The Wrangling of Taxpayer Money by Jeb Bush and other Education Reformers

The Wild West Comes to Your State via Education Reformers looking for Gold.

Education is the "Wild West".  Scott Joftus was correct when talking about money to be made in education reform:

Scott Joftus, closely aligned with Bill Gates and his foundation since the early years of 2000, had this to say about education in an article aptly titled "Is the Stimulus Really "No Consultant Left Behind" "?:

That metaphor is an apt one for the market as well. In the fall of 2009, Mr. Joftus was contacted by a former contractor who was working for Global Partnership Schools, a new school turnaround venture funded by GEMS Education, a Dubai-based company founded by entrepreneur Sunny Varkey. The caller was hoping to obtain copies of Mr. Joftus’ contract for school improvement services in Kansas.

“You know we’re in a new era when school turnaround firms in the U.S. are being funded out of the Middle East,” Joftus said. “To me, that says there’s money to be made. I call this period the Wild West in education.”

We wrote about Joftus in May 2011.  Researchers such as Susan Ohanian and Dora Taylor have been writing about the money trail to Bill Gates and other "entrepreneurs" using taxpayer money to fund their private companies for years.   Note that Joftus' remark was in 2009.  This has been in the planning for some time by private corporations and the Federal Government to create an enormous public/private partnership without voter/legislative approval.

Joftus is just a small part in the big picture of corporate payback in education.  The story garnering the attention of education activists this week was the information on former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and his plans to gain monetarily from the reforms designed "for the kids". Rather than serving student educational needs, various education reforms allow the framework for investors and professional ed reformers to gain access to state/federal coffers.  From inthepublicinterest.org:

Emails between the Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE), founded and chaired by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and state education officials show that the foundation is writing state education laws and regulations in ways that could benefit its corporate funders. The emails, obtained through public records requests, reveal that the organization, sometimes working through its Chiefs For Change affiliate, wrote and edited laws, regulations and executive orders, often in ways that improved profit opportunities for the organization's financial backers.

"Testing companies and for-profit online schools see education as big business," said In the Public Interest Chair Donald Cohen. "For-profit companies are hiding behind FEE and other business lobby organizations they fund to write laws and promote policies that enrich the companies."

The emails conclusively reveal that FEE staff acted to promote their corporate funders' priorities, and demonstrate the dangerous role that corporate money plays in shaping our education policy. Correspondence in Florida, New Mexico, Maine, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Louisiana paint a graphic picture of corporate money distorting democracy.

This report focuses on testing companies and for-profit online schools and doesn't mention common core standards.  But think how easy (and necessary for increased profits) it will be for these testing companies and on-line schools to use the mandated CCSS standards, assessments and resulting curricula.  It doesn't matter so much to these companies/investors what students are learning, it's that they are learning the same material so the process can be streamlined for the assessment/testing companies.  

Does anyone seriously believe the push for CCSS is anything more than a money making scheme and to control educational content?  Why the clamor to sign on to assessments that were never even written?  Why are the standards/assessments copyrighted by private companies?  Why won't states/school districts be able to adapt these standards/assessments?

Read again what Scott Joftus said in 2009 and understand what education reform is really about.  It's never been "for the kids".  Mr. Joftus may be discovering how making money in education reform is getting in the way of real teaching for his own children in his post When Education Reform gets Personal in EducationNext.org:

Over more than 20 years in the field of education—including two with Teach For America—I have helped promote state standards, the Common Core, the hiring of teachers with strong content knowledge, longer class periods for math and reading, and extra support for struggling students, to name a few. I have recently discovered, however, that what I believe as an education policy wonk is not always what I believe as a father.

In Montgomery County, Maryland, where I live, academic expectations are extremely high. Our school district aims to teach math, for example, in a rigorous way. I appreciate this goal, but to date “increased rigor” has primarily meant that some students skip grade-level math classes and enroll in classes meant for older kids. Basic skills that are taught and reinforced in the grades being skipped are often given short shrift. In 2nd grade, my daughter brought home worksheets on probability before she had any real understanding of the concept, or even a strong foundation in simple division. Her frustration with probability, and consequently math, grew as we substituted times-table drills for play dates. Last year, to my horror, she said that she hated math. This year, which has included an increased focus on math facts and an inspiring teacher, math has become her favorite subject.

He writes how a child in the foster system disrupted the class and took the teacher's time and away from other children:

The tension between my understanding of good education policy—driven by a deep commitment to equity and the belief that an outstanding education can transform lives, and this country—and what is right for my daughters makes me both a better policy wonk and a better father. The tension also illustrates why school reform is so difficult.

I would suggest the educational reform currently being driven by leaders like Jeb Bush, Bill Gates, Achieve, David Coleman, etc won't alleviate the types of problems Mr. Joftus details.  Living in the "Wild West" of education leaves much to be desired, even for the education reformers profiting from the wrangling of taxpayer money.  





  

Is THIS why Arne Duncan wants Everyone to go to College?

Is college debt collection the new "Wild West in Education" scheme for "entrepreneurs" to make money?

It is no secret this Administration's goal is to make the majority of students college/career ready, in fact, it is in its educational blueprint and heard in many of their speeches.  What is the stated goal of the Administration's school reform?  From an Arne Duncan speech:

Today, we have a unique opportunity to rethink the mission of high school for the 21 century and educate our way to a better economy. I'm convinced that what we do in the next several years to complete this transformation will help America's children and the nation's workforce for decades to come.

Students are to be educated so they are globally competitive and help the nation's workforce.  The emphasis is on training human capital to supply the needs of the economy. In Duncan's world, this means there should be opportunities for all students to go to community college, career college or a four year university so as to help private businesses (and government) be successful.

Does a goal of most people achieving the same outcome make you a little nervous and suspicious?  Do you remember the No Child Left Behind Goal of "100% of students will be proficient by 2014"?  That goal was unattainable and ridiculed from the beginning, no matter how noble its intentions.

The goal of the majority of students to go to some sort of post-high school program is unattainable as well.  Some students are not motivated enough and/or are not intellectually able to handle post-high school programs.   Why is there this push for students to become become theoretically smarter and more productive human capital by furthering their education? 

What's occurring with this plan?  While more students are attending post high school programs,  it's establishing student servitude to the Federal Government long after the students have graduated due to student debt.  Since 2010, the Federal Government directly makes student loans, not private companies.  The loans are to be paid directly to the government, not private industry.  It's a pretty nifty program to ensure a money stream for a cash strapped country.  It falls apart when those students can't find a job and don't have enough money to pay their bills, much less the government treasury.

From the NY Times and Debt Collectors Cashing In on Student Loans:

At a protest last year at New York University, students called attention to their mounting debt by wearing T-shirts with the amount they owed scribbled across the front — $90,000, $75,000, $20,000.  

On the sidelines was a business consultant for the debt collection industry with a different take. 

“I couldn’t believe the accumulated wealth they represent — for our industry,” the consultant, Jerry Ashton, wrote in a column for a trade publication, InsideARM.com. “It was lip-smacking.” 

Though Mr. Ashton says his column was meant to be ironic, it nonetheless highlighted undeniable truths: many borrowers are struggling to pay off their student loans, and the debt collection industry is cashing in. 

In an attempt to recover money on the defaulted loans, the Education Department paid more than $1.4 billion last fiscal year to collection agencies and other groups to hunt down defaulters.

The article highlights one private company reaping huge dividends from the government to go after debt:

The New Oil Well?

 

Business is booming at ConServe, a debt collection agency in suburban Rochester. The company recently expanded into a neighboring building. The payroll of 420 is expected to double in three years. 

“There is great opportunity,” said Mark E. Davitt, the company’s president and founder.

Where some debt collection firms have made their fortunes collecting on delinquent credit cards or hospital bills, ConServe is thriving because of overdue student loans, a large majority of its business. 

With an outstanding balance of more than $1 trillion, student loans have become a silver lining for the debt collection industry at a time when its once-thriving business of credit card collection has diminished and the unemployment rate has made collection a challenge. To recoup unpaid loans, the federal government, private lenders and others have turned to collection agencies like ConServe. 

Mark Russell, a mergers and acquisition specialist, writing in the same trade publication as Mr. Ashton, the consultant at the N.Y.U. protest, suggested student loans might be a “new oil well” for the accounts receivable management industry, or ARM, as the industry is known.

 

Mr. Ashton's and Mr. Russell's comments remind me of education venture capitalist Scott Joftus remarking that "education is the Wild, Wild West and there is a lot of money to be made".  Not only will education reformers and venture capitalists make money from laws tweaked by politicians, so will debt collectors.

Does the alliance with private companies (ed reformers, venture capitalists, Solyndra, Mamtek, etc) with the Federal Government cause concern?  Are our tax dollars propping up this economy under the guise of supporting private industry?  Why are tax dollars being used for private industries in the first place? 

While ed reformers espouse "free market" principles in "choice" schools, it's really not "free market" at all.  The money used to fund these schools are from your tax dollars and there is little to no risk to the "entrepreneurs".   Meanwhile, education venture capitalists like Bill Gates and Scott Joftus are making money from the mandates put in place by the politicians and the Department of Education.

Now the debt collectors can step in and reap the benefits of the unattainable goal pitched to  students that they can and should (it's their "right") to go to college.  It's a Utopian goal and we know there is no Utopia.  If there is no Utopia, what is the real reason for this structuring of educational reform?

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Take some time and read the comments at the end of the Times article.  Interesting stories and theories on debt, student responsibility, the structure of the economic system, etc.

Why the Republicans Don't Want Common Core Rescinded.

You are invited to the educational reform party masqueraded as Common Core and School "Choice"

Common Core allows State Longitudinal Data Systems to share information.  The information does not only include state wide assessment scores and educational data, it will include invasive personal data on students and families.  This data will be used to track children from birth into careers.  This data will be supplied to various Federal agencies and private researchers/companies determined by the DOEd.  Why is it agreeable to Republicans to gather this information and disseminate your personal information for workforce development?

The party won't address Common Core and the power taken away from states because there's a lot of money to be made in these assessments and data.  We've written about Scott Joftus and referring to education as the "Wild Wild West" and an enormous amount of money to be made in education.  It's not about the kids; it's about the ed tech bubble and fortunes to be realized.  

From gigaom.com:

As I wrote last week in a story about LearnSprout, another quickly growing San Francisco startup tackling the same issue, data integration is a major headache for schools and developers. Accessing student data — from attendance records to grades to addresses — can currently be a weeks-long, labor-intensive, error-prone process that discourages schools from working with ed tech companies.

“Moving and managing data is one of the biggest things holding education back today,” said co-founder Tyler Bosmeny. The company’s traction, he said, shows how badly developers and educators need tools that integrate and normalize student data.

Some of the schools integrated with Clever include large charter school networks like KIPP, ASPIRE, and Green Dot, but the company said 50 percent of its schools are in traditional districts. Clever charges over 30 software companies, such as Mastery Connect, TenMarks, Sokikom, for access to its API so that those software companies can process student data and charge school districts for their educational services.

The company, which was founded by Bosmeny and two Harvard classmates, Dan Carroll and Rafael Garcia, was inspired by Carroll’s experience in education. After completing two years with Teach for America, Carroll managed technology and innovation for a Denver charter school and “lived this problem” with data, Bosmeny said.

Clever’s growth not only speaks to the current issues facing schools and developers, it indicates the founders’ desire to show the potential of education startups. While K-12 education has, more recently, attracted investment, investors have historically eschewed the field. To their knowledge, Clever’s founders said they think they’re the first K-12 startup accepted to Y Combinator.

“We really want to show that education can be a valuable business if you approach it the right way,” said Bosmeny. “We hope we can take away the barrier and prove that education is a real market and there’s a lot of room for innovation in this space.”

What this TFAer took away from his experience was not how to teach kids, but what was needed on the business side of education: the gathering and posting of data.  This Harvard graduates has a first hand knowledge of what data needs to be gathered, not how to educate children.  He "lived with the problem of data".  Did he "live with the problem of educating a child"?

When you hear legislators extoll the value of TFAers, remember that many of them do their two years, leave the profession and apply their business degrees to figure out how to make money from the educational machine.   

Common Core standards (written by private companies) have mandated this enormous data retrieval.  The mandates have created  a niche for private companies to compel states to spend money on these systems.  The states have to provide the data; the private companies are delighted to supply this need.   THIS is why the Republicans are loath to rescind the standards.  If there are no standards, there is no vehicle/mandate to require this data.  No data means no private start ups to gather the data.  It doesn't matter to the Republicans that these private start ups are using Federal and state money for their "entrepreneurial" ventures.

 From gettingsmart.com:

The drought is over and capital is flowing to innovators in K-12, postsecondary, and consumer learning. That’s the conclusion of a report from GSV Advisors including industry veterans Deborah Quazzo and Michael Moe. They examine the “near spontaneous explosion of entrepreneurial activity in education.”

...With more capital flowing, GSV points to four remaining challenges the primary obstacles to scale can be classified as the following:

• People: New talent is being attracted to education but there is still a short supply of management and engineering talent.
• Product: There are limited early adopters to support product evaluation and iterative development.
• Potential: Education is a huge segment of the economy but strangled by layers of policy and bureaucracy, and anti-market bias, and inefficient decentralized procurement.
• Predictability: Traditional political and budget vagaries have been exacerbated by the Great Recession, disruptive technologies, and new philanthropies.

How did the spontaneous combustion occur? Page 10 of the report is the “Magic Chart” that summarizes the coalescence of four change forces: advancing technology, maturing markets, innovation friendly education policy, and improving human capital. I would add a global overlay; the doubling of education expenditures in India and china is building demand for new learning tools, and viral apps quickly develop a global presence.

The "challenge to Potential" is being addressed and answered by Arne Duncan's policies and the Republicans' support of Common Core mandates and LDS.  The standards, assessments and curricula are becoming quite centralized, cutting out those pesky standards for education (which are state powers, not powers delegated to a centralized bureauracy) that are impediments for these education venture capitalists. 

The "Magic Chart" needs the innovation friendly education policy (school "choice") and the improvement of human capital.  The companies don't care how children are educated or what they learn, the companies just need to show improvement on the assessments these educational venture capitalists have fashioned.  Human capital are widgets.  Your children are pawns in a money making scheme masquerading as education.  The Republicans touting themselves as constitutionalists are masquerading behind the education reform mask as well.

Republicans don't want this business segment to disappear.   Common Core allows this private segment to tap into taxpayer dollars.   This is the reason you hear Republicans clamoring for school "choice".  It's "for the kids" is secondary or non-existent. 

Common Core is a Money Making Venture and Social Justice. Is this the Educational Reform Taxpayers Want?

Forget the Arne Duncan "Happy Dance" and verbal spin about his plan of education reform.

Common Core and Race to the Top mandates are not about making students STEM ready or globally competitive.  It's about:

• making preselected suppliers wealthy
• centralized educational control
• educational equity

That's it.  It's capitalist cronyism disguised as choice, centralization of power, and social justice played out in schools.

Here's an exchange a friend of  mine (who knows about Common Core Standards and how they are untested, unproven and underfunded) had in an airport and passed along:

I struck up a conversation with the guy next to me while eating dinner at the bar in the Chicago airport during my layover. It turns out he is an education consultant/trainer on his way to Minneapolis for some big charter school conference tomorrow. I played dummy and started to ask him questions. He brought up common core and said, "I hate curriculum stuff. It is really boring. But that is where the money is. The thing is a pot of money." I asked him what it would cost the average school district to implement it. His answer, "That is a really good question. There will be some software and training, but I really have no idea."

The reference to the "pot of money" is reminiscent to Scott Joftus' remark many years ago about education reform being the "Wild West" in terms of making money.   The answer about the cost for the average school district is similar to DESE stating "it won't cost much" for taxpayers. 

The educational equity goals are paramount in Common Core standards and RTTT mandates.  Oak Norton in Utahns Against Common Core discovered interesting information about the standards as they relate to social justice:

I was at a Meet the Candidates event last night and someone told me that Phil Daro, one of the writers of the math standards, said they wrote Common Core specifically for social justice. For those that don’t know, social justice is a buzz word that means redistribution of wealth or helping the poor at the expense of the wealthy. I did a couple of web searches and found a teacher’s website (who seems to get it) with this video where Phil says it right at the end.

Common Core set minimum standards for all students which means minimal learning for those who could accelerate. Thus social justice is achieved by holding down the achievers to the level of the lowest common denominator and by forcing them to learn what you want them to learn instead of letting them become individualized and accelerating their education as they can.


Nowhere is this going to happen more than in Utah where we adopted math standards in an integrated fashion instead of discrete years. If you’ve not read about that problem yet please click that link. Otherwise watch Phil’s video clip. I’m not sure who he’s speaking to but they are an easily entertained bunch.

Here's the clip from Oak's site:

When you attend your child's mid-year conference, understand that his/her progress is not about him/her at all.  It's "progress" based on Common Core standards of "show me the money" and attempting to make everyone the same. 

Is it any wonder or surprise Gallup polling finds confidence in public education is at an all time low?  

Americans' confidence in public schools is down five percentage points from last year, with 29% expressing "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in them. That establishes a new low in public school confidence from the 33% measured in Gallup's 2007 and 2008 Confidence in Institutions polls. The high was 58% the first time Gallup included public schools, in 1973.

Over approximately four decades, confidence in public schools has declined 29%.  Could this decline have anything to do with the more than three decades old Department of Education and its centralized mandates?  Can we now determine federal involvement in education has been a failure, academically and financially? 

Do you think that by making schools money making ventures for private companies using taxpayer money and constructing a program of "one size fits all for students" will "reform" education?  Do you think Gallup will see an uptick in citizen confidence or will Common Core standards create a race to the bottom in polling and real learning?

America's Global Educational Reform: When the Rule of Law is Ignored and Privatization Overtakes Education.

Why don't we just go ahead and abolish Legislatures?  They have lawmaking abilities and duties, but these laws don't make any difference when governmental agencies decide to enact mandates via regulatory authority or ignore existing laws.

We've seen it here in Missouri when Federal grants are given for educational trigger options  bypassing state lawmakers and the implementation of common core standards.  State standards have been trumped by the signing onto common core standards by the governor, DESE and the State Board of Education.  The standards have been crafted by private organizations unaccountable to taxpayers.  It will cost the taxpayers a minimum of $350,000,000 and no citizen input in local school districts, but that's what privatization is all about: the use of taxpayer money without a taxpayer vote to enable private companies to make decisions in education.  You don't have to worry your brains on how to make decisions for your children or how your tax money is spent...these private organizations and governmental agencies have taken care of all those pesky details.

We've seen it on the national level when the Department of Education revised FERPA regulations allowing invasive personal data about children and their families to be shared with various federal agencies and private vendors.

A classic example of the runaround of  laws protecting parental AND child rights is present in Colorado.  First, here's a snippet from Channeling Reality on the current state of affairs in education, its emphasis on global education and how this renders legislatures impotent.  Existing laws and statutes are ignored or revised to allow private companies to make money in the educational arena with free reign.  Remember, your child is now termed "human capital" in the educational reforms put forth by Arne Duncan:

The real decision that must be made is how we are going to respond to the problems of a globalized economy.  The world trading system under the World Trade Organization has fundamentally changed the nature and function of government.  ‘Globalization’ is the process of transition from government as arbiter between business and people to a system of corporate governance for profit with people as factors of production for corporations.  

                                    Old System                   Globalized System

                                    Government                    Corporations

                                    ---------------                -----------------

                                    Corporations                  Government  

Obviously, government is becoming a superfluous layer under corporate rule - except as it pertains to enforcement of corporate rule.

With that as a basis for understanding, we can now look at the individual elements of the proposed changes. 

Now back to Colorado.  Robert Peters, General Counsel for Morality in Media writes  about access to pornographic sites existing on school issued iPads:

I have been asked to provide an analysis regarding the Manitou Springs School District 14 (“District 14”) policy of providing 5^th thru 8^th grade students with Apple iPad2 tablet computers (“iPad2s”) for educational use both within and away from school grounds. While District 14 filters the wireless signal that emanates from its own school based servers, the iPad2s are not themselves properly equipped with filtering protections and thus allow unrestricted access to the Internet via wireless signals that emanate from other sources. Some of these unfiltered signals can be received while students are on school grounds. Students’ use of the iPad2s for school work away from school grounds is also unmonitored, thus allowing children to browse the Internet with no record of web pages they visit or the search requests they make. The following additional information about the District 14 policy regarding student use of its iPad2s has been provided by a concerned parent.

 

• Most other Colorado schools (6 out of 7) known to provide students with take home computers protect each computer by only installing Internet browsing software that filters and monitors all online activity at all times, despite the source, location or type of Internet connection (hereinafter, “24/7 protections”). Such filtering/monitoring browsing software is commonly and successfully used in iPad2s by schools in Colorado and nationwide.
   
• Initially, District 14 installed the LightSpeed Mobile Filter browser that provides 24/7 protections but also inadvertently installed additional Internet browsing applications that did not filter or monitor students’ online activities (hereinafter, “unrestricted browsers”). 
   
• When District 14 first became aware of its unrestricted browsers problem, it indicated that these unrestricted browsers would be removed from its iPad2s and did in fact begin to remove them. Subsequently, District 14 reversed itself and provided iPad2s with unrestricted browsers (Safari, Wiki, Wikibot, Zite, Smartnote, and perhaps others) because it deemed “the educational value” of these browsers “too great to justify removing them.” [Quoted matter from a statement, ”Blazing new trails in 21st Century Learning,” issued by Chris Burr, Principal, Manitou Springs Middle School.]
   

Are there laws protecting children and parents from this access?

 

The question has arisen as to whether the District 14 policy is in compliance with the Colorado Children’s Internet Protection Act [C.R.S. 87-22-101 et seq.], which states in part in Subsections 101(2) and 104(1) & (2): “It is the intent of the general assembly…that public schools be required to adopt and enforce reasonable policies of internet safety that will protect children from access to harmful material without compromising…use of the internet as an educational resource…[T]he governing body of each [school] district shall adopt and implement a policy of internet safety for minors that includes the operation of a technology protection measure for each computer operated by the district that allows for access to the internet by a minor…After the adoption and implementation of the policy…the governing body of each [school] district shall continue to enforce the policy and the operation of the technology protection measure for each computer operated by the district that allows for access to the internet by a minor.”

The question has also arisen as to whether the District 14 policy is in compliance with the Federal Child Internet Protection Act [47 U.S.C. 254(h)(5)], which states in Subsection 254(h)(5)(B)(i) that in order for a school to qualify to buy Internet access at a discount it must first certify that it is “enforcing a policy of Internet safety for minors that includes monitoring the online activities of minors and the operation of a technology protection measure with respect to any of its computers with Internet access that protects against access through such computers to visual depictions that are …harmful to minors.”

 

The school district's actions don't seem to be hindered by the state or national laws protecting students.  Remember its statement: Subsequently, District 14 reversed itself and provided iPad2s with unrestricted browsers (Safari, Wiki, Wikibot, Zite, Smartnote, and perhaps others) because it deemed “the educational value” of these browsers “too great to justify removing them.”

 

Why is the use of iPads so important in American education?  It's because the assessments the students take due to Common Core mandates require those assessments be done on a computer or hand held device.  Pretty nifty, eh?  Mandate products provided by private corporations in your mandated reform measures (disguise them as being "state led") and it's a bonanza to private industries.  They are the recipients of taxpayer money due to these unfunded mandates.  Remember Scott Joftus and his proclamation about education reform?  It's about the money, not education:

“You know we’re in a new era when school turnaround firms in the U.S. are being funded out of the Middle East,” Joftus said. “To me, that says there’s money to be made. I call this period the Wild West in education.”

 

Mr. Peters' memorandum details how the rights (mandated by government) of Apple to make money off public education students (funded by taxpayers) trumps the parental rights or existing laws to easily keep pornographic material from their children.  The school shifted the obligation to the parents to keep such material from their children.  Peters writes:

 

• To address the problem of children gaining access to harmful Internet content while using school issued iPad2s when away from school, District 14 shifted that responsibility to parents. District 14 Policy Code: JS, entitled “Student Use of the Internet and Electronic Communications” and adopted in December 2011 (available at mssd14.org/boe/section_J_3x.html#JS), states in part: “Parents and/or legal guardians must accept responsibility for the blocking and filtering of obscene, pornographic and harmful information while their students are away from school and using district issued technological devices.”

•  Because browsers (e.g., Safari) now installed on the iPad2s do not offer parental controls, parents have no means of controlling Internet content beamed from unsecured Wi-Fi signals readily accessible to their children when they are off school grounds.  Parents also face burdensome and complex technical measures to place controls upon their own home wireless networks to protect children while their children are at home. (emphasis added)

Can parents opt out from iPad use at home?  Well, sure, parents can opt out but look at this dire language and warning from the school:

If a parent chooses to “Opt Out” of the school’s recommended “iPad at home” program, the parent must first sign a Technology User Agreement that says in part: “I understand that my child may not have the same learning opportunities as other students who have access to the school-issued iPad beyond normal school hours.”

 

 

If a child needs the iPad to finish homework at home, beware!  Because a parent wants to shield his/her child from pornographic sites accessible away from the school grounds, he/she is now withholding said child from the "same learning opportunities" as the other students.

 

Maybe that's not such a bad thing to be shielded from the "same learning opportunities".  While Apple keeps making money because of educational mandates set forth by the federal government (NOT the states) and the school district shirks any moral and legal responsibility to parents and children, legislatures are impotent to stop this privatization of education (the DOEd either ignores or revises current laws to allow such activity to continue in the name of "education"), and in the meantime, tax dollars are perpetuating this system. 

 

Welcome to the globalization of education in which Arne Duncan so wants your human capital to succeed.

 

 

 

Welcome to the Sunday Education Weekly Reader Visual Soundbites for 02.10.12

Welcome to the Sunday Education Weekly Reader.  The visual soundbites from Twitter for 02.12.12:

• As Scott Joftus said, it IS the Wild West in Education.  Scads of money to be made in education...those dot.com investors had to go somewhere.....For those of you following the explosion of education startups, an interactive map of the new players http://www.newschools.org/entrepreneurs/edtechmap

• From Japan, an article on an alternative learning process.....the Donguri method because "it attaches a high value to [children's] thinking processes."...but how will this method fit on a computer assessment sheet?.....EDUCATION RENAISSANCE / Drawing pictures helps kids develop math skills: This piece--the final installment in a ... bit.ly/zT9FAK

•  This story comes from Britain.  Just substitute "USA" in place of the word "Britain" and it's the same argument.  Must be that global push for education.  Teachers seem to be the number one villain in the education wars everywhere...Teachers, stop being so defensive. It's time to embrace the no-excuses culture | Will Hutton - http://bit.ly/AcbsDi

•  Interesting video from an Asian student on how Asian parents and US parents view grades. A teenager's view of Tiger Mom parenting.  Seems as if the parents have embraced the "no-excuses" culture..... Education and culture! If every student's parents were Asian an A would = average wp.me/pz20Z-4sH

•  Are you a student adhering to the "Road Less Traveled" blueprint?  Check out these scholarships actually rewarding creativity, rather than what you spew out on a data set.....These are 4 unique scholarships that could land you some serious college cash! http://ow.ly/90PuF

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Educational wisdom from Twitter focusing on student responsibility for his/her own future:

DREAM = Dedication . Responsibility . Education . Attitude . Motivation.

The Sunday Education Weekly Reader 12.11.11

Welcome to the Sunday Education Weekly Reader for 12.11.11.  Highlighted today:

• Another story comparing education providers to living in the Wild, Wild West to make money , rather than living there to provide better education;
• The tipping over of the education pyramid;
• An analogy on how the Common Core standards are akin to Obamacare and the proposal of one group to stop them.

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Not only are businessmen like Bill Gates and convicted hedge fund managers like Michael Milken setting policies and direction for education, so are social networkers.  From Bloomberg Businessweek:


Reid Hoffman and Matt Cohler, two of Silicon Valley’s social-networking pioneers, are throwing their hats into the education ring.

The entrepreneurs-turned-venture capitalists today led a $15 million investment in Edmodo, a free learning site for teachers and students that claims almost 5 million registered users. The cash pile, from Greylock Partners and Benchmark Capital, gives the management team the runway to hire developers and add products without doing the one thing they prefer not to talk about: making money.

Rob Hutter, the company’s chairman, said the new financing gives the company “several years” to build and expand the product without worrying about generating revenue. He and Borg are looking for developers who are passionate about education and want to build something that they say is helping change education. (emphasis added)

Of course, venture capitalists don’t invest in startups unless they see the opportunity to make several times their money back, and Greylock and Benchmark have been among the most successful firms in that regard. 

Question:  How are these social networkers (investors) helping to "change education"?  The delivery of providing education is what they are changing, not the education itself.  Remember, the education (WHAT students are learning) is controlled by the Federal Government, the NGA and the CCSSO.  These venture capitalists are providing the vehicles to deliver education, not crafting the core of what students are learning.  Remember what Scott Joftus said about education:

“You know we’re in a new era when school turnaround firms in the U.S. are being funded out of the Middle East,” Joftus said. “To me, that says there’s money to be made. I call this period the Wild West in education.” 

There IS money to be made in education reform but is it really "for the kids"?  If investors and developers are delivering educational "reform" that  is faulty and insufficient at is core, it doesn't matter how it's presented.  

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Education Week reports on the "education pyramid".  The pyramid is:

the prevailing model of ed policy decision-making, illustrated in The Mitchell 20 film: a hierarchical pyramid, with decision-making power concentrated at the peak--Congress and the Department of Education-- flowing down through layers and layers of state bureaucracy, district offices and administrators, and ending up on the shoulders of teachers.

 The author envisions what it might be like if that pyramid is turned on its side and the power would flow horizontally so teachers would have more voice (megaphones) in the actual teaching of children.


I would add additional stakeholders to the pyramid.  Parents and taxpayers need admittance into that pyramid and a turn at the megaphone.  Everyone wants a seat at the table but parents and taxpayers seem to never be mentioned as an important stakeholder.  After all, they are the ones paying for the education and they provide the human capital necessary to staff these publicly funded halls of learning.


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Will conservatives finally push back on the educational version of Obamacare? Why haven't more legislators made the connection the educational reforms are as constitutionally egregious as the health care plan?  From Heritage and its reporting on model legislation waiting for adoption by ALEC:


For the past two years, the Obama Education Department has been supporting an effort to implement national education standards and tests. The national standards push, which will affect all public schools, has been underway outside the normal legislative process. At least (to quote Jim Stergios of the Pioneer Institute) Obamacare went through Congress.


It’s time for state leaders to stand up to strong-arming from Washington, instead of faulting conservative organizations for pushing back on this latest federal overreach. A nationalization of education is underway, and unless conservatives work to fight Washington’s power grab, Obamacare won’t be the only overreach we’ll have to live under.

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Educational quote for the week:


Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.




H. G. Wells (1866 - 1946), Outline of History (1920)

"Education is the Wild West and There is Alot of Money to be Made". Is this the underlying philosophy of education "reform"?

Yesterday we wrote a piece likening Bill Gates to Pac-Man as he eats educational stakeholders in his quest for his educational vision. The taxpayers, parents, students, unions, teachers, administrators, state educational offices, etc are being replaced for Gates' vision of US public education models.

Gates is spending a fortune paying governors and states so they will adopt common core standards, which will then necessitate the expansion of the state longitudinal data systems. Software companies will reap the windfall, as well as Pearson, an educational publishing company that partners with the Gates Foundation. With the mandate of these new assessments having to be completed on line, the computer and assessment companies will realize an infusion of cash. Where this cash will come from is still a question that hasn't been answered; most observers believe the computers mandated will have to be bought by individual school districts which are presently strapped for cash. The districts won't be able to ask their states for assistance as they are pinching pennies themselves.

With the standards and assessments being controlled by private consortia, the ability for the taxpayers to have any say in what their children will be taught (or not taught) is extremely slight, if not impossible.

Susan Ohanian has been following Gates' educational quest for many years and she has posted extensively on The Gates Foundation providing huge infusions of cash to states for their purposes. Ohanian has written an extensive supplement to the latest NY Times article on Gates' involvement and she chronicles how this influence has just about taken over the constitutional rights of states to set educational policy, and how we are on the verge of a national curriculum (which, by the way, is illegal):

In June 2006, Joshua Benton of the Dallas Morning News reported that within the Texas Education Agency, contracts often were not competitively bid but depended on whom one knew at the Gates Foundation. Diane Ravitch was on target in a July 30, 2006 Los Angeles Times piece: "In light of the size of the foundation's endowment, Bill Gates is now the nation's superintendent of schools. He can support whatever he wants, based on any theory or philosophy that appeals to him." This was positioned as an opinion piece and there was no follow-up from the education press.

Dillon's mention that National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CSSEO) received "millions of dollars" is rather like identifying half a dozen root canals as "a dental procedure." Since January 2008, Gates has shelled out more than $35 million to the Council of Chief School Officers and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, the two primary organizations charged with drafting and promoting common standards. Daniel Goldman's Bill Gates' School Crusade (Bloomberg Businessweek, 7/15/10) was one of two articles I found revealing that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation "bankrolled the development of the common curriculum standards." Golden observed that our U. S. Department of Education and the Gates Foundation "move in apparent lockstep" on an agenda which is "an intellectual cousin of the Bush administration's 2002 No Child Left Behind law."
These are just a few of the examples she offers on who the Gates Foundation has been funding in education. Here is her connection to the "school choice" industry and the Gates Foundation:

We--you and I--are paying for Gates' pet projects. Kenneth Saltman points out something few people seem to realize: For every ten dollars given by the Gates Foundation, four dollars is lost from the public wealth in taxes. The philanthropist’s dollars would otherwise go to the public in the form of taxes. So a big chunk of all that money Gates is spending to get teachers on script, destroy tenure, and standardize curriculum is actually OUR money; Bill Gates is using our tax dollars to mold America. And part of the plan--well on its way-- is to de-professionalize teachers. Saltman calls on readers "to stop applying business metaphors and logic to educational thinking derived from discredited market fundamentalism." Such terms as choice, monopoly, turnaround, efficiency need to be dropped in favor of public language and assumptions. Taxpayers are subsidizing (as tax-free) an organization bent on undermining their best interests. [See Kenneth Saltman's The Gift of Education: Public Education and Venture Philanthropy and Philip Kovacs' edited collection, The Gates Foundation and the Future of U. S. "Public" Schools.

This is a takeover of education. Gates and others can couch it in terms of choice and turnaround schools, etc, but the fact remains, these models of providing education and the delivery and setting of standards/assessments/curriculum is being set by private companies, the National Governor's Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).

Capitalism is a great theory and when it works as it was intended to do, it helps this country operate in a positive business manner. However, the Gates idea of education and setting certain companies in line to deliver the services is crony capitalism:

A description of capitalist society as being based on the close relationships between businessmen and the state. Instead of success being determined by a free market and the rule of law, the success of a business is dependent on the favoritism that is shown to it by the ruling government in the form of tax breaks, government grants and other incentives.

Ohanian goes on to describe the web of players in this crony capitalism venture. It's stunning and here are just a few of the organizations:


The National PTA received $1 millon grant to mobilize parents for the Common Core Standards in four states. -- Dec. 2, 2009 The May 18, 2011 Education Week (which gets its own Gates funding, as in $2,534,757 in 2005, another $100,000 in 2005, and $1,997,280 in 2009.) ran a ¾ page ad from ASCD. It was presented in the form on an opinion piece by Executive Director Gene R. Carter offering strong support of the Common Core. The ad doesn’t mention that The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded $3 million to ASCD> "to support that group's efforts to help education leaders and educators themselves understand the standards and implement them." -- The Journal, April 5, 2011

You might just want to rethink if your local PTA really needs funds for pet projects when the national organization is pushing "reform" which takes parental and taxpayer control away and lines up with crony capitalists. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association Foundation (NEA) have also received substantial amounts to support Gates' agenda, which has evolved into the Department of Education's agenda. She has many more organizations and think tanks listed funded by the Gates Foundation.

When did it become appropriate for billionaires to set educational policy? Has it been occurring in incremental steps and this is the last grasp of control? There is a theory why this "concern" about the "educational crisis" is being addressed by the billionaire community. When the dotcom bubble burst, the next area to make money was in...education. It probably has less to do with a desire to "help the children" as it is to "make money". In fact, Scott Joftus, closely aligned with Bill Gates and his foundation since the early years of 2000, had this to say about education in an article aptly titled "Is the Stimulus Really "No Consultant Left Behind" "?:

That metaphor is an apt one for the market as well. In the fall of 2009, Mr. Joftus was contacted by a former contractor who was working for Global Partnership Schools, a new school turnaround venture funded by GEMS Education, a Dubai-based company founded by entrepreneur Sunny Varkey. The caller was hoping to obtain copies of Mr. Joftus’ contract for school improvement services in Kansas.

“You know we’re in a new era when school turnaround firms in the U.S. are being funded out of the Middle East,” Joftus said. “To me, that says there’s money to be made. I call this period the Wild West in education.”

"There's money to be made...and school turnaround firms in the US are being funded out of the Middle East...there's money to be made". Does anyone still believe this is all for the children?

Bill Gates is eating the Constitution and buying the players to implement the change HE wants for HIS ends. He and his cronies will become quite wealthy and powerful. The taxpayers, students and parents...schools, administrators, teachers....well, they'll be operating under one man's vision. And the irony is our tax dollars are funding a plan in which we had no voice and works against individualism and true education. This is not how a republic is to operate, is it? And why is our government complicit in this plan?