By Grassroots Mom and Parent Advocate
#NO WAY ESEA, #NO WAY ESEA, #NO WAY ESEA
"We’ve been absolutely staggered by realizing that the computer has the capability to act as
if it were ten of the top psychologists working with one student.... You’ve seen the tip of
the iceberg. Won’t it be wonderful when the child in the smallest county in the most distant
area or in the most confused urban setting can have the equivalent of the finest school in
the world on that terminal and no one can get between that child and the curriculum? We have great moments coming in the history of education." Dustin H. Heuston,
“Discussion: Developing the Potential of an Amazing Tool” (cit. below)
if it were ten of the top psychologists working with one student.... You’ve seen the tip of
the iceberg. Won’t it be wonderful when the child in the smallest county in the most distant
area or in the most confused urban setting can have the equivalent of the finest school in
the world on that terminal and no one can get between that child and the curriculum? We have great moments coming in the history of education." Dustin H. Heuston,
“Discussion: Developing the Potential of an Amazing Tool” (cit. below)
The change agents are emboldened it appears. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, courtesy of its current President Anthony S. Bryk, has informed us in so many words in this recent March 25th, 2015 article http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/blog/learning-our-way-into-better-education-systems/ that they are nearing completion of incorporating the necessary tools for cementing their dearly cherished school to work "curriculum" in the minds of children everywhere.
With typical obscuring semantics Bryk speaks what sounds like gibberish to most normal people when he implores his devotees to improve learning by:
"learning to improve through the use of improvement science in networked communities."
How many times, over how many decades now, have Americans heard entreaties like this one, by superintendents and education thought leaders and government policy wonks, to adopt some new "scientifically proven" method of Improvement that will magically fix every Outcomes-based, Teaching and Learning disaster that came before it?
And how many times has the Carnegie Foundation played a role in fomenting and funding a newly-minted, thinly-disguised Outcome based, Teaching and Learning method that was each inevitably replaced by some other Carnegie-funded, virtually identical but simply renamed Performance-based method which was going to make all the difference "This Time" ?
How many times have American parents' eyes glazed over or rolled back in their heads hearing the great future strides to be made in: Teaching to Teach, Learning to Learn, Teaching to Learn, Learning to Teach, Improving Improvement, Improving Teaching and Learning, etc...? So what can be different now when Carnegie's Bryk insists we must Learn Our Way into Better Education Systems?
Quite a bit can be different now, actually. The trouble is that normal, honest Americans are not educated in how to speak Carnegie Foundation School to Work Semantics. But that ends today. Today, Americans are going to get a crash course in Carnegie Code.
Here is what Anthony S. ( does the S stand for Snake? ) Bryk said to those in the know:
Not only do we need data to make visible the effects of our changes, we also need more of a specific kind of data: practical measurement embedded in actual work processes to enable faster and more focused learning.
Now what the Carnegie Foundation, courtesy of its mouthpiece Bryk, has really just announced, is that the illegal and unethical DATA collection from individual students, which has been up to this point largely gathered from Summative PARCC type tests, will be replaced by IN-Class Formative assessments. What this looks like, in practice, will be Americans' worst nightmare come true.
Data Collection via "actual work processes" means that classwork will be done on a computer primarily. No papers, no pencils. The student will "practice" their lessons online and receive real time software feedback regarding their alleged academic progress. Their online lesson will be "personalized" to the extent that they will be given the same lesson over and over again with varying levels of complexity until they demonstrate that they have learned what they are supposed to have learned. MASTERY in other words.
Here is what Mastery really means by the way:
Meglomaniacs Assessing Students To Engender
Robotic Yes-Men.
Robotic Yes-Men.
As the student supplies his/her answers, not only does the software adjust to teach the student more "practically", but it stores the information about how the student answered x, y or Z; how quickly, how well, how thoroughly. All of this DATA will be isolated to the student's personal electronic dossier. This will occur as a matter of practice every hour of every day that student attends school in student's lifetime.
And parents think that the current PARCC tests are opaque and invasive?
This entire process will make summative assessments seem practically benign because at least parents know concretely when the tests are taking place. The embedded "practical assessments " that Carnegie is hustling will be invisible to the students, parents, and even to the students' teachers. The measure and basis of what constitutes students' success or failure on any given "learning objective" will be unknown to the people who deserve to know the most. There will be fewer, if any, papers or tests to come home for parents to see, or for the students to learn from, or for the teachers to use to actually help the students.
Formative Assessment, aka invisible steering and monitoring of student "progress", has been the end game of Carnegie Foundation's school-to-work education agenda.
A prediction:
In a matter of months we will hear from the Department of Education that the Summative twice a year, days-long testing cycles for all students will become a thing of the past. There will be a big hue and cry that the educators and Government representatives have 'listened to the parents! '
Do Not Fall for it.
It is true that they will remove most of the onerous assessments for most of the kids in school. Summative assessments will only be mandated for 3rd grade, 8th grade and 12th grade or whatever approximates those grades in the new personalized learning environment of the community school hub.
The SCANS report from 1992, (Secretary's Commission On Achieving Necessary Skills) explains the entire assessment and school to work plan in black and white. http://sbceo.org/%7Ecareers/pdf/scans_report.pdf
BUT the actual invasive and illegal violating assessments of our kids WILL remain in place. Only now they will be worse because the assessments will be daily. They will be constant. And they will attempt to control our children's every thought and every move.
Carnegie Foundation claims: "We need data to make visible the effects of our changes."
Parents can demand now, and demand loudly, to know who is the "We" that gets to see the "Visible" data because it certainly is not the parents. Parents can also demand to know what are the CHANGES desired for our children and WHY? How exactly are the desired effects revealed in the Data gathered? Parents can say NO. No more data collection. Not with my child. Not with my tax money.
Parents say NO to collection of actually Invisible "visible" Data .
3D, page 213. In 1984 Schooling And Technology, Vol. 3, Planning For The Future: A Collaborative Model, An Interpretive Report on Creative Partnerships in Technology—An Open Forum by Dustin H. Heuston, World Institute for Computer-Assisted Teaching (WICAT) was published (Southeastern Regional Council for Educational Improvement: Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, 1984) under a grant from the U.S. Office of Education, HEW, National Institute of Education. An excerpt from “Discussion: Developing the Potential of an Amazing Tool” in Schooling and Technology follows:
"We’ve been absolutely staggered by realizing that the computer has the capability to act as if it were ten of the top psychologists working with one student.... You’ve seen the tip of the iceberg. Won’t it be wonderful when the child in the smallest county in the most distant area or in the most confused urban setting can have the equivalent of the finest school in the world on that terminal and no one can get between that child and the curriculum? We have great moments coming in the history of education."
[Ed. Note: The comment regarding the computer’s role as a “top psychologist” is as disturbing as is the idea of “no one getting between the child and the curriculum.” These ideas lay to rest the publicly stated purpose of the words “parent-school partnerships” which represent a superb example of semantic deception.]
