How exactly did the Department of Defense end up in my child's classroom?

 

from Wrench in the Gears

You cannot fully understand what is happening with Future Ready school redesign, 1:1 device programs, embedded assessments, gamification, classroom management apps, and the push for students in neighborhood schools to supplement instruction with online courses until you grasp the role the federal government and the Department of Defense more specifically have played in bringing us to where we are today.

In 1999, just as cloud-based computing was coming onto the scene, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 13111 and created the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative or ADL.

Section 5 of that order set up “The Advisory Committee on Expanding Training Opportunities” to advise the president on what should be done to make technology-based education a reality for the ENTIRE country. The intent was not only to prioritize technology for “lifelong learning,” but also shift the focus to developing human capital and in doing so bind education to the needs of industry and the economy.

Representatives of Cisco Systems and Jobs for the Future co-chaired the committee. Others around the table included the e-learning industry, student loan financiers, educational testing companies, human resource managers, labor market analysts, universities, community colleges, chambers of commerce, city government, and a futurist. George Bush incorporated Clinton’s work into Executive Order 13218, the 21st Century Work Force Initiative, the following year giving the effort a bipartisan stamp of approval. The Obama administration continued this push for online learning in the National Broadband Plan, which contained an entire chapter on digital education, as well as through a variety of 21st century school redesign efforts like ConnectEd, Future Ready Schools, and Digital Promise.

ADL began as an electronic classroom for the National Guard and later expanded to serve the entire Defense Department. In 1998 the government decided to use it for ALL federal employee training. And by leveraging its influence over federal contracting the government successfully pushed for standards that enabled wide adoption of cloud-based instructional technology.

Click here to read the entire article.

 

The Real News on the Fake Education Reform

More testing, more accountability for teachers and public schools, more data collection, merit pay for teachers based on worthless test scores and crap curriculum supplied by Pearon, McGraw Hill and Houghton Mifflin, more computer learning, more charters and more privatization. Yes, that is the agenda of those who profit from this fake education reform in the name of closing the achievement gap.

The grassroots organizations referred to in this video such as United Opt Out, Parents Across America, GEM in NYC, Save Our Schools who are fighting this Prussian-style pedagogy that has led to a mindless nation that still tunes in to mindless news stories about Warren Buffet's prostate or Dick Clark's life history, go unnoticed and one of the most important stories in the country goes untold. Meanwhile, on the ground and in the trenches, parents all across the country are fed up with high stakes standardized tests and are opting their children out, questioning the validity and value of these tests and the emphasis on data and measuring. They know intuitively that the insanity has reached its tipping point.

In this video by Real News Network, Joel Klein and his buddies are calling for more tests in more subjects because apparently there just aren't enough kids prepared for the military and who will protect us. These scare tactics used to justify this ridiculous hoax called education reform that has made a lot of people very rich, but the curtain is wearing thin as parents, teachers and students are increasingly weary from the onslaught of these meaningless and expensive tests their children are forced to take and they are forced to pay for with their taxes while Draconian budget cuts gut their schools by eliminating things like libraries, nurses, social workers, music, art, dance, gym and many other valuable and worthwhile programs.

It's time for teachers. students and parents all across the country to boycott the corporate network television news organization who continue to ignore a story that is impacting millions of families and communities in destructive ways. Turn these stations off, boycott their advertisers, call them and send them emails and letters. It's time to hold these so-called journalists accountable for NOT doing their job. As Justice Louis Brandeis noted, sunlight is the best disinfectant and boy does it stink in here!