"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Saturday, December 26, 2015

NYU's Online Teacher Prep for the Poor

NYU announced last week that the university will begin selling an online teacher prep Masters program that is aimed at the poor and brown school children of America.  Not to worry, though, NYU's Steinhardt School will continue to provide real professional teacher undergrad degrees to those students who have plans to teach in Westchester County or some other white enclave within America's leafiest suburbs.

No doubt NYU plans to make a lot of money on this internship-based online program, and no doubt some of the millions of non-profit dollars that the University rakes in will be used to pay for the millions recently laid out for renovations and palatial treatments to NYU's presidential living quarters overlooking Washington Square in lower Manhattan.  The cash brought in from NYU's exploitative teacher prep for the poor will also be helpful in paying the $800,000 per year in retirement benefits when the current university president floats away on his golden parachute.

You may be wondering how an online Masters program will provide supervision for students dumped into schools without the benefit of any previous professional training.  No problem: NYU has partnered with of Silicon Valley's best white salesmen to provide digital connections, recorded lessons, and surveillance from afar.  All saved to corporate servers and ready to be used in whatever ways may be salable.  Protections for students and interns?  Data security? Informed consent?  Nonsense, this is the Steinhardt School, and these are poor kids, after all.
NYU Steinhardt will use Silicon Valley-based HotChalk’s technology platform, including an online video observation and collaboration tool provided by the New Orleans-based startup Torsh, Inc., to enable rigorous analytics designed to support, term after term, a continuous cycle of measuring, learning, and adapting to improve educational outcomes for students and teachers alike.



4 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:40 PM

    Where is the research that demonstrates that poor children learn differently from their more affluent peers?

    Abigail Shure

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anecdotal comment: I taught 38 years: 16 in a segregated "poor" Bronx HS; 4 in an integrated working/middle class HS in Westchester; and 18 in the HS in one of the richest districts in the nation, also located in Westchester. Guess what..... The kids I taught all had the same needs to be respected and engaged in interesting and challenging work. If they were, their success rate was much higher. If not.... the only difference was the pressure put on them by parents to succeed anyway.

      Delete
    2. So poverty rates had nothing to do with success rates? You are, indeed, one helluva teacher.

      Delete
  2. Anonymous11:42 AM

    Homelessness, hunger, incarceration of a family member, lack of a winter jacket take an enormous toll on children's concentration on academics.

    Abigail Shure

    ReplyDelete