Edu-Blocks Arrive in New Hampshire

Roughly two months ago I discovered Southern New Hampshire University had become the first academic institution in North America to issue a diploma credential / education transcript on the Blockchain. It surprised me. I knew Learning Machine (MIT) was working on this in Malta, but I had no clue there was a domestic trial underway. I dove in, did a lot of research, and created the map below. To view an interactive version that is actually readable click here.

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Ted Dintersmith is not here to save neighborhood schools!

from Wrench in the Gears

March 21, 2018

No, Ted Dintersmith is not coming to save our schools, because to him they’re obsolete. Last week Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post pitched Ted Dintersmith’s new book “What School Could Be,” and many ed-activists ate it up. I thought by now a “philanthropic” white male technocrat investor with absolutely no teaching experience coming on the scene to tell us how to fix our broken-on-purpose schools would be met with a healthy dose of skepticism. Dintersmith might say what we want to hear. His pitch might validate our concerns about punitive high-stakes standardized testing and the psychological damage caused by developmentally inappropriate education standards. He may criticize AP classes and the College Board; but if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Consider his quote from a recent EdSurge article “the focus should really be on funding schools the produce future entrepreneurial adults, instead of entrepreneurial adults today funding obsolete schools.”

Dintersmith’s is the face of Ed Reform 2.0. The new paradigm for education he envisions replacing our “obsolete” schools with is one where:

Competency or mastery-based education is the norm.

Skills are uploaded to online portfolios via apps.

Mindsets and habits of work are tracked.

Children teach one another.

Students are expected to be “in charge” of their learning.

Teachers become “mentors;” or are even replaced by volunteers.

Out of school internships are prioritized.

Instruction may be outsourced to community or work-based organizations.

Students are expected to have a passion and a pathway to the workforce.

With such a model, bricks and mortar schools and certified teachers could wither away and eventually disappear.

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Hoping to escape Competency-Based Education? Looks like Wyoming is your only option.

from Wrench in the Gears
May 2, 2017

Last week Susan Patrick of iNACOL (International Association of K12 Online Learning) and Chris Sturgis of CompetencyWorks presented “An Overview of K12 Competency-Based Education for Education Leaders and Teachers.” The webinar and slides can be accessed here. Compare the slides below and consider the gravity of our situation.

The first (above) shows the reach of Competency-Based Education policies today. Only Wyoming remains untouched.

The second shows the reach of those policies in 2012.

The Carnegie Corporation has signed on as a sponsor of iNACOL’s 2017 National Summit on Competency Based Education to the tune of $50,000. A list of 2016 sponsors can be found here.

Last September the Gates Foundation awarded iNACOL a grant “to develop an evidence-based report that identifies how personalized learning is emerging in the United States, what the drivers for moving to personalized learning are, and identification of patterns of why and how personalized learning is taking hold.”

In 2014 the Nellie Mae Education Foundation awarded a grant to “support iNACOL in the development of an integrated learning system that provides a platform for a school’s learning environment by enabling the management, delivery and tracking of student-centered learning and includes robust reporting and analytics capabilities.”

This week the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education and Digital Promise are bringing hundreds of researchers, teachers, entrepreneurs, professors, administrators, and philanthropists to Washington, DC to collaborate on EdTech Efficacy Research. Click here for bios of working group members who will be finessing data analytics that will set the stage for widespread adoption of impact investing in public education.

With the Ed Reform 2.0 transition well underway, it is imperative that education activists familiarize themselves iNACOL’s operations. The organization’s 2014 tax filing states their mission is to “Ensure all students have access to a world-class education and quality blended and online learning opportunities that prepare them for a lifetime of success.” Susan Patrick, President and CEO, left her position as Director of the US Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology in 2005 to launch iNACOL. While at the US DOE, she was the primary architect of the 2004 National Educational Technology Plan. Her LinkedIn profile notes she earned degrees in English and Communications and was employed as a legislative liaison and administrator of educational technology programs, but never taught or worked in a K-12 school setting.

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New Test to Solve Tennessee's "true ethical and moral dilemma"?

Candice McQueen has replaced Tennessee's toxic former Commissioner of Education, Kevin (Rhee) Huffman.  In doing so, McQueen has inherited one of the most aggressive corporate education agendas in the nation. 

At the same time, she has taken the reins of a state system that has been underfunded for at least the past 35 years, as governors and legislators have jumped from reform one bandwagon to another to collect any free federal cash being handed out, even as the percentage of the state's budget committed to education has continued to dry up (see Part II of The Mismeasure of Education).

If these challenges were not enough, Dr. McQueen faces a literacy meltdown as measured by state test scores, even with the infusion of $501,000,000 from Race to the Top federal funds--most of which never reached the classrooms or the severely underfunded school library programs that remain on life support. 

At the same time, poverty continues to grow across the state, with more than one in four children now living in poverty, and one in three black or brown children.  The state ranks 43rd in the nation in child poverty and 48th in Hunger and Food Insecurity.  As poverty and hunger spread, literacy scores continue to tank, especially since math prep has been the major focus of year-round test prep.

For Dr. McQueen, however, it is not the hunger, poverty, and oppression that represent the "true ethical and moral dilemma; it is, rather, the low reading test scores.

As these developments unfold, the billionaire governor, Bill Haslam, continues to hand out to his cronies as much of the public resources as he can, including the shuttering of public schools in favor of the corporate welfare charter reform schools.  And the chief federal architect of the racist new states rights education policy based on the proliferation of charter schools, Lamar Alexander, is at Haslam's side, ready to berate any school board that has the audacity to support its public schools as its first priority.  See story here.

The corporate foundation solution that has been prepared for Dr. McQueen's "true ethical and moral dilemma," however, is as old as the corporate efficiency movement that began over a hundred years ago: it is another standardized testing scheme that promises to produce even more failures, more inequality, more racist and classist results, and more inequity than the TCAP that is now headed for the dustbin of failed fixes.

The "new" antiquarian reform is called TNReady, and it is another test based on the infamous Common Core standards.  Like the old test, the new test will be used to label, sort, and further segregate the poorest and neediest children of the state in test prep hell schools, where they will be dehumanized and roboticized and made ready for a Walmart or Amazon future, or one without any job at all. 

Tennessee ranks 41st among states in the number of 18 to 24 year olds unemployed or not enrolled in higher education.

McQueen and Haslam's morally-bankrupt dehumanization school plan has the support of the corporate union affiliate in the state, the TEA, even though the majority of teachers in the state must surely know that this effort will end as poorly as the last one.  TEA President, Barbara Gray, is bullish on TNReady, ready or not:

The new test will also be given online, which officials believe will further help prepare students for life in the real world [irony alert].

However, Barbara Gray, president of the Tennessee Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union, told The Associated Press in an email later Thursday that teachers are concerned about a "lack of appropriate technology for students to complete the assessment online."

"Many school districts across the state, especially in our rural areas, have poor Internet connections and too few computers to efficiently administer the assessment," she said.

Aside from that, Gray said the new assessment overall should be beneficial.

Haslam Water Carrier, Jon Alfuth, Claims to Be the Voice of Teachers

Jon Alfuth has tapped in to the main artery of corporate welfare education reform schooling in Tennessee, with a blog up called Bluff City Education, where Alfuth leads a team of fellow TFA cult members in massaging and pasting up all the news that corporate education reformers want to frame for educator and parent consumption in West Tennessee.  

As a former drum major at UWisconsin-Madison, Jon is now leading the corporate reform school parade in Tennessee.  Who is Jon Alfuth?  

This is from his LinkedIn profile:

Jon has a post up today to announce the public portal that Haslam and his TFA Commissioner, Kevin Huffman, have offered for "public input" on what is wrong with the Common Core?  

This exercise in time killing and public spleen venting is based on the assumption that the rotted Common Core is innocent until proven guilty.  This clear sentiment is expressed in the seeping self-righteousness of Alfuth's announcement of the new site.  

This week the Governor unveiled the first step in his “full vetting of common core,” an online portal where any Tennessean can provide comments on the standards English or Math in any grade.

I took some time to complete the review process for my own content area (geometry) and wanted to provide a brief review of my experience with the portal. Overall I was very satisfied with the process. It is easy to use and puts the burden of proof on those who thing something needs to be changed. I truly believe that it should lead to a strong evidence-based review of our Tennessee State Standards.

First of all, it should be noted that Alfuth is a self-proclaimed math teacher, since none of this higher education coursework was in math education.   What he knows about teaching math, he learned on the backs of poor people's children at a charter chain gang in Memphis.

As for the “burden of proof” here, that load should be on the Governor and his corporate pals, who rammed through this untried and unstudied testing delivery system without a shred of evidence that any aspect of CCSS will have any positive effects on learning.

While the positive effects for technology companies and the testing-industrial companies will be too large to count, there have been no pilot studies conducted and no feedback gathered in early testing sites like New York, where 70 percent of kids failed the test in 2013. 

What percentage of failures would you predict in Tennessee??

If you want to understand the origins and likely outcomes of Common Core, get this documentary for just over $20.

Corporate Feeding Frenzy Continues in Fragmented Memphis Schools

When Bill Gates came to Memphis in 2009 with $90 million in handouts for every corrupt politician in the city and county, Memphis public schools were doomed.  This outcome was further assured by successful campaign to "consolidate" county and city schools.  Laws were changed, plans written by corporate foundation drones and Stand on Children politicos, and outlandish promises were made about turning the lowest scoring schools in TN into top scoring ones in 5 years. Beyond ridiculous, particularly in light of the fact that no state money or corporate money is going to do anything about poverty and lack of opportunity in the poor areas of Memphis.  And nothing to challenge apartheid schooling.

What we have today is not a consolidated system but a fragmentation of systems, so that now we have five suburban communities planning for their own segregated charter or public systems, a Memphis charter system controlled by local corrupt politicos, another Memphis charter system made up of Achievement District Schools run by out-of-state corporations (KIPP, Uncommon Schools, Rocketship, etc.), and what remains of the public school students in East Memphis and the County.  And let's not forget the largest private school concentration in the state.  Utterly atomized, just as Gates Broad, and the Waltons wanted. The only thing missing now are vouchers, which would allow the state to fund religious education in Memphis and elsewhere in the State.

In a Take Part corporate news piece, Suzi Parker provides this on what is going on Memphis:

At the heart of the program are charter schools that allow for intense student testing, performance pay for teachers, long school days and no teacher tenure. The district also incorporates recruits from Teach for America.

The Memphis district’s website states, “Proving the Possible by moving the bottom 5% of schools in Tennessee to the top 25% within five years.” Teacher unions have criticized the district, and some parents have complained about the loss of neighborhood schools. 

Race has also become an issue with critics who point out there are not enough black teachers in the district. And other critics say the schools are simply a small hub for the rich. Last month The Walton Family Foundation gave $1 million to fund training for four school leaders interested in running charters in the Achievement School District. 

In January, Republican Governor Bill Haslam visited the Memphis district and said the program was changing the archaic methods of teaching as well as the roles of schools
“A lot of it is about giving more autonomy,” he said at the time. “It’s about letting principals in school buildings and teachers in the classroom make more decisions because they have a better sense of how to do that than we do on Capitol Hill.”

It's interesting that school freedom and autonomy only become important considerations by Haslam and Huffman when the schools are handed over to corporate school operators.  Otherwise, accountability by testing remains mandatory for everyone else in Tennessee, i. e., public schools.

Of course, the high stake testing guarantees a continuing supply of "failed schools" (there will always be a bottom five percent) that can be handed over to privatizers and profiteers who plan to open more total compliance segregated corporate testing camps for poor children.

We called it eugenics a hundred years ago.  We call it neo-eugenics today.

The latest on the new Superintendent's search:  expect a former TFAer, per Rhee and Huffman.  Personally, my money is on an Eli Broad pick.

With Common Core, "You start to see entire ecosystems of investment opportunity lining up…It could get really, really big."

How does the growth of charter schools depend upon the Rotten Common Core?  See below.

Thanks to Stan Karp:

Latest Newark ‘performance report:’ blueprint for more closures/charters?

A new report & presentation from Newark State District Supt. Cami Anderson may lay the groundwork for more school closings, charter expansion, co-locations and staff firings. Anderson has already closed twelve schools during her 18-month tenure, leased district facilities to charters over the objection of the local school advisory board, and negotiated a new teachers contract that provides for “turnarounds” in up to 10 schools in each of the next three years. According to an NJ Spotlight story, Anderson said the new school performance report, “didn’t change any of her own reform strategies for the district, but rather helped ‘sharpen our goals.’

The new report was developed by the Parthenon consulting group, a Boston-based global management firm that identifies investment opportunities in education. Last summer, Parthenon executive Rob Lytle made a presentation on "private equity investing in for-profit education companies” to an elite group of investors in NYC. He told them the coming implementation of the common core standards and assessments would create a lucrative opportunity: “Think about the upcoming rollout of new national academic standards for public schools, he urged the crowd. If they're as rigorous as advertised, a huge number of schools will suddenly look really bad, their students testing way behind in reading and math. They'll want help, quick. And private, for-profit vendors selling lesson plans, educational software and student assessments will be right there to provide it. You start to see entire ecosystems of investment opportunity lining up…It could get really, really big."

Anderson is scheduled to present the Parthenon report to the Newark Advisory Board tonight.

Newark Schools Chief Pulls No Punches in Depicting Challenges

Superintendent presents new study’s data in bid to make case for major reforms

NJ Spotlight

Court Refuses To Dismiss Newark Local Control Appeal

Education Law Center

Rahm and the Fat Cats