"Technology In The Classroom" Is Marketing-Speak For A Corporatized Classroom

A reader left the following comment on another post on the blog about technology and education:

The "technology" piece was always the juicy center. Its the big nut of the privatization movement, make no mistake.....charters are a middle step for sure....the step beyond that is shedding the physical plants of schools. None if this should be new information. In fact the corporate interests have been quite legible about it. Look at every "disruptive" new business model out there in any sector....shrinking or killing off physical plants is right up there with shrinking or killing off traditional employment models. So that Cuomo and other political mouthpieces of corporate interest and "reform" making strides in this direction is not new, not a thing, and should shock no one. Classrooms managed by IT "professionals" (you know, to make sure the computers are working optimally), and legions of kids not actually in classrooms is the goal. Shrink the demands and needs of physical plants, and take $30-100k teachers out of the loop entirely....then you have room for risk-free, government paid PROFITS. Nothing new here.

As I commented awhile back on Diane Ravitch's blog:

Part of the problem with this manufactured necessity of technology in school is that we, as teachers, often buy into some of the fundamental lies. In our district, teachers clamor for a smartboard, etc etc etc etc under the pretense that it somehow DEEPENS the learning experience for students….a highly questionable notion when subjected to even modest amounts of rigorous thought. Nonetheless, being an earnest, eager, and enthusiastic lot for the most part, teachers, long accustomed to grabbing for any tool or aid, have also lunged for technology….without the requisite thinking. I would argue that a very firm “NO” from teachers on technology would have quite an impact. NO, I don’t want X, Y, or Z. No I will not teach via algorithm. NO, NO, NO. But, too often technology and its myths have become a norm because they were accepted nicely.

Perhaps what is needed is a counter-narrative coming from teachers that is a “return-to-authentic-roots” kind of thing. A return to the idea that with a teacher, some students, and a book, ignorance can be defeated and exposure to the enlightenment possible. A sort of artisanal classroom kind of thing, to appeal to all the Subaru driving parents who long for “authentic” food, clothes, homes, and experience everywhere else in their lives. Why is a Monsanto tomato bad and a Monsanto classroom for little Dylan good? “Technology in the classroom” is marketing-speak for a corporatized classroom, and we need to be the ones aggressively saying that. The problem is that we have to realize it first. We need to begin to understand that we need to create compelling counter-narratives. Certainly there is nobody else doing it for us! This is easy meat though for counter-narratives! Corporate food=bad. Corporate classroom where kids grow=good?? Come on. Too easy.

The entire thing of “technology in the classroom” is an invented need for an invented problem. The most astounding piece of evidence to this is the fact that, somehow, devoid of any technology save for pen, paper, book, art supplies, instruments, lab material, a library. etc, all of us born before 1990 had no technology to speak of and we (well alot of us, myself probably excluded) actually LEARNED. Shocking. We are evidence that technology in the classroom is a sham. However, that sham is only called out and destroyed if we attack its first principles and ideas.

I am not taking a Luddite position here, or a nostalgic one….but simply saying that learning is probably one of those landscapes of the human condition that does not require so much technological aid to participate in.

We, as always, need to look at ourselves as organized(ish) teachers FIRST. Lets assume that privatizers will act like privatizers, their politicians will act always in their corporate interests, and that federal prosecutors will always find less than enough evidence. Its on us on all levels. 

Nothing to add here except the link to that NY Times story that detailed how many Masters of the Tech Universe in Silicon Valley send their kids to low-tech Waldorf schools and limit their children's use of technology at home.

De Blasio To Mandate Computer Science In Schools

Oy:

To ensure that every child can learn the skills required to work in New York City’s fast-growing technology sector, Mayor Bill de Blasio will announce on Wednesday that within 10 years all of the city’s public schools will be required to offer computer science to all students.

Meeting that goal will present major challenges, mostly in training enough teachers. There is no state teacher certification in computer science, and no pipeline of computer science teachers coming out of college. Fewer than 10 percent of city schools currently offer any form of computer science education, and only 1 percent of students receive it, according to estimates by the city’s Department of Education.

Computer science will not become a graduation requirement, and middle and high schools may choose to offer it only as an elective.

But the goal is for all students, even those in elementary school and those in the poorest neighborhoods, to have some exposure to computer science, whether building robots or learning to use basic programming languages like Scratch, which was devised by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to teach young children the rudiments of coding.

You know what some seniors asked me for last week while I was introducing them to financial aid?

A home economics class.

You know, where you learn how to cook, clean, sew, fix stuff, balance your checkbook, do your taxes, figure out your credit card statement - you know, the kind of stuff many people can't do anymore.

Mandating computer science is swell and I know "coding" is all the rage, but as we keep adding more and more mandates to the school day, it seems like students can do less and less to take care of themselves.

By all means, offer computer science to every student because it's such a fast-growing career and it's spaceage and whatever, but let's not forget the basic stuff of life too.

Seriously, the kids are asking for it.

While we're adding robots and computer programming. while we're focusing on Common Core and argumentative writing, how about bringing back home economics too?

Doesn't have to be a big thing - maybe just a half credit stuck in somewhere.

I know it would really help many students.

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.

Just Another Sign Of Toxic Schooling

From the NY Times:

Anxiety has now surpassed depression as the most common mental health diagnosis among college students, though depression, too, is on the rise. More than half of students visiting campus clinics cite anxiety as a health concern, according to a recent study of more than 100,000 students nationwide by the Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Penn State.

Nearly one in six college students has been diagnosed with or treated for anxiety within the last 12 months, according to the annual national survey by the American College Health Association.

The causes range widely, experts say, from mounting academic pressure at earlier ages to overprotective parents to compulsive engagement with social media. Anxiety has always played a role in the developmental drama of a student’s life, but now more students experience anxiety so intense and overwhelming that they are seeking professional counseling.

As students finish a college year during which these cases continued to spike, the consensus among therapists is that treating anxiety has become an enormous challenge for campus mental health centers.

And guess where all that anxiety starts?

Anxiety has become emblematic of the current generation of college students, said Dan Jones, the director of counseling and psychological services at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C.

Because of escalating pressures during high school, he and other experts say, students arrive at college preloaded with stress. Accustomed to extreme parental oversight, many seem unable to steer themselves. And with parents so accessible, students have had less incentive to develop life skills.

“A lot are coming to school who don’t have the resilience of previous generations,” Dr. Jones said. “They can’t tolerate discomfort or having to struggle. A primary symptom is worrying, and they don’t have the ability to soothe themselves.”

Oh - and guess what exacerbates the problem?

Social media is a gnawing, roiling constant. As students see posts about everyone else’s fabulous experiences, the inevitable comparisons erode their self-esteem. The popular term is “FOMO” — fear of missing out.

You know what would be a great way to solve this growing problem?

Ratcheting up the level of anxiety at school with some new "tough" standards and new "tough" tests tied to those estandards.

You know what would be even better?

Force teachers to use rubrics for every assignment so that students always know what the expectations are and they never ever have to live with any uncertainty.

And you know what would make for the hat trick?

Stick the kids in front of computers all day for some "personalized learning" so that their interactions with their fellow human beings, both peers and adults, are as minimal as possible.

Oy.

Education reform, helicopter parenting and technology - wrecking an entire generation.

Vote NO On Cuomo's Smart Schools Bond Act

Gary Stern at LoHud does a great job of giving both sides of the Smart Schools Bond Act story.

Here's why critics are opposed to Cuomo's technology bond for schools:

Opponents of the bond act say that borrowing $2 billion to pay for computers and other items with limited life spans would be an unprecedented move that has not been supported by analysis.

Nicholas Tampio of Mamaroneck, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University who has tried to incite opposition to the bond act, said money from the bond act will ultimately tie districts to the state's agenda. The state Education Department's goal, he said, is for districts to prepare for online tests aligned to the Common Core.

"School districts face a choice: Submit investment plans that (state Education Commissioner) John King wants or relinquish any chance of having the plan approved," Tampio said. "And what John King wants is the technological infrastructure to support online Common Core testing."

If the bond act is approved, each district would be eligible to receive a set amount based on the state's aid formula. But districts would need to have spending plans approved by a high-powered review board consisting of King, SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher and state Budget Director Robert Megna.

And:

E.J. McMahon, president of the Empire Center, a conservative think tank in Albany, has been the most prominent critic of the bond act. He said Cuomo has no research that proves New York needs to borrow $2 billion for school tech.

"There was no assessment of need and no one asked for this," he said. "This is the most ill-conceived and wasteful bond act to be put in front of New York voters in 30 or 40 years."

He noted that the state Board of Regents, which sets educational policy, has not endorsed the bond act.

"The governor treats the need for this as self-evident: Tech is good," McMahon said.

Why in the world would anybody want to vote for a $2 billion dollar boondoggle bond act that gives John King and Nancy Zimpher the right to approve or reject what districts do with the money?

You can be sure King and Zimpher, staunch Common Core proponents and testing advocates, will want every district to use the money for infrastructure for the PARCC (or some other online tests) to grade students, rate teachers and evaluate schools.

We ought to call this the Infrastructure For Online Computerized Testing Bond Act, because that's exactly what it is.

Don't be fooled, thinking much (or any, for that matter) of this money will go to building schools or getting rid of trailers in the city schools.

This is tech bond, pure and simple, meant to get the state up and running for the coming online PARCC tests.

Vote NO on the Proposition 3 on Tuesday.

Will Cuomo's Smart Schools Tech Boondoggle Bond Actually Pass?

It doesn't sound like anybody other than Cuomo and his tech buddies are actually supporting it:

When Cuomo first announced the bond act, school groups gave the proposal a lukewarm reception, arguing that any additional funding would be better spent to restore recent cuts in aid that have forced some districts to lay off teachers and eliminate programs.

“I know of no state education groups—or any groups, for that matter, that are actively advocating for passage of the act,” said David Albert, spokesman for the New York State School Boards Association.

”I've heard nothing about lobbying the bond act,” said Carl Korn, spokesman for New York State United Teachers.

The fiscally conservative Empire Center seems to be the only group actively lobbying on behalf of the bond proposal—and the think tank is decidedly against it.

“The annual payments on $2 billion in bonds could ultimately come to more than $130 million a year,” E.J. McMahon, president of the Empire Cenrter, wrote in an op-ed in Wednesday’s New York Post. “A far better way to ‘equalize opportunities to learn’ would be to spend that money on added annual aid to public and charter schools serving the state’s neediest children.”

McMahon joins other financial experts in warning against the use of long-term debt to finance the purchase of products with short useful lives, as Capital has reported.

Jessica Bakeman at Capital NY reports that Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch was "lukewarm" in support of the bond and said she thought it was a mistake if the money from the bond was used on short-term tech projects:

Tisch agrees, saying on Wednesday that she hopes districts avoid investing in technology that will soon be obsolete.

“I am a believer that what’s potent in technology today, six months from now is on the shelf, an old hat,” she said. “So my hope is that districts … have a long range vision for what the best uses of technology are and use them masterfully to deliver a quality curriculum.”

Mark the calendar - here's one of the few times I agree with Merryl Tisch:

What's so-called cutting edge in technology today is old in six months and obsolete soon after.

It will be interesting to see if the Smart Schools Initiative passes.

With few actively lobbying for it, there won't be a ton of press or ads about it in the lead-up to the election.

I haven't seen any polling on the matter either.

So it's hard to say how voters will go with the bond next month.

But I will be actively campaigning against it.

That should sway, well, probably nobody.

Nonetheless, I cannot support the bond.

Cuomo and his tech buddies want the money for tech projects that, as Tisch notes, will be obsolete soon after they're completed.

We've seen this kind of boondoggle in L.A. where they spent infrastructure money on iPads.

The truth is, if this were going for real infrastructure - i.e., school buildings - I would support it.

But that's not where the money's going to go.

Instead most of it will be used for bandwidth and other tech upgrades to get the online state testing apparatus going.

It's interesting that Merryl Tisch is lukewarm about the bond when that's where the money's supposed to go.

Perhaps she looked at the L.A. iPad disaster and figured there's a better way to spend $2 billion in taxpayer money for education.

Edu-Entrepreneurs And Lobbyists Flood Cuomo's "Smart Schools" Forum

Not a surprise - that "Smart Schools Commission meeting" I blogged about earlier was filled with edu-entrepreneurs and corporate lobbyists looking to feed off the public trough:

Rather than being filled solely with educators, many of the roughly 100 people who came to a Smart Schools Public Symposium earlier Monday were lobbyists and representatives of telecoms, networking companies, software and hardware providers as well as other businesses that service the Internet and its digital economy.

That’s because the symposium came amid the knowledge that voters this fall will decide on a $2 billion bond referendum which Gov. Andrew Cuomo has gotten on the ballot to, if it passes, modernize the state’s school buildings.

If the bond passes, these companies will be competing to equip schools with the latest broadband wiring and all that goes along with it.

And check out all the fun jargon, buzzwords and other bullshit Cuomo highlighted in his press release:

The Smart Schools Commission is charged with advising the State on how to best enhance teaching and learning through technology. The Governor instated the Commission in spring 2014 in order to reimagine New York’s public schools for the 21st Century. Access to advanced technology fosters a more interactive and personalized classroom experience while facilitating increased communication between parents, students, and teachers. Embracing innovation in education is an important step towards helping New York’s students gain the skills they need to succeed in the 21st Century economy.

...

The five experts highlighted to the Commission and community members the need and ability to: enrich the in-classroom learning experience by incorporating the use of tablets, laptops and smartphones; extend preparation for student instruction by using web-based software accessible at home, increase communication between the instructor and student’s guardian; provide more descriptive academic progress reporting; and to support these changes, build a robust network of high-speed broadband and wi-fi connectivity throughout New York’s public schools and communities. Challenges that the panel encouraged the Commission to address include the difficulty of providing broadband access to rural regions of Upstate New York and the initial implementation of new technology in the classroom.

In short, lots of yummy yummy taxpayer-provided funds for Cuomo's corporate criminal friends to gobble up - all so that we can envision and create "The Classroom of Tomorrow" today.

Sounds like the kind of claptrap I used to see hawked in "Tomorrowland" in Disney World when my parents took me there in the 70's.

Here's an idea - how about we create the "Classroom of Yesterday" when students used to read books, engage in discussions with peers and teachers and, golly, not stare at a freaking computer screen all day?

Nahh - no money to be made off that.

Because that's what this is all about, of course - funding a whole bunch of giveaways to Cuomo's corporate buddies and edu-entrepreneur friends while making believe he's "improving schools"!

Public Isn't Buying Substandard Technology As Big Problem For Schools

From the Times-Union/Siena poll:

Almost three-quarters, 71 percent, said the biggest problem facing schools is lack of parental involvement in a child's progress, followed by bullying and poor behavior, 69 percent each, and hiring and retaining effective teachers, 61 percent.

One of the least significant problems, respondents said, is substandard technology and facilities: Only 40 percent cited the lack of computers and other high-tech learning tools, with 30 percent worried about the condition of school buildings.

Those numbers are notable in part because New Yorkers in November will vote on a $2 billion state bond issue, proposed by Cuomo, to fund new school technology and infrastructure.

Back in April, Cuomo appointed another one of his famous commissions to try and sell the public on a $2 billion bond act to improve technology in schools:

Though voters are yet to consider a $2 billion bond act for education infrastructure and technology upgrades at New York schools, Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday named a commission that would provide recommendations on how best to spend the money.

Included on the commission is Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman and former CEO of Google, a company that is best known for its search engine, but has also entered the laptop and tablet computer market in recent years.

In addition, Cuomo is also turning to Harlem Children’s Zone President and CEO Geoffrey Canada and Constance Evelyn, Superintendent of the Auburn School District in Cayuga County.

“It is a simple fact that disparity remains in our education system, with some schools providing tablets in the first grade and others where the most sophisticated piece of electronic equipment is the metal detector that students walk through on the way to the classroom,” Cuomo said in a statement. “In the State of the State, we called for a $2 billion Smart Schools Initiative to transform our classrooms from the classrooms of yesterday to the classrooms of tomorrow. This panel will help guide this bold initiative and reimagine our classrooms to provide New York’s students with the skills they need to succeed in the 21st century economy.”

The $2 billion borrowing proposal still has to be approved by voters, who are due to consider the ballot referendum this fall.

Cuomo proposed the bond act in January as way to improve technology in the classroom as well as potentially build more space for pre-Kindergarten programs.

As I wrote in April:

Gotta love that Cuomo thinks it's a big plus that some districts are giving tablets to first graders - that tells you everything you need to know about how Cuomo is looking to have this bond money spent.

Strike one.

That he stuck Canada on the commission is strike two and the Google CEO is strike three for me.

I am opposing the Smart Schools Initiative because it's clear Cuomo plans to use the money as a boondoggle for his tech buddies, not to build new schools or provide more classroom space for smaller class sizes.

You know what smart classrooms are?

They're ones where students have the adequate resources to learn, including computer and Internet technology when appropriate, but also enjoy small class sizes and personalized contact with their teachers.

This is not what Cuomo plans to use the money for, however.

Rather, he seems to envision this:

If the TU/Siena poll is any indication, Cuomo is going to have an uphill climb selling the $2 billion dollar Technology Boondoggle Bond Act he's trying to get the public to buy.

Who Needs All That Technology?

Not school's in Finland:

HELSINKI — At the start of morning assembly in the state-of-the-art Viikki School here, students’ smartphones disappear. In math class, the teacher shuts off the Smartboard and begins drafting perfect circles on a chalkboard. The students — some of the highest-achieving in the world — cut up graphing paper while solving equations using their clunky plastic calculators.

Finnish students and teachers didn’t need laptops and iPads to get to the top of international education rankings, said Krista Kiuru, minister of education and science at the Finnish Parliament. And officials say they aren’t interested in using them to stay there.

That’s in stark contrast to what reformers in the U.S. say. From President Barack Obama on down, they have called education technology critical to improving schools. By shifting around $2 billion in existing funds and soliciting $2 billion in contributions from private companies, the Obama administration is pressing to expand schools’ access to broadband and the devices that thrive on it. 

School districts nationwide have loaded up students with billions of dollars’ worth of tablets, laptops, iPods and more on the theory that, as Obama said last year, preparing American kids to compete with students around the globe will require interactive, individualized learning experiences driven by new technology.

But with little education technology in the classroom, Finnish students have repeatedly outperformed American students on international tests. In 2001, Finland’s students were the highest-achieving in the world, according to the Programme for International Student Assessment test administered by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The Nordic country uses innovative teaching strategies in the classroom, just generally without incorporating technology. Private schools and charter schools aren’t part of the mix, and all education is essentially free. Powerful teachers unions work hand in hand with the government, which went to great lengths to revamp teacher training. The profession is revered and respected, and government has no bearing on assessing a teacher’s performance in the classroom.

If technology was so necessary for an "excellent" education, many of the country's elite, including it's tech elite, wouldn't be sending their kids to low tech Waldorf schools.

The real goal behind this expanded technology spending in education is to pull money out of the public school classroom, away from individual schools and teachers' salaries, and hand it off to tech companies and the donor class.

Cuomo Appoints Geoffrey Canada To Smart School Initiative Commission That Looks To Upgrade Classrooms For Online Testing

Another day, another Cuomo commission - this one a commission to make recommendations for what to do with $2 billion in "Smart School Initiative" bond money Cuomo hopes to get the public to pass in order to provide "smart classrooms" (i.e., classrooms wired for online testing) in schools:

Though voters are yet to consider a $2 billion bond act for education infrastructure and technology upgrades at New York schools, Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday named a commission that would provide recommendations on how best to spend the money.

Included on the commission is Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman and former CEO of Google, a company that is best known for its search engine, but has also entered the laptop and tablet computer market in recent years.

In addition, Cuomo is also turning to Harlem Children’s Zone President and CEO Geoffrey Canada and Constance Evelyn, Superintendent of the Auburn School District in Cayuga County.

“It is a simple fact that disparity remains in our education system, with some schools providing tablets in the first grade and others where the most sophisticated piece of electronic equipment is the metal detector that students walk through on the way to the classroom,” Cuomo said in a statement. “In the State of the State, we called for a $2 billion Smart Schools Initiative to transform our classrooms from the classrooms of yesterday to the classrooms of tomorrow. This panel will help guide this bold initiative and reimagine our classrooms to provide New York’s students with the skills they need to succeed in the 21st century economy.”

The $2 billion borrowing proposal still has to be approved by voters, who are due to consider the ballot referendum this fall.

Cuomo proposed the bond act in January as way to improve technology in the classroom as well as potentially build more space for pre-Kindergarten programs.

Gotta love that Cuomo thinks it's a big plus that some districts are giving tablets to first graders - that tells you everything you need to know about how Cuomo is looking to have this bond money spent.

Strike one.

That he stuck Canada on the commission is strike two and the Google CEO is strike three for me.

I am opposing the Smart Schools Initiative because it's clear Cuomo plans to use the money as a boondoggle for his tech buddies, not to build new schools or provide more classroom space for smaller class sizes.

You know what smart classrooms are?

They're ones where students have the adequate resources to learn, including computer and Internet technology when appropriate, but also enjoy small class sizes and personalized contact with their teachers.

This is not what Cuomo plans to use the money for, however.

Rather, he seems to envision this:

Newark Star-Ledger Lays Off 25% Of Non-Unionized Newsroom Employees

Brutal:

In a grim day of reckoning at the state’s largest newspaper, the owners of The Star-Ledger today said they were eliminating the jobs of approximately 167 people, including 25 percent of the newsroom.

The sweeping job loss was part of a plan announced last week in an effort to greatly reduce costs and combine resources by consolidating the operations of The Star-Ledger, along with its sister publications in New Jersey and its online partner, NJ.com, which also announced cutbacks today.

The Star-Ledger, which has won three Pulitzer Prizes and several national awards, currently has 750 employees, of which approximately 500 are non unionized. None of the cuts announced today will affect unionized personnel, who are covered under existing labor contracts.

The cuts will mean the loss of 40 of the 156 reporters, editors, photographers and support staff in The Star-Ledger newsroom, which had already seen a parade of people leaving in recent weeks over concerns about the paper’s future and the continuing fiscal pressures affecting newspapers across the country. One of those leaving voluntarily had been slated to be cut.

The newsroom is not unionized.

Will the non-unionized, union-hating editorial writers continue to write editorials about the evils of teachers unions and such?

Or were they laid off in the carnage too?

Oh, but some of these Star-Ledger employees may be hired back - at lower pay:

 Those being let go will not necessarily leave immediately. In packets that were being handed out this morning, those being told their jobs were being eliminated were offered severance packages if they agreed to stay with the newspaper until NJ Advance Media, new media company being formed, is up and running.

Star-Ledger employees receiving offer letters of jobs with the new company in some cases were being given different positions or titles, some at lower pay. They will have a week to decide to accept the offer, the offer letters said. 

The unions took hard contracts last year including job losses, so unionized employees didn't go untouched in this mess.

It is a very challenging environment for the creative classes these days - especially writers.

Soon there will only be jobs in finance and services - everything in between will be gone, killed by the Internets, technological advances and globalization.

The Daily News Can't Wait For The Security State To Replace Unionized Doormen

The Daily News has a propaganda piece cheerleading for technology that will replace doormen while still making sure the riff-raff don't get where they don't belong:

An Israeli general is at work on a “biometric security” system that he believes will have New Yorkers tossing out their keys and maybe ditching their doormen, too.

Using sophisticated scanners that can recognize a person’s face, voice, build and stride, the system can unlock your door in under two seconds. Any strangers not in the database will be denied access. 

“This is only the beginning,” says General Aharon Farkash, the founder and president of the firm FST21. “This is the way people will enter buildings in the 21st century.”

To help establish FST21 in the states, Farkash opened a North American office earlier this month at 7 World Trade Center. Should you drop by, you’ll be greeted by one of its security devices. But unless he’s beamed a code to your phone or you work there already, there’s no convincing the small 8-inch scanner to let you in.

...

“Cities are crowded, often dangerous places, with the gap between rich and poor growing,” Farkash says. “We need a way to live safely but also comfortably next door to one another.”

For those worried about privacy as well as security, Farkash stresses that the system is self-contained, so it is impossible to hack from outside. It also stores no data of users coming and going beyond two weeks.

“I was the Israeli NSA, so I can tell you I know privacy, and the best effort is being made to keep things private,” Farkash says.

Gee, sounds fabulous.

Except I don't buy that part about keeping things private and anybody who has even scanned an article in the last year about NSA spying shouldn't either - they'll be tracking everywhere you go via this "biometric security" apparatus, the cell phone you carry and the credit cards you use to purchase items.

Such is life in the 21st century.

But besides our privacy and humanity, what else do we lose in the tradeoff when every building starts using "biometric security"?

Why, unionized jobs of course!

For individual homeowners, it offers the convenience — and cool factor — of not having to fumble for the keys anymore, especially with the kids and groceries in hand. For condo and co-op boards, it could mean serious savings.

“It’s much cheaper than a doorman,” Farkash says. “To have 24-seven coverage, that’s four shifts a day, at least $250,000 a year. Our system is 70% less to install, and 90% less to maintain each year after that.”

Oh, goodie - another technological advance that will replace jobs humans do.

On the plus side, when the people who used to have jobs but can no longer find them in our increasingly globalized, technology-laden economy start to steal to eat, the "biometric security" will keep them out of your condo.

On the negative side, you (or I) may be the one the security is looking to keep out.

More plutocratic propaganda from the Daily News masking itself as "journalism".

What A Surprise That A "Blended Learning" Course Is A Disaster

Mayor Bloomberg loved all things techie - especially when it came to replacing humans with computers or computerized programs.

So of course we got all kinds of computerized nonsense in the NYDOE during his 12 years in power and one of the more infamous was the iZone, which was a highly-touted education program that was supposed to combine online learning with classroom learning into an highly effective amalgamation of "real" and "virtual" educational opportunities for students.

They called this amalgam "blended learning" and it was supposed to revolutionize education, especially for students who had fallen behind in "traditional" classroom settings, giving them a chance to catch up on credits and learn material they had failed to grasp earlier.

But many teachers who have worked these "blended learning" programs have told me that taking students who have failed classes before - many of them having behavioral issues, attention span problems, and other obstacles that have kept them from succeeding in school before - and putting them before a computer for a couple of hours a day to read and answer text-based questions is a disaster.

What these students actually need is a small class with at least one teacher (in some cases two if many are support service students) "personalizing" the learning through face-to-face interactions, not to be put into a class with rows of computers and told to sit in front of a computer and complete some work from an iZone learning program.

The program also leads to all kinds of fraud opportunities because there is a component that has students working on their own on the computer to complete work - either at computers at school during a free period or at home.

Of course anybody can sign in and do the work at that point, but that rarely gets touted in the "Wonders of Blended Learning" stories you read in the media.

There's lots and lots of money to be made by the edu-entrepreneurs in "blended learning," so you rarely hear about the problems in this kind of education, especially from education journals like Education Week, which makes money off advertising for that kind of stuff.

The same might be said for the Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corporation, which is trying to sell tablets to school districts for blended learning programs.

But the Murdoch-owned Post never misses an opportunity to publish a school-based scandal, so today they tell us about a "blended learning" course at Murry Bergtraum that isn't really much of a course.

Here is the story in full:

On paper, he’s a super-teacher. To critics, he’s the poster child for academic fraud in New York City.

Alexis Pajares “teaches” 475 students at Manhattan’s Murry Bergtraum HS for Business Careers in all grades and all disciplines — including algebra, biology, chemistry, Chinese, earth science, economics, English, government, health, history, law and Spanish.

Students failing any of those subjects get dumped on Pajares, who signs them up for an online course they can do in a computer lab or at home. Students can snag full credit without attending class.

“There’s little to no traditional instruction going on, which makes the whole thing a farce,” said history teacher and union chapter leader John Elfrank-Dana. “It’s a credit-recovery trick, in most cases, to move kids along and get them out.”

Principal Lottie Almonte started the program last year, appointing Pajares the “blended learning” teacher. But staffers charge that it violates state rules that online programs must include “substantive interaction” with a teacher certified in the subject. Pajares is certified only in social studies.

Elfrank-Dana, citing complaints from teachers and students, said he has repeatedly asked Almonte to explain the program but got no response.

Two blocks from City Hall, “F”-rated Murry Bergtraum has struggled in recent years as a “dumping ground” for overage or held-back students who lack credits. The school had only a 51.2 percent graduation rate last year.

Almonte referred questions to the Department of Education. A spokesman admitted Pajares doesn’t teach all 475 kids, but “is running the blended learning program,” that other certified teachers “support students” and students are required to be in classes with traditional instruction.

Teachers and guidance counselors dispute those claims. Schedules show students in blended learning without an equivalent class.

“You don’t learn a lot,” said a 21-year-old senior — a recent immigrant from the Dominican Republic — who takes an online chemistry course.

“We just sit down, sign on to the program and that’s it,” he said.

He watches a video of a teacher giving a lesson, then has to answer questions in a quiz. If he doesn’t know the answer, he watches the video again — or uses Google. He takes notes, but “nobody checks our notes.”

Another senior took blended learning English after failing the class in her junior year.

“There’s no attendance. You just log on when you feel like it,” she said.

The online course, which she did at home, took three weeks — while a classroom semester lasts 4¹/₂ months. She said she got no feedback on the one essay she was required to write and doesn’t know who grades it.

Other kids take the online classes purely as a convenience — instead of a regular class that starts early and requires a lot more work.

A math teacher said the program is flawed because kids take tests at home — not under school supervision — raising the possibility of cheating.

Staffers have heard that some students pay friends $80 to $100 to take the online exams for them.

Another math teacher had a student who “sat there doing nothing all semester,” the teacher said. “He told me, ‘I don’t have to do any work in your class. I can take blended learning.’ ”

After flunking out, the kid scored 82 online.

But students who pass the online courses stumble in subsequent classes. “I have not seen any kid who can handle material at the next level after blended learning,” the teacher said.

The Post does mention that Bergtraum had been made into a "dumping ground" by the DOE, so at least we get a bit of context for why Bergtraum has so many "failing students" who need to take the blended learning course to make up credit.

But what they fail to tell us is that "blended learning" programs always lend themselves to these kinds of problems by their nature.

The point of "blended learning" is to use fewer teachers to teach more students.

Yes, I know they sell it as a 21st century learning program to instill technological expertise and skills for a student populace that needs to compete in an increasingly global and ruthless marketplace
.
But all of that is not really the point of blended learning.

The point is always to decrease the number of teachers you need to teach students and to increase the dollars that go to the edu-entrepreneurs.

That's been the selling the point certainly for schools like Bergtraum that use the blended learning programs to try and catch students up in credits - fewer teachers to teach more students, in this case one teacher for 475 students.

It's not a surprise to me that the program lends itself to fraud, giving schools opportunities to pass students along for doing a little bit of work (and maybe not even that - you never really know who is doing the work on the computer off-site.)

Teachers I have spoken to who have taught this stuff tell me that even in schools where the blended learning program is small and well-organized, it's mostly a disaster when its used for credit recovery for students missing credits.

Again, you're taking students who have already struggled with the material, then sticking them in front of computers for a few hours to work on their own to pore through reading, writing and multiple choice tasks.

The very population that needs the most support, the best "personalized" learning opportunities in a face-to-face interaction with a teacher instead gets the "personalized" learning of a computer program and computer screen.

Even in the best schools, that's a recipe for disaster.

Cuomo's Education Bond Puts State's Environment At Risk

Sheriff Andy wants to invest $2 billion in technology for schools so that students can take tests on computers and their teachers can be evaluated using so-called state of the art technology.

That's not exactly what he said when he called for a $2 billion bond for education technology, but that's what many observers think he wants the money for (i.e., the infrastructure for the PARCC tests.)

Scott Waldman at Capital NY reports that Cuomo's pushing of the education bond has an even more obvious downside:

ALBANY—Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposed education bond act might put an iPad in the hands of every student, but a chance to fix the state's leaky sewage infrastructure would go down the drain.

The $2 billion education bond act floated by Cuomo in Wednesday's State of the State speech would get computers, tablets and high-speed broadband into every school across the state. But it will also effectively kill off any chance of a $5 billion environmental bond that would pay for sewer upgrades, drinking water protection, climate change adaptation, improved air quality and farmland protection.

Only one bond plan can be put to voters statewide vote a year and it must be for a single purpose, according to the state Budget Office.

Cuomo made it clear Wednesday that he'll put his weight behind the education initiative, not environmental improvements, on the same ballot where his name will appear in November.

Screw the clean drinking water and sewage systems that don't leak - Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch want an education bond that will effectively hand over $2 billion to their companies (as well as other technology companies) and Sheriff Andy is happy to comply.

Having seen how little improvement the iPads have done for LA's school children, or how little the Amplify tablets have helped students in North Carolina, it's difficult to justify the education bond over the environmental bond - especially when so much of the money will simply go to consultants, tech companies and edu-entrepreneurs.

But I'm sure Sheriff Andy will get his way on this and we'll soon see $2 billion in bond money heading the way of the consultants, tech companies and edu-entrepreneurs.

Many of these people are so corrupt that no matter how much money you throw their way, the expanded broadband and Internet access never happens.

A few years ago, Bloomberg said there was no money for teachers and he had to lay some off even as he was expanding technology spending in schools by $542 million.

The goal was expanded broadband and Internet access in every school.

The money got spent, all right, but the expanded broadband and Internet access did not come.

Andy's education bond is aimed at getting the technology infrastructure up for the PARCC tests, but given how this kind of money has been wasted in the past, I would think Sheriff Andy's great grand son will be governor before that goal is reached.

This money could be spent on something useful - either for the environment (like fixing drinking water and sewage systems) or for education (like lowering class sizes and building new schools.)

Sheriff Andy has instead chosen to waste it on a tech boondoggle.

Joel Klein On Student Success

He's so full of it.

The so-called personalized learning he's talking about is created by algorithms on his Asus/Amplify tablets.

Nothing personalized about that.

Even if the tablets worked, rather than melted, which apparently they don't, since the first district that bought them has had serious issues with them.

Do you know what we need for student success?

This kind of school system.

That's something Klein - somebody so deficient in humanity that he's always on his Blackberry, no matter where he is - wouldn't understand.

Nay, couldn't understand.

Murdoch/Klein Amplify Tablet Chargers Melt, Tablets Suffer Multitude Of Other Problems

There has been such a heavy sell of the Amplify tablet in the media lately, including a long Times Magazine piece a few weeks ago.

Turns out Joel Klein and Rupert Murdoch should expend less effort on the p.r. around Amplify tablets and more on the safety and workability issues:

Not The Fault Of Schools Or Teachers

From today's NY Times:

WASHINGTON — Despite the addition of more than two million jobs last year, soaring corporate profits and continuing economic growth, income for the typical American household did not rise in 2012 and poverty failed to fall, new data from the Census Bureau show. 

“The poverty and income numbers are a metaphor for the entire economy,” said Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution. “Everything’s on hold, but at a bad level.” 

Over a longer perspective, the figures reveal that the income of the median American household today, adjusted for inflation, is no higher than it was for the equivalent household in the late 1980s. 

For all but the most highly educated and affluent Americans, incomes have stagnated, or worse, for more than a decade. The census report found that median household income, adjusted for inflation, was $51,017 in 2012, down about 9 percent from an inflation-adjusted peak of $56,080 in 1999, mostly as a result of the longest and most damaging recession since the Depression. 

Most people have had no gains since the economy hit bottom in 2009. 

The government’s authoritative annual report on incomes, poverty and health insurance, released Tuesday, underscores that the economic recovery has largely failed to reach the poor and the middle class, even as the unemployment rate continues to sink and growth has returned.

In the past 12 years, there have been two recessions, one of which was the worst economic downturn since the Depression, two bubble bursts (tech and housing), two major wars that have eaten up a lot of tax money, an endless War on Terror that continues to eat up tax money, and most of the middle class jobs that disappeared in the last two recessions have been replaced with crappy service jobs.

This is an economic problem caused by capitalism, not an education problem caused by schools and teachers.

Why Is Obama So Desperate To Improve Internet Access In Schools?

President Obama has decided to tack on a $5 a year fee to every cell phone account for the next five years in order to raise funds to increase high speed internet access in schools around the country.

The fees are expected to generate $6 billion dollars in three years and sunset in 2017.

The move has generated a lot of criticism, but according to the NY Post, the Obama people just don't get why it has:

Obama is relying on the fee hike to avoid dealing with a Congress that White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest yesterday described as “dysfunctional.”

“You would think that connecting schools to the information superhighway would be a pretty noncontroversial topic,” Earnest told reporters in Martha’s Vineyard, where the first family is on vacation.

Just why is Obama so desperate to raise $6 billion in funds to improve Internet access in schools around the country that he has launched an end run around Congress?

Could it have something to do with the high stakes Common Core testing program that his administration has been pushing, first through Race to the Top, then through NCLB waivers, that will force states to test every child in every subject using "high-quality Common Core-linked assessments"?

You bet it could.

There has been a lot of discussion recently about how the two consortia that are working on the Common Core tests are doing all their work for nothing if states do not have the technological capacity to handle the online tests.

Just yesterday, Gotham Schools covered that problem here in NY State:

The computer-based testing would allow tests finally to require the kinds of critical thinking that the Common Core asks students to do, advocates say. In the online tests dreamed up by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, screens replace bubble sheets, students type their essays, and math problems are solved by dragging and dropping answers. Expedited grading would return results to schools in weeks, offering teachers valuable feedback before the end of the year.

State officials have long signaled an intention to shift to the PARCC tests once they become available in the 2014-2015 school year. But they still have not formally committed to that plan.

...

But administering online tests would also require significant technology upgrades in schools. Schools would need to be equipped with computers and expanded wireless bandwidth to allow many students to take online tests at the same time.

A one-time windfall of technology funding will soon be available to needy schools to subsidize the costs of upgrading their infrastructure. But that might not be enough to prepare schools in less than two years.

“This is a huge undertaking,” United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said of the ambitious timeline. “There’s no way we would be ready for this.”

Thus we get an end run around Congress by the Obama administration to try and get a few extra billion dollars to give to schools to upgrade their technology infrastructure so that these tests can get off the ground.

And you can bet the fees will never sunset, that the extra $2 billion the federal government raises every year off cell phone users will remain in perpetuity.

Gee, I can't imagine why this end run around Congress in order to get money to fund technology upgrades so that online testing can be done in schools all across the country would be controversial, can you?

Obama And Surveillance

OK, so now we know that the Obama administration has taken the Surveillance State they inherited from the Bush administration and expanded it exponentially:

The Obama administration has presided over the most thorough expansion of the domestic surveillance state of any U.S. presidency. Even as the nation was still absorbing the news, broken by Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian on Wednesday night, that the National Security Agency has been routinely collecting phone call records for millions of Americans, the Washington Post and the Guardian published articles revealing even broader government snooping powers: Since 2007, the NSA and the FBI have had the power to watch nearly every aspect of our online life as well.

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.

The nine companies are Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple. (PalTalk, according to the Post, “hosted significant traffic during the Arab Spring and in the ongoing Syrian civil war.”)

The program is code-named PRISM, and while it was created during the administration of George W. Bush, the Post reports that it has experienced “exponential growth” under Obama.

This is the surveillance that we know is taking place.

You can be sure there is more that we don't know about.

Today, Obama said he wants to expand the technology in schools so that teachers can know what is going on in the brains of their students, moment to moment, and second to second.

I wrote this earlier, but I want to write it again:

Given the news about the abuses of power and domestic spying the Obama administration has engaged in, why would anybody trust any technology Barack Obama wants to put into schools?

Would this increased bandwidth and so-called technological tools really be meant to help students or would it be used to track both students and teachers?

Barack Obama, Warrantless Surveillance And Classroom Technology

Two stories about Barack Obama I want to look at today.

The first is an education story:

President Barack Obama imagines a country where teachers know what's happening in their students' brains.

He wants "teachers to have an ability to assess learning hour by hour and day by day," a senior White House official said Wednesday. "That vision ... is really not possible with the connectivity we have today."

That's why on Thursday Obama will speak at a school in Mooresville, N.C., to unveil an initiative that aims to give 99 percent of America's public schools high-speed connectivity over the next five years.

The project, called ConnectED, also seeks to get devices into the hands of teachers and students so they can experience digital lessons and software designed for the classroom. Districts will be in control of their own purchasing. The plan would also use existing money within the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to fund professional development to "help teachers keep pace with changing ... demands," according to a background memo provided by the White House.

The second story is this:

Within hours of the disclosure that the federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights. 

Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability. The administration has now lost all credibility. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the 9/11 attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers. 

Based on an article in The Guardian published Wednesday night, we now know the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency used the Patriot Act to obtain a secret warrant to compel Verizon’s business services division to turn over data on every single call that went through its system. We know that this particular order was a routine extension of surveillance that has been going on for years, and it seems very likely that it extends beyond Verizon’s business division. There is every reason to believe the federal government has been collecting every bit of information about every American’s phone calls except the words actually exchanged in those calls. 

A senior administration official quoted in The Times offered the lame observation that the information does not include the name of any caller, as though there would be the slightest difficulty in matching numbers to names. He said the information “has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats,” because it allows the government “to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States.” 

That is a vital goal, but how is it served by collecting everyone’s call data? The government can easily collect phone records (including the actual content of those calls) on “known or suspected terrorists” without logging every call made. In fact, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was expanded in 2008 for that very purpose. Essentially, the administration is saying that without any individual suspicion of wrongdoing, the government is allowed to know who Americans are calling every time they make a phone call, for how long they talk and from where. 

This sort of tracking can reveal a lot of personal and intimate information about an individual. To casually permit this surveillance — with the American public having no idea that the executive branch is now exercising this power — fundamentally shifts power between the individual and the state, and repudiates constitutional principles governing search, seizure and privacy. 

Does anyone else see the connection between the Obama education policy, the data tracking, the technologizing of everything, and the Obama surveillance system?

Mr. Obama can keep his ESEA money for increased technology and bandwidth.

At this point, given the realities of data tracking both by private enterprise and the federal government, I'll take a couple of bucks for pens, pencils, paper and chalk, thanks.