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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

O Brave New World!

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2018 //
9

 

China has brought surveillance of its citizens to new levels, using face recognition technology. 

A woman jaywalked, thinking nothing of it. The police demanded her identity card, but she didn’t have it. They snapped her picture and promptly pulled up her identity and her personal history.

This incident was but a small indicator of China’s determination to monitor its people.

“Mao Yan’s Shenzhen is part of one of the great social experiments of mankind — the use of massive amounts of data, combined with facial recognition technology, shaming and artificial intelligence to control a population via marriage of the state and private companies. Already on the packed highways of Shanghai, honking has decreased. That’s because directional microphones coupled with high-definition cameras can identify and ticket — again, via WeChat — noisy drivers and display their names, photographs and identity card numbers on the city’s many LED boards. On some streets, if drivers stop their cars by the side of the road longer than seven minutes, high-definition cameras identify the driver and, again, issue him or her an instant ticket…

”But as Mao Yan’s story makes clear, this technology is bleeding into the rest of China, where 95 percent of the population is Han Chinese. And China’s authorities won’t be content with traffic stops. Their goal is behavioral modification on a massive scale. Chinese planners have announced their intention to tap the vast AI and surveillance infrastructure currently under construction to generate “social credit” scores for all of China’s 1.5 billion people. With a high score, traveling, securing a loan, buying a car and other benefits will be easy to come by. Run afoul of the authorities, and problems begin.
Some Chinese businessmen who are benefiting from this massive investment in data have argued that the Chinese are less concerned about privacy than people in the United States. Robin Li, the founder of Baidu, China’s version of Google, which routinely shares its data with the Chinese Communist Party, argued over the weekend that Chinese people don’t care that much about privacy. “The Chinese people are more open or less sensitive about the privacy issue,” said Li, speaking at the China Development Forum in Beijing. “If they are able to trade privacy for convenience, safety and efficiency, in a lot of cases, they are willing to do that.” Ironically, Li’s remarks were released by the Chinese magazine Caixin on the same day that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg issued an apology for releasing user data to a political consultancy.
In her article, Mao Yan didn’t seem to agree with Li’s optimistic interpretation of the campaign. “Maybe,” she wrote, “it’s intimidation to make everyone afraid.” I think she’s right. Hours after Mao Yan posted her story on China’s Internet, censors took it down.”

We should never normalize the invasion of privacy.

Thats why I left Facebook. So did Elon Musk.

The protection of privacy—some basic human dignity—should concern us all.

Categories Privacy and Privacy Rights, Technology

Network for Public Education: A Report on Online Learning: What Every Parent Should Know

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2018 //
7

 

The Network for Public Education has released an important report on online learning, directed at parents who need more information about the value of the time spent on computers and other devices in and out of the classroom.

The report urges parents to be wary of hype intended to sell a product of inferior quality and to protect their children’s instructional time from hucksters.

The report aims to answer such questions as:

With so much attention focused on online learning, it is important that parents be armed with the facts. What does the research tell us about online learning, and what are the different types? How well do students do when they take courses online vs. courses with face-to-face classmates and teachers? What is online learning’s promise, and what are its pitfalls? What role does profit play in online learning? When virtual schools get dismal results, why are they still supported? And what are the privacy implications of outsourcing more and more student data into private hands, as occurs when more learning goes online?

It reviews the research literature, which is thin, and warns parents against programs whose sponsors whose primary motive is profit. It looks at blended learning, “personalized learning,” and such programs as Rocketship Charter Schools, School of One (now known as Teach to One), and Mark Zuckerberg’s Summit Learning Platform. It also casts a wary eye towards virtual charter schools, behavioral management apps, and online credit recovery. Additionally, close attention is paid to student privacy issues, which few of the vendors have protected.

 

 

Categories For-Profit, Network for Public Education, Privacy, Technology, Virtual Charter Schools

Network for Public Education Releases a Parents’ Guide to Online Learning

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2018 //
12

MEDIA ADVISORY FOR
March 9, 2018

For more information contact:
Carol Burris, NPE Executive Director

718-577-3276

cburris@networkforpubliceducation.org


Kew Gardens, New York – Today the Network for Public Education (NPE) released a new report, Online Learning: What Every Parent Should Know, in response to the growing dependence on technology in K-12 education. Schools are increasingly implementing digital instruction, often requiring that students use online programs and apps as part of their classwork. Many students even attend a virtual, full-time charter school, never meeting teachers or classmates face to face.

Yet there is scant evidence of educational technology’s success and growing concerns regarding its negative impact. This guide presents a frank assessment of the intended and unintended consequences of online learning in K-12 school and offers questions parents should ask principals if their child’s school adopts computerized programs to deliver instruction, assessment or behavior management.

Rachel Stickland, Co-Chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, had the following to say about the report: “NPE’s Online Learning report is essential reading for anyone questioning the research behind the national push toward digital education. With this report in hand, parents can discuss their concerns with online learning confidently with school leadership – whether it’s the lack of evidence showing that it actually works, the political and moneyed interests advancing it, or how it places student privacy at risk.”

Dr. Faith Boninger of the University of Colorado Boulder researches and writes about commercial activities in schools. Commenting on the importance of the report she said, “As much as companies are eager to sell digital technology to schools, and schools are eager to increase children’s achievement, research does not support claims that shifting to digital educational platforms achieves the desired goals. What a growing body of research does indicate, however, is that excessive computer use by children leads to negative health effects such as vision and sleeping problems, social-emotional disturbance, and addiction to digital devices. NPE’s report on on-line learning is an important, timely, resource for parents. In plain language, its review of what we know about online learning shows that parents would do well to not accept promises or bland reassurances, but rather be extremely skeptical consumers. Armed with this report, parents will be able to ask administrators the very hard questions that must be answered adequately in order to justify the use of digital technologies to teach children.”

The 18-page guide is a parent-friendly review of the research on virtual schools, online courses, blended learning and behavior management apps. It also includes a discussion of the student privacy issues that arise when highly sensitive personal student data is collected by online programs and then distributed to third-party vendors without parent knowledge or consent.

The guide’s harshest criticism is reserved for virtual charter schools, whose academic ineffectiveness, coupled with fraudulent attendance practices, resulted in NPE’s recommendation that parents refrain from enrolling their children in online charters.

Based on the report’s findings, NPE President Diane Ravitch advises parents to “be wise consumers.” According to Ravitch, “Technology can be used creatively in the classroom by well-prepared teachers. But most of what is sold as ‘digital learning‘ is a sham that allows vendors to mine student data. Worse, online charter schools are educationally worthless. Students learn best when there is human interaction between teachers and students and among students. Parents must beware of false promises by profiteers.”

Online Learning: What Every Parent Should Know is available online at https://networkforpubliceducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Online-Learning-What-Every-Parent-Should-Know.pdf.

The Network for Public Education (NPE) was founded in 2013 by Diane Ravitch and Anthony Cody. Its mission is to protect, preserve, promote, and strengthen public schools for both current and future generations of students. We share information and research on vital issues that concern the future of public education. For more information, please visit: networkforpubliceducation.org.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, On-Line Education, Technology, Virtual Charter Schools

Utah Legislator Who Sponsored Charter Bill: They Are a “Grave Disappointment”

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2018 //
13

The legislator who launched charter schools in Utah declared that they are a “grave disappointment” to him.

Sen. Howard Stephenson, sponsor of the laws that launched charter schools in Utah, said Tuesday that the alternative schools have fallen short of their mission to improve education through innovation and competition.

The Draper Republican said he’s looking for a “fresh start” for charter schools, as their average performance on statewide tests is no better than that of their school district counterparts.

“I don’t want to discount the fact that many, many students have found success in these schools of choice but on average, we have not seen that occur,” Stephenson said. “That has been a grave disappointment for me as the sponsor of that [original] legislation.”

Stephenson thought that if he changed the composition of the state charter school board, that might fix things. First, he offered a prohibition on anyone who was currently a charter school board member or member of a charter governing board. But that would have cut some of the current board members, so he revised the bill to seek someone “with expertise in classroom technology and individualized learning.”

One of the charter members who might have been kicked off warned that the board needed someone with expertise in digital technology and “personalized learning” since that was the wave of the future.

Guess the word hasn’t reached Utah that “personalized learning” means “depersonalized learning” and that teachers and parents are rebelling against the replacement of teachers by machines.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Failure, Privatization, Technology, Utah

Parents Across America: A Detailed Critique of the Dangers of Screen Time for Young Children

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2018 //
13

 

Parents Across America (an independent group of parent activists that is critical of the commercialization and corporate takeover of education) has created a valuable resource about the effects of screen time on children. 

It is titled “Our Children @ Risk.”

The paper is 26 pages long. It contains extensive documentation.

It is a valuable resource in light of the profit-driven effort to promote EdTech in the schools without regard to is effects on children.

Here is the introduction:

“Children have a basic right to live in environments that promote their social, emotional and intellectual well-being. They have the right to grow up, and parents have the right to raise them, without being undermined by greed.” Susan Linn

“Parents Across America has developed a position paper and associated informational materials which detail a number of concerns about the invasion of EdTech* into our schools, and which we have collected under the title, “Our Children @ Risk.”

“This document is an annotated bibliography of resources we used to inform our position paper and materials. References to the outline letters and numbering below are used parenthetically throughout the informational materials to indicate the corresponding supportive research, documentation, expert opinion, and anecdotal and other background information.

“There is some overlap in the categories, and, of course, many of the sources quoted address more than one area of concern.

“A. Effect on children’s mental/emotional health

“B. Impact on student learning

“C. Physical effects – screen time

“D. Physical effects – vision E. Physical effects – sitting

“F. Effects on schooling

“G. Questionable effectiveness of EdTech

“H. Constant testing/lack of informed consent

“I. Privacy issues

“J. Who benefits?”

 

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Technology
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