Joel Klein Brought His Incompetence To News Corporation, Helped Rupert Murdoch Lose Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars

Buzzfeed with a post-mortem on Rupert Murdoch's Amplify digital education revolution:

Amplify, Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to disrupt the American education industry, had a lot going for it: a lot of hype, a lot of media attention, a lot of high-profile names, and a lot of money to spend. Then add to all that the fact that the education industry seemed especially vulnerable — dominated by big, cozy, slow-moving incumbents, just the way Murdoch likes it.

But none of that mattered in the end. As it turns out, Murdoch’s News Corp. couldn’t even make waves in the education world, much less disrupt it. During its short life, Amplify bled money, losing $193 million in 2014 alone.

On Aug. 12, News Corp. said it was in final talks to sell Amplify, had written down the value of the business by $370 million, and would wind down the education unit’s first and most ambitious project, a custom-made tablet computer that was supposed to revolutionize education technology. The venture lasted just three years at News Corp.

Amplify’s high-profile failure, despite the people and money backing it, is a sign of just how strange and difficult to navigate the education industry can be. The company underestimated almost everything about the industry: the deep entrenchment of the biggest players and the complexities of selling to school districts — not to mention the surprising political power of parents and teachers unions, who had a not-insignificant hand in the company’s troubles.

Amplify wasn't helped when news broke that their tablets set themselves on fire or broke when turned over.

Nonetheless, the Buzzfeed analysis is that Amplify thought they could "disrupt" the education world by going right at their competitors and getting districts to sign on to Amplify contracts but failed to grasp that they needed to build and develop relationships with districts and district personnel first.

Another reason for Amplify's failure?

Google beat them by offering cheaper hardware in their Chromebooks that came with built in keyboards (Amplify requires separate keyboards for the tablets) and offered more software  flexibility:

For one company, however, grabbing market share in the education business has been anything but slow. Google was hardly a blip on the education world radar in 2010, when News Corp. bought the testing company that it would eventually transform into Amplify. But more than half of all devices sold in education are now Google Chromebooks, outstripping even iPads in sales.

“Is the industry still ripe for disruption? Absolutely. The disruptor has been Google,” said Phil Maddocks, an industry analyst with Futuresource Consulting. “They’ve come from nowhere.”

Google Chromebooks had a lot of advantages over Amplify’s tablets. They are cheaper than almost any device on the market. They also come with keyboards — a necessity for many state tests, which are increasingly taken by computer, and a feature that is increasingly in demand for older students.

Chromebooks are also better suited to the “extremely fragmented” education market, where many districts and teachers prefer to piece together content and apps, rather than turning to one company for curriculum, apps, and devices. While Amplify’s tablet was technically “content-agnostic,” meaning it could run other companies’ software, it was envisioned as a “complete mobile learning system,” in the company’s words. It came designed to be bundled with Amplify curriculum, with hefty discounts for school districts if they bought Amplify’s content alongside it. That subscription cost an additional $99 a year.

“They were really offering only one solution,” Maddocks said. “In the past, when we’ve seen hardware try to link up with content, it hasn’t worked. It all comes back to the fragmentation of the [content] market — every district wants a different solution.”

Amplify also misread the competition - they thought Pearson and other textbook companies would be slow to move to digital.

They were wrong:

And despite how it had looked when News Corp. headed back into the education market in 2010, companies like Houghton Mifflin and Pearson were not as print-bound and slow to adapt as they had seemed. Houghton Mifflin, the biggest player in the elementary education space, made heavy investments in technology, and its sales are now mostly digital, though by a slim margin.

These were key mistakes that ought to cost Joel Klein his job at News Corporation, but as we see again and again, accountability is only for the little people.

Instead, they will cost other people at News Corp their jobs, even as Klein makes excuses for his poor leadership at Amplify:

In a long letter to Amplify staff announcing the company’s impending sale, Klein offered his own explanation. “Amplify’s work has been so innovative and transformative that we’ve been ahead of the market,” he said. “That, in part, helps explain what has happened with our tablet business.”

Ahead of the market?

Uh, uh - behind the market.

Chromebooks with keyboards are the way forward, not Amplify tablets.

Software flexibility potential is the way of the future, not "complete mobile learning systems" built into the hardware and available to access for a yearly fee.

The only way Amplify was "ahead of the market" is if you think that tablets that break easily are the way of the future.

More Klein incompetence, this time at News Corporation, but as is usual with Jeol Klein, there is no accountability for his failures.

Joel Klein keeps failing upward.

With Amplify A Financial Disaster That Loses Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars, What's Joel Klein's VAM?

From the NY Times:

Amplify, a much-heralded push by News Corporation into digital education, led by Joel Klein, a former New York City schools chancellor, is nearing an inglorious end.

News Corporation, controlled by Rupert Murdoch, said on Wednesday that it would take a $371 million write-down on the education division and would move to wind down the production of tablets for schoolchildren, a key part of the unit’s offering.

Moreover, News Corporation’s chief executive, Robert Thomson, said in an earnings call with analysts that the company was in an “advanced stage of negotiations” with a potential buyer for the remaining education business.

$372 million dollar write down on the ed division.

What's Joel Klein's value-added measurement for that?

While we're at it, what's his value-added measurement for the tablets that set themselves on fire or broke when they flipped over?

It's illuminating when you see this "accountability" people go through their own lives without any accountability.

News Corporation In Talks to Sell Amplify, Will Stop Marketing Digital Ed To Customers

Well now, it didn't take long for Joel Klein to make a mess of News Corp, did it?

News Corp swung to a net loss of $379 million in the most recent quarter after it wrote down the value of its digital-education business. But reduced costs helped bolster its adjusted operating earnings, and the media company said it would start paying a dividend for the first time.

On a conference call Wednesday, Chief Executive Robert Thomson said the company is in advanced negotiations with a potential acquirer for its Amplify digital-education business. News Corp said it would cease marketing Amplify’s Access products to new customers but continue to provide service to existing customers. The impairment charge for the division amounted to $371 million.

News Corp had invested heavily in its Amplify subsidiary, led by former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. Launched in 2012, Amplify is built around a tablet-based learning platform and digital curriculum. While it reviews options, News Corp said it would cease production of the dedicated tablet product but continue to develop the curriculum software.

“The recent selling season for the new school year for our digital ELA curriculum overall has been disappointing and the marketplace in digital curriculum has been much slower to develop than we initially expected,” News Corp Chief Financial Officer Bedi Singh said on the call with analysts.

FOX is no longer there to hide the bleeding in the newspapers or digital ed business.

Given the poor performance of Klein's digital ed division, I'm not surprised it's for sale.

It had to sink or swim on its own, and with costs already cut, there was nothing for it to do but, uh, swim.

I wonder if the new buyer gets the Amplify tablets that set themselves on fire and/or break if they flip over too?

Rupert Murdoch's Amplify Not Setting World On Fire

Joe Pompeo at Capital NY:

News Corp's newspaper revenues took another hit in the third fiscal quarter of 2015, leading the global media conglomerate chaired by Rupert Murdoch to emphasize growth in digital real estate services and book publishing.

The company's news and information revenues were down 9 percent year on year to around $1.35 billion, while advertising revenues in the segment fell 12 percent. Advertising revenues at News Corp's marquee American newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, were down 11 percent, the company's chief financial officer said Tuesday.

The bright spot?

Realtor.com, which News Corp acquired last year - revenue was up there 67%.

As for the education division:

Digital Education
Revenues in the quarter were $21 million, which was flat compared with the prior year. Segment EBITDA in the quarter improved $24 million, or 53%, from the prior year, primarily due to the impact of the capitalization of Amplify Learning’s software development costs of $12 million and lower operating expenses.

Amplify is not exactly setting the digital education world on fire.

Perhaps that's because Amplify's tablets set themselves on fire and/or break if they flip over?

In any case, how much value is Amplify's Joel Klein adding to News Corp?

What The Testing Game Is All About

Norm Scott:

Well, we know what the testing game is all about and it ain't children. It's about using tests to go after teachers, close schools, end tenure, de-unionize the teaching force so they can lower salaries, and create massive turnover in a temporary teaching force so they will never have to pay pensions.

Is that enough of a mouthful for you?

So will all the sturm and drang over the "failures" of the Bloomberg admin I would disagree. Bloomberg has accomplished exactly what he intended. Sure he may take a temporary hit over the low scores but he can manage the media well enough while keeping his eye on the big prize: undermine public schools (these low test results will provide some assistance) so people will want to leave in drives and head to charters which will glom onto the higher performing students and toss the remains back into what is left of the public schools.

And I don't trust one mayoral candidate to truly resist this trend, even Di Blasio or Liu. Neo-liberalism reigns.

And of course the only thing to add to this is how the union leadership at the AFT, the NYSUT, the UFT and the NEA have "collaborated" with Bloomberg and his fellow deformers to bring us to this moment.

The education deformers and their compatriots in the media are declaring the public school system a failure in New York State today, folks.

The media is not reporting how these new Common Core tests, aligned with the NAEP scoring methodology, are rigged to show 50%-70% failing rates.

They're not reporting how the NAEP scoring methodology is controversial, as Diane Ravitch noted yesterday in this post, with many researchers finding the performance levels "fundamentally flawed" and "unreasonably high."

Nope - they're just reporting that the standards were raised, the scores fell and most New York students, teachers and schools are failures.

This is the end game - to declare the system a failure and call for drastic and disruptive "change" to solve the imaginary crisis the deformers themselves engineered.

You can bet that solution will enrich many of the deformers themselves - from Rupert Murdoch, the owner of a for profit education technology company, to Joel Klein, his henchman who runs that company, to John King, the purveyor of charter schools who no doubt will go back to the sector after he's done with his dirty work at NYSED, to Merryl Tisch, whose family sold their cigarette business and went into the for profit online education company to go along with their other interests.

It's all rigged - and our union leaders, rather than fight this, rather than expose the chicanery of the reform movement, have instead collaborated with the deformers and corporatists and privatizers to negotiate the terms of exploitation and, ultimately, surrender.

To repeat - it's all rigged.

Joel Klein Diverts Attention From Disappointing News Corp Education Division Debut With Education Speech

According to Gotham Schools, former NYC Schools Chancellor and current News Corporation executive Joel Klein gave a speech defending Bloomberg's education policies and attacking mayoral candidates who aren't fully on board with that agenda.

Not mentioned in the Gotham Schools story is that yesterday was the debut of the "new" News Corporation, with Joel Klein at the helm of the for-profit education technology division that is now paired with the newspapers and the publishing house, Harper Collins.

The much more profitable entertainment business in the old News Corporation has been spun off into a company known as 21st Century Fox.

Here is how Reuters reported on that story:

(Reuters) - Wall Street rewarded Rupert Murdoch's move to create a separate entertainment company, giving 21st Century Fox one of the richest valuations in the media sector on its first day of trading.
 
Investors had waited for Murdoch to split News Corp, giving its cable, movie and equity stakes in pay-TV assets their own spotlight away from the publishing division.

The move is part of larger trend among media companies that are shedding print properties. Tribune announced on Monday it will acquire a stable of TV stations making it one of the largest local TV broadcasters while it seeks a possible sale of its newspapers.

21st Century Fox, which includes the Fox cable network, already has one of the highest valuations among its media peers based on 2013 price to earnings multiple. At 20.7 times, it is higher than Walt Disney, Viacom and Time Warner, and ranks second only to Discovery according to estimates from UBS analyst John Janedis.

Shares in the new 21st Century Fox entertainment operation gained over 2 percent on Monday, or $1.1 billion dollars in market value, from its opening price. Its market capitalization is about $68 billion, reflecting Monday's gain.

"By divesting its less attractive legacy business, Fox has become a pure-play entertainment company with fantastic assets in its cable channels," Gabelli & Co analyst Brett Harriss said.

In contrast, shares of the new News Corp, which includes publishing assets like The Wall Street Journal and HarperCollins, and an education division, lost 3 percent, or half a billion, from their opening price. News Corp has a current market value of about $8.5 billion.

"News Corp is largely seen as ink on paper, and the perception is that the good assets, so to speak, went to Fox," said Gabelli & Co analyst Barry Lucas.

In addition to being seen as the "less valuable" assets from the old News Corporation, the "new" News Corporation education/print division is facing potential lawsuits in the United States related to phone hacking.

Norman Siegel has already filed one for Eunice Huthart, a stunt double for Angelina Jolie, who says she was hacked by News Corporation journalists working for the now closed News of the World and The Sun while on U.S. soil.

According to The Guardian, Siegel said at a press conference that "There are a bunch of people, the majority from England but some from here, who want to bring claims."


The Guardian article goes on to say that:

This is the first time that News Corp, parent company of News International, which controls the UK newspapers, has been named as a defendant in a case. It comes as the Justice Department continues to investigate News Corp under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), used to pursue US companies accused of bribing foreign officials.

Siegel has also worked with the relatives of 9/11 victims who were also reportedly hacked by News Corp employees. Siegel said it was his understanding that a FBI investigation into those allegations was ongoing.

With News Corporation now split into two entities, court fees, fines and settlements related to both British and U.S. hacking claims will come of out Klein's education technology/newspaper division.

 The Associated Press reports that:

News Corp. has spent $388 million in settlements, legal fees and other costs associated with ongoing investigations in the U.K. since the hacking scandal came to light in 2011.

It's not a mistake that just as the "new" News Corporation is debuting on Wall Street by losing 3 percent (half a billion dollars in valuation from its opening price) and is facing a new American front in the hacking scandal that could cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars, Klein is giving a speech touting his education "legacy" when he was NYC chancellor and attacking mayoral candidates who aren't on board with that legacy 100%.

They're looking to divert attention from the poor reception Wall Street gave to the education technology/newspaper division yesterday and the problems they're facing over future hacking claims that put the company's health very much in doubt.

More U.S. Hacking Claims Against News Corporation

From The Guardian:

Lawyers working for a Hollywood stuntwoman allegedly hacked by News Corp journalists said Tuesday they are working with more potential victims.

At a press conference in New York, Norman Siegel, lawyer for Eunice Huthart, Angelina Jolie's sometime stunt double, said they had spoken to a number of people who claim they have been hacked by journalists working for News Corp.

He refused to give details but added: "There are a bunch of people, the majority from England but some from here, who want to bring claims."

Siegel is part of a team bringing the first case for alleged hacking in the US courts. He is working with Mark Lewis, the British lawyer who has represented nearly 100 clients, including the family of Milly Dowler, the kidnapped 13-year-old whose voicemail is said to have been hacked by reporters from the now-closed News of the World tabloid.

News Corp initially dismissed the hacking scandal in the UK as the work of a "rogue reporter", said Siegel. That case grew into a scandal that has led to more than 100 arrests and the closure of the News of the World. "Six years later we are on this side of the Atlantic looking at one case but at something that will clearly go further," said Siegel.

Huthart, who is British, worked with Jolie on movies including Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Salt and Mr and Mrs Smith. According to a civil lawsuit filed in Los Angeles: "illegal activities were undertaken [by News Corp employees and their representatives] ... principally through the two newspapers, the Sun and the News of the World".

The suit alleges that Huthart's personal messages were intercepted and used in several stories by the UK newspapers, including the fact that Jolie had started a relationship with co-star Brad Pitt on the set of Mr & Mrs Smith, something that only their bodyguards, their PAs and Huthart knew.

News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch regularly called the editors of his newspapers to discuss their top stories and "knew or should have known that executives, employees and agents of The Sun and News of the World were engaged in widespread phone hacking", the suit alleges.

This is the first time that News Corp, parent company of News International, which controls the UK newspapers, has been named as a defendant in a case. It comes as the Justice Department continues to investigate News Corp under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), used to pursue US companies accused of bribing foreign officials.

Siegel has also worked with the relatives of 9/11 victims who were also reportedly hacked by News Corp employees. Siegel said it was his understanding that a FBI investigation into those allegations was ongoing.

Klein-watchers should keep an eye on this story.

News Corporation has been split into the entertainment division (21st Century Fox) and the print/education division (News Corporation.)

These court cases will affect the print/education division.

The legal fees, penalties, out of court settlements and the like will all come from that division.

It doesn't bode well for the future of Amplify that the education division starts out having to fight the hacking claims cases.

Murdoch: Aggressive Cost-Cutting Coming For Amplify, Newspapers

From Reuters:

As News Corp prepares to separate its publishing business from its entertainment assets, Murdoch said that while some brands face individual challenges, as a whole the publishing portfolio is "undervalued and underdeveloped."

...

The new publishing company, which will retain the News Corp name, officially kicks off on June 28 with properties such as: The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires, The Times of London, Australian pay-TV services, book publisher HarperCollins and fledgling education unit, Amplify.

The spin-off comes as newspapers face plunging advertising revenue and readers who increasingly prefer to get news for free on their smartphones and tablets. Shares of newspaper companies - once considered blue-chip investments - have tumbled over the past decade as investors fear a permanent drain in ad sales.

Against this backdrop, the publishing company's new chief executive, Robert Thomson, said there will be "relentless" cost cuts in store for the business. He gave no specifics.

News Corp executives took pains to note almost half of the publishing company's revenue comes from sources other than advertising. One revenue source is Dow Jones, which sells news and information to financial institutions and competes with Thomson Reuters Corp and Bloomberg LP.

This is the death knell for the NY Post.

The newly-created Murdoch newspaper/publishing/education division cannot afford a newspaper that loses $110 million a year.

Unless another buyer takes it off their hands, the NY Post is going to go through a vicious cycle of buyouts, layoffs and cost-cutting until they finally close it.

Joel Klein is not going to be given free reign to lose millions at Amplify either.

Without FOX News and the entertainment division to support them, the newspapers and Amplify will have to swim on their own or follow The Daily to the graveyard.

Murdoch/Klein Hire Duncan Press Flunky

Leonie:

Rupert Murdoch’s empire expands; now Duncan’s former flack/press secretary now working for Murdoch and Joel Klein at Amplify.  He left US Ed Gov in November.

See reference in Edweek to his twitter debate w/ Diane below, in which Hamilton supported the notion of edu-entrepreneurs vs. teachers in improving education.  I guess he chose which camp to join.

http://shar.es/YBxWK

Ah yes - the Duncan/Obama education team seems to be feeding both Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst wingnut group and Rupert Murdoch's for-profit education company.

Just in case anybody thinks working for Murdoch is not a big deal, let me remind you that a second front in the hacking case was opened last week when six current and former Murdoch employees were arrested in a whole new hacking investigation.

So many Murdoch employees have been arrested in the scandal that you may be having a difficult time keeping track of the players.

I know I am.

Fortunately for us, UK Progressive has a handy chart with a list of all the arrests and all the crimes allegedly committed.

Here's the chart:

Let me also remind you that for a while there, Joel Klein was running the News Corporation response to the scandal.

He has since given up that job as the scandal looking to be winding down and Murdoch's for profit education business looking to be winding up.

But with a whole new hacking investigation going on and Murdoch's newspaper/education division open to hundreds of millions of dollars in hacking claims in civil court, Klein just may have to go back to his old job of trying to staunch the damage from the hacking/corruption scandals to Murdoch's business.

Maybe former Duncan flunky Justin Hamilton can help out.

He's pretty skilled at jive already.

He'd be perfect trying to bullshit people that nothing evil happened under Rupert's tenure.

Rupert Murdoch Calls News Corporation Hacking Victims "Scumbags"

Doesn't seem Rupert Murdoch has learned humility from the News Corporation hacking scandal:

Rupert Murdoch has labelled victims of phone hacking "scumbag celebrities" after they met David Cameron during the Conservative party conference.

On Saturday night Murdoch took to Twitter to criticise the talks in Birmingham between the prime minister and members of the Hacked Off campaign, singer Charlotte Church, former Crimewatch presenter Jacqui Hames and actor Hugh Grant.

Murdoch tweeted: "Told UK's Cameron receiving scumbag celebrities pushing for even more privacy laws. Trust the toffs! Transparency under attack. Bad."

The comments sparked a storm of disapproval, with Murdoch repeatedly asked to apologise for the remarks and remove the tweets. Hames hit back at the head of News Corp, tweeting: "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story eh Rupert. Happy to discuss our concerns with you sometime?". She added: "I've been called worse, but admittedly not by CEO of large multinational corp."

Murdoch replied to Hames, but it was not clear if he was aware who she was as he tweeted: "not referring to these ladies". Thais Portilho-Shrimpton, a journalist and former co-ordinator of the Hacked Off campaign, tweeted that she had set up a meeting "between PM, a former Crimewatch presenter, a singer and an actor", adding: "You must be referring to all".

The former Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris was one of the first to respond to the comments, tweeting: "By "scumbag celebs" do u mean the WPC u put under surveillance, the teen girl yr papers perved over, or the actor u hacked?". He accused Murdoch of being disingenuous and hypocritical. "I was at meeting & unlike yr secret meetngs w/ PMs promoting yr business, the victims went in front door & told media abt it," he wrote, calling for Murdoch to remove his tweet, labelling him a "bully".

Murdoch also engaged with one Twitter user who said: "Scumbags"? And your journalists and executives are what?". Murdoch replied, somewhat incomprehensibly: "They don't get arrested for indecency on major LA highways! Or abandon love child's".

Classy stuff from Mr. Murdoch.

Here his employees engage in all kinds of horrible crimes, from hacking into the phone account of a murdered teen and erasing her messages to hacking into thousands of other phone and computer accounts of people in Britain (and perhaps the U.S. also) to bribing officials to destroying evidence to engaging in a conspiracy to cover up criminal activities, the former heads of his British newspaper empire and the biggest selling news rag in that empire are both facing multiple charges in the scandal and Murdoch is calling the victims of the scandal "scumbags".

You just can't make that kind of chutzpah up.

No wonder parent groups are worried about a NYSED deal to hand over confidential student information to Murdoch's News Corporation as part of a consortium of states doing a data tracking contract with a partnership between the Gates Foundation and the Murdoch-owned Wireless Generation.

Given the arch criminal running News Corporation, clearly this is not a company that can be trusted to handle sensitive information or learn from past mistakes.

I am certain Murdoch and News Corporation would love to get their hands on the confidential student and teacher data as part of the "Shared Learning Collaborative" for their own deviant purposes.

NYSED Commissioner King must not be allowed to give Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation this information.

Joel Klein's School Of One Doesn't Work

So reports the Daily News:

Former NYC Chancellor Joel Klein's highly touted School of One math project dropped by 2 of 3 schools in pilot program
Initiative was hailed by Time magazine as one of the 50 best inventions of 2009, but NYU study shows $9 million effort failed to raise test scores more than old-school math classes.

But the DOE is forging ahead with plans to utilize the program anyway - even though all it is, really, is a glorified test prep program.

Private Equity, Hedge Fund And Wall Street Predators Look To Engorge Themselves On Public Education Money

An informative link from An Urban Teacher's Education, which I repost here:



The vultures are circling - ever looking to increase profits.

It's really important to remember that when many of the reformers talk about "reforming" education, they're primarily talking about reforming the way the money is doled out.

They want to dole out a lot less to individual schools, to support for those schools and of course to the labor costs that go into manning those schools, and dole out a lot more to the technology companies, the "educational materials" companies, the testing companies, the test prep companies and the consultants.

Often, all of those things are combined into one big conglomerate.

Think Joel Klein, Murdoch, Wireless Generation, Amplify and News Corp.

Think Pearson.

Not exactly the kind of crew who really seem to "care about the kids."

Profits, however - that they care about.

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.

Hacking Scandal Will Cost News Corporation $1 Billion Dollars

Take a look at this doozy from the John Burns piece in the NY Times tonight about the fall-out from the arrests of eight former Murdoch employees in the hacking scandal today and tell me it isn't going to give Klein and Murdoch problems as they pursue their for-profit education company fantasies:

The indictments did not surprise executives at News Corporation, the New York media conglomerate that owns the British papers, who are readying the split of the company’s newspapers from its more lucrative entertainment assets. The charges, in part, played into the timing of Mr. Murdoch’s finally agreeing to the split, which his top lieutenants had proposed for years, a person familiar with the thinking at the company said.

“You don’t get an indictment like this without a lot of preliminary discussions,” said this person, who could not comment on the record about private discussions. “They knew exactly, exactly what was coming and how bad it would look.”

...

Besides shaking Mr. Murdoch’s global empire to its core, the British scandal has forced News Corporation to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in legal costs, out-of-court settlements and payoffs to employees who have been laid off, Mr. Murdoch testified this year at a judicial inquiry into the scandal.

And that price, analysts say, is likely to exceed a billion dollars as lawsuits and settlements proliferate. Alison Levitt, chief legal adviser at the Crown Prosecution Service, the government department, traced the scope of what lies ahead when she gave a broad account on Tuesday of the number of people — more than 600, by the prosecutors’ count — who are confirmed victims of the phone hacking.

Sue Akers, the senior Scotland Yard officer overseeing the police investigations, told the Leveson inquiry on Monday that the police had notified 2,615 people that they may have been targets of the voice-mail interceptions. So far, only about 40 of those known to have been victims of the practice have settled their lawsuits against the Murdoch papers, with at least one of the settlements exceeding $1-million.

Joel Klein's new for-profit education division has been partnered with the old News Corporation newspapers while the much more profitable entertainment division will be split off on its own.

That means the costs of the lawsuits, the legal fees, the out-of-court settlements, and the fines will all come from the publishing/education division, not the entertainment division.

Since many of the Murdoch papers lose money (with the Big Three - the Times of London, the NY Post, and the Wall Street Journal reported to lose $250 million a year alone) and since the one paper that was profitable has been closed (The News of the World), the new publishing/education division is starting out behind the eight ball.

Couple that with the continued financial fall-out from the hacking scandal and you are looking at a very challenging task for our former chancellor to handle.

Can he make the education division lucrative enough so that it can survive even as the unprofitable newspapers and hacking scandal costs threaten to sink it?

Will any district or state buy education products from a company still dealing with the aftermath of scandal where its employees hacked into a dead teen's phone?

Will Klein and Company make anything anybody will want to buy in the first place?

It's going to be a competitive market, that's for sure.

And then there are all those other problems the division will face.

Klein will start by cutting costs at the newspapers, which means either selling papers or closing them outright.

"The Daily," the online news app that was supposed to "revolutionize" news on Apple platforms, is already on life support and probably won't survive the year.

Expect the Times of London to go up for sale soon after.

They'll try and sell the Post, which reportedly loses $110 million a year, but if they can't find any takers, they might have to close it.

And they'll circle the wagons around the Journal, partner that with the education products, and try and expand the business that way.

All of that is arguably do-able, except for one unknown - the cost of the financial fall-out from the hacking scandal and the bribery and corruption investigations.

While eight former Murdoch employees were arrested today, including the entire brain trust of Murdoch's now-defunct News of the World, some of these same people face bribery and corruption charges in a related criminal investigation.

So do at least 20 employees at another Murdoch paper, The Sun.

This scandal is far from over and it still has the chance to leap the ocean to these shores as well.

The lawyer who brought the civil suits against News Corporation in the U.K. over the hacking is bringing at least four lawsuits here against News Corporation for allegedly hacking people on U.S. soil.

Those suits threaten the firewall Murdoch and his American News Corp. brain trust have counted on to keep them from facing criminal investigations here (as well as from having to pay hefty fines for breaking the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.)

Klein will have to deal with all of this as he maneuvers to make his education division successful.

But even if successfully navigates all of that, if the hacking costs total $1 billion, that could sink the division no matter what.

I do not underestimate Rupert Murdoch or Joel Klein in successfully pulling this off.

But they've got their work cut out for them.

It is challenging enough to take on Apple, Pearson, McGraw-Hill, et al. in selling education products to districts and states.

It is even more challenging when you also have to deal with criminal investigations, court cases, civil trials, out-of-court settlements and potential fines from the Corrupt Foreign Practices Act.

A Slew Of Charges Against Ex-Murdoch Employees

A day after Murdoch and Klein announce their joint new education/journalism venture, the Brits announce criminal charges against eight ex-Murdoch employees from the newspapers:

LONDON — British authorities on Tuesday charged an ex-aide to the British prime minister, a former protege of media mogul Rupert Murdoch and six others in the ever-widening phone hacking scandal, accusing them of key roles in a lengthy campaign of illegal espionage that victimized hundreds including top celebrities Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

The announcement was a major development in a saga that has transfixed and at times horrified Britons and one that shows no signs of ending. A senior police official said earlier this week that her force was investigating more than 100 claims including computer hacking and illegal access to medical records stemming from the scandal.

The Crown Prosecution Service’s Alison Levitt told journalists that Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks, both former editors of Murdoch’s now-shuttered News of the World tabloid, are among those being charged with conspiring to intercept the communications of more than 600 people between Oct. 3, 2000, and Aug. 9, 2006.

After his time at the tabloid, Coulson found work as British Prime Minister David Cameron’s communications chief. Brooks became the chief executive of Murdoch’s London-based News International and one of the country’s most prominent news executives. Others being charged are senior tabloid journalists Stuart Kuttner, Greg Miskiw, Neville Thurlbeck, James Weatherup and Ian Edmondson.

If the News Corporation split goes forward, the entertainment division - the most lucrative part of the company - will no longer have to deal with the hacking stuff.

The new education/journalism division announced yesterday by Murdoch and Klein will.

And as you can see from today's arrests plus comments made by police this week that they are investigating computer and medical hacking claims as well, the fall-out from the hacking scandal is far from done.

More civil suits are to come in Britain and at least four suits will be filed here in the U.S. against News Corporation for hacking on U.S. soil.

Those suits could trigger larger revelations about hacking here in the U.S. by News Corporation employees.

In addition, News Corporation still faces fines under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for their bribing of police and governmental officials in the U.K.

Joel Klein's new education division has been joined at the hip with the dying newspaper division, so that means Klein has to deal with all of these problems as he tries to make the education division lucrative.

And let's not forget that with the News of the World now shuttered, Murdoch's newspaper division actually loses money - a lot of it.

It is estimated that the Big Three in the Murdoch stable - the Times of London, the NY Post and the Wall Street Journal - lose $250 million a year.

It's possible Chancellor Joel can work miracles here and keep the whole thing afloat, but he sure has his work cut out for him.

It's not an accident that the hacking charges were announced a day after Klein and Murdoch announced the new education business model.

The corruption has been so endemic in this company that no matter how they try and move beyond it with future plans, the past keeps coming back to haunt them.

How Technology Harms Education

Read this whole piece from Slate, but here is a snippet:

A 2007 congressionally mandated study by the National Center for Educational Evaluation and Regional Assistance found that 16 of the best reading and mathematics learning software packages—selected by experts from 160 submissions—did not have a measurable effect on test scores. But despite this finding, the onslaught of technology in education has continued. The state of Maine was the first to buy laptops for all of its students from grades seven to 12, spending tens of millions of dollars to do so, starting with middle schoolers in 2002 and expanding to high schools in 2009.

The nation is not far behind. Though no well-implemented study has ever found technology to be effective, many poorly designed studies have—and that questionable body of research is influencing decision-makers. Researchers with a financial stake in the success of computer software are free to design studies that are biased in favor of their products. (I’m sure this bias is, often as not, unintentional.) What is presented as peer-reviewed research is fundamentally marketing literature: studies done by people selling the software they are evaluating.

For instance, a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of graphing calculators from Empirical Education Inc. reports a “strong effect of the technology on algebra achievement.” But the meta-analysis includes results from a paper in which “no significant differences were found between the graphing-approach and traditional classes either on a final examination of traditional algebra skills or on an assessment of mathematics aptitude.” In that same paper, calculators were marginally helpful on a tailor-designed test. The meta-analysis included the results of the specially made test, but not the negative results from the traditional exam.

ake this gem from researchers at SRI International. They say that standardized tests don’t capture the “conceptual depth” students develop by using their software, so the “research team decided to build its own assessments”—and, of course, they did relatively well on the assessments they designed for themselves. Another example: A recent study by the Educational Development Center compared students who took an online algebra 1 class with students who took nonalgebra eighth-grade math. The online students did better than those who didn’t study algebra at all (not exactly surprising). But the online students weren’t compared with those who took a regular algebra class.

Despite the lack of empirical evidence, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics takes the beneficial effects of technology as dogma. There is a simple shell game that goes on: Although there is no evidence technology has been useful in teaching kids math in the past, anyone can come up with a new product and claim that this time it is effective.

And of course now teachers will be evaluated in part by how they integrate technology use into their lessons.

In NYC, who was most responsible for pushing the technology jive?

Joel Klein.

And what does Klein do for a living now?

Oh, right.

Liu Cancels NYCDOE Contract Signed By Joel Klein With A Company Now Run By Joel Klein

Good:

City Controller John Liu has rejected a $2.7 million contract for a company overseen by former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, the Daily News has learned.

The contract with Wireless Generation - now owned by News Corp., where Klein works - was approved by the city Department of Education in October, when Klein was still chancellor.

But it was rejected earlier this month by the controller's office because Klein had not provided a letter recusing himself from involvement in the contract, which is necessary to approve the deal, officials in the controller's office said.

"Clearly, there remains some outstanding issues with the DOE's submission," said controller's office spokesman Michael Loughran. "It clearly does not meet the requirements, and it still does not meet the requirements."

But Education Department officials said yesterday they consider the deal finalized because the controller's office had not rejected the contract on proper legal grounds.

They also provided a letter to the controller's office dated yesterday from Education Department General Counsel Michael Best. In it, Best writes that while in office Klein recused himself from any work on Wireless Generation contracts as soon as the company was acquired by News Corp. in late November

.

Liu is going to have to take the DOE and Bloomberg to court to force them to not make payments in this contract.

That much is clear.

As is usual with a Bloomberg administration, the law is always second to financial considerations for cronies and political ideology.

In this case, Bloomberg wants to pay off Klein for his past work and promote more online school instruction so that eventually he can fire thousands of teachers and replace them with computer programs.

That's the goal here.

But I suspect Liu will be up to the challenge of fighting the DOE and Bloomberg on this.

It surely helps him to take the city to court to force them to not make payments in an illegal contract signed by Joel Klein when he was chancellor at the DOE with a company now run by Joel Klein.

I mean seriously, how does Bloomberg defend that?

NYSED To Give Wireless Generation$27 Million Dollar No Bid Contract

The people running the NYSED don't even bother to hide the appearance of corruption anymore, do they?

The state Education Department is poised to award a $27 million no-bid contract to a company former city Schools Chancellor Joel Klein oversees, the Daily News has learned.

The money - part of the state's $700 million in Race to the Top winnings - will go to Wireless Generation, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., to develop software to track student test scores, among other things.

Klein took a job at News Corp. overseeing their educational technology business after he left the chancellor job in December.

City rules forbid former workers from contacting the agency that employed them for one year, but the rules would not formally bar contact between Klein and the state.

"It raises all kinds of red flags," said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York.

"It just smacks of an old-boys club, where large amounts of public money are spent based not on 'is this the best product?' but 'I know this guy and I like him and I want to be sure he makes a lot of money.'"

Klein did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wireless Generation helped build a similar system in the city called Achievement Reporting and Innovation Systems, or ARIS, that has been widely criticized in the city. The contract would expand the ARIS system statewide.

In a request to the state controller's office to sign off on a no-bid process, officials cited the tight timeline for beginning the Race to the Top project and the company's record at producing results.

State Education Department officials declined to answer any questions about the possible contract for nearly three weeks, but a document obtained from the controller's office Thursday makes the case for the no-bid contract.

State officials argued the ARIS system already covers 35% of the state, and the system had received "national recognition."

They also said Wireless Generation had a "demonstrated capacity" and would be able "to extend and expand ARIS" to the entire state.

State Education Department officials, in response to requests for comment, provided a document showing the controller's office approval for a no-bid contract.

The controller has not signed off on the contract, but has agreed to let Education Department officials bypass the standard bidding procedures.

Oh, boy - expanding a shitty data tracking system currently used in NYC to the whole state!

What a great idea!

And it's being done in a no-bid process!

Even better!

And the guy who has foamed at the mouth about Wireless Generation and ARIS - former Chancellor Joel Klein - is the guy now overseeing Murodch Corp.'s online education division, which now owns Wireless Generation.

He's the guy who originally signed off on the no-bid NYCDOE contracts with Wireless Generation for products that people hate using.

You just can't make this stuff up.

Hey, while we're at it, why not take the CityTime payroll system and make that statewide too!

I mean, sure it sucks as a payroll system, kinda the way ARIS sucks as a data tracking system, but at least the right crooks would be getting paid off in the process.

There are a whole bunch of people who ought to be going to jail on this one - from Klein to Tisch to John King.

Anybody who hands Wireless Generation even a nickel for the piece of shit system they have designed for data tracking is either a crook or one of the dumbest people on the planet.

Since I don't think either Tisch or King are dumb, that leaves crooked.

No wonder they want an accelerated time line for the contract and a bypass of the usual process.

Joel Klein And Rupert Murdoch Are Hiring

Wireless Generation has an opening - how exciting!

Wireless Generation creates innovative tools, systems and services that help educators teach with excellence. With its solutions, educators can easily apply research-based, proven practices such as frequent progress monitoring and needs diagnosis, data-informed decision-making, differentiated instruction, and professional collaborations across classrooms, grades, and schools. The company has helped educators address and solve some of the most pressing challenges in teaching and learning. Wireless Generation currently serves more than 200,000 educators and three million students.

---

Professional Development Designer

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Job Description:

We seek a training designer, with a passion for education reform, to create action-oriented, job-embedded professional development that inspires educators and gives them the tools they need to propel student achievement. The successful candidate will be a collaborative team player, strong writer, and skilled instructional designer.

Responsibilities of the Professional Development Designer:

• Lead the development of PD content and related materials for one or more WGen products, including partnering with the relevant product teams, writing workshop content, collaborating with subject matter experts and others, and creating materials for trainers and participants using PowerPoint and other software. Training will be administered in the classroom, as webinars, and/or through e-learning, for teachers and instructional leaders.
  
• Conduct mock trainings, internal training sessions, consultant trainer prep calls in a train-the-trainer format, and possibly customer trainings as needed.
  
• Demonstrate complete ownership of their PD projects and outcomes, including attending the initial training when workshops are newly developed, which likely requires infrequent travel.
  
• Support other team members’ projects as needed.

Requirements of the Professional Development Designer:

• Minimum 1 year experience creating professional development (could include experience as a literacy coach).
  
• Masters degree in education, instructional/curriculum design, or closely related field required.
  
• Minimum 3 years experience as a K-12 teacher is preferred.
  
• Demonstrated passion for education reform and an understanding of adult learning principles required.
  
• Excellent written and verbal English skills.
  
• Fluency with MS Office suite and an ability to grasp technical concepts and programs quickly.
  
• Ability to think creatively and contribute to a collaborative team

I notice that even as Bloomberg gets ready to lay off thousands of teachers in NYC, the charter schools and corporate education reform organizations and thinktanks continue to hire.

Project Corrupt At The NYCDOE

The Daily News has some more salacious details on the outside tech consultant arrested yesterday for stealing $3.6 million from the city:

A cuckolded computer consultant hired to link the city's 1,400 schools to the Internet was charged Thursday with downloading $3.6 million into his crooked pockets.

Willard (Ross) Lanham, aided by corporate giants IBM and Verizon, masterminded the massive fraud to enjoy a life of luxury from 2002 to 2008, according to a scathing report from the special schools investigator.

"Lanham effectively stole from schoolchildren so he could buy fancy cars and valuable real estate," said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

Prosecutors described Lanham's greed as staggering. He was charged with looting the Department of Education while earning a $200,000 annual salary and living with his family in a sprawling, two-story Long Island home.

As he earned an illegal fortune off phony companies, inflated fees and a pair of no-show jobs, officials said, he built three luxury homes on a piece of abandoned Long Island farmland.

Once finished, Lanham even named the private street after his estranged wife, Laura Lanham.

The couple have since endured a long, angry and ongoing three-year divorce, with the wife dumping her 57-year-old husband to pursue younger men while blogging about her "cougar" lifestyle.

Willard Lanham - who faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted - smiled wryly when asked about his 42-year-old wife before he bolted from Manhattan Federal Court.

Willard Lanham also maintained a $600,000 fleet of high-end automobiles, including a flashy yellow Corvette, a Porsche, a Mercedes-Benz, a Lexus and a Cadillac Escalade.

He owned a $380,000 property in Bethpage, L.I., and held an interest in a multimillion-dollar Bridgehampton, L.I., development, according to court papers.

Just last week, he treated his family and a next-door neighbor to a pricey Florida vacation with a stay at the Hard Rock Cafe.

"It was an expensive trip," the teen neighbor told the Daily News before a young man from the Lanham house ran over to end the interview by slamming her front door shut.

The probe, aided by the city Department of Investigation, found Lanham was hired to work on three major DOE projects - including the highly touted "Project Connect."

The scam was simple: He hired contractors at low hourly rates, persuaded subcontractors to bill the city at a much higher rate and pocketed the difference, officials said.

In all, his Lanham Enterprises allegedly was paid $5.3 million for consulting work that cost his company only $1.7 million.

The accused swindler even ripped off his own brother, hiring him for a $40-an-hour consulting job while charging the city $225 an hour, a criminal complaint charged.

I am sure Bloomberg will try and blame this on just Lanham when he gets asked about this today on his WOR radio show, but the truth is that two major DOE vendors - and major American companies - also aided in and profited from the scam. The NY Daily News reports that:

Richard Condon, special commissioner of investigation for city schools, said IBM and Verizon "by their silence facilitated this fraud."

But both companies noted they cooperated with the probe, and neither business, nor any of their employees, were charged with a crime.

The Times reports that:

Verizon and I.B.M., the largest of the vendors involved in the projects, played a role in the scheme and profited from it, according to the city’s special commissioner of investigation, Richard J. Condon.

How many other outside consultants are stealing money from the DOE and being "facilitated" in the theft by vendors like IBM and Verizon?

We don't know, but neither does Bloomberg because he has done little to no oversight of the consultant jobs since he became mayor.

You see, Bloombert thinks outside consultants, because they are non-unionized, non-governmental employees, are by their very nature honest and worthy.

It's those nasty crooked governmental employees - like those teachers the NY Post has been chronicling all week, you know the 12 out of 75,000 who have done something unethical, unseemly, or illegal - who need oversight.

Accountability is NEVER for the outside consultants and it is NEVER for Bloomberg himself.

But now that Project Corrupt at the NYCDOE has been revealed, oversight MUST be done not only on all outside consultant gigs, but also on the mayor himself.

As John Liu said yesterday:

“Federal charges once again, that a consultant has stolen millions from the taxpayers are infuriating enough. Even more disconcerting, however, are indications that corporations with billions of dollars in City business have aided and abetted and profited from the scam. As with the CityTime scandal, oversight of subcontracting is acutely needed right now.”

This mayor CANNOT be trusted with the city money without some independent oversight of what he is doing with it.

This mayor CANNOT be allowed to claim he needs to lay off 6,166 teachers in order to save $300 million when he is squandering $550 million on tech projects like Project Corrupt that have little benefit to anybody who isn't on the Bloomberg/Klein/Murdoch crony payroll.

And make no mistake, former chancellor Klein and prime teacher hater Murdoch are BOTH tied up in this corruption.

Murdoch now owns Wireless Generation, a tech/ed company that Klein - who now works for Murdoch - signed a bunch of DOE contracts with to bring tech services to the public school system.

How did this contract come about?

How did Klein come to sign it?

How did Murdoch decide to buy the company after Klein came to work for him?

So many questions, so few answers.

But there are plenty of things to mull over in this deal and plenty of oversight to do on the Wireless Generation deal as well as the other tech deals Bloomberg has done at both the DOE and other agencies.

Between CityTime, Project Corrupt at the DOE, the Independence Party/Haggerty corruption case and other problematic consultant jobs pointed out by Juan Gonzalez in the Daily News, we have more than enough evidence to see that Bloomberg CANNOT get his way on financial issues involving the city without outside input.