Why High Stakes Testing Was Cancelled This Year (and Probably Will Be Next Year, Too)

May 16, 2020 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Civil Rights, college, Competency Based Education, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Data, Democrat, Democrats for Education Reform, Donald Trump, edtech, Education, Eugenics, Every Student Succeeds Act, John King, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Pennsylvania, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Racism, Republican, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, small class size, Special Education, Standardized Testing, standards, Student Mobility, student privacy, Students, Teachers, Technology Competency Based Education, coronavirus, COVID-19, Depersonalized Learning, distance learning, ed-tech, edtech, education, high stakes testing, personalized learning, Politics, schools, standardized testing, virtual learning

There are at least two silver linings to the current Coronavirus catastrophe for education.

One – with nearly all public schools closed, March was the first month since 2002 without a school shooting.

Two – districts nationwide cancelled high stakes standardized tests in April and May.

Taken together, these are two victories that no one could have predicted before November.

Gun safety restrictions remain laughably lax in the US compared to the rest of the world. And our system’s reliance on high stakes testing to hold schools and teachers accountable for economic inequalities and racially biased standards has been thoroughly criticized for nearly a century.

In short, the virus succeeded where policy did not.

The pandemic’s other effects have been more damaging as students, parents and teachers have struggled to move education online at home.

Teachers are seeing high absences especially among poor, underprivileged and special needs children. Not to mention worries about the quality and depth of education provided virtually and the stress it places on families.

To make matters worse, the situation seems likely to continue in some form when next school year begins in the fall.

With the COVID-19 virus likely to endure spreading unchecked due to a lack of adequate health screenings, the time it takes to make a vaccine, and an unwillingness by the government to save everyday people from the economic consequences of a nearly stopped economy, not to mention an increasing unwillingness among people to continue thorough social distancing procedures, schools may be left to solve the crisis themselves.

There’s been talk that when schools start up in August and September they may simply continue with cyber curriculum. Or they may open the physical buildings with safety protocols including half day classes of smaller size to keep students a safe distance apart.

In any case, the question of standardized testing arises again with a vengeance.

While there is some wiggle room, federal law (The Every Student Succeeds Act) requires all public school students be given standardized tests in grades 3-8 and once in high school.

The U.S. Department of Education waived that mandate this year because of the virus.

That was great news – a sound decision from a government agency known more for market solutions than rationality.

The question remains: why did the department do it?

Whether staffed by Democrats or Republicans, this doesn’t sound like them.

Why was this exception made and will it be extended again given that the circumstances may be little different in 2020-21 than they were in 2019-20?

The answer seems to be rooted in the tests, themselves, and the economic circumstances which create and sustains them.

WHY TESTS WERE CANCELLED

In late March, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said that her department would streamline the paperwork for states to request a waiver allowing them not to give high stakes testing this year and that the government wouldn’t use this year’s testing data in future school accountability ratings.

DeVos said in a statement:

“Students need to be focused on staying healthy and continuing to learn. Teachers need to be able to focus on remote learning and other adaptations. Neither students nor teachers need to be focused on high-stakes tests during this difficult time.”

How did we get here?

Well, imagine a world where this didn’t happen.

Before DeVos made her statement, some states like Colorado and Texas had already eliminated testing requirements without waiting for a response from DeVos.

If the federal government hadn’t answered these requests in the affirmative, it would have had to engage in an open power struggle with the states over control of public schooling.

This would be especially damaging for a Republican administration because of the party’s stance on state’s rights.

However, even if we put aside this power dynamic, the decision was inevitable.

CORPORATIONS FIRST

All of these assessments are the property of private corporations. These include Harcourt Educational Measurement, CTB McGraw-Hill, Riverside Publishing (a Houghton Mifflin company), and NCS Pearson.

States purchase the right to use these tests but assessment material is the ideological property of the parent corporation. And so they want it guarded from theft.

That’s why nearly all high stakes testing requires proctors – people whose job it is to set up, monitor and secure the testing environment. They make sure test takers don’t cheat, but they also are responsible for ensuring no information about specific test questions leaves the assessment environment.

This is true for standardized assessments at the K-12 level as well as college and certification tests.

I know because I’ve spent every year of my teaching career employed as a proctor throughout most of April as my students take the Pennsylvania System of School Assessments (PSSA) tests. But also when I got my degree I had to go to a designated testing center where I could be monitored as I took a series of assessments necessary to get my certification.

I had to sign in, empty my pockets including giving over my cell phone, and submit to being observed by the proctors and video surveillance. I even had to sign out and back in when I needed to use the restroom.

With physical classrooms closed, there was simply no way effectively to do this.

The College Board tried anyway with an abbreviated Advanced Placement test taken online from home this month to disastrous results – glitches, server issues and a failure by the organization to take responsibility.

However, the problem isn’t essentially technological. These assessments could be given online. Many districts do exactly that, but with teachers in the room acting as proctors.

The technological infrastructure may not yet be in place for widespread virtual testing, but that’s not an insurmountable hurdle.

Test security is a much stickier issue – without real, live people policing the environment, testing information would be at risk.

Rival companies could get access to trade secrets. The value of scores could come under scrutiny due to concerns of student cheating. And the tests, themselves, would for the first time be visible to parents and the general public.

TESTING SECRECY

As a classroom teacher, I get to see these infernal tests. I get to see the questions.

They are not good. They are not well-written, well considered, developmentally appropriate or even good at evaluating student understanding of the knowledge they claim to be assessing.

But up to this point, anyone who gets to see the tests is sworn to secrecy including the students.

The kids taking these exams – regardless of age – are no longer treated as children. They are clients entering into a contract.

At the start of these tests, they are warned of the legal consequences of violating the terms of this agreement.

THE PSSAS

In particular,the PSSAs require students to read the following warning on the first day of the assessment:

DO NOT PHOTOGRAPH, COPY OR REPRODUCE MATERIALS FROM THIS ASSESSMENT IN ANY MANNER. All material contained in this assessment is secure and copyrighted material owned by the Pennsylvania Department of Education. Copying of material in any manner, including the taking of a photograph, is a violation of the federal Copyright Act. Penalties for violations of the Copyright Act may include the cost of replacing the compromised test item(s) or a fine of no less than $750 up to $30,000 for a single violation. 17 U.S.C. $ 101 et seq

So the first act of testing is a threat of legal consequences and possible fines.

In the commonwealth, we also force kids to abide by a specific code of conduct for test takers. They must enter a quasi-legal relationship before they are even permitted to begin.

Much of this code is common sense. Get a good night’s sleep. Fill in bubbles completely using a number two pencil.

But some of it is deeply disturbing.

For example, students are told to “report any suspected cheating to your teacher or principal.”

They have to agree to be an informer or snitch to a government agency. My students aren’t old enough to vote or even drive a car, but they are directed to collaborate with the government against their classmates.

In addition, they are told NOT to:

-talk with others about questions on the test during or after the test.

-take notes about the test to share with others.

Students are compelled into a legalistic vow that they won’t break this code. On the test, itself, we make them fill in a bubble next to the following statement:

By marking this bubble I verify that I understand the “Code of Conduct for Test Takers” that my Test Administrator went over with me.

As a test administrator, I am not allowed to move on until all students have filled in that bubble.

Technically, we are not making them promise TO ABIDE by the code of test takers. Perhaps we lack that legal authority. We are, however, making them swear they understand it. Thus we remove ignorance as an excuse for noncompliance.

As a proctor, I have to sign a similar statement that I understand the “Ethical Standards of Test Administration.” Again, much of this is common sense, but it includes such statements as:

DO NOT:

-Discuss, disseminate or otherwise reveal contents of the test to anyone.

-Assist in, direct, aid, counsel, encourage, or fail to report any of the actions prohibited in this section.

So even teachers technically are not allowed to discuss the test and should report students or colleagues seen doing so.

And according to the “Pennsylvania System of School Assessment Directions for Administration Manuel”:

Those individuals who divulge test questions, falsify student scores, or compromise the integrity of the state assessment system in any manner will be subject to professional disciplinary action under the Professional Educator Discipline Act, 24 P.S. $ 2070. 1a et seq, including a private reprimand, a public reprimand, a suspension of their teaching certificate(s), a revocation of their teaching certificate(s), and/or a suspension or prohibition from being employed by a charter school. [emphasis added]

CORPORATE VULNERABILITY

If students were allowed to take these tests unsupervised at home, all of this legal protection would disappear.

The corporations would be much more exposed and defenseless.

THAT’S why the tests were cancelled this year.

It wasn’t because anyone rethought the value of high stakes tests – though they should have. It wasn’t because anyone had considered standardized testing’s history in the eugenics movement – which they should have. It wasn’t because anyone was worried that giving these tests would take away precious academic time – though they should have.

It was to protect the business interests that would be at risk otherwise.

THE DYSTOPIAN TESTING FUTURE

The need for proctors is a problem that the testing companies know about and are working to eliminate.

In fact, they’ve been trying to line things up in their favor for years.

Their answer is something called Competency Based Education (CBE) or Proficiency Based Education (PBE). But don’t let these names fool you. It has nothing to do with making children competent or proficient in anything except taking computer-based tests.

Paradoxically, it’s sold as a reduction in testing, but really it’s about changing the paradigm.

It’s a scheme that ed tech corporations privately call stealth assessments. Students take high stakes tests without even knowing they are doing it. They’re asked the same kinds of multiple-choice nonsense you’d find on state mandated standardized assessments but programmers make it look like a game.

This safeguards the tests because kids aren’t aware of being tested. Constant micro-assessments blend in with test prep curriculum until there is little to no difference between the two. Academics gets dumbed down to the level of multiple choice and critical thinking is redefined as asking “What does the questioner want me to think?”

Yet the results could still be used to label schools “failing” regardless of how under-resourced they are or how students are suffering the effects of poverty. Mountains of data will still be collected on your children and sold to commercial interests to better market their products.

But that’s just how it is used in schools today.

The potential is to make this a replacement for physical schools.

It’s a disaster capitalism reform tailor made for the Coronavirus age, but not yet ready for large scale implementation.

Imagine a world where there are no schools – just free range children plopped in front of a computer or an iPad and told to go learn something.

No schools, no teachers, just gangs of students walking the streets, stopping along the way to thumb messages to each other on social media, play a video game or take an on-line test.

That’s the world many ed tech entrepreneurs are trying to build.

One thing they need is a pet policy of DeVos and the Trump administration – Education Savings Accounts (ESAs).

Normally, the federal, state and local government collect taxes to fund an individual child’s education, which is then spent at a public or charter school.

However, ESAs would allow that money to go elsewhere. It could go to funding the tuition at a private or parochial school like a traditional school voucher.

Or it could be used for discrete education services provided by the ed tech industry.

It’s almost like homeschooling – without a parent or guardian in charge.

The idea is often called a learning ecosystem.

But it’s just a single person cyber school with little to no guiding principles, management or oversight.

Education is reduced to a series of badges students can earn by completing certain tasks.

Reading a book or an article gives you a badge. Answering a series of multiple-choice questions on a reading earns you more badges. And if you’ve completed a certain task satisfactorily, you can even earn a badge by teaching that same material to others.

It’s the low wage gig economy applied to education. Children would bounce from a few hours of Khan Academy videos here to a software package there and Voila! “Modern” education!

And as an added benefit, the badge structure creates a market where investors can bet and profit off of who gains badges and to what degree on the model of crypto-currencies like Bitcoin!

Make no mistake, it’s not about improving the quality of education. It’s about providing the cheapest possible alternative and selling it to the rubes as innovation.

It’s school without the school or teachers.

CONCLUSIONS

This is where the testing industry is going.

This is where we would be today if the legal framework were in place and the technology were widespread, adequate and capable of safeguarding corporate intellectual property without the need for test proctors.

In the short term, this is good news.

As long as the pandemic keeps school buildings closed or keeps them running at less than capacity, the chances of mandating high stakes testing during the crisis goes down.

On the flip side that’s detrimental to student learning in the here and now, but it does offer hope for the future. It at least opens the door to cancelling high stakes testing in 2020-21 like we did this year. And the longer we keep those tests at bay, the greater likelihood they will go away for good.

However, the people at the testing corporations are far from stupid. They know that each year we forgo the tests proves how unnecessary they are.

A coalition of six neoliberal organizations warned against cancelling the tests nationwide in March.

“As the coronavirus pandemic evolves on a daily basis, it would be premature to issue blanket national waivers from core components of the law. Thus, case-by-case consideration of each state’s needs is, at this time, most appropriate,” said a letter signed by testing industry lobbyists including John King, the former secretary of education and head of the Education Trust.

They have the future mapped out – a future with immense earnings for their companies and shareholders.

We must be fully aware of what is happening and why if we are to have any chance of opposing the next disaster and coming out of the current crisis with better school policy than we went in.

If we are to safeguard an authentic education for our children, we must learn these lessons, ourselves, now.

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HBO’s “Bad Education” Aims at Public School Theft While Ignoring More Frequent Fraud at Charter Schools & Testing Companies

April 27, 2020April 27, 2020 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, capitalism, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Credibility, Data, Democrat, edtech, Education, Eugenics, history, Learning, Local Control, Media, Network for Public Education, New York, Obama, Opt Out, Parents, Pennsylvania, Politics, Prejudice, principals, privatization, Propaganda, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Technology, Toxic Testing, White Privilege Bad Education, charter schools, Cyber Charter Schools, ed-tech, education, film, fraud, HBO, Hugh Jackman, movie, Politics, public schools, school vouchers, standardized testing, theft

“Bad Education” is a frustrating movie to watch as a public school teacher.

It does a fine job telling the true story of a wealthy New York district where administrators stole millions of dollars for themselves.

But it ignores the far more frequent waste and malfeasance caused by school privatization, high stakes testing and runaway ed tech.

Maybe I’m being too sensitive, but there is no subject more political than public schools.

During the current Coronavirus pandemic, teachers and schools are finally getting some respect from people who are trying to “home school” their own kids while the nation’s classrooms are shuttered.

But education budgets are still routinely slashed, and every policymaker from Betsy DeVos to Barack Obama still thinks there is nothing better than closing public schools and replacing them with charter and/or voucher schools.

Pundits continually decry low test scores while applauding every means to increase racial and economic segregation. They push every policy to increase the school to prison pipeline for black and brown students.

And now HBO drops this movie about Rosalyn School District Superintendent Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman) who embezzled $11 million from taxpayers.
What happened in Rosalyn was scandalous. But it’s an outlier.

Such misappropriation and outright theft rarely happens at public schools. After all, the records are all public. It just takes someone to check up.

For REAL theft you have to go to charter and voucher schools where the law literally allows them to spend our money without most of that public oversight.

Viewers like me from Pennsylvania still remember Nick Trombetta. The founder and former CEO of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School stole a similar sum (at least $8 million), and got much less prison time (20 months vs. Tassone who served 3 years). Trombetta used taxpayer dollars to buy a$300,000 private jet for goodness sake! He bought a $933,000 condo in Florida! He bought $180,000 houses for his girlfriend and mother in Ohio. He did all this and more – and his lawyers got the charges down to tax evasion! Why is there no movie about THAT?

Or how about June Brown?

As the head of Agora Cyber Charter School, which was part of the K12 Inc. charter empire, she was indicted for stealing $6.5 million from taxpayers. She and her executives were indicted on 62 counts of wire fraud, obstruction of justice and witness tampering. She had a reputation for claiming large salaries and filing suits against parents who questioned her.

Where’s that movie?
The history of charter schools reads like a who’s who of hucksters and thieves!

Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) the largest charter school in Ohio was forced to shut down and auction off all its taxpayer funded property because administrators grossly inflated its students body of 12,000 online students to the state.

New Jersey charter schools spent as much as $800 million of taxpayer dollars to buy property that they then charged taxpayers additional money to rent from the charter schools, according to an IRS investigation.

The Network for Public Education published a report in 2019 detailing more than $1 billion in federal dollars misappropriated by charters – including hundreds of millions spent on charters that never even opened or that closed soon after opening.

I think those would make good movies. Don’t you?

But let’s not forget the other vulture industries that prey on our public school system without providing much of value in return.

If you want REAL fraud, you have to go to the standardized testing and ed tech industry sucking away billions or taxpayer dollars while providing services that are either unnecessary or downright destructive.

Why do we give every public school child high stakes tests in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school? Because the federal government says so.

These tests don’t tell us how well students are doing in school. We have at least 180 days of classroom grades that tell us that.

These tests taken over a period of a few days tell us what the corporation making them thinks is important. And they nearly always show that richer kids are doing better than poorer kids, and that whiter kids are somehow “smarter” than blacker kids.

And for this prized data we pay billions of dollars to big businesses every year.
It’s one of the largest captive markets in existence. That’s some 50.4 million children forced to take standardized assessments. The largest such corporation, Pearson, boasts profits of $9 billion annually. It’s largest competitor, CBT/ McGraw-Hill, makes $2 billion annually. Others include Education Testing Services and Riverside Publishing better known through its parent company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

If many of these companies sound like book publishers, that’s because they are or their parent companies are. And that’s no coincidence. It’s another way they bolster their own market.

Not only do many of these testing corporations make, provide and score standardized assessments, they make and provide the remedial resources used to help students pass.

So if your students are having difficulty passing the state test, often the same company has a series of workbooks or a software package to help remediate them. It’s a good business model. Cash in before kids take the test. Cash in when they take it. And if kids fail, cash in again to remediate them.

Ever wonder why our test scores are so low? Because it’s profitable! The money is all on the side of failure, not success. In fact, from an economic point of view, there is a disincentive to succeed. Not for teachers and students, but for the people who make and grade the tests.

In fact, when I sat down to watch “Bad Education” I thought it was going to be about high stakes testing cheating scandals. I thought it was going to be about how the pressure to have students score well on the tests have in some cases resulted in teachers and/or administrators changing answers to inflate the scores.

But no. That’s not mentioned at all. There’s talk about test scores but their value is never questioned for one second.

Hugh Jackman’s superintendent dreams of leading his schools from getting the 4th highest test scores to having the 1st highest. But nowhere does anyone mention how these tests were literally developed by Nazi eugenicists or how they have been challenged countless times for violating children’s civil rights or even the sizable parent-led opt out movement in the same New York suburbs where the film takes place.

Okay. Maybe I AM being too sensitive.

The film does seem to have a theme about how we expect everything from schools and teachers and don’t reward them well enough. But this is undercut by the obvious villainy of people who use that discrepancy to take advantage of the trust the public has placed in them.

Public schools rarely act this way.

I fear that many people will miss that point.

Instead it will be more fuel to the fire that public schools are bad and must be replaced.

There’s even a parting shot about Jackman’s character’s pension.

I’m all for drama.
But when filmmakers bend over backward to ignore the elephant in the room, I tend to lose my appetite for popcorn.

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Adventures in Online Teaching: Reinventing the Wheel for a Handful of Students

April 25, 2020 stevenmsinger absenteeism, Accountability, Betsy DeVos, bloggers, Close Reading, Compassion, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Data, edtech, Education, home school, Journals, Labor, Learning, literature, Local Control, Parents, Politics, Poverty, principals, school closings, Schools, Special Education, Student Mobility, Students, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Technology, video games attendanance, Computers, coronavirus, cyber, distance learning, ed-tech, edtech, education, educators, online, Politics, Students, teacher, teachers, technology, trauma, virtual learning

Today in our ZOOM meeting, one of my students tried to get one over on me.

I sat at the bureau in my guest bedroom, surveying a gallery of 7th grade faces lined up in little boxes on my laptop like the opening scene of the Brady Bunch.

Lilly was lying on her bed face up, almost definitely scrolling on her cell phone.

Pha’rrel was eating a cookie as he tried to fit his overgrown curls under a gray hoodie.

And Jimmy was smiling at me with the cheesiest close up you ever saw in your life.

The smile was so wide. The eyes were so glassy. The face was so still.

“Jimmy, did you put up a picture of yourself on your camera!?” I asked.

Somewhere miles away he laughed, apologized and took it down.

If we were back in the classroom, I probably would have come down on him.

He used to sit in the back of the room, face buried in his iPad, ear buds plugged into his brain and his work done in the most careless but high-speed fashion possible.

About once a week I had to take away some device just so his Internet-rattled mind could pay attention.

What am I to do now? Those apps and devices are the only thing connecting him to even the most rudimentary schooling.

He still wants to appear to be paying attention, appear to be done with whatever useless crap I am having him do so he can play Fortnite, watch YouTube videos or text – all behind a digital mask of innocent concentration.

So I moved on.

We read a passage together and I noticed Melanie had her eyes closed.

Not just that. She was in her comfy sweats, cuddled under the covers with a kitten curled under her elbow purring away.

“Melanie?” I say.

No response.

“Melanie, did you hear what we just read?”

Nothing.

She’d do that in class sometimes, too. She’d be zonked out, her head plastered to the desk in a puddle of quickly congealing drool. Sometimes it was pretty hard to wake her.

I remember conferencing with her and her mom trying to find out if there was anything wrong – but, no, she was simply misusing the privilege of picking her own bedtime.

How was I to keep her awake online? I couldn’t shake the desk, rattle her papers or even let my voice naturally get louder as it gained proximity.

I had to let her sleep.

Oh and what’s this? Was that Teddy finally joining the ZOOM Meeting 20 minutes in?

I clicked to let him join and immediately it was clear that he was missing something important.

“Teddy? Is that you?” I said.

“Yeah, hey, Mr. Singer.”

“Ted, you forget something?”

“Wha?”

“Ted, your shirt?”

He looks down at his naked torso.

“Oh, I haven’t gotten dressed yet.”

“Uh, we can see that, Buddy. Why don’t you turn your iPad around and put on a shirt and pants? Okay?”

These are just some of the hurdles you face as an online teacher.

Ever since the Coronavirus pandemic shuttered schools across the country, teachers like me have been asked to finish up the year with students via the Internet.

It’s not been exactly a smooth transition.

Getting kids attention is not an easy task under the best of circumstances. Online it’s nearly a Herculean labor.

Strangely the episodes related above aren’t even close to the worst of it.

More than students’ attempts to message each other through the lesson or the constant screaming in the background at some kids homes or the vacant stares of the child with ADHD whose IEP calls for teacher proximity and eye contact, but how do you do that from across town? – more than all of that is the silence.

The empty, deafening silence of the majority of kids who don’t even show up.

I’ve been doing this for three weeks now and I average about 40% participation.

Some days a class might be almost full. Another day there might be two kids.

I know it’s not necessarily the children or the parents’ fault.

We’re in the middle of a global catastrophe. Family members are sick, kids are scared, and many don’t have experience with Internet, the devices or certainly the learning platforms we’re using.

Districts can give out iPads and mobile hot spots, but not familiarity with technology, not a quiet place to work, not a safe and secure learning environment.

When a parent tells me her child is having trouble with something, I excuse him. I get it.

When a student tells me she doesn’t understand how to do something, I don’t penalize her. I try to fix the problem and ask her to give it another shot.

But when you’ve been tasked with creating almost entirely new curriculum on the fly for several different classes– and you do – it’s anticlimactic that so few kids show up to see it.

I almost don’t mind it when someone’s cat swaggers in front of the screen and flaunts its butthole for all to see.

That’s just life in the age of distance learning.

But when I design all these assignments and teach all these classes, I wish more students showed up.

My district doesn’t require me to do all this.

I could have just thrown a few worksheets up on Google Classroom and called it a day.

That’s kind of what administrators want, I think. Just review previously taught skills. Make it look like we’re doing something. And we’ll close the academic gaps next year.

But when the world shut down, my 8th graders were getting ready to read “The Diary of Anne Frank” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.” You don’t really expect me to skip over that, do you?

My 7th graders were getting ready to read a gripping mystery story, “Silent to the Bone” by E.L. Konigsburg. You don’t really think I’m going to substitute that with grammar and vocabulary worksheets? Huh?

So I narrowed it all down to essentials.

I could have assigned my students to read the texts on their own and then made them write reader response journals. But I don’t think any but my most self-motivated students would have done it and even they would have lost a lot without being able to discuss it.

So I put a few assignments on Google Classroom, but most are through live ZOOM Meetings where the students and I talk through the texts together.

The 8th graders read the play version of “Anne Frank” together with me, and it’s actually going pretty well.

I’m able to display the text on the screen and move the cursor under what they’re reading.

I’ve even seen some reluctant readers improve right before my eyes.

I’ve always suggested that students put their index fingers under the words as they read, but few do it. Using ZOOM like this forces them to follow my advice.

Of course, the class is a tiny fraction of what it would be in person.

If we were still in the school building, I’m positive they’d be learning more. We’d be able to discuss more. I’d have a better read of the room. They would be less capable of hiding behind the technology.

But there is real life-long learning taking place.

It’s my most successful group.

My 7th graders are a different story.

They are the kind of class you have to explode a stick of dynamite under to get them to notice what’s right before their eyes.

And more of them actually show up. Yet much of what we’re reading seems lost on them.

They are much more dedicated to being present in body if not in spirit – and barring an exorcism, I’m unsure how to reach many of them through fiber optic cables.

Then we have my Creative Writing class – basically a journaling course taught to a different group of students every few weeks.

It’s particularly challenging because I’ve met very few of them in person before the school closed.

However the course also lends itself best to this distance learning format.

Back in the school building, I used to give students a prompt every day, explain it and then have them write. I’d go from desk-to-desk as they worked and give feedback. Once they were all done, we’d share the writings aloud.

Now online, I just give the prompts via Google Classroom, provide instruction or attach video links and leave them to it. Then I comment on what they produce.

The problem is it’s my least attended class. I have a handful of students who do all the work, but most have done nothing. And this is a traditional work-at-your-own-pace cyber class.

I’ve had much more difficulty planning the other courses. Everything had to be reinvented. You want to read along with students, you need (1) a platform where you can all talk (2) an online text, (3) a way students can catch up, (4) a way to hand in written work, (5) a way to give tests without allowing students to cheat or do the work together.

It’s been challenging especially because sometimes one online solution will simply disappear.

For example, the e-text I was using for 7th grade was taken down overnight. One day it was available. The next it was gone. So I had to scramble to find a way to make it work.

That kind of thing happens all the time.

And speaking of time, when I’m not in a ZOOM Meeting with students or programming next week’s lessons, I have to wait for assignments to come in. Back in the classroom, they used to be handed in mostly all at the same time. I could grade them and move on.

In cyber-land, they trickle in piecemeal. I’m NEVER done teaching. It could be 1 am and my phone dings that an assignment, comment or question was turned in. I could wait until later, but usually I trudge over to the computer and see what needs my attention.

Which brings me to the final challenge – managing my home and teacher-life.

I’m not just an educator. I’m a parent.

I don’t teach my daughter. I don’t assign her lessons or work. But I have to oversee what her teacher wants her to do and make sure it gets done – and done correctly.

I’ll tell her to go in the dinning room and do three BrainPop assignments, or sign on to Edmentum and finish this diagnostic test, etc.

She’s generally pretty good about things, but if I don’t watch her, she’ll play Mario Party on her Nintendo all day long.

With the wife working from home, too, I usually give her the living room, my daughter is someplace else or her room, and I’m in the office.

On the one hand, it’s nice to be busy, and the good moments where I connect with students are just as magical as in person.

But most of the time, I feel lost at sea, depressed about the news and unable to concentrate or sleep the night through.

I’ve resigned myself to this life for the next six weeks when school will end for the academic year.

Perhaps the summer will be better. Maybe we’ll be able to go out and life will get somewhat back to normal.

However, I am not blind to the possibility that I’ll have to pick up again online in August and September.

School could start up with distance learning in 2020-21. Or we could have to quickly rush back to the Internet after a second wave of COVID-19 crashes upon us.

I keep thinking of the opening of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities”:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

The fact that life and schooling will be different after this crisis ends is both encouraging and terrifying.

There’s so much we could fix and finally get right.

But from what I see us doing as the crisis unfolds, my hope dwindles with each passing day.

Stay safe and stay optimistic.

But let’s not stay cyber.

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You Can’t Have My Students’ Lives to Restart Your Economy

April 18, 2020 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, absenteeism, Accountability, Art, Betsy DeVos, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Data, Donald Trump, edtech, Education, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Pennsylvania, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Republican, school closings, School Funding, Schools, small class size, Social Justice, Special Education, Standardized Testing, student privacy, Students, Teachers, Technology, Violence Against Children children, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, economics, ed-tech, edtech, online, pandemic, Politics, public schools, school closings, schools, standardized testing, Students, teachers, technology, Walton Family

It’s okay if a few children die to start up the economy.

That is literally the opinion being offered by media influencers and policymakers as Coronavirus social distancing efforts continue passed the 30-day mark.

In the midst of a global pandemic, we’ve closed down all nonessential businesses while people self quarantine at home waiting for the curve of infection to plateau and then drop off. Medical experts tell us this is the only way to ensure there are enough ventilators and hospital beds for those who get sick.

As it is, more than 700,000 Americans have tested positive for COVID-19 and 38,000 have died – more than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the September 11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the Oklahoma City bombing – combined. In fact, the United States has the highest number of Coronavirus deaths in the world.

Yet there is a concerted effort by the Trump Administration and plutocrats everywhere to get business back up and running. And to do that, they need the schools to reopen so parents can return to work.

They literally want to reopen schools as soon as possible – even if it isn’t 100% safe.

And if that means students, teachers and parents die, at least their sacrifices will have been worth it.

“Schools are a very appetizing opportunity,” said Dr. Mehmet Oz as a guest on Fox News’ Sean Hannity show.

“I just saw a nice piece in [British medical journal] The Lancet arguing the opening of schools may only cost us 2 to 3%, in terms of total mortality. Any, you know, any life is a life lost, but … that might be a tradeoff some folks would consider.”

Dr. Oz walked back the comment after popular backlash, but I believed him the first time. Many people would find that acceptable.

Dr. Phil McGraw (who unlike Dr. Oz is not a licensed doctor) said the following on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle:

“The fact of the matter is, the longer this lockdown goes on, the more vulnerable people get. And it’s like there’s a tipping point. There’s a point at which people start having enough problems in lockdown that it will actually create more destruction and actually more deaths across time than the actual virus will itself.”

He then compared coronavirus deaths to deaths from smoking, swimming pools and car crashes – which critics pointed out result from mostly voluntary behavior.

Once again, Dr. Phil walked back his comments after public outrage. And once again, I saw where he was coming from – because it’s clear where these celebrity talking heads are getting their information.

You find the same opinion tucked into many otherwise informative articles about the virus and education.

Education Next published a piece by Walton Family Foundation advisor and American Enterprise Institute fellow John Bailey with this precious little nugget tucked in its middle:

“Currently, the public health benefits of school closures and home quarantining outweigh the costs. But at what point does that equation flip? When do the economic, societal, and educational costs outweigh the public health benefits of these aggressive social distancing actions?”

The rich need the poor to get back to work. And they’re willing to put our lives on the line to do it.

What’s worse, they’re willing to put our children’s lives on the line.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not willing to risk my daughter’s life so that the stock market can open back up.

As a public school teacher, I’m not willing to bet my students lives so that the airlines and cruise industry can get back in the green.

Nor am I willing to gamble with my own life even if it means the NBA, NFL and MLB can start playing games and Hollywood can start premiering first run movies again.

There’s still so much we don’t know about COVID-19.

Initial reports concluded that older people were more susceptible to it, but as infections have played out worldwide, we’ve seen that 40% of patients are between 20-50 years of age. Children seem mostly asymptomatic. However, many immunologists suspect they are acting as carriers spreading the virus to the older people with whom they come into contact.

Children have a more difficult time with the constant hand washing and separating themselves at least 6 feet apart recommended by health experts. This is one of the justifications for closing schools in the first place. If we reopen schools too quickly, it could jumpstart another wave of infections.

In fact, that’s exactly what the Imperial College of London found in its own modeling study on likely U.S. and U.K. outcomes.

School closures can be effective to help suppress the transmission rates and flatten the curve, the report concluded, IF CONTINUED OVER FIVE MONTHS.

That’s a long time. But it gets worse.

In the absences of mass vaccinations – which may be as much as two years away – the study found the virus is likely to rebound for a second and third wave.

So when would it be safe to reopen schools?

Honestly, no one really knows.

Former US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb released a more optimistic answer in the “National Coronavirus Response: Roadmap to Reopening.”

The report maintains the need to continue social distancing including school closures until cases peak and we see sustained declines in new cases for 14 days.

That seems to be a fair minimum standard.

However, we are not there yet. The death toll continues to rise in the US and may continue to do so for some time yet.

Despite the science, every state has a different date in mind for when schools will reopen.

Since the beginning of April,a total of 21 state departments of education (including Pennsylvania’s) have decided to keep schools closed for the remainder of the academic year until at least August or September. Six states plus Washington, D.C., still have plans to reopen their schools before the end of the month.

Beyond the question of WHEN to reopen schools is the even more complicated one of HOW or IF.

President and chief executive of the National Association of State Boards of Education Robert Hull said administrators across the country are asking not how – but if – schools will reopen in the fall.

“Everybody says we hope we return to normal,” Hull said. “It’s not going to return to normal anytime soon because the new normal is going to be different.”

Multiple possibilities are being considered.

A major factor will be how well districts can test incoming students for infection.

The best solution would be quick and cheap Coronavirus screenings. If we could mass produce such tests and distribute them to schools or have the results be a precondition to coming to school, things might be able to run pretty much as normal.

If US schools all had digital thermometers (as they do in Singapore), students temperatures could be taken before letting them in to the building. Anyone running a fever could be sent home.

Some policymakers are even considering spot checking students throughout the day with thermometers and using video cameras to trace the path of any students running a temperature to tell who they may have come into contact with before being identified. However, this seems pretty disruptive to me and – especially in the younger grades – might terrify students and make them conversely feel less safe in school because of the very efforts done to ensure their safety.

In all likelihood, policymakers see to think schools will probably have to run while engaging in some sort of social distancing. And that’s not easy. Nearly everything from the way the academic day is organized to the maturity level of most students goes against this need.

One thought provoking proposal is reducing class size to no more than 10 students.

This would also have educational benefits allowing teachers the ability to give more one-on-one instruction. However, most classes are double or triple this size now. Few school buildings are large enough to double or triple the number of classrooms needed at the same time.

One solution to this is that children could attend on alternate days or on a half day basis – one group in the morning, another in the afternoon. The drawback is that this would reduce the hours students are in class. Lessons would either have to be cut down to essentials or some part of assignments may have to go online.

This might also narrow the curriculum so that the arts, music, and other subjects would be eliminated. Gym classes would probably have to be cancelled and lunches might have to be in the classroom, itself, instead of allowing large groups of students to congregate in the cafeteria.

Just ensuring that students aren’t all in the hallway at the same time would be a challenge. Class dismissals might be staggered or perhaps the teachers would move from room-to-room while the students stay put.

Moreover, the simple act of busing students to-and-from school is likewise complicated. If students sit further apart on the bus, that means each district needs either more buses at the same time or double the time to transport students at arrival and dismissal.

None of this would be cheap. It could necessitate more money on transportation, support staff and teachers. In a country where education budgets haven’t yet recovered from the Great Recession of George W. Bush, reopening schools safely would require an influx of cash.

But without it, the economy cannot get back under way.

When schools closed in March, many districts switched to some kind of distance learning. Teachers put assignments on-line and even teach through Internet meeting sites like ZOOM. Continuing this in some form – for part or all of the day – is also being considered. However, it causes as many problems as it solves.

Parents need to be able to get back to work. Many can’t stay at home taking care of their children indefinitely. And they can’t leave their kids to their own devices while trying to learn via computer, device or app.

Moreover, these cyber schooling efforts come with educational drawbacks. Just about every educational expert acknowledges that learning in-person is preferable. Students with special needs are particularly at risk because many of their individual education plans (IEPs) cannot be met remotely. And even though efforts have been made to help impoverished students gain access to the necessary technology and Internet access, the problem has by no means been universally solved. Not to mention privacy concerns with student data being pirated by unscrupulous ed tech companies.

Another issue is high stakes standardized testing.

With the Coronavirus crisis, the tests were cancelled this year – and no one has really missed them.

If lessons have to be cut to essentials, standardized testing and the need for endless test prep should be the first things to go. In fact, students, educators, parents and college professors will tell you how useless these assessments are. They reflect basic economic inequalities and enforce them by tying education funding to the test scores.

Poor kids score badly and rich kids score well, so the funding becomes a reward for the privileged and a punishment for the underprivileged.

That’s why it’s laughable when Hull laments “issues of equity” including how to measure what students are learning and how to help those who have fallen behind.

Equity is a matter of funding and opportunities – not test scores. Regardless of the problems with reopening schools, we could solve a long standing issue by erasing high stakes testing from the academic map.

But that’s been the elephant in the classroom for a long time.

Economic interests have trumped academic ones for decades.

Will we continue to value money over children? Will we pave the post-Coronavirus future over the bodies of sick children and adults?

Like any crisis, COVID-19 is another opportunity to get things right.

Here’s hoping we have our priorities straight this time.

Here’s hoping schools stay closed until we’re certain reopening them won’t endanger students, teachers and the community.

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The First Taste is Free: Ed Tech Follows Drug Dealer Sales Techniques with Schools During Coronavirus Crisis

April 4, 2020 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, Budget, California, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Common Core, Competency Based Education, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Data Mining, edtech, Education, Healthcare, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, Special Education, Standardized Testing, standards, student privacy, Students, Teachers, Technology Big Business, Computers, coronavirus, Corporate Education Reform, drug dealer, economics, ed-tech, edtech, education, educational technology, for-profit, Politics, Profit, public schools, teachers, technology

“Pst! Hey, Kid! Come here!”

Educational technologies are a multi-billion dollar industry.

“Who? Me?”

The coronavirus pandemic has closed schools across the globe, and districts have tried to solve this problem by putting their classes online.

“Yeah, you. I’ve got some… candy I want to give you.”

Nearly every ed tech company has offered help with this processes.

“Oh boy! I sure love candy… Wait a minute! How much does it cost?”

Teachers, parents, students and education activists are wary of educational technologies in the classroom, and research backs them up. Ed tech has been shown to widen socioeconomic divides, it hasn’t lived up to its promise of increasing academic gains, and – perhaps most tellingly – Silicon Valley executives restrict their own children’s use of technology and send them to tech-free schools.

“Nothing. It’s free.”

These for-profit corporations are offering limited time promotions – they’re providing additional services for free that would normally be behind a paywall.

“Oh goodie!”

Districts are jumping at the chance. They’re encouraging teachers to use apps, services and software that have never been tried before locally in an attempt to abide by continuity of education guidelines written by departments of education.

“That’s right. Absolutely free. But if you want some more, next time I’ll have to charge you a little something…”

So when the pandemic is over and classes eventually are reopened, a great deal of the technology that schools used to get through the crisis will no longer be on the house.

Continuing to use them will require an additional fee, and if districts end up budgeting for them, the money has to come from somewhere. So that means fewer books, field trips, tutors, classroom aides, and – yes – teachers.

In short, well-meaning governors, law-makers, administrators, school directors and even educators are participating in a program that in the long run may enrich private corporations but not be in the best interests of the students we’re supposed to serve.

I bring this up not to stop schools from using online learning during the crisis. Unfortunately that ship has sailed. Nor do I voice my objections to criticize teachers, parents or students. We all have to do what needs to be done to get through all this.

However, it is vital that we are aware of the compromises being made today so as to better avoid the pitfalls ahead.

When teachers use Zoom, Google Classroom, or any of dozens of other ed tech products during this season of social distancing, we must be aware that these should only be temporary measures. Do not resign yourself to any of this becoming the new status quo.

When classes resume, we can’t simply go back to normal. Nothing can ever be normal again. Normal is what got us into this mess – a society ill equipped to meet this pandemic – ill equipped to take care of its citizens, provide basic resources, equity and put people before profits.

The post coronavirus world must be one of universal healthcare, a social safety net for all and a robust, fully funded system of public education. We cannot allow it to be a dystopian world of edu-tech vulture capitalism where the economics of street corner drug pushers is used to dictate how public money is spent.

There are many clear reasons why.

First, education technologies are almost completely unregulated. Cybersecurity and student privacy laws are woefully out of date if not entirely nonexistent.

These applications collect a torrent of data on students. So do teachers, in fact, to calculate grades. However, if an educator were to share this information with outsiders, she could be sued. But if a corporation did the same thing, it falls into a legal no man’s land.

Each state has different laws denoting the limits of privacy.

The main federal law safeguarding student data privacy, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), was written in 1974 before much of these technologies even existed. It hasn’t been significantly amended since 2001.

So it’s left to individual districts, administrators, school boards and teachers to navigate these murky waters.

They end up trying to decipher the individual terms of service agreements and privacy statements with these companies that are often full of legal loopholes. In many cases, decision makers don’t even bother or give the job to school lawyers unversed in cybersecurity concerns or law.

While Congress has neglected its duty to regulate the industry, the matter is important enough that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) put out a strong warning. Two years ago, the Bureau cautioned consumers about the risks of classroom management tools like Class Dojo as well as student testing and remediation applications like Classroom Diagnostic Tools and Study Island.

The FBI warned schools and parents that widespread collection of student data involved in these applications could cause safety concerns if the information is compromised or exploited.

The Bureau was concerned about ed tech services because many are “adaptive, personalized learning experiences” or “administrative platforms for tracking academics, disciplinary issues, student information systems, and classroom management programs.”

And these are many of the same applications being used today for distance learning initiatives.

Education advocates have been sounding the alarm for years.

Commonsense.org – a nonprofit studying education issues – conducted a three-year review of 100 ed tech companies. It concluded that 74% of these businesses hold the right to transfer any personal information they collect if the company is acquired, merged, or files for bankruptcy. And since many are start-ups, this often happens.

The authors wrote that there is “a widespread lack of transparency, as well as inconsistent privacy and security practices” in how student information is collected, used, and disclosed.

Leaking student data is often not a security failure. It’s part of a company’s business model.

This is valuable information about one of the most lucrative demographics in the marketplace. Companies use it to help sell products targeted directly to consumers. And they can even sell student data as a commodity, itself.

For instance, imagine how much more effective the hiring process would be if businesses had access to applicants school attendance records. Imagine if businesses had an applicant’s entire academic record.

Employers could buy vast amounts of data and use algorithms to sort through it looking for red flags without fully comprehending what was being compiled. Imagine an applicant being turned down for a job because of low middle school attendance but not being able to explain that this was due to a legitimate illness.

There are reasons we protect people’s privacy. You shouldn’t have to explain your score on a 1st grade spelling test the rest of your life or have the need for special education services damage your credit rating.

Yet all of these things are possible when student data is up for grabs.

No one is protecting our children from this kind of mercantile future – one which will only be exacerbated if we allow educational technologies to become common place after the current crisis.

And tightening our student privacy laws, will not solve everything.

Hardly any attention is being paid to how these technologies can be used for harms unrelated to business and industry.

Tablets, laptops or monitoring devices such as cameras or microphones could be exploitable by tech savvy criminals – especially since many ed tech programs allow remote-access capabilities without the user even being aware of what is happening.

Pedophiles could use this data to find and abduct children. Criminals could use it to blackmail them. Other children could use it to bully and harass classmates.

It’s hard to imagine how children could be protected on such devices without increasing surveillance and thereby running similar risks. Using them will always involve a chance of endangerment so they should be kept away from the youngest and most vulnerable potential users.

How did we let ed tech get so out of control? Like so many problems of the pre-coronavirus world, money was allowed to dictate policy.

Global venture capital investments in ed tech finished 14 times higher by the end of the decade than they started. Investments went from $500 million in 2010 to $7 billion in 2019. And insiders expect that to triple in the next decade to more than $87 billion.

The two biggest spenders by far are China and the US.

Yet enthusiasm for such technologies are not nearly as prevalent among educators.

A 2019 study of educator confidence in ed tech conducted by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt found that 60% of teachers were concerned that implementing technology tools could damage the student-teacher relationship.

Moreover, education research in the United States concluded these technologies only widen the gap between different socioeconomic groups. Global initiatives like the One Laptop per Child program, which distributed 25 million low-cost computers with learning software to children in the developing world, failed to improve language or math results.

Meanwhile, students seem to be telling us they prefer more old school methods of instruction. Studies have shown preference for everything from physical books over eBooks to having “ordinary, real-life lessons” and “a smart person at the front of the room.”

Parent Blogger Alison McDowell has studied these issues in more depth than nearly anyone else. She warns that adaptive applications become the gatekeeper of children’s educations. They only allow students to move on once they’ve demonstrated mastery on a previous academic standard – or at least once they’ve been able to guess which one answer a programmer thought correct:

“The “personalized learning” model conditions students to view themselves as independent operators, free agents attempting to navigate a precarious gig economy alone. Screen-based isolation and an emphasis on data-driven metrics steadily erode children’s innate tendencies to creative cooperation. Which is ultimately better for society, an algorithm that learns each student in a classroom and delivers a pre-determined reading selection that they review and are quizzed on online, or a human teacher who selects an all class reading in which there is lively debate? The first scenario forecloses creative thought in service of data generation and reinforces there is but one correct answer. The second opens up chances for students to gain new insights while limiting opportunities for digital surveillance.”

Ed tech may allow us to stumble forward during the coronavirus quarantine, but it is not a central part of a healthy education system.

It may play a limited role in remediation and augmentation, but it cannot be the fulcrum around which everything else revolves.

I’d like to see a new education system built from the ashes of the old where every child has the chance to learn, a system that forgoes standardized testing and corporate-written academic standards for individualization and human interaction. I’d like to see a world where charter and voucher schools are things of the past, where schools are integrated and differences valued, where teachers and learning are respected and esteemed.

That is not an ed tech centered world. It is a student centered one.

It is a world where our priorities are such that even the promise of the new and the free won’t encourage us to indulge in practices that put our children in greater danger.

It is a place where the pusher has no power because his product is seen for what it is – treacherous and unnecessary.

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Virtual Learning Through Quarantine Will Leave Poor and Disabled Students Behind

March 25, 2020 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget, capitalism, Child Predators, Civil Rights, Competency Based Education, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Donald Trump, edtech, Education, Learning, No Child Left Behind, Parents, Philosophy, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Schools, Social Justice, Special Education, Students, Teachers, Technology Betsy DeVos, Computers, coronavirus, distance learning, ed-tech, edtech, education, education policy, educators, IDEA, Politics, Poverty, public schools, schools, Special Education, teachers, technology, virtual learning

In the wake of the coronavirus crisis with most people self quarantined at home, schools across the country are shut down.

Some offer (or are considering offering) distance learning over the Internet.

However, this poses problems.

Not all student services can be provided via computer.

And not all students even have a computer, online compatible device or Internet access.

Should our nation’s public schools soldier on anyway and provide some kind of learning experience for those not thus encumbered at the expense of those who will be left behind?

The U.S. Senate’s proposed coronavirus aid package includes a provision to waive existing federal law that requires all schools to provide services to special education students. Removing this specification would allow districts to move forward with virtual learning without having to worry about meeting the needs of their special education students.

Advocates worry that even a temporary suspension of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) could have devastating long term effects on students with disabilities and ultimately remove the requirement upheld for the last 45 years that they receive a free public education.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos offered a gleeful statement in favor of dispensing with protections for students with autism, cerebral palsy, learning disorders and other special needs:

“It was extremely disappointing to hear that some school districts were using information from the Department of Education as an excuse not to educate kids. This is a time for creativity and an opportunity to pursue as much flexibility as possible so that learning continues. It is a time for all of us to pull together to do what’s right for our nation’s students.

“Nothing issued by this Department should in any way prevent any school from offering educational programs through distance instruction. We need schools to educate all students out of principle, rather than educate no students out of fear. These are challenging times, but we expect schools to rise to the occasion, and the Department stands ready to assist you in your efforts.”

The Department of Education issued a Fact Sheet that went even further:

“To be clear: ensuring compliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (Section 504), and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act should not prevent any school from offering educational programs through distance instruction.”

This is tantamount to prioritizing the education of some students over others. In short, if we follow DeVos’ guidelines, we will be saying that regular education students are more important than students with special needs.

It is a dangerous precedent.

However, perhaps even more dangerous is the abdication of any responsibility for, even complete erasure of any mention of poor students without Internet access.

This just underlines the importance of legislation. Special education students have IDEA. Poor students have nothing. There is no right to education for them at all.

If there had been some legislation specifically enshrining the rights of the underprivileged, however, it is clear this administration would be likewise proposing measures to dispense with it.

I understand that we are in a crisis. I understand that some think it is better to take half measures so that something gets done rather than nothing.

However, the coronavirus outbreak is expected to be a temporary situation. It may last weeks or months, but it will not last forever.

We want to do things in the best interests of children now, but we also must be aware of later. And trying to meet some kids needs now while writing off a large chunk of the rest would have a huge negative impact later.

If we educate just the privileged kids, we will be worsening the socioeconomic gap between students – a gap that is already too wide.

According to the most recent federal data, nearly 7 million students in the United States do not have Internet access at home. That is about 14 percent of all U.S. students. And of those with online access at home, 18 percent do not have home access to broadband Internet so they would also have difficulty retrieving lessons or participating in Zoom meetings online.

Moving to distance learning on the Internet would leave tens of millions of children behind.

Is this really what we want to do?

In addition, there is the question of quality.

Few teachers are trained or have experience with distance learning. They will probably be able to provide some kind of learning – but it will almost certainly not be the best they could be providing.

Moreover, there are real questions about the quality of learning that CAN be provided in a virtual environment even under the best of circumstances.

Cyber schools are a perfect fit for some students. Older and more mature students would probably have an easier time adjusting to it.

However, many students – especially younger ones – need the face-to-face interactions of school to get the most out of the experience. Forcing them into a mold that may at best be unsuited to them individually and at worst developmentally inappropriate will only cause them undo trauma.

I understand that everyone wants to appear like they’re doing something to meet the challenges provided by this crisis. However, sometimes the best thing to do is nothing.

One day the quarantine will be lifted. At that point, we can reopen the schools.

This may mean a few months of summer school. Or we could extend the 2020-21 school year to make up the difference.

Neither are perfect solutions. But they’re both better than virtual learning.

Neither require us to write off our poor and special education students.

And THAT is the most important thing.

Public schools don’t have to settle for whatever fad is offered from disaster capitalists.

We can still do what’s right for our kids.

All of our kids.

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Top 7 Ways Technology Stifles Student Learning in My Classroom

July 31, 2019July 31, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, Close Reading, Common Core, Competency Based Education, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Data Driven Instruction, Data Mining, edtech, Education, Learning, Parents, Philosophy, Politics, privatization, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Standardized Testing, student privacy, Students, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Technology Competency Based Education, Depersonalized Learning, ed-tech, edtech, education, individualization, language arts, Learning, literacy, personalized learning, Profit, public schools, reading, schools, standardized testing, Students, teachers, teaching, teaching to the test, technology, Test Prep

As a middle school teacher, I have real concerns about the ways technology is used in the classroom and the effects it’s having on students.

That does not make me a technophobe.

The fact that you are reading this article on a blog – a regularly updated Website containing personal writings or a weB–LOG – should prove that point.

I use technology in my everyday life and in many ways find it indispensable.

However, that does not mean I embrace all uses of technology just as criticizing some forms does not mean I think we should get rid of them all.

But after 17 years of teaching, I have legitimate concerns about what all this technology is doing to our students and our schools.

I have seen technologies come and go. Some – like a computerized grade book – have been extremely helpful, and I would not want to have to do my job without them.

Others have fallen by the wayside, been discontinued or proven a waste of time or even worse – they’ve become impediments rather than assistants to student learning.

In general, I think we have become too reliant on technology in schools. We’ve welcomed and incorporated it without testing it, or even reflecting upon whether it promises to offer better pathways toward student comprehension and discovery or whether it merely offers flash and novelty devoid of substance. And perhaps even more frightening, we have not investigated the ways in which using these technologies actually puts student privacy and intellectual growth at risk.
So, without further ado, here are the top 7 ways technology stifles student learning in my classroom:

1) It Stops Kids from Reading

I’m a language arts teacher. I want my students to read.

I could simply assign readings and hope students do them, but that’s not practical in today’s fast-paced world. When kids are bombarded by untold promises of instant gratification, a ream of paper bordered by cardboard doesn’t hold much of a claim on their attentions.

So like many teachers, I bring reading into the classroom, itself. I usually set aside class time every other day for students to read self-selected books for about 15 minutes. Students have access to the school library and a classroom library filled with books usually popular with kids their age or popular with my previous students. They can pick something from outside these boundaries, but if they haven’t already done so, I have them covered.

In the days before every student had an iPad, this worked fairly well. Students often had books with them they wanted to read or would quickly select one from my collection and give it a try.

Sometimes when there was down time in class, when they had finished assignments or tests early, they would even pick up their self-selected books and read a little.

What a different world it was!

Now that every student has an omnipresent technological device, this has become increasingly impossible. I still set aside 15 minutes, but students often waste the time looking for an eBook on-line and end up reading just the first chapter or two since they’re free. Others read nothing but the digital equivalent of magazine articles or look up disparate facts. And still others try to hide that they’re not reading at all but playing video games or watching YouTube videos.

Even under the best of circumstances, the act of reading on a device is different than reading a printed page.

The act of reading traditional books is slower, closer and more linear. It’s the way teachers really want kids to read and which will most increase comprehension.

Reading on a screen is a product of social media. We scroll or scan through, seeking specific information and clicking on hyperlinks.

The old style of reading was transformative, absorbing and a much deeper and richer experience. The newer style is more superficial, mechanical and extrinsic. (And, Yes, I’m aware of which style of reading you’re engaged in now!)

To be fair, some students actually prefer reading eBooks on devices and may even experience the richness of the original style. But they are few and far between. Usually students use the devices to escape from the deeper kind of reading because they’ve never really done it before and don’t understand what it really is. And when they have this choice, they may never find out.

2) It’s a Distraction

As a teacher, I want my students to be able to focus on one thing at a time. There are situations and assignments that call for multitasking, but usually we need students to be able to look at text closely, examine an argument, identify figurative language or write creatively, etc. They can’t do that if they’re constantly checking their devices.

We have to admit that iPads, laptops, social media, etc. are addictive. If given the chance, many teenagers will spend hours there. Heck, many adults will, too. It’s common for students to rush through assignments to get back to watching videos about the latest on-line gaming trend Fortnite, or listen to music with earbuds, or others such things.

Technology is usually associated in their minds with entertainment, not education. I’m not saying that technologies don’t have their place. If you want to look up information quickly, devices are great. But the most common words I tell my students on any given day are “Apples up.” In others words, turn your iPads face down and focus on the lesson at hand.

3) It’s Unhealthy

For most students, technology is not a novelty. It is something with which they already have a lot of experience. Many studies find that kids between the ages of 13-18 spend up to 18 hours a day in front of a screen.

Why are we adding to that in the classroom?

Children need face-to-face interactions. They need to learn social skills, how to communicate with people, not screen avatars. They need time outdoors, time to get up and move around and interact with the world. Heck! They need unstructured time where they actually experience boredom and have to find ways to cope.

We’re robbing them of these skills by giving in to the electronic nanny. And it’s creating children who are less able to survive without that technological crutch.

As technology has become more widespread in my classes, I’ve noticed attention spans decreasing. So has self control, mindfulness and an ability for critical thinking.

4) It Costs Too Much

Public schools are already grossly underfunded. We have to pick and choose the most effective tools to help kids learn. Technology is often very expensive and takes away valuable money and resources that could be better spent elsewhere.

And the way these technologies are marketed is often reminiscent of the drug trade. The first uses are free. But if you want to expand, it will cost.

Even those that don’t demand briefcasefulls of cash often recoup their costs by collecting and selling student data.

In the school system, we are privy to an enormous amount of information about the children in our care – information that we are tasked with keeping safe. Ed tech software and technologies also routinely collect data on students. But they are not as constrained or legally responsible for it in the way schools and teachers are.

Some of the data technologies collect is indeed necessary for whatever task they perform – tabulating which questions students get correct and incorrect, etc. However, much of it is unnecessary for those tasks – information about student preferences or marketing information.

We have no guarantee that this data is secure. The FBI has warned schools, parents and students of information breaches at these ed tech companies. And the contracts these companies have with schools and/or users are shady at best. They don’t guarantee your data will be secure, don’t accept liability and even when they do, they routinely warn that their policies can change at any time without warning – especially if they go bankrupt.

These are costs too expensive to pay.

5) It Has Never Been Proven to Help Kids Learn

Educational technologies’ claims about student learning outcomes are based on faith not facts. There are few (if any) long-term, large scale, peer reviewed studies showing that most technologies are effective educational tools.

This is partially because they’re too new to have been around long enough to be adequately tested. Moreover, the field is flooded with “studies” payed for by the same companies or organizations being studied – which is like having McDonald’s tell you the McRib is nutritious. Some small-scale peer reviewed studies have been done, but the results have been inconclusive.

We are literally unleashing these devices and software applications on children without knowing their full effects.

Ed tech is a market-based solution to an academic problem. It is the triumph of big business over pedagogy.

Our children deserve better than this.

6) It Perpetuates Bad Pedagogy and Assessment

Ed tech is almost always organized around standardized testing. It takes the multiple choice test as the ultimate form of assessment and arranges itself around that paradigm.

Software basically teaches to the test. It shows users the kinds of questions that will be asked, how to solve them and then gauges their success by giving them test-based questions.

It’s ironic because the marketing departments of these corporations usually sell this junk as “personalized learning,” “individualized learning,” or “competency” or “proficiency based education.” They want you to think that the program is tailor made to the user when it’s actually just a prepackaged mess. If you can’t answer a question of type A, you don’t get to move on to a question of type B. That’s all.

This can be an effective method for increasing test scores – if students aren’t so tuned out by the experience that they don’t engage with what they’re being presented – which is what I often find with my students when I’ve been forced to subject them to this nonsense.

However, learning how to take a multiple choice test on reading is not the same as learning how to read and understand. It is not the same as interacting with, comprehending and forming an opinion about that reading.

This is not the best way to teach just as having students fill out endless worksheets is not, nor is even having a flesh-and-blood teacher do endless test prep.

It is brainwashing – teaching kids to think like the designers of a test when we should be teaching them how to think for themselves and like themselves.

7) It Undermines Public Schools and Teachers

Ed tech companies are not philanthropies. They are in this business to turn a profit. And the best way to do that is to displace and disrupt the public education system.

There is an entire testing and school privatization industrial complex out there trying to prove that traditional public schools are bad and need replaced with business solutions.

These aren’t just charter schools or private and parochial schools cashing in on vouchers siphoning tax money away from children and into their private pockets. These are ed tech companies, too.

The ultimate goal is to get rid of the very concept of school, itself, and to replace it with on-line cyber schooling that can be accessed anywhere without the need for any living, breathing teachers in the mix. Or at best, they want to reduce the teacher to a mere facilitator. It is the device and the software that teach. It is only the human being’s job to make sure the student is engaging with the technology.

This is not in the best interest of students. It is in the best interests of companies and corporations.

When we give away our responsibilities, our autonomy, and our humanity to these businesses, we are selling out our children.

I’m not saying that all technology is bad or even that it should never be used in the classroom.

But we must approach it with caution and intelligence. We should always know why we’re using it, what end we expect it to have and fully comprehend the consequences.

Otherwise our children will be left to pay for our own shortsightedness.

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

eBackpack Bankruptcy May Put Student & Teacher Data in Peril

July 20, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, capitalism, Child Safety, Civil Rights, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Data Mining, edtech, Education, Homework, Local Control, Politics, privatization, School Funding, Schools, Special Education, STEM, student privacy, Students, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Technology bankruptcy, Chapter 7, Data, Data Mining, eBackpack, ed-tech, edtech, education, Politics, Profit, student data, student privacy, Students, teachers, technology

Teachers put their assignments into an on-line data base.

Students access them on their computers, iPads or other devices and then submit their work via the Internet.

What could go wrong?

Plenty. Especially when the company that provides this service goes bankrupt.

And that’s exactly what’s happened with Texas-based educational technology company eBackpack.

All those teacher assignments and student works are still there in computer servers somewhere. And now that eBackpack has filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy, all of it has become assets the company could decide to sell off to pay its debts.

The company explicitly reserves the right to do so according to its own Privacy Statement:

“The information we collect is used to improve the content of our Web pages and the quality of our service, and is not shared with or sold to other organizations for commercial purposes, except to provide products or services you’ve requested, when we have your permission, or under the following circumstances:

-We transfer information about you if eBackpack or part of it is acquired by or merged with another company. In this event, eBackpack will notify you before information about you is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.” [Emphasis mine]

Well that’s comforting. I wonder how a company that will no longer exist will have staff to notify former customers about what’s happening to the mountains of data we put in its hands.

Even under the best of circumstances, who will it notify? Teachers? Students? Parents? Or just the administrators or school boards who managed the over all accounts for individual districts?

eBackpack’s Terms of Service Agreement contains several red flags that someone should have noticed before students’ privacy was jeopardized:

“-eBackpack may assign its rights and obligations under these Terms to a third party without your consent.

“-You agree to use the Service at your own risk, without any liability whatsoever to eBackpack.

-1.1. Your use of the Service is at your sole risk. The Service is provided on an “as is,” “as available” and “with all faults” basis. The Service is owned and copyrighted by eBackpack and offered through a subscription, not sold, to you.

-10.1. eBackpack reserves the right at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Service (or any part thereof) with or without notice.

-By submitting Content to eBackpack, you grant eBackpack a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free right to copy, display, modify, transmit, make derivative works of, and distribute your Content for the purpose of providing or developing the Service.

-14.2. You consent to eBackpack’s use and/or references to your name, directly or indirectly, in eBackpack’s marketing and training materials. You consent to eBackpack’s use of your communication with eBackpack for marketing and training materials. You may not use eBackpack’s name or trademark without eBackpack’s prior written consent.”

It’s not like schools weren’t warned.

Less than a year ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) issued a strong statement cautioning consumers that edtech companies put student data at risk.

The bureau advised parents, teachers and administrators to take several steps to safeguard children’s privacy. The organization also pushed for the federal government to revise privacy laws to better protect kids from this industry.

In addition, commonsense.org – a nonprofit studying education issues – conducted a three-year review of 100 edtech companies. It concluded that 74% of these businesses hold the right to transfer any personal information they collect if the company is acquired, merged, or files for bankruptcy.

The authors wrote that there is “a widespread lack of transparency, as well as inconsistent privacy and security practices” in how student information is collected, used, and disclosed.

Why would any company want such student data?

It helps market products and, itself, can be a very marketable product.

There are reasons we protect people’s privacy. You shouldn’t have to explain your score on a 3rd grade spelling test the rest of your life or have the need for special education services become a liability on your credit record.

Yet all of these things are possible when student data is up for grabs as it may be in this instance.

This is personal to me.

My district uses eBackpack.

Yet it was for these exact reasons that I never jumped on the bandwagon with my own students in my classroom.

I experimented somewhat with the platform, myself, to see what it offered and to weigh whether the advantages canceled out the disadvantages.

If I had decided to move forward, I would have asked parent permission first, but in the end, I decided it wasn’t worth the risk – and boy am I glad!

Yet having interacted with the platform at all, I received the following email from the company yesterday:

“Dear User,

We regret to inform you that this 2018-2019 school year is the last year eBackpack will be operating. We will not be accepting any renewals going forward and we will not be providing any services past July 31, 2019. All services will be terminated on that date. Please download and save to your own devices any data prior to July 31, 2019. Once the services for eBackpack are turned off, your files and data will no longer be accessible, and we will not have staff available to respond to any customer inquiries. We appreciate your support over the past years and we will truly miss working with you all!

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to send an email to edison@ebackpack.com or billing@ebackpck.com.
Again, we appreciate your time with us and all of your support.

Thank you,  eBackpack Team”

I haven’t tried to contact the company, but I’m seeing on Reddit that others have been unable to do so.

One customer wrote:

“We use eBackpack and we are unable to pay our bill as no one answers their number or responds to emails. A quick Google search shows recent bankruptcy procedure. Anyone know anything? Am I the only one still using them?”

EBACKPACK, LLC did in fact file a chapter 7 bankruptcy case on Feb 8, according to docket information on-line.

Chapter 7 is sometimes called straight bankruptcy or liquidation bankruptcy. In general, the court appoints a trustee to oversee the case, take the company’s assets, sell them and distribute the money to the creditors who file claims. However, the trustee doesn’t take every last bit of company property. Owners are allowed to keep enough “exempt” property to get a “fresh start.”

This is big business. Venture capitalists have invested more than $1.8 billion in the edtech industry in 2015, alone.

At this time, it is still unclear exactly how many students and teachers have been put at risk.

I can’t find information anywhere about how many student or teacher accounts are in jeopardy or how many districts used the platform.

Hopefully this will be a wakeup call that the edtech industry needs to be more closely monitored and regulated.

We cannot continue to put convenience and profit ahead of student and teacher safety.

Ten of 15 Cyber Charter Schools in PA Are Operating Without a Charter – Close Them All

January 29, 2019January 29, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Predators, computers, Corbett, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Data, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Schools, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Politics, privatization, Republican, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, Schools, segregation, small class size, Special Education, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Technology, Tom Wolf charter schools, Cyber Charter Schools, ed-tech, edtech, education, fiscal responsability, Internet, on-line, online charter schools, Pennsylvania, public schools, scam, scandal, School Choice, schools, technology

Cyber charter schools are an experiment that failed.

It’s time to pull the plug and recoup our losses.

First, let’s get straight exactly what we’re talking about here.

Like all charter schools, these are contracted institutions. In fact, that’s what charter means – they’re independent businesses that sign a deal with the state to teach kids.

So they’re publicly financed but privately run. And in the case of cyber charters, they agree to educate children online without the benefit of a physical building.

Students access lessons via computer or other device, submit work electronically, get virtual feedback and assessment.

At best, these institutions are the grade school equivalent of the University of Phoenix – good only for independent, self-motivated learners. At worst, they’re the kiddie version of Trump University – a total scam.

In Pennsylvania, 10 of the state’s 15 cyber charter schools are operating with expired charters, according to a report by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

That’s incredibly significant – especially for an industry that enrolls about 35,000 students across the state.

These are charter schools operating without a charter. They only get the right to operate because a local school district or the state has signed a contract allowing them to do so.

If you hire a plumber to fix your toilet, you give him the right to enter your house and do what needs to be done. That doesn’t mean the plumber can walk in anytime he feels like it. There is a limited term of service. Once that term is up, the plumber needs to get out.

In the case of these cyber charters, the authorizer is the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE).

Charters are initially issued for three to five years. They are an essential contract between the schools and the supervisory body. The school details how it will operate, what curriculum and education strategies will be used, etc.

The state has the option to revoke the charter if the school violates its agreement or fails to meet requirements for student performance or fiscal management.

After the initial period, charters must be renewed every five years in the state.

Yet for the majority of the Keystone state’s cyber charter schools, this has not happened. The charter agreements have been left to lapse without any decision being made by state officials to renew or cancel them.

Some of the reluctance to decide may stem from the fact that the state Charter Appeal Board – the body which decides on appeals of charter applications – are all serving out expired terms, themselves. They were all appointed by the previous governor, Republican Tom Corbett, a notable privatization ideologue.

The current Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat now elected to his second term of office, still hasn’t gotten around to appointing new ones.

Another issue gumming up the works could be staffing issues at PDE that make it impossible to handle the reviews in a timely manner. It could be because the cyber charter schools have not provided all the data required of them by the state for the review to be completed on time. Or it could be because state officials are struggling with a fair and adequate metric with which to assess these schools.

CYBER CHARTER’S DISMAL ACADEMIC RECORD

To be frank, the latter option has to weigh heavily on state auditors. After all, it’s no secret that these schools are an educational disaster. On-line schools in Ohio, Georgia, Indiana, Nevada and New Mexico are all being closed by their respective states.

Study after study consistently shows that cyber charters are much less effective than traditional public schools – heck! They’re even less effective than brick and mortar charter schools!

A recent nationwide study by Stanford University found that cyber charters provide 180 days less of math instruction and 72 days less of reading instruction than traditional public schools.

Keep in mind that there are only 180 days in an average school year. So cyber charters provide less math instruction than not going to school at all.

The same study found that 88 percent of cyber charter schools have weaker academic growth than similar brick and mortar schools.

Student-to-teacher ratios average about 30:1 in online charters, compared to 20:1 for brick and mortar charters and 17:1 for traditional public schools.

Researchers concluded that these schools have an “overwhelming negative impact” on students.

And these results were duplicated almost exactly by subsequent studies from Penn State University in 2016 (enrolling a student in a Pennsylvania cyber charter school is equal to “roughly 90 fewer days of learning in reading and nearly 180 fewer days of learning in math”) and the National Education Policy Center in 2017 (cyber charters “performed significantly worse than feeder schools in both reading and math”).

Even the state’s own data shows lower graduation rates and standardized test scores at cyber charters than at traditional public schools.

According to a 2015-16 state PDE report, about 86 percent of public school students across the Commonwealth finished high school in four years. During the same time, only about 48 percent of cyber charter school students graduated in four-years.

CYBER CHARTER’S COST TOO MUCH

But providing such a poor service to Pennsylvania students is only one reason these schools are problematic. They’re also ruinously expensive.

They cost taxpayers more than $463 million in 2016-17 alone.

The state charter law grants these schools as much money per pupil as brick and mortar schools, yet their costs are much less having forgone a physical building and all that goes with it.

So cyber charters get whatever the local per-pupil expenditure is. It doesn’t matter if a district spends $8,000 on each student or $20,000. Whatever the amount, that goes to the cyber charter.

However, the cost of educating kids is drastically reduced online. Their programs are bare bones compared with what you get at a traditional public school. Most online charters don’t have tutors or teacher aides. They don’t offer band, chorus or extra-curricular activities. You don’t have to pay for any building costs, grounds, upkeep, large staff, etc. But the funding formula ignores this completely. Cyber charters get to keep the difference – whatever it is. In fact, they have an incentive to keep as much as possible because they can do almost whatever they want with it. That includes putting it into operators’ pockets as profit!

And when it comes to special education funding, it gets worse. In Pennsylvania, our funding formula is so out of whack that charters schools of all stripes including cyber charters often end up with more funding for students with special needs than traditional public schools get. However, because of this loophole in the Commonwealth, Pennsylvania online charters have been increasing the number of special education students they enroll and even working to label as many of their students as possible as needing special services on the flimsiest of pretexts.

According to a report by the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators (PASA), tuition for special education students is often twice as much at cyber charter schools than at traditional public schools.

CYBER CHARTER FRAUD

Unsurprisingly, these conditions have lead to rampant fraud and malfeasance.

Just this past year (2018) the head of the largest cyber charter chain in the state was sentenced to jail for siphoning $8 million from his school into his own pockets.

PA Cyber Charter founder Nicholas Trombetta was found guilty of tax fraud in relation to the theft of public funds. He used that money to buy an airplane, a $900,000 condo, houses for his girlfriend and mother, and nearly $1 million in groceries and personal expenses, according to the grand jury. Trombetta allegedly set up numerous for-profit and nonprofit businesses to provide goods and services to the cyber charter. Federal investigators filed 11 fraud and tax conspiracy charges against him and indicted others in the case.

Another cyber charter founder, June Brown, was also indicted for theft of $6.5 million. Brown ran the Agora Cyber Charter School, which was part of the K12 Inc. empire of virtual charters. She and her executives were indicted on 62 counts of wire fraud, obstruction of justice and witness tampering. She was well known for student test scores and had a reputation for claiming large salaries and filing suits against parents who questioned her, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

It’s no wonder the state has been tardy renewing these schools’ charters!

Frankly, there is no good reason to continue lavishing taxpayer dollars on a system of education that provides subpar services at an exorbitant expense and is subject to runaway fraud.

But lawmakers have always been reluctant to do the right thing.

After all, there are a slew of wealthy investors who want to make sure the money train of taxpayer dollars keeps flowing to their shady businesses. And lawmakers who enable them are assured hefty campaign contributions.

The only chance we have of saving our children from this monstrous abuse of power and saving our wallets from this shameful waste of funding is if voters make their intentions known.

The people of Pennsylvania need to stand up and demand an end to the cyber charter school experiment.

We need lawmakers with the guts to stand up to big money and rewrite the state’s charter school law.

And that’s part of the problem. The law is a joke.

It’s more than 20 years old and was only amended once in 2002 to allow cyber charters.

Subsequent attempts at requiring more accountability have resulted in horrible compromise bills that would have made the situation much worse and – ultimately – no vote.

With Ohio and California, Pennsylvania was in the “big three” cyber-charter states in 2016, accounting for half of cyber charter enrollment nationally, according to the industry’s authorizers’ association. While 35 states and the District of Columbia allow full-time cyber charter schools, eight do not, including neighboring New Jersey.

The right course is clear.

We just need a people-powered movement to force our lawmakers to do it.

Either that or replace them with those who will.

Still can’t get enough Gadfly? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

FBI Warns EdTech Puts Student Safety at Risk

September 20, 2018September 20, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, capitalism, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Competency Based Education, computers, Congress, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Data, Data Mining, edtech, Education, Learning, Local Control, Media, Parents, Politics, privatization, School Funding, Schools, Standardized Testing, STEM, Students, Teachers, Technology, video games corporate, Corporate Education Reform, corporate school reform, Danger, Data Mining, ed-tech, edtech, education, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigations, Pandora's Box, Profit, public schools, schools, student privacy, technology, warning

Pandora’s box may not be a heavy wooden chest.

It might just be a laptop or an iPad.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) issued a warning late last week about the proliferation of educational technologies (EdTech) in schools and the dangers they pose to student safety and privacy.

The devices and applications singled out by US domestic intelligence services all involve software that asks for and saves student input.

This includes classroom management tools like Class Dojo and eBackpack as well as student testing and remediation applications like Classroom Diagnostic Tools and StudyIsland.

The alert cautions schools and parents that the widespread collection of student data involved in these applications could cause safety concerns if the information is compromised or exploited.

It’s just such technologies that have proliferated at a breakneck pace in districts throughout the country while legislation, cybersecurity and even awareness of the danger has lagged behind.

The Bureau is concerned about EdTech services because many are “adaptive, personalized learning experiences” or “administrative platforms for tracking academics, disciplinary issues, student information systems, and classroom management programs.”

The Bureau clarified that use of EdTech applications was not, in itself, the problem. They are a tool, and like any tool, they can be used for good or ill.

Advocates say when used correctly, these systems offer the potential for student collaboration, and for teachers to collect and compare information about students to help design better lessons. On the other hand, critics warn that the problems with most EdTech is essential to the way it operates and that it is designed more for the purposes of student data mining and profitization by corporations than with academic success for children in mind.

In either case, the dangers posed by such devices are indisputable.

The amount and kinds of data being collected about students has not been well publicized or understood. Many school boards, administrators, teachers, parents and students may be using EdTech without a full appreciation of how it often surreptitiously collects data on children.

Analysts listed several types of student particulars being stockpiled:

“personally identifiable information (PII);

biometric data;

academic progress;

behavioral, disciplinary, and medical information;

Web browsing history;

students’ geolocation;

IP addresses used by students; and

classroom activities.”

This is highly sensitive information that could be extremely harmful to students if it fell into the wrong hands.

Pedophiles could use this data to find and abduct children. Criminals could use it to blackmail them. It could even be sold to unscrupulous corporations or exploited by other children to bully and harass classmates.

These concerns are not merely academic. Data breaches have already occurred.

According to the FBI:

“…in late 2017, cyber actors exploited school information technology (IT) systems by hacking into multiple school district servers across the United States. They accessed student contact information, education plans, homework assignments, medical records, and counselor reports, and then used that information to contact, extort, and threaten students with physical violence and release of their personal information. The actors sent text messages to parents and local law enforcement, publicized students’ private information, posted student PII on social media, and stated how the release of such information could help child predators identify new targets.”

Though the Bureau did not mention them by name, it cited two specific cybersecurity failures in 2017 at two large EdTech companies where millions of student’s private information became publicly available.

The FBI seems to be referring to Edmodo and Schoolzilla. Hackers stole 77 million user accounts from Edmodo last year and sold that data to a “dark web” marketplace. Likewise, Schoolzilla stored student information on a publicly accessible server, according to a security researcher, thereby exposing the private information of approximately 1.3 million children.

It was these data breaches that prompted the Department of Education to issue a Cyber Advisory alert in October of 2017 warning that cyber criminals were targeting schools that had inadequate data security. Criminals were trying to gain access to this sensitive material about students to “shame, bully, and threaten children.”

In February, another cybercrime was reported by the Internal Revenue Service. The agency released an “urgent alert” about scammers targeting school districts with W-2 phishing schemes.

Of particular concern to the FBI are school devices connected directly to the Internet. They offer hackers an immediate link to private student information. This is true even if a school device is in the student’s home.

Tablets, laptops or monitoring devices such as cameras or microphones could be exploitable by tech savvy criminals – especially since many EdTech programs allow remote-access capabilities without the user even being aware of what is happening.

Indeed, some EdTech companies collect information on students’ feelings; become student data brokers and use voice-activated speakers in the classroom.

The FBI listed several recommendations for parents and families:

“Research existing student and child privacy protections of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and state laws as they apply to EdTech services.
Discuss with their local districts about what and how EdTech technologies and programs are used in their schools.

Conduct research on parent coalition and information-sharing organizations which are available online for those looking for support and additional resources.

Research school-related cyber breaches which can further inform families of student data vulnerabilities.

Consider credit or identity theft monitoring to check for any fraudulent use of their children’s identity.

Conduct regular Internet searches of children’s information to help identify the exposure and spread of their information on the Internet.”

The warning concluded by asking those who have information about cybercrimes or who have been victimized by data breaches to file a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov.

For some, the FBI’s warning highlights the need for greater education funding for cybersecurity.

“While other industries are investing in greater IT security to protect against cyber threats, many schools are facing budget constraints that result in declining resources for IT security programs,” staff members from the Future of Privacy Forum wrote on their blog. “Schools across the country lack funding to provide and maintain adequate security,” they wrote.

Others see the problem as one of antiquated legislation not keeping up with changing technologies.

The FBI memo highlights a need for Congress to update federal student privacy laws, said Rachael Stickland, co-founder and co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy.

At present, these issues are covered haphazardly from state to state, a situation Strickland finds intolerably inadequate.

The main federal law safeguarding student data privacy, The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, should be updated, she said. It must address exactly which ways districts should be allowed to share data with EdTech companies.

“What we need is a comprehensive approach at the federal level to address these outdated federal laws,” she said. “We really need these modernized to address not only the cybersecurity threats but also the potential misuse of this data.”

However, some critics are skeptical of the very use of EdTech in the classroom, at all.

They see the potential dangers being so massive and difficult to guard against that any remedies to fix the problem would be counterproductive.

Instead of spending millions or billions more on cybersecurity measures, we should use any additional funding for more essential budget items like teachers, tutors, nurses and counselors.

The goal is to provide a quality education – not to provide a quality education with increasingly complex technologies. If the former can be done with the latter, that’s fine. But if we have to choose between the two, we should go with proven methods instead of the latest fads.

EdTech corporations are making staggering profits off public schools while almost every other area goes lacking. In the nexus of business and industry, we may be losing sight of what’s best for students.

The question is have we already opened Pandora’s box, and if we haven’t, can we stop ourselves from doing so?

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