Kaplan/Washington Post Continue To Try And Extract Money From The Education Sector

Alex Pareene at Salon:

Call up Sallie Mae and take out some non-dischargable loans, because Newt University is in session! Gingrich, in partnership with the Republican National Committee, is hosting a series of “policy classes” for Republican Convention delegates in Tampa this week. (Today’s classes feature guest-lecturer Larry Kudlow, in what is I am guessing involved a creative application of NBC News’ ethics policies.) Oh, and “Newt U” will also be available online, thanks to “a new learning technology platform pioneered by Kaplan Inc called KAPx.”

According to a Kaplan press release, KAPx (which seems to be just Google+ Hangouts meant to be sold to learning institutions at a high markup)

“The KAPx™ platform is designed to help schools, organizations, businesses, and individuals who want to share information and knowledge in an exciting, interactive, and highly participatory manner that is aligned with the best instructional practices,” said Edward Hanapole, Kaplan Inc.’s Chief Information Officer. “We will continue to refine the platform to reflect our leadership in learning science and how to marry technological innovation with educational achievement.”

And of course Kaplan is the money-marking test-prep and for-profit school arm of the Washington Post Company, and its many innovations in the field of extracting money from the education sector are what keep the Washington Post’s printing presses running in this unhappy time for newspapers.

And right here on the Washington Post Company’s KAPx website is a big plug for Newt U and a link to register ” for exclusive content access to Newt University courses and discussions.” Today’s theme is “We Can Do Better” and tomorrow’s is “We Built It.”

I just registered and it’s a live YouTube stream and a comment section. Thanks, Washington Post Company, for yet another exciting innovation!

You know that if Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation were hawking this crap, the NYCDOE would be happy to sign on to it today.

And in fact, Rupert Murdoch, Joel Klein and News Corporation will be hawking systems quite like this very soon.

We'll see how quickly the NYCDOE buys this crap up and how long it last before it's tossed on the junk heap.

As for the the Kaplan/Post venture, if it is as bad as Pareene says it is, I think this particular "exciting technological innovation in education to improve student achievement" will be tossed on the junk heap sooner rather than later.