Gates and Zuckerberg Take Direct Aim at Children

Bill Gates began his purchased reforms of education policy and practices in 2000, and his repeated failures in this arena have not altered his determination to turn American schools into technology-dependent, business-modeled training camps, to turn American teachers into disposable contract middle managers who are laser-focused on the bottom line--test scores, and to convert children into eager culturally-sterilized recipients of the global economic mindset of personal sacrifice toward an eventual corporate reward. 

Of course, what I mean by "failure" needs some explaining, for not everyone affected by the Gates philanthropic ventures in education has been negatively affected.  Even though the Gates Foundation reforms have done nothing to raise achievement levels, and they have done nothing to staunch the shameful resegregation of American schools, and they have done nothing to build or renew support for public education, the Gates initiatives have been wildly successful in promoting the privatization of public schools, dependence on high tech and big data, and the marketing of thousands of corporate product lines in curriculum, testing, professional development, and teacher preparation.  

In short, Gates initiatives over the years have been used to feather the nests of Gates's own businesses, along with the thousands of entrepreneurs and hangers-on who trail the Gates army as it moves in and occupies the various sectors of the education landscape.  

There is nothing new in my critique.  More extensive criticism of Gates's giving has been delivered by the social advocacy group, Global Justice Now, whose 54 page report in 2016 examines the darker side of Bill and Melinda's giving business.  Here are three allegations from the report aimed at the Gates Foundation:

• It provides a disproportionate amount of funding to health organizations in high-income countries, "exacerbating unequal research and development infrastructures between poor and rich regions." The report cites as an example the foundation's "overwhelming focus" on developing and promoting new vaccines at the expense of already-proven preventative measures for diseases that most affect poverty-stricken areas.
• Its projects are primarily "vertically funded interventions targeted at specific diseases or health problems" and do little to strengthen public health systems, leaving underdeveloped nations ill-equipped to combat the root causes of disease. The report backs this claim with comments from Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), who said in an interview with The New York Times that the WHO's budget is "driven by what I call donor interests." This limits the organization's ability to maintain fixed support staff "to build response systems" when there is no active health emergency. Adds the report: "The inference in Chan’s remarks is that the WHO, whose largest donor is [the Gates Foundation,] is unable to respond adequately to ebola and other disease outbreaks because donor interests prevent it from being able to build public health systems in developing countries.
• It "prioritizes support for corporations." The report notes that the Gates Foundation has funded a huge number of projects for major corporations—including Monsanto, Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and Coca-Cola—and that the corporations often stand to profit. According to the report, the foundation has owned or still owns shares in some of the corporations it funds. "The foundation is profiting from its investments in corporations which contribute to social and economic injustice," reads the report.

And most importantly, perhaps, Global Justice Now points out that the strategic giving on a massive level is aimed, too, to buy the silence of would-be critics of the Gates army.  There's no better examples than AFT and NEA, whose leaders have been bribed to support a Gates-led war to cororatize schools.  Both have accepted multi-million dollar grants from Gates and have partnered with Gates-linked corporations to involve teachers in advancing the Common Core, the war waged by the Business Roundtable and funded by Gates to impose a stupidifying sameness to American schooling, while constructing many new layers of profitable bureaucracy within the educational corporate complex.

And there are many other examples here.

Now we find the two dollar-fortified armies of Gates and Zuckerberg converging to wage a new corporate education war, this time with a primary focus to remap the neurological paths of children through psychological interventions beginning at an early age and proceeding through the schooling years.  From the AP: 

Tech moguls Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday they will team up to help develop new methods for kids with trouble learning — an effort that will include dabbling into child brain science. . . .The effort is now seeking information and ideas from across sectors, from education and academia to business, technology and medicine. Future investments based on that information are expected, but no dollar amount has been set.

Part of the oligarchs' dream, of course, is to develop and deploy the psychological equivalent of individual surveillance cameras that can interactively monitor the choices, behaviors, preferences, and levels of involvement of children and adolescents, and to further develop learning algorithms that can intervene to redirect individual behavior or thoughts when they move outside acceptable parameters.  

The idea that disadvantaged children struggle to learn because of poor executive brain function involving memory, thinking flexibility, and behavioral issues related to autism and other attention disorders has long been lamented by social workers and health advocates.

The joint project by Gates and Zuckerberg details possible ways to mitigate those shortcomings

Among the ideas is using games and technology simulations to support teachers and family, and tracking progress in certain vulnerable student populations such as kids with disabilities or those who are learning English as a second language.

In effect, Gates and Zuckerberg are intent upon eliminating the debilitating effects of poverty on learning, while doing nothing to eliminate child poverty aside from rewiring children's brains to make them behaviorally immune to inequality and mistreatment.

What could go wrong!

Sleight of hand, Slate?

by Wrench in the Gears
May 27, 2017

 Over the past few days, my social media feed has been buzzing about Slate’s “The Big Shortcut.” The eight-part series, developed in coordination with Columbia Graduate School of Journalism’s The Teacher Project, explores “the exponential rise in online learning for high school students who have failed traditional classes.” Many of us have been working hard to sound the alarm about online education undermining teaching as an inherently human, relationship-driven endeavor and to draw attention to negative impacts of digital curriculum on student health and emotional well being. So to have our concerns seemingly validated by not just one article but by EIGHT was initially refreshing; that is until I read the whole series. Once I finished the last article, I was left scratching my head.

Why would Slate and The Teacher Project expend significant resources to discuss one VERY narrow aspect of online education, namely credit recovery? Certainly it’s an egregious practice, but given the rise of personalized “blended/hybrid” online learning that is overtaking regular classrooms, why choose to expend ALL their energy exhausting that topic while remaining silent on so many others? There are millions of students today enrolled in regular bricks and mortar neighborhood schools who are taking one or more online classes as a regular part of their curriculum. In fact, some states actually require students to take an online course in order to graduate. These are not credit-recovery courses. Austerity budgeting, teacher shortages and ever-more rigorous graduation requirements are increasingly pressuring districts to delegate core instruction to the cyber-sphere. Everyone is expected to do more with less—less money, less time, fewer human bodies; and with this disaster by design, digital curriculum becomes a convenient, but ultimately dangerous, remedy. Readers should take note that in this 8-part series, discussion of non-credit recovery cyber instruction, blended-hybrid-personalized learning and flipped classrooms is conspicuously absent.

As Slate focuses our attention on credit-recovery, you might ask what are they trying to distract us from or prepare us for? Well, you should first know that the magazine started out as a Microsoft-sponsored venture in 1996. The original staff operated out of the company’s Redmond, WA campus. It was sold to the Washington Post Corporation in 2004. Also, Columbia University, home of The Teacher Project, has a rather checkered past with respect to predatory home-correspondence/distance education detailed in David Noble’s Digital Diploma Mills (see page 34). Following the money is my preferred strategy and in this case did not disappoint.

Who funds The Teacher Project?

Click here to read the entire article.

Personalized Learning Poised to Take Center Stage

from Wrench in the Gears
May 14, 2017

As new state education plans are unveiled, the ed-tech sector is positioning itself to take full advantage of the ESSA’s ample provisions for innovation / entrepreneurial experimentation on public school children. Language in Title lV-21st Century Schools Part F, Subpart 1 of the Every Student Succeeds Act allocates $200 million+ annually in fiscal years 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 to “create, develop, implement, replicate, or take to scale entrepreneurial, evidence-based, field-initiated innovations to improve student achievement and attainment for high-need students.” Any state educational agency, local educational agency, consortium of such agencies, or the Bureau of Indian Education may partner with a non-profit organization, business, educational service agency or institution of higher education to develop these “innovative” products.

The New Schools Venture Fund Summit 2017, an invitation-only event, expects over 1,000 entrepreneurs, funders, policy makers, educators, and community leaders to converge on the Hyatt Regency in Burlingame, CA next week to “reimagine education.” Technology features prominently with sessions on rigor in personalized learning, tech in special education, tech as an equity issue, and developing a robust R&D program to “drive the kinds of technological breakthroughs we need in education.” Platinum level event sponsors include the Gates and Walton Family Foundations, the Carnegie Corporation, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative-all forces behind the Ed Reform 2.0 digital curriculum agenda. According to EdWeek, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative recently teamed up with Chiefs for Change (CFC) to establish a “Transforming Schools and Systems Workgroup.”

Their partnership will promote adoption of “Personalized Learning” at state and local levels, building on efforts underway in states like Rhode Island where Chan Zuckerberg funds are being used to pilot “Lighthouse Schools” that have adopted online learning platforms developed by the Facebook-affiliated Summit Learning. Diane Tavenner, CEO of Summit Public Schools, is slated to speak at the New Schools Venture Fund conference referenced above.

With backing from Zuckerberg, the company’s “free” Summit Basecamp has expanded its reach from ten bricks and mortar charter schools to over one hundred public schools nationally. The Gates Foundation helped underwrite this expansion via two grants totaling nearly $3.5 million and funded a white paper documenting the program prepared by FSG, a social impact consulting firm. Facebook provided technical support to develop Summit Learning’s “Personalized Learning Platform” that embraces Ed Reform 2.0 principles of competency based education and playlist modules. A New York Times article from August 2016 contrasts Zuckerberg’s current approach to education reform with earlier top-down efforts in Newark, noting this time around he plans to employ “a ground-up effort to create a national demand for student-driven learning in schools.” The Chan Zuckerberg/CFC collaboration appears to be part of that plan.

Established as a program of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education in 2010, Chiefs for Change spun off in 2015, expanding its mission to include city school districts as well as state departments of education as targets for their bi-partisan ed-reform strategies. Though the group at one point had dwindled to four members, it’s growing again and currently numbers twenty-six, seventeen of whom joined in 2016. The four newest members are: William Hite, Superintendent of Philadelphia Public Schools; Kunjan Narechania, Superintendent of the Recovery School District Louisiana; Paymon Rouhanifard, Superintendent of the Camden City School District; and Candice MacQueen, Commissioner of Education for Tennessee. As of now, seven state departments of education are represented in addition to eighteen school districts. You can find information on members of CFC here.

 Click here to read the rest of the article.

 

Indiana, Personalized Learning, Smart Drugs, and the KnowledgeWorks Foundation

By Doug Martin 

(for a background on what edtech is up to, please see Alison McDowell’s post here—and all of her posts.  If you want to witness the frightening scenario many like the KnowledgeWorks Foundation have in mind for American education and the workforce, watch this video.)  

Although I’m deep into writing a new book on the national edtech movement to follow Hoosier School Heist and haven’t blogged for a while, I want to take the time to warn Hoosiers about so-called “personalized learning” (also referred to as competency-based learning) not only because of the idea to use online learning to teach pre-schoolers here, but also because Robert Behning’s House Bill 1386 offers a personalized learning pilot program.  Thankfully, Bill 1386  died recently in a House Education Committee vote of 8-3, but don’t expect the personalized learning movement to go away.  This movement is not just about using technology in the classroom, which, done well, can be a good thing.  Now a major national force, the personalized learning movement has some scary things lurking inside it and everyone should take notice.

THE EDTECH FUTURISTS AT THE STATEHOUSE

Speaking edtech and corporate school reform clichés, the KnowledgeWorks Foundation’s Matt Williams testified in favor of Behning’s personalized learning bill before the Indiana House Education Committee in February, stressing the need for Indiana to become “a leader” nationally by creating a personalized learning system where “formative assessments ….measure student mastery of academic knowledge and social and emotional competencies”  and students “master the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in college and career,” which is “an essential step” for “our country’s education system.”

Personalized or competency-based learning glues students to computers, allows students to learn at their own pace, and sometimes even does away with grade levels altogether.  But, as even the Gates Foundation-funded iNACOL(International Association for K12 Online Learning), which promotes ALEC’s online learning model legislation, has publicly admitted, this is a Trojan Horse for more harmful things the billionaires have in mind.

To promote the online learning agenda, the Ohio-based KnowledgeWorks paints futuristic scenarios focusing on training workers for the gig economy via online personalized learning (K-university level) in the event that tech titans’ dreams will be eventually fulfilled when one day students will no longer go to real buildings or real jobs, since all education will be done online merely for credentials, and job gigs (like Fiverr, TaskRabbit, the Global Survey Group, etc.) will be done online to earn literally a couple of dollars (yes, literally) an hour, since these will be the only jobs left because of the quick expansion of technology (for an excellent outing of the gig economy scam and the real possible threat of technology eliminating future jobs, read Steven Hill’s book).   
  
Originally a student loan lender, KnowledgeWorks recently called on Donald Trump to “overhaul….the Federal financial aid system to ensure it is more flexible, better able to address changing career requirements, and reflective of the nation’s increasing interest in personalized education” (page 4).  For its “cradle-to-career framework,” the KnowledgeWorks Foundation in 2013 was awarded $1.8 million from Indianapolis’ Lumina Foundation, a group formed out of the student loan business “when government-sponsored enterprise Sallie Mae,” which was beginning to privatize, “purchased USA Group” and federal regulators required the $770 million from the deal to go into a “successor nonprofit” since the USA Group was a nonprofit enterprise.  The Lumina Foundation is a major player in the new credentials movement to wipe out universities and replace them with online credential-giving platforms geared specifically for the workforce, even investing in the alternative credential-granting platform Credly.

The Gates Foundation, the most well-known of the edtech promoters, has handed KnowledgeWorks millions of dollars over the last few years.  Judith Peppler, KnowledgeWorks Foundation’s CEO, had a total compensation package in 2015 of $638,000 (page 45) and the group had over $59 million in total assets (page 1)

KnowledgeWorks, like several futuristic promoters of extreme edtech, has some frightening ideas, which Indiana House member Robert Behning may or may not know about.  Here is a very rough excerpt on KnowledgeWorks from my new book-in-progress.  As you read, keep in mind, too, that although much of the edtech hype is pure pseudoscience for marketing purposes, so-called “smart drugs” are in vogue in Silicon Valley now, and research on biosensors and biometrics in education, as well as using electric shock to improve math skills is already taking place.

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BUT KNOWLEDGEWORKS HAS an even scarier agenda, having now joined the futuristic tech movement which is sneaking into edtech circles.  In a brave new world where students practice “anytime, anywhere learning,” educators become “Learning Pathway Designers,” “Micro-Credential Analysts,” “Data Stewarts,” and “Pop-Up Reality Producers” (who take their lead “from the positive aspects of both rave culture and massive cultural events such as Burning Man”) (page 8), and “Every Experience” is “a Credential” (page 2), the edtech futurist KnowledgeWorks Foundation hopes that nootropics, better known as “smart drugs,” play a major role in the cradle to career pipeline, too.  Jason Swanson, the director for Strategic Foresight for KnowledgeWorks, an Ohio-based nonprofit closely aligned with the Institute for the Future’s thinking, gives us a glimpse into the future school and work mindset, where school is “disrupted,” “personalized to each learner,” bent on “ongoing” assessments, and geared toward social control and “on-demand” gig economy jobs which “could push many people to be in a mode of constant learning and continuous career readiness and could increase the need for specialized training similar to that required for professionals such as doctors, lawyers, engineers, and scientists” (page 2).  In Certifying Skills and Knowledge: Four Scenarios on the Future of Credentials, Swanson foresees a future that “advances in the understanding of the brain, coupled with ever-expanding data streams generated by students,” which “deepen educators’ understanding not just of how to personalize learning, but also of how each student actually learns” (page 13) Pointing out the edtech desire for so-called social and emotional learning, Swanson says that in a few years, hopefully, teachers will “have the ability to monitor a student’s cognitive, social, and emotional skills,” “their neuro-finger prints, in real time” (page 13). 

     This data-driven neuro-finger print based-education includes feeding children smart drugs.  Glimpsing a future scenario and also noting that neuro fitness programs like Lumosity (busted, as I show elsewhere in this book, for false advertising), Cognifit, and Quantified Mind already exist “to measure and improve users’ cognitive abilities” (page 15), Swanson, who has a degree in Public Policy from West Chester University, a masters in  Foresight from the University of Houston, and is a member of the Association of  Professional Futurists,” looks into the future where:

Educator roles have diversified to reflect schools’ new emphasis on monitoring the development of students’ neuro-fingerprints. Neuro-fitness coaches now work hand-in-hand with students, parents, and other learning agents. Part medical professional, part educator, these neuro-fitness coaches help teachers create lessons and monitor feedback in order to stretch students’ cognitive abilities. When students have extreme difficulty making progress, neuro-fitness coaches may recommend nootropics, changes in diet, mindfulness training, or mediation, to name a few options. In the case of nootropics, coaches watch for signs of “smart drug” abuse in students who may not need the boost but seek to gain an unfair advantage. Coaches also help to monitor whole-student health, being mindful of how issues such as trauma can impact a student’s cognitive development and recommending ways both the school and the learner can take action to begin the healing process. (page 13)

     In this new educational world, where “the employment sector has become actively involved in all levels of the formal and informal education systems” (page 8), students no longer work toward diplomas or degrees or fall victim to annual testing since credentials are set up like online videogames, measuring continuously in real time, where “students now work to attain a standardized level of mastery for a core set of cognitive abilities, along with essential social and emotional skills such as determination, grit, self-control, and growth mindset” (page 13).  So-called “mind scouts” examine students’ credentials and help them with career training in the gig economy or match their neuro-finger prints with “micro-credentials and nano-credentials” programs (page 14), so that for post-secondary education “the skills gap that employers once observed has virtually disappeared because graduates applying for jobs now display deep mastery of skills as a result of matching credential paths with neuro-fingerprints.  Now, a smaller pool of applicants with higher education degrees or other forms of post-secondary credentials is highly desirable” (page 14). 

     Swanson also notes a possible smart drug epidemic in the future, without discussing the bad idea of throwing drugs at students at all, the big boon to Big Pharma, or how making learning into a videogame creates another avenue for youth addiction:

The more stringent post-secondary credential market has also led to a high degree of nootropic abuse, as students try to gain an edge or alter their brain patterns in an attempt to gain acceptance into programs that their neuro-fingerprint may not permit. In an attempt to curtail such abuse, many credentialing organizations have a neuro-regulator on staff, trained at accessing years of neuro-fingerprint data in order to uncover possible abuse. When abuse is found, the student is removed from the program, and his or her neuro-fingerprint is flagged. Students with previous offenses are often subject to a thorough smart drug evaluation when they apply for another credentialing program. (page 14)

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Coming from several directions simultaneously, the edtech movement is vast and international, and billions of dollars are being poured into it each year in the hopes of cashing in on a market said to possibly reach $252 billion by 2020.  Personalized learning is just one aspect of the movement, whose overall goal is to rid education of teachers, among other things. 

While everyone was fighting off school vouchers and charter schools, the billionaires and their promoters (many most pro-public school activists have not even heard of) and the federal government were hard at work creating a vast infrastructure for edtech, which encompasses learning apps, gamification, virtual charter schools, online platforms, biometrics, virtual tutors, social media monitoring of students, surveillance, big-data, data-brokers, hacking, social control by the government and corporations, the gig economy, etc., and the complete financialization of education (please read Tim Scott’s piece, too). 

Automated Education + Chasing Skills + Debt = Social Control

from Wrench in the Gears
April 15, 2017

I posted the scenario below in November of 2015 as a Facebook note. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve come across a number of items having to do with skills, automation, and human capital management, so I thought I would pull it back out to share. Below are a couple of articles that caught my eye:

Article 1: New Tools Needed to Track Technology’s Impact on Jobs, Panel Says by Steve Lohr of the New York Times

Article 2: The EIDCC, The Experience Graph, and the Future of Human Capital by Shelly Blake-Plock of Yet Analytics

I’m a parent activist, not an educator or economist. But after reading and listening to a wide range of sources, I came up with the construct below. In the 18 months since I wrote it, many indicators seem to confirm this is where we are headed. I’d be interested in hearing your feedback and welcome comments explaining how this is all wrong.

Originally posted to Facebook November 2015:

Emily Talmage noticed a connection between ed reformers, those funding CBE, and student loan financing. I was thinking about it today, and I think I see how it will play out. Follow the money. Who stands to gain?

1. Move to the idea of online credentialing. Call it standards-based skills mastery, etc. Get everyone on board with CBE.

Click here to read the rest of the article. 

Global Finance Needs Our Schools to Fail

by Alison McDowell
@ Wrench in the Gears
April 7, 2017

Yesterday Peter Greene expanded on an idea I’d put forth a few months back that Competency Based Education (and really all digital curriculum) was a way of gradually turning neighborhood public schools into charters from the inside out. I encourage you to take a few minutes to read his piece “Charterizing From Within.” I’m glad this proposition is making it out into the world and finding a wider audience. However there are still many who doubt CBE / Personalized Learning / Blended Learning etc. will ever take hold. This despite the fact that adaptive “personalized” learning systems are popping up all over the country each passing day.

Doubters say virtual schools and e-learning don’t “work.” So there; it won’t happen. But therein lies the problem. Many assume that a system that “works” is one designed to serve the needs of children and society as a whole. The present system, however, is being increasingly twisted to serve the interests of global capital markets. When you look at it through that lens, the “failure” of CBE is actually “success.” Succeeding by creating failure moves the ball forward for those who seek to kill the old system and create a new educational paradigm, one custom-built for profit.  That is why global capital needs our schools to fail. Comprehensive dismantling of public school districts across the nation will throw open the doors to a new age of social impact investing. If you’re not familiar with the the term yet, please set aside time to read “Impact Investing and Venture Philanthropy’s Role in Sowing the Seeds of Financial Opportunity” carefully. Take the time. It’s important.

In the aftermath of the failure that has been intentionally created, venture capitalists will install learning ecosystems in the place of neighborhood schools. These diffuse networks of online and badge-based learning opportunities will be structured for maximum social control, surveillance, and behavior management (the nudge) as well as financialization. Children will no longer be children, but rather commodities to be monitored in real time (Internet of Things), bet upon and securitized.

Below is a comment I left on Peter’s piece. I’ve shared it a few places, and some found it helpful, so I thought I would blog it here today.  I fully anticipate New Profit will be a central character in the drama that is unfolding. Below is a list of grants they’ve received from the Gates Foundation since 2014, $23 million+.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Dear Rhode Island: That April Fools Day Blended Learning Conference is no Joke!

by Alson McDowell
Posted on Wrench in the Gears
April 4, 2017

Competency-based education’s march through New England continues. In the fall it was Massachusetts with its fanfare around MAPLE (Massachusetts Personalized Learning Ed-Tech Consortium), and now on April Fools Day the joke appears to be on Rhode Island. This weekend hundreds of educators gathered in Providence for the sixth annual “Blended and Personalized Learning Conference” hosted by the Highlander Institute, the Christensen Institute, and the Learning Accelerator. Event sponsors included the Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, Nellie Mae Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the Overdeck Family Foundation.

The intent of this post is to describe the players and follow the money behind the shift to digital education in Rhode Island. If you’re new to the blog and not yet familiar with concerns about this shift please refer to this recent talk (it’s an hour, but I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback) or posts on learning ecosystems and “Future Ready” schools. Short on time? My 4-minute overview of the end game cuts to the chase.

The Highlander Institute based in Providence, RI began in 1990 as Children of Promise to serve students with diagnosed learning differences. In 2005 a partnership was established with the Highlander Charter School, and in recent years the organization has been become an incubator and cheerleader for ed-tech and blended learning in the state. A query of Gates Foundation grants shows that the Institute has received nearly $2.5 million in support of these efforts since 2015, including a recent grant of $1.7 million. EdTechRI, run by the Institute, is part of a national network of test beds funded by Gates that pairs ed-tech entrepreneurs with teachers and classrooms. Their FUSE RI program has trained 59 teacher fellows since 2014. These educators and administrators are coached in blended learning “best practices” (data, data, data) and sent out to assess readiness and implement these blended learning programs in LEAs throughout the state, 29 and counting. FUSE fellows have access to “flex funds” to supplement their learning and subsidize program development.

Woonsocket provides a useful case study in how Highlander’s programs influence school districts, guiding them to adopt policies friendly to ed-tech implementation. In 2014 Heather Neil, an elementary technology integration specialist, participated in the first FUSE RI fellows cohort. As part of the program she designed district-wide professional development for teachers, implemented district PLC around blended learning and supported the superintendent in becoming “more tech savvy.” Her profile page notes she “is an active member of EdUnderground, a PLC of education technology pioneers and early adopters from across Rhode Island.” Following her participation, the district entered into a two-year partnership with Highlander, piloting blended learning in select classrooms throughout the district and had one 8^th-grade cohort using Summit Basecamp, a program developed by Summit Charter Schools. The Institute then recognized the Woonsocket Education Department with their 2016 FUSE RI Blended Learning District Leadership Award. By the way there is a regional Summit Learning Convening in Warwick, RI on April 24-25.

Click here to read the rest of the post.

Also see:

Peter Greene agrees that Competency-Based Education is charterization from within. http://tinyurl.com/lfajr2h

Corporate education reformers are suing those who threaten their profits in Africa. Can the role of tech for corporate education reformers be any clearer? http://tinyurl.com/mfv2yfp 

We change the world by showing up. I went to Seattle and got a video on Ed Reform 2.0/Learning Ecosystems to share.

by Alison McDowell
Posted on Wrench in the Gears
March 27, 2017

This weekend I relished the opportunity to meet up with some wonderful activists with whom I have been collaborating online for many months. Virtual worlds provide useful starting points for building networks and sharing information, but nothing beats being able to be in the same physical space, shake hands, share a hug, and discuss the future of education looking directly into each other’s eyes.

There are days when I wonder how I ended up where I am, where this is all headed, and who am I to be pushing the conversation forward? But I continue to believe that our voices matter, our questions matter, and public discussion matters. The future our children and grandchildren inherit hinges on our willingness RIGHT NOW to challenge educational surveillance and profiling being enabled by so-called “personalized” online adaptive learning systems and a “playlist” approach to education that is aligned to workforce skills and social-emotional competencies. I am heartened to hear of the legal challenge in Tennessee regarding a student’s right to have a human teacher rather than a computer. I was grateful to have a full room of everyday people, people like you, show up to the Lake City Library on a Saturday morning to hear what I had to say, and I hope you will help carry the message into your community.

While in Seattle we spent an afternoon visiting ed-reform landmarks, including the visitor center of the Gates Foundation. There wasn’t a gift shop, but I did get the best possible souvenir of my trip, a professionally done video prepared by Mike McCormick. Thank you Mike! I hope you will consider watching it, sharing it and starting these important conversations where you live. You might find this post on digital curriculum a useful starting point.

Link to the slides used in the presentation.