Common-Core Testing Consortium Hires Tech Director
Brandt Redd, formerly of the Gates foundation, has been named chief technology officer at the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. Read Full Post >
All Blog Posts With gates foundation Tag or Category
May 17, 2013
May 15, 2013
Dystopia: A Possible Future of Teacher Evaluation
This is a future I believe is possible given the systems and structures being promoted by technocrats like Gates. This is NOT the way the system has been described by Bill Gates or any of his representatives. They tend to use the language of feedback and collaboration. But as I have been asking, if collaboration is the goal, why must this be embedded in an evaluation process, which has the goal of determining who ought to be fired? Read Full Post >
May 08, 2013
Bill Gates' TED Talk: Are Video Cameras the Missing Link?
Bill Gates has described himself as a technocrat, so perhaps it is natural that he would fixate on some piece of technology as the missing element. But the real things that are missing are the time that teachers need to work together, and the understanding that this time will be most fruitful when teachers are given the autonomy to tackle the challenges they face, rather than micromanaged and driven by test score data. Read Full Post >
May 04, 2013
Rebirth: New Orleans -- Documentary Poses a Moral Dilemma
this highlights for me, the moral dimension that Merrow ignores, when, at the end of the film, he proclaims this experiment a success. How can we accept that a third of the schools in New Orleans have been consigned to the status of dumping grounds for the other two thirds? How can we celebrate the creation of a system that allows schools to wall themselves off from students who are the most damaged by poverty and violence - and relegates those students to schools that cannot possibly succeed in this competitive scheme? Read Full Post >
April 30, 2013
Are Education Innovators Channeling B.F. Skinner?
So what is wrong with these machines and this mechanical "personalization"? The modern versions of the teaching machines are certainly more sophisticated than these dinosaurs of the 1950s. But they have more in common than just the promises made on their behalf. If we look over the shoulders of children in computer labs today, most of the programs are variations of those described by Dr. Skinner. Students are given a short text or math problem and must provide the correct answer. Often there is a game or snazzy cartoon characters who dress up the process and make it more fun, but the essence has not changed much. Students follow a course of study with bits of learning sprinkled along a pathway, and then take periodic tests to show they have mastered that mouthful. Read Full Post >
April 25, 2013
Paul Horton: Of Common Core, Conspiracies and Coups d'Etat
When it comes to education, however, Obama asserts a policy that has nothing to do with progressive ideas about education. While progressive ideas of education emphasize children as individuals who must be given opportunities to stretch their innate capacities within an organic context for learning, the President and Mr. Duncan have embraced the data-driven high-stakes-testing-model retooled from President Bush's No Child left behind days. Read Full Post >
April 25, 2013
John White Withdraws Louisiana Student Data from inBloom
Louisiana Superintendent John White announced the state was no longer storing student data with inBloom, a non-profit group focused on personalized learning. Read Full Post >
April 19, 2013
Who Created Excuses for Michelle Rhee?
Teacher unions have not been the dynamic organizations they could or should have been. But to make them responsible for the reactionary tidal wave of phony reform upon which Michelle Rhee has surfed like one of the Beach Boys is absurd. It is like blaming climate scientists for the backlash against global warming. There are significant motivations powering corporate education reform, and its sponsors have poured billions into their project. They own this, and they own Michelle Rhee. They bought her, and now Merrow has helped to break her. Rhee and her billionaire sponsors, and the media who promoted her, they are the ones responsible for her rise to power way beyond that which she could have achieved without such support. Read Full Post >
April 05, 2013
Accountability for Mr. Gates: The Billionaire Philanthropist Evaluation
But let's imagine we could turn the tables on Mr. Gates and evaluate his performance as a philanthropist. Might we establish some goals to which we could hold our billionaires accountable? We do not have any measurable indicators such as test scores to use, but since I do not find these to be of great value in any case, I will offer a more qualitative metric, based on my knowledge of the subject's work. Since he has spoken glowingly of the salutary effect of feedback on teachers, surely he will welcome this feedback, even though it is unsolicited. Read Full Post >
April 04, 2013
Bill Gates Dances Around the Teacher Evaluation Disaster He Sponsored
This amounts to an attempt to distance the Gates Foundation from the asinine consequences of the policies they have sponsored, while accepting no responsibility for them whatsoever. This is a non-starter, as far as I am concerned. When Bill Gates states he is all for accountability, perhaps he might start with himself. Until then, I really do not value his views on what good accountability systems for others ought to consist of. Read Full Post >
