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May 20, 2013

Will the Data Warehouse Become Every Student and Teacher's "Permanent Record"?

inBloom, the non-profit started with a hundred million dollar investment from the Gates Foundation, is planning to create a digital record which, barring catastrophe, truly could be a permanent record of every K12 student, from their first interaction with the schools to the last. The amount of information they are planning to collect is staggering. Here are the several hundred categories, which include academic records, attendance records, test results of all sorts, disciplinary incidents, special ed accommodations, and more.  Read Full Post >

Posted by Anthony Cody at 2:00 PM | | Leave a comment | Recommend

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 >

Posted by Anthony Cody at 9:54 PM | | Leave a comment | Recommend

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 >

Posted by Anthony Cody at 5:32 PM | | Leave a comment | Recommend

May 06, 2013

Will a Year's Delay Save the Common Core? A Response to Weingarten's Proposal

Teachers - and union leaders -- may feel as if they should get on board, to try to steer this process. However, I think this is a ship of doom for our schools. I think its effect will be twofold. It will create a smoother, wider, more easily standardized market for curriculum and technology. This will, in turn, promote the standardization of curriculum and instruction, and further de-professionalize teaching. The assessments will reinforce this, by tying teachers closer to more frequent timelines and benchmark assessments, which will be, in many places, tied to teacher evaluations. And the widespread failures of public schools will be used to further "disrupt the public school monopoly," spurring further expansion of vouchers and charters and private schools.  Read Full Post >

Posted by Anthony Cody at 1:13 PM | | Leave a comment | Recommend

April 24, 2013

John Thompson: Education Reform Party is Over -- What a Mess!

Guest post by John Thompson. Back when "Dandy Don" Meredith was host of Monday Night Football, when the game was all over but the shouting, he would break into song. We need a 21st century way of saying the obvious. Test-driven school "reform" failed. To borrow a phrase regarding "closing time,"...  Read Full Post >

Posted by Anthony Cody at 9:26 PM | | Leave a comment | Recommend

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 >

Posted by Anthony Cody at 00:36 AM | | Leave a comment | Recommend

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 >

Posted by Anthony Cody at 3:32 PM | | Leave a comment | Recommend

January 23, 2013

John Thompson: The Gates Foundation Leapt, Now MET Looks

What would have happened if the Gates Foundation's Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) research had been conducted before the "Billionaires Boys Club's" preferences were codified into law in Race to the Top and the Department of Education's NCLB waiver requirements? How would their final report, "Ensuring Fair and Reliable Measures of Effective Teaching," read if its findings were reported before value-added evaluations were imposed on the nation's schools? Even if the same researchers had used the same methodology and made identical findings, how would that evidence have been presented?  Read Full Post >

Posted by Anthony Cody at 1:29 PM | | Leave a comment | Recommend

November 05, 2012

John Thompson: New Research Uncovers Fresh Trouble for VAM Evaluations

Guest post by John Thompson. As more and more schools implement various forms of Value-Added method (VAM) evaluation systems, we are learning some disturbing things about how reliable these methods are. Education Week's Stephan Sawchuk, in "'Value-Added' Measures at Secondary Level Questioned," e...  Read Full Post >

Posted by Anthony Cody at 10:07 AM | | Leave a comment | Recommend

November 03, 2012

Is Seniority for Teachers Bad for Students?

Yesterday's post challenging the ability of some education reform "liberals" to shed core values such as support for unions, desegregation and the institution of public education apparently hit some sensitive nerves. In particular, Chris Arnold, whom we recently saw praising the "parent trigger" mo...  Read Full Post >

Posted by Anthony Cody at 11:32 AM | | Leave a comment | Recommend

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