FL: College Is For Meat Widgets, Not That Learnin' Stuff

Oh, Florida.

GOP State Senator Dennis Baxley wants only some students to have Bright Futures. Under his bill SB 86, the scholarship program would be targeted only for those students who are pursuing majors that lead "directly to employment."

Baxley offers a folksy justification for this, saying his own sociology degree was very nice and all, but wouldn't buy him a cup of coffee, and not until he got that associate degree that he was able to make a buck opening his funeral parlor. As God is my witness, I am not making this up.

This "refocus" comes with an endorsement from Senate President Wilton Simpson, who points out that "All too often the debate surrounding higher education focuses on the cost to the student, in terms of tuition and fees, but never the cost to the taxpayer or the actual value to the student." 

More from Baxley:

We want all of our students to succeed in meaningful careers that provide for their families and serve our communities. As taxpayers we should all be concerned about subsidizing degrees that just lead to debt, instead of the jobs our students want and need. We encourage all students to pursue their passions, but when it comes to taxpayer subsidized education, there needs to be a link to our economy, and that is the goal of this legislation,

Yeah, pursuing your passion is swell and all, but the taxpayers shouldn't have to foot the bill unless you're going to be a useful meat widget. 

In other words, pursuing your passion is just for rich folks.

There are really two awful parts to this awful idea. Not just the "education is only to make you a useful meat widget" part, but the part where some government board is going to decide each year which majors are going to lead to employment and which are not. There are several things wrong with this. One is that it assumes that the Board of Governors and State Board of Education would actually have that information (via, one supposes, a crystal ball in Tallahassee). 

But the other is that this makes education planning for students a hugely uncertain crap shoot. Are you a high school junior who wants to pick her major and is hoping for a state scholarship? Well, you'd better just wait for the annual Florida Acceptable Majors report to come out. And I am wondering what exactly happens if, after steering a truckload of entering freshmen into a Widgetry major, the Boards decide two years later that the Widgetry major field is now clogged and therefor the major no longer leads "directly to employment."

You can bet that Florida high school students are talking about this:

“I felt personally attacked because my degree would most-likely not fall under that,” said [high school senior Jocelyn] Meyer.

Meyer said she wants to major in geography or international studies. Then continue on to graduate school.

“Potentially work for the Peace Corps. That would get me the experience to work for a non-governmental health organization like the World Health Organization or Centers for Disease Control,” said Meyer.

Meyer is afraid the track she planned for college won’t be paid for, even though she worked hard to meet all the criteria for a full-ride Bright Futures Scholarship. Funding she is depending on to get through college.

Florida's GOP apparently wants to cut back on spending, though the Bright Futures program is funded by the Florida lottery.

It's a strange choice for (at least) two reasons. I know we no longer pretend that the GOP actually believes in small government, but it's still odd to see the party of small government now deciding to tell students what they have to major in if they want to go to college. And the notion that they don't want taxpayers to have to spend a bunch of money sending students off to study at some private school if they hadn't set up an entire K-12 system to require taxpayers to spend a bunch of money to send students off to study at some private school. 

ICYMI: Unsurprised But Disappointed Edition (2/28)

 Well, it didn't take long for Biden to return to his corporate ed reform roots. Not a surprise, but even when hope is a very tiny thing with very small feathers, it's a bummer when a big cat chomps it up. Time to move on. Here's some reading from the week.

America prefers teachers who offer themselves as tribute. And that needs to stop.

Myriam Gurba at lulzcollective with a hardhitting piece looking at that damned hero teacher myth.

"When I'm gone..."

Accountabaloney looks at the issues of missing students, and the dominoes that are going to fall because of them.

Learn To Earn

At Have You Heard, Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire talk to Cristina Groeger about a topic that is often on my mind--why the whole "educate the poors and they will become not-poors" doesn't, and can't, work

Teachers Unions aren't the obstacle to reopening schools  

At the New Yorker, Sarah Jones takes a more balanced look at what thee real problems are (hint: years of infrastructure neglect aren't helpful)

US Ed Department Promotes Putting Student Records on Blockchain

Cointelegraph caught this grant from the department of creepy developments.

We Don't Need Standardized Testing in a Pandemic

I wrote about this Jersey Jazzman piece this week, and if you still haven't read it, here I am telling you again to go read it.

The Most Important "Skill" In A Post-Covid World

Joshua Hatala blogs about schools, the pandemic, and the new post-modern demand that students "figure it out" as they contemplate life and the world.

Education Development Center and Urban Collaborative

Thomas Ultican takes another deep dive into another group of education disruptors.

A History of Technological Hype

At the Kappan, Victoria Cain and Adam Laats take a look at the long, sad history of technological baloney. A good swift overview.

Standardized Testing during the Pandemic is Corporate Welfare Not Student Equity

Steven Singer lays it out.

Teachers, Testing and Why We Might Just Chill

Nancy Flanagan on why we could maybe just take a breath about the whole testing thing. 

Why Aren't There More Black Teachers?

Rann Miller at The Progressive addresses what should be one of our major concerns in education these days.

Philly-based group launches $3.12 million initiative to develop Black teachers

In the Philadelphia Inquirer, a look at a group that has a plan  for expanding the Black teaching force. Their allies aren't necessarily friends of public education, but this is work that needs to be done.

My Complete, Unedited Review of Doug Harris's Book, Charter School City

It's been a long journey, but here te indispensable Mercedes Schneider finally publishes her full review of Harris's book about New Orleans and its charter conversion. In the process, she provides some useful on-the-ground insights into the gutting of public education in NOLA

Who's assessing the assessment?

At the Kappan, a detailed look at just how very bad edTPA really is, and how Pearson fights back, again, against any criticism.

Instead of surveillance, try an ethic of care

John Warner at Inside Higher Ed looks at student surveillance and sees a better way, including radical notions like "an easy way to judge whether or not something violates an ethic of care for students is whether or not I would agree to be subjected to the same requirement as a condition of doing my work."

Schools face a substitute teacher crisis

NBC news picked up this piece from Hechinger Report which is somehow mystified that terrible pay and conditions have exacerbated the long-stewing sub crisis. A little infuriating, but still worth the read.

England's catch-up tutors ae being short-changed by private employers

Somebody's making a bunch of money from the covid make-up tutoring business in England, but it's not the teachers who are doing the actual work.

New Morehouse College Program Encourages Black men to complete unfinished degrees

From NPR, a good idea being developed.

Representative Jamaal Bowman educating an uninformed mom on BLM won late night

It has been pretty damn cool to see teacher Bowman make his mark in DC, and this week he also appeared on Stephen Colbert's show, winning the attention of the folks at Vulture. 

Big Standardized Test Test

Supporters of testing, testocrats, and all other folks insisting that the Biden administration made the right call because the 2021 (including all these reformy groups that sent a thank you note)-- can we take a moment to assess your own test-related ideas?

For the "Parents Need To Know How Their Kids Are Doing" folks: 

Create a short video in which you display a real individual student result printout and describe, in detail, the information that a parent can glean from it. Offer specific advice--exactly what should the student be tutored in. And by specific, I don't mean "Pat needs to strengthen reading comprehension of non-fiction writing." Which particular reading strategies is Pat weak in? Which sorts of specific questions does Pat tend to flub? 

Be sure to factor in how Pat has spent the months since the test was taken. And be certain to highlight all of the specific information that Pat's adults could not have acquired by calling Pat's teacher.

For the "Locating Schools That Had Trouble During the Pandemic So We Can Target Resources" crowd:

Present any and all of the bills that have been crafted to distribute additional school support and resources based on test results. Be sure to include the formula that is going to be used, as well as the specific dollar amounts that will be distributed and the methods that will be proposed for funding, Note: no version of "public-private partnerships will be explored to fund and administer this initiative" will be considered an acceptable answer.

For the "We Have To Know How Far Students Are Behind" crowd:

Outline the testing benchmarks that you believe students should be reaching at this point in their education. Provide the research and evidence that establishes the validity of these benchmarks, showing how the selected test scores predict better life outcomes for the students who reach those scores on schedule (and the worse life outcomes for the students who don't). 

Additionally, provide an evidence-based program for how learning can be accelerated in order to get students to achieve those benchmarks.

For the "Teachers Need This Information To Better Address Student Needs" crowd:

You would think that test results given to teachers might, for instance, show how students performed on each of the common core college and career ready state standards being tested, but in many states you'd be wrong. Explain how ELA teachers can strengthen their teaching based on results that report scores only for fiction reading, non-fiction reading, and open ended questions. Describe also how history, phys ed, music, science, art, and theater teachers can use test results to better meet student needs. 

I look forward to your answers to any or all of these questions. 

Mark Weber's Three Critical Testing Questions

This is not the first time I've piggy-backed on a post from Mark "Jersey Jazzman" Weber, but sometimes what he posts just sets a bright blazing lightbulb off in my head. Weber is a certified PhD-carrying academic of data crunching, and he is an absolute master of rendering complicated ideas comprehensible to civilians, and that's what he's done with his post  about why "We Don't Need Standardized Testing In A Pandemic."  

I encourage you very much to go read the whole post. But sometimes saying, "This! This! This!" isn't enough for me. So. What I'm going to center on is his three-question response to anyone who says that students must take a standardized test.

1) What are you going to do with the results?

This question is hugely powerful and by far the least answered. Here's Weber:

A core concept of assessment is that tests must be shown to be valid for the purposes in which they will be used. In other words: you should make a separate argument for every proposed use of a test. A test that may be valid to use for, say, determining whether there are enough overall resources in the education system isn't necessarily valid for the purpose of determining whether a student should pass to the next grade.

Psyshometricians often speak of making a validity argument in favor of the use of a test for a particular purpose. That argument should touch upon the relevancy of the outcomes to a specific use, the consequences of making decisions based on these outcomes, the opportunity to learn the content in the test, and other factors.

This is just so key. As Weber notes, one of the huge problems with the current Big Standardized Test system is that one test is supposed to serve a variety of purposes. Evaluate schools, evaluate teachers, assess curriculum, inform parents, plus serve as a go-to measure of whether Reform Program X is "effective" or not. Plus, now, figuring out how far "behind" students are. And most of the time nobody has made a validity argument for any of it.

The answer to the question also needs to be specific. The announcement that the administration won't waive the test leans on that old standard promise that test results will be used to "target resources and supports to the students with the greatest needs." That's great.

How? 

How do you plan to use the test results to do that targeting? Where is the bill or program proposal that shows how test scores will be linked to the targeting of resources?

Of course there is no such proposal. There never has been. What states have actually done is things like using low scores to target schools for charterization. 

When your doctor wants to perform a biopsy, there's a reason, and it's not "Just thought IK'd chop you open, dig around, see if I can figure out anything about your diet or your blood pressure or maybe check for cancer, and then we'll do, I don't know, something." Your doctor has a specific intent both for the operation and for hat's going to be done with the results.

When we get to specifics of these tests, we are forced to see how useless they are. Are they to help teachers find out how "behind" students are? How will that work-- months from now, when the teachers see the basic test scores (but not the questions that were answered)? What will this one test tell teachers (particularly those who don't teach math or reading) that they can't --and haven't-- already figure out on their own in their own classroom?

And on what planet will we find the parent (because the Biden administration throws them in the test-justification mix, too) saying this-- "I had no idea how my child was doing in school, but now that I can see some very general results on a test she took a few months ago, it's all clear to me." 

If you can't tell me exactly what you want to do with the results of a test, you have no business giving the test. 

2) What is the cost of administering the test?

Testing is, of course, a billion-dollar industry, supported with tax dollars. But as Weber points out, there are other costs. We've had the long-term costs of narrowing the curriculum, and the cost of telling children of poor families that they are academic failures.

But there is also opportunity costs. Time spent t=on test prep and test taking is time not spent on education. I guarantee you that among the first reactions among teachers to the Biden Testing Is On announcement, right after some fiery obscenity, was the thought, "Well, what I'm going to have to cut out now."

For most of my career, my year to year aspiration was to see what else I could add to my class. By becoming more efficient, more focused, and better at understanding where my students were, I could claim some space in the 180 days and fill it with something else. But towards the end, as my school became more "data driven," the question flipped, and year to year I found myself asking, "Now that I'm losing more time to testing, what can I stand to cut." 

This year, time is more valuable and rare than ever. That makes the cost of testing astronomical.

3) Is the cost of testing worth it?

Again, directly from Weber:

What, exactly, will statewide standardized test outcomes tell us that we didn't already know, or that we couldn't find out some other way? That students didn't gain as much learning as they would have without the pandemic? We already know this; and again, it's not like the tests will give educators data they couldn't get other ways that are much faster and more detailed.

Will we learn that students who are economically disadvantaged need more resources to equalize their educational opportunity? We already knew that before the pandemic. And does anyone really think that otherwise reluctant politicians will be persuaded to dole out more funds when they see this year's test scores? Really?

And on top of that, will there be any magical means of determining which part of the score is the result of student knowledge and which will be the result of students taking tests during a chaotic year under lousy circumstances under family stress? There is always reason to doubt that the tests measure what they purport to measure; this year that doubt can be multiplied a hundredfold.

It will be worth it to some folks. Test manufacturers will get their payday. And I'm betting that once test results are out, folks who like to declare that public schools are disastrous failures will have a field day pushing the critical corporate reforms that must be implemented to Save Students. The Big Standardized Test has always been a tool for those who want to break public education down and sell off the parts; these test results should be a disaster capitalist holiday, a national-scale Hurricane Katrina.

Weber's three questions are a useful response to testing in any year, yielding results that can be debated by reasonable people. But this year it's pretty clear that the cost will be high and the results will be mostly worthless. Remember these three questions for the years ahead, but this year, the Biden administration should reverse its bad decision.

Biden Administration Won't Waive Big Standardized Test. Dammit.

 The Biden administration has offered its first flat-out wrong decision in the education sphere. 

Today Acting Ed Secretary Ian Rosenblum sent a letter out to state education chiefs. The news was not good, outlining the bad reasons for its bad decision.

To be successful once schools have re-opened, we need to understand the impact COVID-19 has had on learning and identify what resources and supports students need. We must also specifically be prepared to address the educational inequities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic, including by using student learning data to enable states, school districts, and schools to target resources and supports to the students with the greatest needs. In addition, parents need information on how their children are doing

Who is this "we"? That's not entirely clear. But, as I've said before, the "we need information so we can address needs" argument is baloney for at least two reasons.

First, if you need information, ask the teachers. Ask the teachers. Ask the teachers. Ask. The. Teachers. They have been doing steady, daily assessment, both formal and informal, every day since this mess started. They know far more than the Big Standardized Test will ever tell anyone, and they know it today, not months from now when BS Test results come back. Parents can certainly learn far more about their student's progress by asking the teacher than by looking at vague, non-specific test scores from months ago. 

Second, since we entered this Golden Age of BS Testing, test results have virtually never been used to actually direct resources and assistance to schools that needed it. I would also wager that no BS Test results have ever identified an actual educational inequity problem that was not already well known, though by focusing on a single mediocre measure of math and reading they may have labeled schools that didn't deserve it. Because--

State assessment and accountability systems play an important role in advancing educational equity

There's little evidence that this is true.

To further muddy the water, the department is offering some "flexibility."

States can ask for a waiver from reporting and identifying schools with low results, as well as getting a bye on ESEA's 95% participation rule. So schools will not face evaluation based on the test scores this year (if the state asks for the waiver).

However, says the department, "It remains vitally important that parents, educators, and the public have access to data on student learning and success." This is just bullpucky, not because those folks don't deserve or need to know what's going on, but because using BS Test results, particularly from this year under the stresses and circumstances that we've been experiencing, will be about as useful as reading the warts on a horny toad under a full moon. 

If local authorities have determined that it's not safe to go to school, students should not go to school just to take the test. This is clearly aimed at Florida, which will certainly ignore it. 

But the department also suggests that states might want to use a shortened version, give the test remotely, or give a wider testing window. Maybe leave it till next fall, which sort of negates the whole No Waiver argument. And maybe there is other flexibility your state will need. In other words, it's really vital that you give this super-important test, but it's okay if you just half-ass it.

It's a bad decision, the wrong decision, a decision that will yield zero useful results, but waste a bunch of time and money that states and teachers and students don't have to waste. It also, unfortunately, gets us right back to the same old notion that teachers and schools are untrustworthy and only by giving these God-forsaken tests can anyone in the halls of power possible hope to know what's Really Going On. 

Do we need to know how the pandemic affected learning? Sure. Teachers, mostly, already know. The amount of information to be gleaned from the BS Tests this spring will be somewhere between tiny and non-existent and certainly not worth the time that will be wasted. Nor does history suggest that it will key in unlocking actual assistance from the feds. 

It's a lousy move from the Biden administration, a bad start for the new ed department. I don't know that a non-teacher can really grasp how disappointing and discouraging this is, like having someone pop in and, on top of everything else that has come in the last twelve months, announce blithely that the school year will be shortened and they'll have less time that they thought to try to help their kids get on top of the year's material. This just sucks.

Big Brother Knows What's In Your Heart

Well, this is creepy.

Before the pandemic, Ka Tim Chu, teacher and vice principal of Hong Kong's True Light College, looked at his students' faces to gauge how they were responding to classwork. Now, with most of his lessons online, technology is helping Chu to read the room. An AI-powered learning platform monitors his students' emotions as they study at home.

The software is called 4 Little Trees, and the CNN article only scratches the surface of how creepy it is. So let's work our way down through the levels of creepiness.

4 Little Trees is a product of Find Solution AI, a company founded in 2016. This product appears to be the heart and soul of their company. Though their "about us" mission statement is "FSAI consistent vision is to solve the difficulties that the society has been encountered with technology." They might want to look at their placement of "with technology" in that sentence. Anyway, on to 4 Little Trees.

It uses the computer webcam to track the movement of muscles on the student face to "assess emotions." With magical AI, which means it's a good time for everyone to remember that AI is some version of a pattern-seeking algorithm. AI doesn't grok emotions any more than it actually thinks-- in this case it compares the points it spots on the student's face and compares it to a library of samples. And as with all AI libraries of samples, this one has issues--mainly, racial ones. 4 Little Trees has been "trained" with a library of Chinese faces. The company's founder, Viola Lam, is aware "that more ethnically-mixed communities could be a bigger challenge for the software." 

But aren't emotions complicated? The sample image shows the software gets to choose from varying amounts of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise and neutral. The company calls these "primary" emotions. More complex emotions "like irritation, enthusiasm, or anxiety" are tougher to read, though in a great case of techno-whataboutism, one commenter notes that "human beings are not good at reading facial expressions." So there.

Privacy concerns? Particularly in China, where Big Technobrother is already pioneering all sorts of crazy-creepy techno-surveillance? 4 Little Trees only stores the data points for the different muscle points on the face, not the face itself. Feel better yet? There are 83 schools in Hong Kong using it, anywhere from $10 to $49 per student. 

The applications touted in this article are simple enough. The software can perform emotional surveillance on your remote students, but the company suggests that it could also be useful in a large class, where it's hard for a teacher to catch the face of every student. Basically, just another handy support tool to help teachers better understand where their students are, right?

Well, no. That's the picture in the CNN profile, and that's pretty creepy. But if we go to the actual website for Find Solution Ai and 4 Little Trees-- okay, I can't actually read any of that one. But it turns out they've got an English language site as well. 

Turns out that emotion detection can be helpful for teachers, but it can also be helpful for eliminating the need for them, too, because Find Solution Ai is in the personalized learning biz.

Here, for instance, is their quick four-step plug for Adopting Motivation Model:

When learner deals with hard questions...

Our emotion detection technology notices the frustration

The AI technology will analyze the learner's progress and provide them the most suitable question, and give challenges when it is appropriate.

Compare with the traditional way of learning, learner will be self-motivated and learn more effectively!

There's also some noise here about how their model raises "learning efficiency" to 12%. How did they measure that? Lord only knows, but they do mark "tradition learning" as 0% efficient. There is also a promise of Big Data Analytics which among other things will "forecast students' learning performance from the data collected, enhance further training to the students on their weaker areas." There appears to be a bunch of earn-a-badge gamification as well.

Basically, Find Solution Ai has augmented algorithm-driven education with some Ai that is supposed to read your heart. As always, there are many, many, many questionable links in the chain. Is the education programming itself valid and effective? How deep is the software's ability to adapt to students (when it's time to present the next exercise, are there dozens, hundreds or thousands of possibilities)? Is there any basis for believing the software can really read human emotions? And how will humans behave when they realize that software is trying to read their hearts by the expressions on their faces? 

How do you feel about this? Lean in a little closer to your screen, so that Big Brother can better read your heart.

ICYMI: Neither Cat Nor In Cancun Edition (2/21)

This week seemed.... long, somehow. It's a big list this week. Remember to share, and take a minute to hug someone you love, too.

Stop calling this generation 'lost.'

Selena Carrion has written a really great piece about students and remote learning and the rhetoric surrounding our current flap. I wrote about this and shared it, but if you still somehow haven't seen it, now's your chance.

The Fiscal Impact of Charter Schools on School Districts

A long but important read, in which Jersey Jazzman discovers that the effects are not what many of us expect, but also require some more careful consideration  as well. Mark Weber is awfully good at making data comprehensible to ordinary mortals, and this data is worth chewing over. 

With all that robust progress monitoring, who needs a test

Accountabaloney asks the question--if Florida already has all that data on student progress, why can't they ask for a waiver for the Big Standardized Test, already. Oh, Florida. 

NH Bumps Voucher Bill Till Next Year

When you're nifty new voucher bill is so unpopular that thousands of people show up to testify against it, what do you do? Let it sit on the shelf for a year and hope people have a short attention span.

Reopening must be done safely

Leave it to Jan Resseger to take a reasoned, well-researched approach to the question of opening school buildings. A good explainer for where we are right now.

Parents are getting the kind of instruction they want

There are soooo many pols right now, but Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat has the results of one that finally asked the right question--are parents getting the kind of schooling they want? Mostly, yes.

Tens of thousands of community college students still taking unnecessary remedial classes

In 2017, a California law aimed to phase out unnecessary (but lucrative) remedial classes for some college students. How's that going? Wellll.......

Bill lavishes more money on favored private schools

In Indiana, the Journal Gazette editorial pushes back against the state's proposed voucher expansion.

Hoosiers all lose

Three former Indiana superintendents of public instruction speak out against GOP proposals.

Call for summer of play to help English pupils recover from Covid-19 stress

Sally Weale in the Guardian argues against any sort of academics-intensive catch-up summer. Let the children play. Different continent, but the point still applies.

Post-pandemic child care options will be scarce

At Hechinger Report, Lillian Mongeau lays out the bad news--one of the pandemic casualties is likely to be child care businesses.

Want to fix the chronic absentee problem in Detroit schools? Start with transportation.

Lori Higgins at Chalkbeat looks at one of the underlying issues behind Detroit's attendance problem (both public and charter). I'm betting they aren't the only ones.

If teachers think standardized tests stink, maybe we should listen

A Michigan state rep points out that there's good reason to think that the Big Standardized Test is a waste of time this year.

Black teachers improve education outcomes for Black students

In Pennsylvania, more support for what we already know. Plus an appearance by Erie, which always makes me happy. 

Building a community for Black male teachers

At EdWeek, a profile of Baron R. Davis, a superintendent in South Carolina looking to build support for Black men in the classroom.

The Weird Plot To Privatize Education in Minnesota

Sarah Lahm at the Progressive peeling back the layers on Minnesota's push to privatize public ed, courtesy of a guy from California.

Postmate drivers have become easy prey for scammers.

Nothing at all to do with education, but a look at one of the ways that gig workers are vulnerable to scams. One more thing to add to the list of reasons that gig work is not a welcome model for education.

Edgenuity's software wasn't meant for a pandemic. That didn't stop some school districts.

NBC news catches on the mess that is Edgenuity school-in-a-box software.

Told Ya This Would Happen

Tennessee Education Report has an update on another dark money PAC hiding behind students.

You're gonna miss us when we're gone

Steven Singer imagines a bleak version of the post-covid ed techified world

Reflections on Apocalypse Teaching

NYC Educator takes a look at where we are, and what might stand in the way of where we want to be.

Karen Lewis Taught Me

Jose Luis Vilson offers some personal reflection on Chicago's amazing teacher and labor leader

Give Me A Poke

Nancy Flanagan on maintaining during the vaccine rollout. Just a damn fine piece of writing.

As a superhero teacher, I can't wait to sacrifice my unvaccinated life for your child.

Sommer Koester at McSweeney's.