Big Brother U & The Surveillance State

If you missed this article at Washington Post about on campus surveillance of students-- well, congratulations on having one less troubling thought in your head over the past week. Because the surveillance is continuing its slow, steady advance. Now technology lets colleges monitor their students 24/7. Yay.

This particular article focuses on a company called SpotterEDU, and they are creepy as hell. The main part of their is a quick, easy technofix for taking attendance. Students are required to download the app (this also means, though the article is so tech forward it doesn't even address these issues, that students are also required to carry an up-to-date cellphone and keep it fully charged at all times) which then "checks in" with Bluetooth beacons in classrooms on campus (or anywhere else the beacons are planted).

Bluetooth beacons were supposed to be the Thing Of The Year in 2016, the tech that was going to put coupons on our phones when we approached a certain product and which would unlock doors as we walked closer. As with virtually every big tech promise of the last twenty years, it hasn't exactly arrived yet. If the function of Bluetooth in my home is any indicator, I'm guessing we have a few bugs to work out yet.

That seems to be the case for some students, who report in the article that they get in fights with the tech about whether or not they were really absent or late to class. yay, computer technology-- usually almost doing of what it's supposed to do, sort of. As the SpotterEDU Terms of Service say, its data is not guaranteed to be “accurate, complete, correct, adequate, useful, timely, reliable or otherwise.”

But a professor in the article notes that this method of techno attendance taking has caused more students to show up to class, which raises an important question. Why did they previously think they didn't have to? Because as a lowly high school teacher, I always assumed that if a student could miss my class a whole without it having any apparent effect on what she was learning, then I'm the one who must be doing something wrong. If I can skip your class 50% of the time and still get a great grade, I'm not the one who's screwing up. But the colleges, and some professors, like this tech because it "nudges" students to be more well-behaved and compliant.

If we were just talking about classroom attendance, this would be bad enough, but the SpotterEDU site touts this as "An automated attendance monitoring and early alerting platform." Because our go-to justification for this kind of oppressive tracking, whether we're talking Florida's police state state or Big Brother University, is that This Is For Your Own Good. This is how we'll catch shooters and thwart suicides. We'll just watch all of you young folks all the time, for your own good. Even though there's still not a shred of evidence that this kind of tracking does any good.

Sadly, Bluetooth-based monitoring isn't remotely this 

obvious. Just a little box on the wall, too boring to make a

good pic for a post.

Who's good is it for, really? Another line from the SpotterEDU site is "decrease friction between those helping students succeed." It's for the People In Charge (who are also, not coincidentally, the ones reserving the right to decide what "succeed" will mean. These are tools for lazy managers, for the boss who keep thinking that his job would be so much easier if the people he's in charge of would behave the way he wants them to and stop exercising so much independent thought.

There are other troubling aspects. Colleges can split the tracked students into sub groups like freshmen or minority students. Where is the data stored, and for how long, and under what sort of security. And always, the usual sort of mission creep-- "We'll collect data to deal with this specific issue" becomes "now that we have this big pile of data, I bet we could sift through it do X" followed by "I see you have a big valuable pile of data sitting there-- can I make you an offer so that I can use it? Strictly for the students's own good, of course..."

At one point, one of the interviewees raises the big question-- who exactly does this serve? What sort of utility do students get from allowing themselves to be tracked, imperfectly, everywhere? How does this help them take their place as educated leaders in an adult world? The answer of course is that it doesn't do any of those things-- it lets a tech company make a sale and some college administrators make their own jobs a bit easier.

Even if you don't have a Washington Post subscription, this is worth using up one of your free reads for. It's alarming and disturbing, not just that this kind of thing exists, but that there are people who think it's a great idea, and that we have an entire generation growing up to think that being tracked 24/7 is perfectly normal and okay.

Merry Christmas

To those of you who celebrate the holiday, best wishes. (For those of you who don't, best wishes). Here's the Curmudgucation Institute's annually curated selection of Christmas music that's not just the same damn thing the radio's been playing for weeks. Enjoy.



I've taken off a couple of days to spend with board of directors and the rest of the institute stakeholders who are in town. I'll be back with the usual education shenanigans shortly.

WI: Pre-K Cyberschool Shenanigans

A few Wisconsin legislators have a dumb idea for a law. They'd like to spend $1.5 million on cyberschool-- on line computerized instruction-- for pre-schoolers.

This is just layers and layers of dumb.

First, cyberschools in general have proven to be lousy. Spectacularly lousy-- and that's in a study run by an organization sympathetic to charters.. Students would be better off spending a year playing video games lousy. So bad that even other charter school promoters won't defend them lousy. In short, outside very specific sets of special needs, there is no evidence that cyberschooling works.

Second, while there is still considerable debate, the general consensus is that screen time for littles should be somewhere between very small amounts and none at all.

Third, academic studies are a lousy idea for littles, unlikely to yield real benefits even as they may create real harm.

But education committee chair Rep. Jeremy Thiesfeldt is either unaware or unconcerned-- well, I don't know how he can be either. The man has an elementary education degree (from Martin Luther College) and taught for some time at Winnebago Lutheran Academy. Now, yes-- MLC has as its purpose the cranking out of witnesses to the Lutheran faith (and playing sports). And yes, WLA is a private religious school that exists to "glorify God" (and play sports). But I've known plenty of Lutherans, and there's nothing about being Lutheran that would preclude knowing that cyberschools and academic instruction for littles is a lousy idea.

The program would be used fifteen minutes a day, five days a week, and would be piloted in a combination of rural and urban districts and would be added on top of the state's existing program for four year olds.

Thiesfeldt has some fairly specific ideas about what the program should provide.

The vendor would be required to show past success in similar endeavors; provide instruction in reading, math and science; design a program to improve a child’s transition to kindergarten; require parental engagement including interaction with a learning coach; evaluate a child’s growth; and provide internet and a computer at no cost to families that do not have them.

Also it would help increase reading scores. Because getting standardized test scores up should totally be the focus of pre-school education.

How did he come up with such a clear picture of what he wanted. Well,  he just happened to see a presentation (aka "sales pitch") from Waterford.org, the outfit that is an industry leader in infliucting cyberschool on preschoolers through their widely adopted UPSTART program. So, to recap, he's seen a pitch from one company that works in this field, and he's written a law tailored exactly to that company. I hope the marketing guy for UPSTART is being paid really well.

UPSTART popped up in Utah a few years back, a state that was investing $0.00 in pre=school education. In Utah they also used the business model of making friends with a legislator,State Senator Howard Stephenson, and his explanation was not inspiring:

“We want to reach the greatest number of children with the resources that we have,” Stephenson said. “I don’t think we’re being cheap at all. We’re being smart.”

I'm more inclined to go with this alternative theory.

“It’s wishful thinking by state legislatures,” said Steven Barnett, the director of the National ­Institute for Early Education ­Research at Rutgers University. “We want preschool, we want to get these great results, but we don’t actually want to spend the money.”

Sadly, UPSTART has been spreading like a weed-- a big, cheap weed. Indiana. Mississippi. They benefit from, again, the cheap, plus the shiny computers, plus periodic outburst of uncritical just-run-the-news-release press. The idea of plunking three and four years olds in front of computers to do academic work has become widespread enough that Defending The Early Years actually took the time to write a report pointing out that putting pre-schoolers in front of computers to learn to read is a terrible idea. 

Waterford's website trumpets "Do you know 2.2 million children do not have access to public-funded early education?" which is a compelling statistic, except that it compels me to agitate for public-funded pre-K for all and not a cheap, unproven, bad idea of a software program. But it's really shiny, and it promises a cheap technosolution; the TED-linked Audacious Project handed Waterford $20 million. Waterford calls their program "Award-winning" and boasts that their DIBELS scores (that's the test in which small children decode nonsense syllables, Exhibit A in "When phonics goes too far"). UPSTART also "improves cognitive outcomes," and, no, sorry, but no, you have no idea whether or not it does any such thing.

Their business model, as we've seen, seems to focus on getting paid with tax dollars, which allows them to market their product as "free"! Oh, and they're "non-profit," so you know-- no, you don't know anything other than there are no stockholders making money here. As multiple non-profits have shown, "Non-profit" and "intensely focused on making money" are not mutually exclusive.

Ah, well. It appears that Wisconsin is poised to join the states that would rather get pre-K cheap than right. Bad news for Wisconsin's children, good news for the UPSTART marketing team. Ka-ching.

ICYMI: The Nights Before Christmas Edition (12/22)

Down to the wire (or in some cases, past the wire-- my extended family gathered at my folks yesterday for our holiday celebration). But there's still plenty to read from the last week.

The Science of Writing

"Science is not a hammer." Paul Thomas with some thoughts about the teaching of writing and the science that is (or is not) behind it and science's place in the grander scheme.

Whatever Happened to EdTPA? It's Still Here and Still Messed up

A new study suggests that EdTPA shouldn't be used for, well, much of anything. Fred Klonsky, who's been following EdTPA for a while has some thoughts (and some links) about the study and the program.

How Ending Behavior Rewards Helped One School Focus on Student Motivation and Character  

KQED makes a visit to Jersey to revisit the question of whether or not t's a good idea to reward students for behaving well. Daniel Pink makes an appearance.

Gary Larson Is Back, Sort Of.

Important news from the New York Times-- The Far Side is getting digitized-- and there night even be new panels.

Demand Pennsylvania Reform Its Charter Laws    

Steve Singer reminds Pennsylvanians that there is some legislation just waiting for public comment. A must read for PA residents.

The Lanes That Divide

The Washington Post looks at how the drawing of school district boundaries is still a potent weapon against integration.

American students aren't getting smarter-- and testing is to blame  

Testing expert Daniel Koretz is at NBC, explaining that high stakes testing has been a damaging crock. This should inspire you to buy Koretz's book.

Seven Reasons Teachers Trust Each Other More Than...Well, Anyone.  

You should be reading Nancy Flanagan regularly, but she is particularly on target this week, talking about how teachers value the judgment of other teachers more than, say, self-professed internet ed experts.

Reporters Faced Resistance At Every Level  

Reporters from the Record and NorthJersey.com have done some good work writing about charter schools, but this article shows how one of that reporting came easily. Another reminder that charter transparency and accountability are not really things.

Why Education Reform Is Not Working  

The New York Times runs a few responses to its piece about the Core's tenth birthday. They are not complimentary.

The Myth of Charter School Innovation  

The notion that charters are laboratories of educational innovation just won't die. nancy Bailey explains why it should.

OH: Voucher Crisis Looming

When does a voucher program lose support? When it comes for the wealthy white districts.

Ohio has quietly been working to become the Florida of North when it comes to education, with an assortment of school choice programs that are like a cancerous growth gnawing away at the health of the public school system. But now, due to a collection of lawmaker choices, the privatized schools of Ohio have dramatically advanced their bid to consume public education. And somer lawmakers have noticed.

"Hey! I would like to speak to a manager!"

Ohio has followed the basic template for implementing choice-- get your choicey foot in the door with some modest programs that are strictly to "save" poor, underserved students from "failing" schools. Then slowly expand. Only, somehow, somebody screwed up the "slowly" part.

Next year, the number of "failing" districts in Ohio will jump from 500 to 1,200. The voucher bill for many districts will jump by millions of dollars. (If you like a good graphic, here's a tweet that lays it out.) And the list of schools whose residents are eligible for the EdChoice program include districts that are some of the top-rated districts in the state.

It might not matter that top districts are now voucher-eligible-- after all, parents can just say, "Why go to private school when my public school is great?"-- except for one other wrinkle. Next year ends the requirement that voucher students be former public school students. In other words, next year parents who have never, ever sent their children to public schools will still get a few thousand dollars from the state. Districts will lose a truckload of money without losing a single student.

House Speaker Larry Householder has presided over plenty of choice expansion and school privatization (and been praised by Jeb Bush's right-hand lady of privatization, Patty Levesque, for it), but even he sees some problems with the current trajectory, and has declared that something has to be done, toot de suite. Mind you, his phrase is "soften the blow" and not "stop the funneling of public tax dollars to private schools." He has previously proposed an assortment of softening agents, but he seems to have increased his sense of urgency. “We have failed badly as far as our report card system and our testing system in this state,” Householder told reporters in his Columbus office.

Meanwhile, February 1 kicks off the EdChoice application period for next year.

Householder thinks the problem is the school grading system, and that whole thing needs to be tweaked. By a coincidence, a committee report released Monday suggested that Ohio needs to do away with the business of giving A-F letter grades for schools for a variety of reasons, though personally I think "It's dumb and doesn't tell you anything useful about the school being graded" is more than enough. In the annals of accountability ideas, A-F grades for schools is one of the worst; it provides schools with zero actionable data. The only thing it's good for is a blunt instrument to set policies for closing down public schools or chicken littling your way to pro-privatization policies ("Look at all these public schools with a low grade!!"). A-F grades are not about helping schools improve; they're about punishing them, gutting them, and replacing them. Of the policy groups involved in the committee, only two argued in favor of the A-F grades. One is the Ohio Excels, a group of Ohio business folk who have decided that they should get to set education policy in Ohio, because they want to. The other was Fordham Institute, the right-tilted, reform-pushing, charters-in-Ohio-running thinky tank.

Meanwhile, Sen. Teresa Fedor doesn't believe the Ohio GOP is serious about fixing the coming voucherpocalypse, noting that A) they've known this was coming since the budget, complete with various last-min ute sneaky voucher addendums was passed and B) they've been called back to session about a week before the Feb. 1 opening of voucher season.

So we'll have to wait and see. It could still happen; the Ohio legislature is aces when it comes top speedy stealth legislation, and when they really want to get it done, the last minute is thirty more seconds than they need. On the other hand, the only thing that seems to be wrong here from the reformster perspective is that the voucher expansion came too quickly and may potentially alarm too many people to whom legislators might have to actually listen. Again, nothing about this expansion is out of line with a voucher rollout as a matter of substance or policy; the only problem is the speed with which it's barreling into Certain Neighborhoods. Someone cranked up the heat on that pot of frogs a little too swiftly.

Would Medicare-For-All Come With An Education Bonus?

This is the least-read thing I've ever written for Forbes, but I still wonder about the issue. So let  me put it out there again.

The expansion of Medicare coverage as a path to universal healthcare for the U.S. has unleashed a great deal of debate from think tanks to water coolers. One of the biggest questions remain—how much would it actually cost, and what would the average citizen pay?




The answer to the first question is “a whole lot (but remember--we currently pay a large number of whole lots. The second part-- well, there are many possible plans floating around at the moment. Some argue that the overall cost of healthcare in the U.S. would come down, meaning savings for some folks and fewer profits for others. The government costs would go way up, necessitating increased taxes for everyone. But, argue supporters, the increased tax burden would be offset by the end of deductibles and co-pays; there’s also the hope, under some versions, that employers would save on healthcare costs and some of those savings could be passed on as wage increases. Plus, the extra wrinkle that businesses would no longer be able to use health care as leverage against striking workers.

There is one other wrinkle that seems to draw little or no discussion.

Public school employees, like other citizens, get their healthcare from their employers. But unlike other citizens, public school employees have their healthcare paid for by taxpayers. According to the Kaiser Foundation, the cost of an employer-provided insurance policy has topped $20,000. District-provided insurance has stayed in that neighborhood. That means that in small a school district with just 200 employees, even if the district has been paying $15,000 per employee, Medicare-for-All could potentially provide as much as $3 million savings to local taxpayers. That could be immediately translated into lower real estate taxes, or higher wages or better facilities, or something.

One of the great sticking points for retirement is often how to cover insurance until the retiree is old enough for Medicare; this results in some pricey retirement incentive programs in some districts. Those could go away under Medicare-for-All, providing more savings to school district taxpayers.

There could be additional non-financial benefits as well. Contract negotiations often run aground over benefits, even as increased health insurance costs give teachers “invisible” raises (the school district spends more per teacher, but the teacher never sees it). Taking health insurance off the table could make contract negotiations just a bit easier and clearer.

Heaven only knows what Medicare-for-All (or Mostly-All) could eventually look like, nor what it would look like after it miraculously passed through the House and Senate, But an education bonus could be part of that picture, and with it, maybe even some real estate tax relief. It may not be a major feature of health care policy, but an instant couple of million being freed up is not nothing.

Congress To DeVos: "Nope"

The House has passed a budget, and Betsy DeVos's Education Freedom Tax Dodge is not in it.

This is not a big surprise, though both Kellyanne Conway and Donald Trump stepped up in recent weeks to try to help sell it.

EdWeek reports that the deal struck by federal lawmakers has nary a cent for the Education Freedom Scholarships program. The program was "ignored" and there is neither money for administering that "fund a private school and get out of paying your taxes all at the same time" program, nor does it address the $5 billion budgetary hole that the DeVos plan would create. The program, despite all the DeVosian love lavished upon it, has been ghosted.

EdWeek notes a few other education items.

Trump asked for a 10% cut to the department and the elimination of twenty-nine programs. That didn't happen (though it's worth noting that many Trump appointees like DeVos have figured out that you can cut spending in your department by simply letting positions stand empty).

There is more money for Title I. It's about a 3% increase, while Democratic candidates are calling for increases of 200% to 300%.

The Charter Schools Program-- the fund that has wasted a billion dollars on charter school waste and fraud-- will stay art current levels, with neither the boost the GOP wanted nor the cut that Democrats called for.

And special ed funding will once again not be increased to its full, required level. This makes forever years for Congress to stiff the states on the granddaddy of all unfunded mandates. Thanks a lot, Congress.

Notably, for the first time in twenty years, the budget will fund studies of gun violence by the Center for Disease Control and the National Institute of Health. Apparently the DeVos-led school safety commission recommendation that schools need more guns and surveillance didn't settle the issue for everyone. Go figure.

All in all, an encouraging batch of results, and a reminder that one good thing about Betsy DeVos as ed secretary is that she's incapable of getting much done.