on the web at:

http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/virtual-schools-annual-2018

Categories Accountability, Online Education, Technology, Virtual Charter Schools

Tennessee: Legislators Say Online Tests Wont Count Against Students or Teachers

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2018 //
28

 

Legislators in Tennessee are rightfully upset by the failure of online testing and have said that the results of the tests won’t be used against any student, teacher, or school. Democrats, in the minority, called for the resignation of Candace McQueen, the state commissioner of education, who doggedly defends online testing.

“The Tennessee General Assembly struck a deal Thursday that will ensure this year’s TNReady test won’t be held against students, teachers and public school districts.

“The measure agreed upon by both chambers says test results this school year will count only if it benefits students, educators and districts. Districts can’t base employment or compensation decisions based on the data, the legislation says.

“It came about after an extraordinary 11th-hour deal by the House to address ongoing test issues that continued sporadically on Thursday across the state.

“All across the state we have heard from superintendents, testing coordinators about some issues logging in, recording the tests as the kids took them, sometimes not being able to log in,” said House Republican Caucus Chair Ryan Williams, R-Cookeville.

“I think what happened was the House felt like we needed to do something to protect teachers and our students and our institutions from further erosion of the trust as it relates to these tests. I think what you saw today is an effort to do that.”

”Trust” in online testing? That’s a reach.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Technology, Tennessee

Ohio: Online Testing System Crashes

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2018 //
48

 

Ohio testing is bogged down by failure of the online system supplied by vendor AIR. 

Can anyone remind me why everyone began switching to online assessment?

What was wrong with paper and pencil tests?

What was wrong with tests written by teachers?

How many billions have been wasted on testing in the past 20 years that could have been used to raise teachers’ salaries, reduce class size, repair buildings?

 

Categories Ohio, Standardized Testing, Technology

Parent: Why I Will Not Let My Child Take the State Test

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2018 //
57

 

A parent in New York wanted to see what the testing experience was, so she went to the State Education Department website and tried the practice questions for third grade. Whatever her initial objections might have been, what she found most objectionable was the nature of the online assessment.

She wrote:

“I had the opportunity to take a practice grade 3 math CBT today. It sealed my decision to opt my children out. It was highly frustrating and difficult to navigate. The font was very small. At the beginning there were a multitude of directions explaining all the online “tools”. Not all the answer choices always fit on the screen, so you have to scroll up and down to navigate the entire question with answers. On a two step word problem I was required to show my work. To do this you have to tap on an algorithm and then plug in the numbers. For some reason, even though I chose a vertical algorithm, the two numbers were not properly lined up, which made adding them pretty tough. Even with three adults looking at it we couldn’t fix it. The problem also required carrying, and you basically had to do that in your head as there is no way to carry the extra ten to the next column. Also, I had to enter the answer from left to right, instead of adding the ones, tens, hundreds. These tests are already flawed in so many ways, and now we are adding extra anxiety to these kids. And how will the results not be invalid? How will we know if the kid really didn’t know an answer, or just couldn’t figure out how to navigate the computer? None of this is necessary for 8-14 year old children.”

Categories New York, Opt Out, Parents, Standardized Testing, Technology

National Education Policy Center: Facebook’s Business Model Threatens Everyone, Especially Students

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2018 //
4

The National Education Policy Center recently released by this important report:

Press Release: http://nepc.info/node/9129
NEPC Publication: http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/facebook-student-privacy
Washington Post Answer Sheet: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/04/05/facebook-and-the-very-real-problem-of-keeping-student-data-private/

Contact:
Alex Molnar: (480) 797-7261, nepc.molnar@gmail.com
Faith Boninger: (480) 390-6736, fboninger@gmail.com

NEPC Resources on School Commercialism

BOULDER, CO (April 6, 2018) – In yesterday’s Washington Post Answer Sheet, Alex Molnar and Faith Boninger, Co-Directors of NEPC’s Commercialism in Education Unit, explored the invasive data mining and third-party targeting of users that is inherent in Facebook’s business model and that led NEPC to delete its Facebook account and remove Facebook from the NEPC website.

Molnar and Boninger have studied advertising directed at students in schools for three decades. For the past five years, they have tracked and reported on the evolution of digital marketing and the use of digital platforms in schools. In a series of annual reports, they have repeatedly called for statutory changes and regulations to ensure student privacy, protect data, require transparency, and ensure accountability. In their essay, they explain that the kind of data practices revealed by the Cambridge Analytica scandal are operating in schools and classrooms every day as students’ personal data are scooped up by digital platforms with little oversight or accountability.

Molnar, who is also NEPC’s Publications Director, warns, “Lack of public oversight has permitted the development of a surveillance economy in which corporations relentlessly, invisibly, and very profitably gather information and create profiles on hundreds of millions of people.” He adds that in the absence of public oversight over how digital platforms collect, store, and use data, “there is little or no clear recourse when personal data are used in ways that cause personal and social harm. This is true not only for adults, but also for students whose data are collected through their schools.”

Although Facebook is not alone in collecting data from its users, its business model and particular use of the data stand out. Facebook presents itself as dedicated to bringing people together in a radically transparent world and as serving as a new “public square” where users can express themselves freely. Boninger contrasts this image with reality, where Facebook limits and exploits the false public square it has created: “Rather than letting users engage freely in its environment, Facebook’s algorithms silo users and present them with a distorted reality that is then used by advertisers to influence and manipulate them.” “This is not a ‘mistake,’ she points out. “It is what Facebook is designed to do.”

In high schools, when school groups use Facebook as an organizing tool, students must maintain Facebook accounts in order to participate in school activities. The existence of these accounts allows Facebook to collect data about students every time they visit a page with a “like” button. It also allows Facebook to collect information about users’ friends. Via the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, is using his fortune to promote the adoption of what they call “personalized learning” platforms in schools (i.e., using software to target digitally-provided lesson content based on students’ past responses) that facilitate further collection of massive amounts of educational data from children.

With respect to the Internet, it is often said that if you’re not paying for a product you are the product. That is, if the company is not making money selling a product to you, then they make money selling someone else information about you. Molnar notes, “We’re particularly concerned when this product is children, who are especially susceptible to manipulation because they are still developing. Targeted marketing, facilitated by Facebook, manipulates children and influences their developing worldviews and interests, as well as their understandings of their families, friendships, romantic relationships, environment, society, and selves. These practices are harmful to adults, and when deployed against children they are intolerable.”

Learn more about NEPC research on digital marketing and data gathering in schools at http://nepc.colorado.edu/ceru-home.

The following organizations also have resources on data gathering from children and in schools: Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood, Center for Digital Democracy, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy.

Categories Education Reform, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Technology

Mercedes Schneider: John White, Hypocrite

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2018 //
3

 

Mercedes Schneider noted that John White, Louisiana’s Commissioner of Eduxation, got an advance copy of the NAEP scores, saw that his state was a disaster, and loudly complained about the switch to computer testing.

She observes that only a year earlier, a friend complained about computer testing to White, and he brushed off the complaint. Get used to it, he said. Hypocrite, she says.

Categories Louisiana, NAEP, Technology, Testing
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