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.

TNTP and Indiana SBOE’s Crony Corporate Teacher Evaluation Agenda

by Doug Martin

Funded by Bill Gates and started by corporate school darling Michelle Rhee, The New Teachers Project  has a big role in my  book Hoosier School Heist.  And this corporate consulting/temporary teacher group is at it again, this time with help from the Indiana State Board of Education.

On Wednesday, February 4, the state board will meet to determine whether or not it will take TNTP’s recommendations from the group's report done over the last two months on Indiana teacher evaluations for the state board, and there’s a very good chance it will, since TNTP has been a part of the school privatization movement in Indiana for years now.  

Since TNTP has partnered with SBOE board member Dan Elsener’s Marian University, so we know he's onboard with the agenda.  And just a few days ago, Eli Lilly agreed to hand out $3.4 million to the Mind Trust to expand TNTP and Teach for America in Indiana.

TNTP’s CEO, Ariela Rozman, is a Mind-Trust board member.  In 2013, Rozman made over $300,000 in total compensation (page 7).  That same year, TNTP made almost $4.8 million in government grants (page 9).  TNTP, then, was active in 30 cities and created 1652 teachers  for its organization (page 30). 

As noted in TNTP report to the Indiana SBOE, The New Teacher Project doesn't like local control and finds it a problem that 90 percent of the teachers in Indiana have been rated good, which makes firing them and hiring temporary recruits from TNTP and Teach for America more difficult and slows down school privatization.

Reporter Megan Trent summarizes TNTP’s recommendations, one of them being test scores:

The New Teacher Project recommendations include setting a range for teacher evaluations. For teachers specializing in an area covered on ISTEP tests, 33% to 55% of the teachers’ evaluations would be based on student test scores. Educators that teach subjects not covered on ISTEP would have a range of 25% to 40% of their evaluations based on test scores.

Praising the evaluation system set up four years ago and criticizing the “obstacles” (like Glenda Ritz?) to implementation that have occurred (see page 8-9), TNTP, of course, wants the SBOE (minus Glenda Ritz as its chairperson, no doubt) to have a major role in the new plan, and this may require new laws (see page 26).  If adopted, TNTP's teacher evaluation plan for Indiana will begin in 2016.

Filled full of corporate language like “stakeholders,” the plan, no doubt, seeks to further dismantle teachers in Indiana.  Hoosiers need to find out how much TNTP was paid to do the SBOE report and if any taxpayer money was used and how much.

For TNTP’s recent and secret school privatization teacher preparation goals at the University of Memphis (which was hidden from department of education professors), read Jim Horn’s piece here.

RTTT, the Borg, and the Beehive

The Edu-Oligarchs, led by Gates, Broad, and the Waltons, are pushing states hard to get them in on the 4.35 billion-dollar pettifogging bribery scheme and fund-funneling frenzy of Duncan's Race Over the Top (ROTT). Not only have the Bold Deformers laid out the race course and named the judges, but they are now in the process of training the race entrants and creating the betting form with their own handicapping. Nothing is being left to chance in this race. Resistance is futile.

The New Teacher Project, an outfit funded by Gates and the Feds to undercut teacher unions and professionalism, is in charge of the betting and handicapping. NTP is where Michelle Rhee cut her fangs, and they put Louisiana and Florida as the heads-on favorites. Louisiana, first to use standardized tests to make or break 4th graders, has already adopted pay-per-score and is now evaluating their teacher preparation programs based on test scores. Florida is a leader in corporate charters, a pioneer in corporate voucher programs, and a stalwart in the promotion of year-round high-stakes testing. (Florida and Louisiana rank 36th and 45th in education attainment, respectively, and both rank among the top 10 states with the highest percentages of high school dropouts.)

Sam Dillon captures the excitement for the NYTimes:

. . . .One of the most time-consuming tasks has been lining up written statements of support signed by superintendents and other officials in every school district that would receive grant money. California alone has about 1,000 districts, so getting the word out to each of them and cajoling their local leaders to send in signed agreements has taken much of Mr. Miller’s time, he said.

“It’s what I do every day — I’ve talked to four superintendents this morning,” Mr. Miller said by telephone. He thought a moment, then added: “Sorry, I’ve got to get off the phone. I’m wasting time — you’re killing me with all these questions!”

Illinois has 870 school districts, said Darren Reisberg, a deputy superintendent at the Illinois State Board of Education, so he, too, along with the state superintendent, Christopher Koch, has been talking up Illinois’ proposal with officials in hundreds of districts.

“That’s something Dr. Koch and I are doing just about every day, all day,” Mr. Reisberg said.

Competition for the federal grants is especially intense because state budgets are distressed and awards for states the size of Illinois could be $400 million. Several nonprofit organizations have handicapped states’ chances in the competition. The nonprofit New Teacher Project, for instance, months ago rated Illinois as “somewhat competitive.” Florida and Louisiana were the only two states the project rated as “highly competitive.”

Florida officials say they know they have a shot at the prize money. “But our commissioner has directed us to pretend that we’re not even hearing that,” said Holly Edenfield, an executive director at the Florida Department of Education who is coordinating work to prepare the state’s proposal. She has not calculated how many hours she and her colleagues have logged so far.

“We just know our effort is immense and time-consuming,” Ms. Edenfield said.

The Florida department headquarters in Tallahassee has become a 17-story beehive of Race to the Top activity, said Tom Butler, a spokesman.

“Every time I ride the elevator in the morning, and every time I leave at night, there’s a common conversation about Race to the Top that you can have with any of the 1,000 people who work here,” Mr. Butler said, “because every person is involved.”