Destroying Public Schools & the threat of Competency-Based Education

I am getting a bit tired of the "debate" about the Common Core State Standards, high stakes standardized testing, charter schools, and corporate education reform. Whom should you trust, people who profit from our tax dollars or highly educated, professional teachers? Should you trust people with no accredited education training & people who only have backgrounds in business or people who are ligitimately educated, professional experts in education? This should be common sense.



Want to see if "their" ideas work? Just look to Philadelphia School District, which has been under State control for over fifteen years. In this article in The Nation, the title kind of says it all: 

Read the article to understand how the corporate ed reform game is rigged, and they are trying to set up our public schools to fail - even our suburban schools. After all, our spending per student is higher, which would make education investors (commonly referred to as edupreneurs) richer.

 

In this post, read about the researchers who are trying to get the truth about the Common Core State Standards out to parents and the public at large.

 

"The rhetoric surrounding the CCSS is not supported by a compelling body of research. For example, the CCSS is often presented as a way to enhance rigor in public schools. However, state-level standards varied so widely that no definitive statement can be made as to whether the CCSS is more or less rigorous. Proponents have argued that the CCSS ensures that all students receive an equal education, but even the courts recognize that high expectations without adequate resources can further disadvantage the students in most need. Overall, there is not a compelling body of research supporting the notion that a nationwide set of curriculum standards, including those like the CCSS, will either raise the quality of education for all children or close the gap between different groups of children. Therefore attaching high-stakes testing to the CCSS cannot be the solution for improving student learning."

 

PA is a "developing state," which means we are adopting this. Did anyone ask parents if we want competency-based learning for our kids? Cheaper does not mean better. Read their attack plan here. They tell school leaders how to get parents to drink the kool-aid.

 

 

 Want to know what is coming to a school near you that should make you very afraid? It is called Competency-Based Education, and it lowers the quality if education for kids,. Sure, some well-intended, but misinformed school leaders may tell you otherwise, so decide for yourself. Read the post below:

CONNECT THE DOTS: Competency-Based Education, Digitized Instruction, Data Mining, The Vanishing Teacher, and Profit

 "In this modern computer era, digital personal data is gold, currently being traded like currency. You know when you search for something on Amazon and Google and then you start seeing ads related to that search in your feed? That is the result of data mining. In a video I have linked, the CEO of Knewton explains how Education is today’s most data mined industry. He explains “the name of the game is data per user.” From Amazon or Netflix they get 1 data point per user per day. Google and Facebook 10 data points per user per day. In education, Knewton gets 5-10 million actionable data points per student per day! Apparently, every sentence of every passage in digital content has a data tag and they can tell how interested a child is in a certain topic, how difficult it was, etc., etc. Ten million data points a day! This data grab is a gold mine to companies that want to market and design products. For venture capitalists, Education is the new hot commodity... This is also why, though paper and pencil tests would dramatically reduce testing time, there is an insistence on computer based testing. On a computer based test, more data than just marked answers can and is being collected and shared. This also explains why state approved remedial reading and math programs have essentially all been computer based. State tests can be created, and cut scores manipulated, in order to fail large numbers of students and state law can mandate each failing student participate in a digital remediation program, ensuring a steady stream of data points to third party participants. Keep in mind that student test scores are digitally linked to personal identification data, including student address, IEP, free lunch status, health records, and discipline records and god knows what else. What if your “permanent record” went viral? Last November, a U.S. Congressional committee criticized the USDOE, exposing how vulnerable its information systems are to security threats. I encourage you to watch the proceeding. Currently, federal student data is NOT secure."

"Freeing up the sector" refers to opening the "education market" to get investor's hands on our tax dollars.Read more here.

Here is the litmus test, if you still need one. Do the children of our elected officials send their children to public schools? Nope, nope, and nope. But they are fine with the greed grab for our children's schools.


Who should you trust as a reliable source of education facts for your family? You decide.
Question everything. 

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