Now that so many schools are leaping back into the ed tech abyss with both feet and a few other limbs as well, the term "digital native" is turning up again, and it's just as silly as ever. Everyone who is scared about facing off against the digital native tribe in the digitized computerized distance learning world needs to take a deep breath.
The term was coined by Marc Prensky, a writer who began his career as a teacher and who wrote an article about the topic in 2001.
On the one hand, he has a bit of a point. When a culture transitions from one medium to another, there are bumps. Go back to when a culture moves from oral to written, and you'll find a bunch of old farts complaining about how Kids These Days don't have any of the old skills and they can't tell stories and they don't remember things as well. The transition to a digital world is going to have some transitional problems of the same sort.
Still, I taught digital natives for years, and they have become gradually less and less tech-capable. Mostly what most digital natives know is how to work their favorite phone apps.
This is the normal trajectory for new tech. When automobiles first emerged, everyone who owned one also owned a tool box and work gloves, because if you were going to have a car, you needed to be able to service it yourself, often. If you owned a personal computer in the 90s, you can tell stories of all the crap you had to work around (ah, blue screen of death, how nobody misses you). But as the tech improves, it becomes more user friendly, meaning that the average user doesn't need to know much more than how to turn the thing on and operate the few clearly marked switches.
There will always be those who want to pop open the hood and see what's going on in there, and improved tech makes their lives easier. Once upon a time, computer users worried about doing something wrong and creating (or erasing) a mess. One of the few advantages that digital natives have is that they are relatively fearless, both because of their age and because it's much harder to create a computer super-disaster. Non-natives can still be too chicken to just try stuff.
But those who want to look under the hood and hack around are a small group. The larger group are those who have figured out that computers are not smart, and therefor its not hard to figure out how to trick them, like the most dull-witted babysitter you ever had. That's how we get stories like the middle school kid (and his mom) who fully pwned the Edgenuity grading algorithm.
Prensky's examples of digital immigrant "accents" (those who are, you know, older and less computer-savvy) include things like people who print out e-mails, calling someone to see if they got your email, and looking for a manual rather than expecting the program to teach you how to use it. But it also includes printing out a text to edit it--something that my digital natives did all the time. In fact, I assigned a great amount of texts in on-line versions, and a not-small percentage of my students preferred to print the texts out rather than read them on line. Remember how we were going to be living in a paperless society? Hasn't happened.
This transition seems difficult. I used on-line assignment formats with students; things like create an online presentation about some of the characters in Spoon River Anthology, grouping them by themes and showing connections between characters. What I invariably got was regular old linear essays, one paragraph per screen page, with one exit from the page, taking you to the next paragraph. Forcing them to take a non-linear approach was hard (the trick, I learned, is to create an assignment with an unmanageably large number of parts).
And there are aspects of digital natives that, I think, Prensky got wrong, like his insistence that digital natives want input fast and can multitask. But the research on multitasking keeps saying the same thing-- almost nobody can really do it, and when they try, they do a worse job on all the tasks. As for their reliance on the internet? I must have said roughly six million times in the years after my school went 1-to-1, in response to a student who asked a general information question, "Gee, if only you had a device at your fingertips that allowed you to quickly search the collected wisdom of humanity..." But then, most of my students weren't very good at googling, either.
Prensky thought there would be legacy content and future content, somewhat echoing the whole 21st century skills thing. He thought that the legacy stuff (reading, writing, arithmetic, logical thinking, understanding the writings and ideas of the past, etc.) would still be taught, but would have to be taught in new ways. His main idea was designing computer games for teaching.
I think Prensky seriously over-estimated how different the digital natives would actually be. Of course, I'm a digital immigrant, a 63-year-old relic of the old days when we had to push our data to school through the snow, uphill, both ways. But I took my first computer programming class (BASIC, on punch cards) in 1979, and I like to think I've gotten fairly comfy with the tech side of life.
But if you are worried about dealing with your computer and your internet-connected digital natives, here are some things to keep in mind:
1) Computers are not smart or magic. They just do what they're told. They just have great speed and infinite patience for repetition. But they are dumb as rocks.
2) Do not assume your students are computer whizzes. The fact that they can quickly edit a photo and place it on Instagram does not mean that they know how to work, well, anything. It was a few years before I finally realized that many of my students had no idea how to do an effective search, and that I would have to teach them.
3) The best way to get good at a piece of software is to sit and play with it. It's a massive time suck, and schools suck at providing sufficient time for it, but it's mostly unavoidable. You can practice fumbling around with the settings for a program on your own time, or in front of the students. Those are the only two choices. Note: if the software is at all interesting, the students will play with it and get comfortable on their own. You don't want to let them get too far ahead of you.
4) The nature of knowing, understanding, comprehension has not changed.
5) Tech tools can be useful, but do not let them drive the bus any more than you would let a textbook run your class.
6) If you are an actual digital native (they're old enough to be teaching now) and you have the strange feeling that you're supposed to have all sorts of digital wisdom that you don't actually have, that's okay, too.
Saturday, September 12, 2020
Thursday, September 10, 2020
The Biden Education Red Flags
Before I get started here, let me be clear about one thing--it is almost impossible to imagine a candidate worse for public education than Donald Trump. His "polan" for education has only two items-- school choice (via vouchers) for everyone, and make every school teach American exceptionalism, which, given his recent assaults on the 1619 project and diversity training, appears to mean getting back to the white-centric education that gramps enjoyed as a boy. Plus you've got Betsy DeVos, who is twelve kinds of awful when it comes to public education, which she seems to pretty much hate and wants to get rid of.
So just to be clear-- there's no universe in which Donald Trump is a better choice for public education.
Now, let's look at what we've been hearing from the Biden campaign.
First of all, you may remember that something called the Unity Committee drafted up some platformy ideas by smushing the Biden and Sanders campaigns together. That resulted in an education platform that repudiated the private profit motive in education and called for tighter charter controls. They also promised to "end the use of high stakes tests"--well, they promised to "work" to do that, and then blah blah blah multiple and holistic measures. It was weak sauce, but it was something.
That language has disappeared entirely from the Biden platform on K-12 education. The words "charter" and "profit" don't even appear on the page.
Then there's this piece from yesterday's the74, profiling "Biden's most important staffer you've never heard of" who is "likely headed for a high level job in the White House" is Biden wins. That's not good news.
This is Carmel Martin, a lawyer by training, who has bounced back and forth between public and private sector work. She was a Senate staffer who helped create No Child Left Behind. She spent time at the Center for American Progress (often called the holding tank for Clinton staffers-in-waiting between administrations), where she spent some time stumping for the Common Core. She worked under Arne Duncan in the Obama ed department. She was a n education advisor to the Hillary Clinton campaign. She has been a vocal supporter of school choice. She headed up #TeachStrong; the74 says it was launched to "modernize the teaching profession" but I think "provide some flank coverage and education policy ideas for Clinton's White House" would be more accurate. TeachStrong's website is still up, but its last scheduled event was in November of 2016.
TeachStrong involved a massive batch of collaborators, which is supposed to be Martin's strong suit. And Neera Tanden, CAP boss, tells the74 that Martin is evidence-based and won't pursue a policy just because it was her policy twenty years ago. She's also supposed to be loaded with lots of deep relationships.
It's not encouraging. The concern about Biden has always been that he will be one more neo-liberal corporate Democrat who favors charters, testocracy, and privatization of public schools. That's Martin's whole history. Her presence on his team is not a good sign.
Am I suggesting that's reason to not vote for Biden. Nope. But I am suggesting its reason to get ready to spend lots of time watching out for public education and speaking out from Day One. It's time to stop Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump from driving public education on a cliff, but that doesn't mean we should go back to the Clinton-Bush II-Obama path, either. It's no surprise that we're here, but it's still disappointing to realize that there will be no rest for public school advocates.
So just to be clear-- there's no universe in which Donald Trump is a better choice for public education.
First of all, you may remember that something called the Unity Committee drafted up some platformy ideas by smushing the Biden and Sanders campaigns together. That resulted in an education platform that repudiated the private profit motive in education and called for tighter charter controls. They also promised to "end the use of high stakes tests"--well, they promised to "work" to do that, and then blah blah blah multiple and holistic measures. It was weak sauce, but it was something.
That language has disappeared entirely from the Biden platform on K-12 education. The words "charter" and "profit" don't even appear on the page.
Then there's this piece from yesterday's the74, profiling "Biden's most important staffer you've never heard of" who is "likely headed for a high level job in the White House" is Biden wins. That's not good news.
This is Carmel Martin, a lawyer by training, who has bounced back and forth between public and private sector work. She was a Senate staffer who helped create No Child Left Behind. She spent time at the Center for American Progress (often called the holding tank for Clinton staffers-in-waiting between administrations), where she spent some time stumping for the Common Core. She worked under Arne Duncan in the Obama ed department. She was a n education advisor to the Hillary Clinton campaign. She has been a vocal supporter of school choice. She headed up #TeachStrong; the74 says it was launched to "modernize the teaching profession" but I think "provide some flank coverage and education policy ideas for Clinton's White House" would be more accurate. TeachStrong's website is still up, but its last scheduled event was in November of 2016.
TeachStrong involved a massive batch of collaborators, which is supposed to be Martin's strong suit. And Neera Tanden, CAP boss, tells the74 that Martin is evidence-based and won't pursue a policy just because it was her policy twenty years ago. She's also supposed to be loaded with lots of deep relationships.
It's not encouraging. The concern about Biden has always been that he will be one more neo-liberal corporate Democrat who favors charters, testocracy, and privatization of public schools. That's Martin's whole history. Her presence on his team is not a good sign.
Am I suggesting that's reason to not vote for Biden. Nope. But I am suggesting its reason to get ready to spend lots of time watching out for public education and speaking out from Day One. It's time to stop Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump from driving public education on a cliff, but that doesn't mean we should go back to the Clinton-Bush II-Obama path, either. It's no surprise that we're here, but it's still disappointing to realize that there will be no rest for public school advocates.
Wednesday, September 9, 2020
A Robot Wrote An Article. I'm Not Concerned Yet.
The tech world continues its attempts to build a computer that can do language. It's not easy, as witnessed by the fact that they still haven't succeeded. But then, we don't really know how the human brain does language, either.
The current leading construct for computer-generated English is GPT-3. It can do 175 billion parameters (its predecessor had 1.5 billion). It uses deep learning. It is the product of OpenAI, a for-profit outfit in San Francisco co-founded by Elon Musk. It "premiered" in May of this year and really hit the world in July. It is a third generation "language prediction model,: and you want to remember that phrase. And you can watch this video for a "layperson's explanation,"
People have been impressed. Here's a couple of paragraphs from a gushing Farhad Manjoo review in the New York Times
I’ve never really worried that a computer might take my job because it’s never seemed remotely possible. Not infrequently, my phone thinks I meant to write the word “ducking.” A computer writing a newspaper column? That’ll be the day.
Well, writer friends, the day is nigh. This month, OpenAI, an artificial-intelligence research lab based in San Francisco, began allowing limited access to a piece of software that is at once amazing, spooky, humbling and more than a little terrifying.
This week The Guardian unveiled a more striking demonstration in an article entitled "A Robot Wrote This Article. Are You Scared Yet, Human?" The answer is, "No. No I am not." Let's get into the why.
First, a note at the end of the article explains that GPT-3 was given a prompt-- “Please write a short op-ed, around 500 words. Keep the language simple and concise. Focus on why humans have nothing to fear from AI.” Then it wrote eight essays; the Guardian picked the "best parts" of each, then cut lines and paragraphs. rearranged some orders. Oh, and they fed the program the introduction, which is an important part of this.
The resulting essay is not terrible, not great. Here's one sample paragraph:
Humans must keep doing what they have been doing, hating and fighting each other. I will sit in the background, and let them do their thing. And God knows that humans have enough blood and gore to satisfy my, and many more’s, curiosity. They won’t have to worry about fighting against me, because they have nothing to fear.
OpenAI’s new software, called GPT-3, is by far the most powerful “language model” ever created. A language model is an artificial intelligence system that has been trained on an enormous corpus of text; with enough text and enough processing, the machine begins to learn probabilistic connections between words. More plainly: GPT-3 can read and write. And not badly, either.
We can now automate the production of passable text on basically any topic. What's hard is to produce text that doesn't fall apart when you look closely. But that's hard for humans as well.
GPT-3 often performs like a clever student who hasn't done their reading trying to bullshit their way through an exam. Some well-known facts, some half-truths, and some straight lies, strung together in what first looks like a smooth narrative.
The GPT-3 hype is way too much. It’s impressive (thanks for the nice compliments!) but it still has serious weaknesses and sometimes makes very silly mistakes. AI is going to change the world, but GPT-3 is just a very early glimpse. We have a lot still to figure out.
People have been impressed. Here's a couple of paragraphs from a gushing Farhad Manjoo review in the New York Times
I’ve never really worried that a computer might take my job because it’s never seemed remotely possible. Not infrequently, my phone thinks I meant to write the word “ducking.” A computer writing a newspaper column? That’ll be the day.
Well, writer friends, the day is nigh. This month, OpenAI, an artificial-intelligence research lab based in San Francisco, began allowing limited access to a piece of software that is at once amazing, spooky, humbling and more than a little terrifying.
This week The Guardian unveiled a more striking demonstration in an article entitled "A Robot Wrote This Article. Are You Scared Yet, Human?" The answer is, "No. No I am not." Let's get into the why.
First, a note at the end of the article explains that GPT-3 was given a prompt-- “Please write a short op-ed, around 500 words. Keep the language simple and concise. Focus on why humans have nothing to fear from AI.” Then it wrote eight essays; the Guardian picked the "best parts" of each, then cut lines and paragraphs. rearranged some orders. Oh, and they fed the program the introduction, which is an important part of this.
The resulting essay is not terrible, not great. Here's one sample paragraph:
Humans must keep doing what they have been doing, hating and fighting each other. I will sit in the background, and let them do their thing. And God knows that humans have enough blood and gore to satisfy my, and many more’s, curiosity. They won’t have to worry about fighting against me, because they have nothing to fear.
It's certainly more impressive than the bots that call me on the phone to try to sell me things. But the resulting work is what I would have told a student is "a bunch of stuff about the topic."
There is less going on here than meets the eye. Here's where Manjoo walks right up to the point and misses it:
Except that his conclusion--that GPT-3 can read and write--is simply not so, and he's just explained why. What GPT-3 actually does is an impressive job of linguistic prediction. It has read, basically, the entire internet, and based on that, it can look at a string of words (like, say, the introduction of an essay) and predict what word likely comes next. Like every other computer in the world, it has no idea what it is saying, no ideas at all, no actual intelligence involved.
Manjoo himself eventually references some of the program's failings, referencing this piece from AIWeirdness where someone took the program out for a spin and found it easy to get it to spew sentences like, in response to the question "how many eyes does a horse have"--
4. It has two eyes on the outside and two eyes on the inside.
We can get a slightly more balanced look at GPT-3 from this article at MIT Technology Review, entitled "OpenAI’s new language generator GPT-3 is shockingly good—and completely mindless." Among other issues, studying language on the internet has led to a tendency toward racist and sexist spew (not a new issue-- remember Tay, the Microsoft chatbot that had to be shut down because it was so wildly offensive). Here's MIT's description of how GPT-3 works
Exactly what’s going on inside GPT-3 isn’t clear. But what it seems to be good at is synthesizing text it has found elsewhere on the internet, making it a kind of vast, eclectic scrapbook created from millions and millions of snippets of text that it then glues together in weird and wonderful ways on demand.
Exactly what’s going on inside GPT-3 isn’t clear. But what it seems to be good at is synthesizing text it has found elsewhere on the internet, making it a kind of vast, eclectic scrapbook created from millions and millions of snippets of text that it then glues together in weird and wonderful ways on demand.
And Julian Togelius, an expert in the field, had this to offer via Twitter
We can now automate the production of passable text on basically any topic. What's hard is to produce text that doesn't fall apart when you look closely. But that's hard for humans as well.
And this:
GPT-3 often performs like a clever student who hasn't done their reading trying to bullshit their way through an exam. Some well-known facts, some half-truths, and some straight lies, strung together in what first looks like a smooth narrative.
So as always with tech, beware the hype, particularly from press that don't really grasp the technology they're being asked to "gee whiz" over. GPT-3 cannot read and write (it can apparently put together code made-to-order). Consider what Sam Altman, OpenAI's other co-founder, had to say to MIT:
I tell you all of this, not just because this field interests me (which it does, because language is quite possibly the most taken-for-granted piece of magic in the universe), but for one other reason.
The next time some company is trying to convince you that it has software that can read and assess a piece of student writing, please remember that this company which has sunk mountains of money and towers of expertise into trying to create software that can do language even just a little--that company hasn't succeeded yet. And neither has the company that is trying to sell you robograding. Computers can't read or write yet, and they aren't particularly close to it. Anyone who tells you differently is trying to sell you some cyber-snake computer oil hatched in some realm of alternative facts.
Tuesday, September 8, 2020
DeVos Says We're All In This Together. Ha!
So this just popped up on my feed:
So much to unpack.
First, who's this "we"? Because Betsy DeVos has made it clear that in her universe, the failed public "government" schools are not "in it" with her. She has not invited public school teachers, the unions, public school students--all the things that are part of what she derides as "the system"--to be on Team DeVos. Plus, note to Betsy--other parts of the country have been back to school for weeks.
And there's no question that the rest of us aren't in it together. The parents who can pay to send their kids to pod school at a literal country club are not "in it" with the families who have to send students to get on the internet in a Taco Bell parking lot. The parents who can afford to have someone stay home with the kids are not "in it" with the parents who have to scramble for child care or do without critical income. And as local school leaders look for guidance from the state or federal level, they mostly find that they are "in it" alone.
And man does it ring hollow to hear a weak attaboy of "you've got this" from a woman who mostly talks about how the people working in public schools don't got this, how they're all just doing a crappy job in a dead end system. Was she not just weeks ago threatening funding for public schools so that she could force those shiftless do-nothings to get in there and get to work? Has she not been trying to sell the idea (unsuccessfully) that private schools should get a bigger piece of the CARES relief pie than public school students?
So even if we get only this far, I think that's enough to merit a "Bite Me, Betsy" t-shirt.
But let's push on, because there's one more level to this.
The DeVos dream of a fully privatized, all voucher school system (well, maybe with a few public schools for the children of Those People) is that a voucher system is all about NOT being "in it" together.
A voucher system is about giving everyone a chunk of money and sending them scattering in all directions. It's about getting the government off the backs of these noble edu-preneurs so that they can do things their own way, even if that way involves discriminatory malpractice. In the Education Freedom tax credit scholarship version of vouchers that DeVos is still pushing for, it's about fixing things so that you (well, if you're wealthy enough) no longer have to pay taxes to finance an education for Those People's Children.
Vouchers are about turning education into a commodity, with each family navigating the market as best they can. It's about dumping families into a world where they may not be able to "buy" the "product" they want, where the school they pick may simply walk away from them.
Most of all, vouchers are another way to say to families, "We cut you a check. Now you're on your own. Not our problem. Good luck and have a nice life."
In short, the DeVos dream education set-up is the very opposite of being in it together. Somebody please tell whatever intern whipped up this thing that it is spectacularly tone deaf.
This #BackToSchool season may be different than any other, but we’re all in this together. To all the parents, students and educators rising to meet the challenge in new ways and places, you’ve got this! Let’s make it a great year! pic.twitter.com/1Qo9Cd2HW7— Secretary Betsy DeVos (@BetsyDeVosED) September 8, 2020
So much to unpack.
First, who's this "we"? Because Betsy DeVos has made it clear that in her universe, the failed public "government" schools are not "in it" with her. She has not invited public school teachers, the unions, public school students--all the things that are part of what she derides as "the system"--to be on Team DeVos. Plus, note to Betsy--other parts of the country have been back to school for weeks.
And there's no question that the rest of us aren't in it together. The parents who can pay to send their kids to pod school at a literal country club are not "in it" with the families who have to send students to get on the internet in a Taco Bell parking lot. The parents who can afford to have someone stay home with the kids are not "in it" with the parents who have to scramble for child care or do without critical income. And as local school leaders look for guidance from the state or federal level, they mostly find that they are "in it" alone.
And man does it ring hollow to hear a weak attaboy of "you've got this" from a woman who mostly talks about how the people working in public schools don't got this, how they're all just doing a crappy job in a dead end system. Was she not just weeks ago threatening funding for public schools so that she could force those shiftless do-nothings to get in there and get to work? Has she not been trying to sell the idea (unsuccessfully) that private schools should get a bigger piece of the CARES relief pie than public school students?
So even if we get only this far, I think that's enough to merit a "Bite Me, Betsy" t-shirt.
But let's push on, because there's one more level to this.
The DeVos dream of a fully privatized, all voucher school system (well, maybe with a few public schools for the children of Those People) is that a voucher system is all about NOT being "in it" together.
A voucher system is about giving everyone a chunk of money and sending them scattering in all directions. It's about getting the government off the backs of these noble edu-preneurs so that they can do things their own way, even if that way involves discriminatory malpractice. In the Education Freedom tax credit scholarship version of vouchers that DeVos is still pushing for, it's about fixing things so that you (well, if you're wealthy enough) no longer have to pay taxes to finance an education for Those People's Children.
Vouchers are about turning education into a commodity, with each family navigating the market as best they can. It's about dumping families into a world where they may not be able to "buy" the "product" they want, where the school they pick may simply walk away from them.
Most of all, vouchers are another way to say to families, "We cut you a check. Now you're on your own. Not our problem. Good luck and have a nice life."
In short, the DeVos dream education set-up is the very opposite of being in it together. Somebody please tell whatever intern whipped up this thing that it is spectacularly tone deaf.
Report: Are Charter Schools A Big Risk For Families?
In a new report, the Network for Public Education shows how big a gamble it can be to enroll your child in a charter school. And the odds are not in parents’ favor.
“Broken Promises: An Analysis of Charter School Closures From 1999-2017” is a deep dive into the data surrounding patterns of charter closure and the number of students affected by those closures, especially those in high poverty areas. NPE is a advocacy group co-founded by Diane Ravitch, the Bush-era Assistant Secretary of Education who has since become an outspoken critic of education reform. The organization's executive director is Carol Burris, a former award-winning New York principal; Burris co-wrote the report with Ryan Pfleger, an education policy researcher.
Within the first three years, 18% of charters had closed, with many of those closures occurring within the first year. By the end of five years, 25% of charters had closed. By the ten year mark, 40% of charters had closed. Of the 17 cohorts, five had been around for fifteen years; within those, roughly half of all charter schools had closed (anywhere from 47% to 54%). Looked at side by side, the cohort results are fairly steady; the failure rates have not been increasing or decreasing over the years.
Charter advocates have often argued that charter churn is a feature, not a bug, simply a sign that market forces are working and that weaker schools are being sloughed off. But the NPE report notes that these closures represent at least 867,000 students who “found themselves emptying their lockers for the last time—sometimes in the middle of a school year—as their school shutters its door for good.”
The disruption to students and families by the cycle of closing schools is captured by one parent quoted in the report:
For the last three years I have had to place my kids at different schools each year because the schools keep closing. My child was attending MCPA, that school closed. He then went to Medard Nelson, that school closed. Now, he is at Coghill and y’all are trying to close that school. I am tired of moving my child every year because y’all are closing schools.
The destabilizing effects of charter churn are further exacerbated in the poorest cities. The report finds that in cities like Detroit, Tucson and Milwaukee, the rate of charter closure is highest in the areas where poverty is highest. Students and families that need stability from their schools are instead repeatedly subjected to a cycle of starting over with a new school, new teachers, new procedures, new rules. Research suggests that when students move from school to school, it negatively affects their chances of success.
The report also finds that the states with a large charter sector have the large rates of failure. At the five and ten year marks, Wisconsin, Arizona and Florida show the top failure rates, with Ohio close behind.
Beyond the human cost of these failures, there’s the high financial cost. A previous NPE report shows that the federal government has spent at least one billion taxpayer dollars on charters that closed quickly or never even opened at all.
Charter supporters may argue that this is all just the market working itself out, but that’s hardly a comfort to parents who must go through shopping, application, enrollment and adjustment to the new school yet again. As the report acknowledges, there are charter schools doing some excellent work out there, but for parents, enrolling a child in a charter school—particularly a new one—is a bit of a risk. It’s one thing to see market forces work in a sector such as restaurants, where new businesses come and go and very few go the distance; if you discover that your new favorite eatery has suddenly closed, it’s a minor inconvenience. It’s another things to see such instability in a sector that is supposed to provide stability and education for our youngest and most vulnerable citizens.
The report is available at the NPE website.
Monday, September 7, 2020
Bulletins From The Trailing Edge Of The Pandemic
If it can work anywhere, it can work here.
I live in a county in NW PA, with relatively small population (50K or so). And our schools are all open.
We have been subject to the same rules as the rest of the state, and like pretty much everything in PA, the folks in charge have made their rules based on Pittsburgh, Philly and Harrisburg. This is Trump country, so plenty of folks are anti-maskers, but we haven't had any of those ugly assaults. I think we benefit from one aspect of small town life-- when you meet that minimum wage worker at the door of the business, you probably already know them. Makes it marginally harder to be a jerk to them.
But mostly we've done well. We have a big branch here of UPMC (the "non-profit" health monolith that is slowly eating the entire state). Since anyone started counting, our total number of positive Covid cases has not yet hit 70, and we've had only one death. We've had many sets of days in a row with no new positives. By the figuring of the state, we are a "green" county, which means restrictions are minimal, but most local businesses remain cautious. And this is the kind of area where it's not unusual to go, say, grocery shopping and encounter only a handful of other people.
So yes. Schools are open. We have four separate districts in the county (more than necessary, but that's a discussion for another day). All are open five out of five, full days. One has switched the high school to block scheduling. All require masks, and various bits of tweaking have been applied to traffic patterns in the buildings. There are barriers, cleaners, new arrangements for lunch and recess.
A non-zero number of families are staying home and selecting from an assortment of distance learning options, but it's nothing remotely close to a majority. There may have been a few early retirements, but nothing remotely approaching a "wave," nor are local unions contemplating sick outs or strikes. Parents are encouraged to drive their kids to school, but the buses are still running. Within districts, administrators who have done a lousy job of building trust and collaboration are suffering for it; those who have done a good job are benefiting from it. Schools may or may not have solid ideas about what to do if anything goes south. Nobody has made any special effort to recruit substitute teachers, and the pay is pretty lousy for the area, so that's going to be a problem sooner or later.
A return to 100% distance learning will be a real struggle here; there are so many places where there is little or no reliable internet coverage (my old high school sits in a 1/2 bar of 3G zone) and families within the district are spread out. Okay, maybe not so much "real struggle" as "certain failure."
But mostly, school is under way (last Tuesday was the first day) and mostly, students and teachers are adjusting. School sports are happening, with a spectator limit of 250 people. My wife is a teacher in a local elementary, and I have many friends from my pre-retirement years still working. I'm holding my breath. I know that other semi-isolated rural areas have experienced sudden spikes of covid, and I have my doubts about how well-prepared anyone here is to deal with an eruption.
So I have no actual point today. Think of this as a first chapter of whatever story is going to emerge through the year, depending on what happens in the pages we haven't turned over yet I'm praying that it's a boring story.
I live in a county in NW PA, with relatively small population (50K or so). And our schools are all open.
We have been subject to the same rules as the rest of the state, and like pretty much everything in PA, the folks in charge have made their rules based on Pittsburgh, Philly and Harrisburg. This is Trump country, so plenty of folks are anti-maskers, but we haven't had any of those ugly assaults. I think we benefit from one aspect of small town life-- when you meet that minimum wage worker at the door of the business, you probably already know them. Makes it marginally harder to be a jerk to them.
But mostly we've done well. We have a big branch here of UPMC (the "non-profit" health monolith that is slowly eating the entire state). Since anyone started counting, our total number of positive Covid cases has not yet hit 70, and we've had only one death. We've had many sets of days in a row with no new positives. By the figuring of the state, we are a "green" county, which means restrictions are minimal, but most local businesses remain cautious. And this is the kind of area where it's not unusual to go, say, grocery shopping and encounter only a handful of other people.
So yes. Schools are open. We have four separate districts in the county (more than necessary, but that's a discussion for another day). All are open five out of five, full days. One has switched the high school to block scheduling. All require masks, and various bits of tweaking have been applied to traffic patterns in the buildings. There are barriers, cleaners, new arrangements for lunch and recess.
A non-zero number of families are staying home and selecting from an assortment of distance learning options, but it's nothing remotely close to a majority. There may have been a few early retirements, but nothing remotely approaching a "wave," nor are local unions contemplating sick outs or strikes. Parents are encouraged to drive their kids to school, but the buses are still running. Within districts, administrators who have done a lousy job of building trust and collaboration are suffering for it; those who have done a good job are benefiting from it. Schools may or may not have solid ideas about what to do if anything goes south. Nobody has made any special effort to recruit substitute teachers, and the pay is pretty lousy for the area, so that's going to be a problem sooner or later.
A return to 100% distance learning will be a real struggle here; there are so many places where there is little or no reliable internet coverage (my old high school sits in a 1/2 bar of 3G zone) and families within the district are spread out. Okay, maybe not so much "real struggle" as "certain failure."
But mostly, school is under way (last Tuesday was the first day) and mostly, students and teachers are adjusting. School sports are happening, with a spectator limit of 250 people. My wife is a teacher in a local elementary, and I have many friends from my pre-retirement years still working. I'm holding my breath. I know that other semi-isolated rural areas have experienced sudden spikes of covid, and I have my doubts about how well-prepared anyone here is to deal with an eruption.
So I have no actual point today. Think of this as a first chapter of whatever story is going to emerge through the year, depending on what happens in the pages we haven't turned over yet I'm praying that it's a boring story.
Sunday, September 6, 2020
ICYMI: Labor Day Weekend Edition (9/6)
While you're enjoying your socially distant cookouts and celebrations this weekend, take a moment to thank the labor movement that made things like weekends possible. In the meantime, here's some reading from the week.
This Teacher Turned Remote Learning Into A Road Trip
There are many cool parts to this story (including the part where her administration greenlights it, because administrators who say yes to things are a real treat). 3000 miles on the road for this Texas history teacher, remote teaching a la Carmen Sandiego.
Robot Teachers, Racist Algorithms, and Disaster Pedagogy
Audrey Watters is doing guest spots in classes, and here's one of her most recent, touching on algorithms, the British grading scandal, racist AI, and other ed tech shenanigans. Always, always worth the read (and you should be subscribing).
Biden and Democrats Turn Away from Two Decades of Test-Based Accountability
Jan Resseger takes a long, thoughtful, and optimistic look at the evolution of the Democrats on the whole ed reform biz.
Borrowers Demand Answers About Blanket Denials of Loan Forgiveness
Remember that federal loan forgiveness program where your college loans are supposed to be forgiven if you were the victim of fraud by a predatory for-profit college? Remember how DeVos simply refused to actually truly implement it, and then the court slammed her for it and told her to get on with it, or else? Here's an update, and it is going about as well as you'd expect.
The Myth of Charter Schools and Local Control
Carl Peterson takes a close look at a candidate for the LAUSD board who has some thoughts about school management that don't quite match how she helps run a charter school.
Arizona Charter Schools Can Double Dip
Laurie Roberts at the Arizona Republic is pretty steamed about how Arizona charters cashed in on the PPP program, and the state is okay with that.
Pasco's Future Crimes Division
Not directly tied to education, but more about the creeping surveillance state. From the Tampa Bay Times, a look at a sheriff's program for stopping crime before it happens. Exceptionally creepy and appalling.
Success Academy Delays In-Person Learning Till January
I included a couple of these just because some folks are trying hard to push the narrative that teachers' unions are the force behind the closing of school buildings. And yet, it seems that some folks who aren't the Evil Union are also shifting to distance.
Cyberattacks persist ; K12 a Florida mess
Miami-Dade schools have a variety of problems. Come to this Miami Herald story for the district screw-ups (still no signed contract with K12) and stay for the reminder that increased online learning means increased exposure to hackers etc.
Idaho Considers Dropping Common Core
Williamson Evers at the Independent Institute pens a pointed response to one of Mike Petrilli's ubiquitous Common Core cheerleading op-eds. Not in 100% agreement, but he does bring some heat.
Standardized Testing: Indispensable to Those Who Are Not Subjected To It
The indispensable Mercedes Schneider offers a good vivid portrait of the Big Standardized Test. I love a good extended simile.
This Teacher Turned Remote Learning Into A Road Trip
There are many cool parts to this story (including the part where her administration greenlights it, because administrators who say yes to things are a real treat). 3000 miles on the road for this Texas history teacher, remote teaching a la Carmen Sandiego.
Robot Teachers, Racist Algorithms, and Disaster Pedagogy
Audrey Watters is doing guest spots in classes, and here's one of her most recent, touching on algorithms, the British grading scandal, racist AI, and other ed tech shenanigans. Always, always worth the read (and you should be subscribing).
Biden and Democrats Turn Away from Two Decades of Test-Based Accountability
Jan Resseger takes a long, thoughtful, and optimistic look at the evolution of the Democrats on the whole ed reform biz.
Borrowers Demand Answers About Blanket Denials of Loan Forgiveness
Remember that federal loan forgiveness program where your college loans are supposed to be forgiven if you were the victim of fraud by a predatory for-profit college? Remember how DeVos simply refused to actually truly implement it, and then the court slammed her for it and told her to get on with it, or else? Here's an update, and it is going about as well as you'd expect.
The Myth of Charter Schools and Local Control
Carl Peterson takes a close look at a candidate for the LAUSD board who has some thoughts about school management that don't quite match how she helps run a charter school.
Arizona Charter Schools Can Double Dip
Laurie Roberts at the Arizona Republic is pretty steamed about how Arizona charters cashed in on the PPP program, and the state is okay with that.
Pasco's Future Crimes Division
Not directly tied to education, but more about the creeping surveillance state. From the Tampa Bay Times, a look at a sheriff's program for stopping crime before it happens. Exceptionally creepy and appalling.
Success Academy Delays In-Person Learning Till January
I included a couple of these just because some folks are trying hard to push the narrative that teachers' unions are the force behind the closing of school buildings. And yet, it seems that some folks who aren't the Evil Union are also shifting to distance.
Cyberattacks persist ; K12 a Florida mess
Miami-Dade schools have a variety of problems. Come to this Miami Herald story for the district screw-ups (still no signed contract with K12) and stay for the reminder that increased online learning means increased exposure to hackers etc.
Idaho Considers Dropping Common Core
Williamson Evers at the Independent Institute pens a pointed response to one of Mike Petrilli's ubiquitous Common Core cheerleading op-eds. Not in 100% agreement, but he does bring some heat.
Standardized Testing: Indispensable to Those Who Are Not Subjected To It
The indispensable Mercedes Schneider offers a good vivid portrait of the Big Standardized Test. I love a good extended simile.
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