Sunday, November 11, 2018

NY Post: DOE restricts Zuckerberg Summit Learning as Students at Secondary School of Journalism Protest

This just may be the first student revolt against Zuckerberg and hi-tech assaults on education. That it was led by kids of color makes it special, especially when he hear of recent events where wealthier parents are controlling some of the tech infringements while poorer communities are getting Summit Learning like programs pushed down their throats. I think this story should be picked up nationally.

NY Post

Last week I broke a story on a student walkout at the Secondary School of Journalism on the John Jay Campus in Park Slope. The information about the walkout was provided to me by parent activist Annette Renaud, whose niece attends the school.

STUDENTS ORGANIZE WALKOUT at Secondary Sc...

Video: School of Secondary Journalism Student Walk...

I raced out of the UFT DA this past Wednesday (Nov. 7) to attend the School Leadership Team (SLT) meeting at SSJ after being alerted by Leonie Haimson, a meeting attended Sue Edelman of the NY Post.

Sue has done some of the best reporting on shenanigans at the DOE on the part of officials and supervisors. She is a hero to many teachers. (Sue is also the niece of my former next door neighbor, so we go back a long way since she first came to NYC to work for the Post decades ago.) Today Sue's article appears in the NY Post: https://nypost.com/2018/11/10/brooklyn-students-hold-walkout-in-protest-of-facebook-designed-online-program/

Leonie, of course, is also a hero to many of us for her amazing work.

I wasn't originally clear about all the reasons for the walkout but the way principal Livingstone Hilaire has run the school was a factor in the student revolt. (His reputation over the years has been sketchy, as reported by some of my correspondents who worked at schools he has run.) From what I hear, a number of teachers have left the school and been replaced by newbies who don't dare speak out.
Sue does quote one:

A teacher who requested anonymity said Summit glitches include system crashes, poor wifi in the old John Jay HS building, and a lack of laptops. What’s worse, the teacher added, many students hate it. “It’s a lot of reading on the computer, and that’s not good for the eyes. Kids complain. Some kids refuse to do it.”

Leonie's eye was caught by the involvement of Summit Learning, which is owned by Facebook's Zuckerberg and we are not surprised that Summit mines student and family data for future use. She immediately retweeted my post and left this comment:

Parents and students throughout the country have rebelled vs the Summit system b/c the students start to hate school, fall behind and become disengaged from their learning having to stare at computer screens for many hours per day. Moreover, all their personal data is being scooped up by Mark Zuckerberg via his CZI LLC.

(See below for a list of links Leonie has provided.)

Zuckerberg is giving away ice water in the winter:

Last summer, Summit trained 9th and 10th grade teachers, paying for four nights in a Newark, N.J, hotel plus meals.

Student Mitchel Storman

Hilaire ran the SLT meeting, which lasted until past 8PM. It was not well attended - there were no teachers present - but there was one freshman student, Mitchel Storman, who gave an honest assessment of what is wrong with the Summit program which turned parents, who at first seemed skeptical of the critiques, in the room around. Mitchel was one impressive 14 year old.

Leonie read a list of the data collected on the students and people's eyes lit up. This is Zuckerberg of Facebook data fame and they took notice. I pointed out that teachers' comments might follow the student forever.

Hilaire, who can be a charming guy, played it a bit dumb when Leonie asked for a copy of the Summit contract and if it complied with the state student privacy law. He said DOE Legal had approved his use of Summit. Yes, DOE Legal -- so competent.

When students walked out, the DOE did nothing but try to convince them not to do it through the Supt. But ---

The DOE only takes action when it gets negative press - it ignored the student walkout. So in response to Sue's story:

The DOE said late Saturday the school will immediately drop the Summit program in 11th and 12th grades. Administrators will ” continue to be in communication with students, staff, and parents about the new strategies over the next few weeks,” said spokeswoman Danielle Filson.

David Bloomfield, a Brooklyn College and CUNY Grad Center education professor, said the online system “fits the Facebook business model,” but came into city schools with little input or review.

“It’s educational experimentation on our kids,” he said.
At a school meeting last week, SSJ parents also voiced concerns about privacy in light of recent Facebook data breaches. Summit collects a wealth of information on each student, from age, ethnicity, and extracurricular activities, to grades, test scores and disciplinary penalties. It insists the data is safe.

Read it all at: https://nypost.com/2018/11/10/brooklyn-students-hold-walkout-in-protest-of-facebook-designed-online-program/

Here is a photo from Sue's story - she went back to the school on Thursday. You gotta love these gutsy kids.

Student protest leaders Zenaiah Bonsu (from left), Kelly Hernandez and Akila Robinson

Leonie Haimson's links:

Students’ personal data is being collected by CZI/Mark Zuckerberg and being shared with up to 18 other companies. In at least 16 states parents and students have rebelled.

Facebook Takes a Step Into Education Software, NY Times, Sept. 3. 2015

Facebook-backed school software shows promise and raises privacy concerns, WaPost, Oct. 11, 2016

Parents cite student privacy concerns with popular online education platform, WaPost, Sept. 5, 2017:

Parents rebel against Summit learning platform, Student Privacy Matters, Aug. 31, 2017

Update on Summit Schools including visit to a Summit school, Student Privacy Matters, Dec. 6, 2017

Connecticut School District Suspends Use of Summit Learning Platform, Edsurge, Dec 20, 2017

Two Districts Roll Back Summit Personalized Learning Program, Ed Week, Dec. 22, 2017

Zuckerberg and the parent pushback vs Summit schools; Student Privacy Matters, Feb. 2, 2018

Online Learning: What Every Parent Should Know, Network for Public Education, March 2018

Mark Zuckerberg Is Trying to Transform Education. This Town Fought Back, NY Magazine, Oct. 11, 2018.

What Just Happened to Summit? , Curmudgucation, October 14, 2018

https://www.wetheparents.net/resistance , Website posted by parents fighting Summit in their own districts

Afterburn:

Had a great time at dinner with Leonie at a Turkish restaurant on 7th Ave after the meeting. I had a chance to fill her in on some of the dramas taking place in the UFT.

More drama on the trip home as trains we diverted and stalled and we had to improvise. My car was in Brooklyn and the Gil Hodges bridge was due to close at 11PM. I got to my car at 10:42 and hit the bridge at 10:59. I road that buggy like a formula one.

2 comments:

Laura h. Chapman said...: Great report and congratulations to the students who said no and to Leonie with a boatload of information that needs to be used.; Monday, November 12, 2018 at 11:46:00 AM EST
Spike said...: Any chance in the "Redesign" the education community could begin with reinstating Iowa Testing, institute an appropriate dress code, have a school policy of children asnswering adults as Maam, Sir, and/or Mr./Mrs. whenever addressing an adult in all schools and then might they actually decide to institute teaching Reading (including reading out loud); arithmetic (including "memorizing" the times tables); weekly spelling lessons and testing each week; and teaching cursive penmanship!?? Any chance of these common sense methods and goals becoming the norm at the elementary school level??; Friday, February 15, 2019 at 4:35:00 PM EST

"A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

What media call "philanthropy" for the public schools are actually seed monies to establish a private "market" in publicly-financed education - an enterprise worth trillions if successfully penetrated by corporate America. Cory Booker, one of the "New Black Leaders" financed by the filthy rich, is key to creating a "nationwide corporate-managed schools network paid for by public funds but run by private managers.

"Ed Reformers" want to cash in on public education and to control its content and outcome, not improve it. Provide great education? Baby boomers had as close as this country has ever gotten to it when we were growing up. The Ed Reform Movement has no interest in seeing such a well-educated, democratically astute population ever again.

http://blackagendareport.com/content/cory-booker-clear-and-present-threat-public-education

History of the UFT Pre-Weingarten Years

This award-winning series of articles by Jack Schierenbeck originally appeared in the New York Teacher in 1996 and 1997.

Naturally, from a certain point of view. But, despite certain biases, Schierenbeck, a great guy, was one of the best NY Teacher reporters so this is worth reading. Jack suffered a debilitating stroke many years ago (I used to get secret donations to ed notes from him through a 3rd source.)

This chapter looks interesting:

Class struggles: The UFT story, part 3

“The schism in the union over radical politics [is] a major reason for stalling the growth of a teacher union for decades.” Revolutionary politics and ideology take center stage, as the original Teachers Union becomes a battlefield, pitting leftist against leftist and splitting the union.

Clarence Taylor's "Reds at the Blackboard" focused on the old Teachers Union which disbanded in 1964 after suffering from anti-left attacks.

Of course for another view, check out the review at New Politics of the Kahlenberg Bio on Shanker by Vera Pavone and me: Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neocon

Effective Union Organizing

A video series put together by Jason Mann from the British Columbia Federation of Teachers about social media and how to use it for effective union organizing.

The first series was called New Media For Union Activists Roadmap and it's still available on-line at:
http://www.newmediabootcamp.ca/welcome/
I watched some of them and need to rewatch as they are loaded with information.

The second series started last week and it's called "Online Campaigning for Union Activists"

You can sign up for this free series at :
http://act.bcfed.ca/online-campaigning-for-union-activists/

You Don't Have A Choice - Join the Revolt

Ex-Harlem Success Teacher Comments on Eva the Diva

Ex-HSA Teacher has left a new comment on your post "Fear and Loathing at Evil's Harlem Success Empire ...":

I am a former Harlem Success teacher. Not many people who work/worked for her like her very much. I once made the comment that she is very nice when I first was hired. Two of her closest colleague responded immediately almost in unison, "Eve is not nice!" Over time I realized that there was a lot of political games going on. Another colleague once said to me that he was tired of "being part of a political campaign." Sending out 15,000 applications for only 400 seats in a school is reprehensible. The money that paid for those mass mailings could have paid the yearly salary of another teacher not to mention the heartache of all those parents who applied but did not get a spot. She does good work trying to give disadvantaged students a quality public school education but at a great cost to staff AND the school's educational budget! school budget.

Davis Guggenheim Compared to Riefenstahl

“Waiting for Superman" is the second most intellectually dishonest piece of documentary work I have seen. It is surpassed only by Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," the pro-Hitler propaganda classic, in that regard. Uses personal narratives of adorable children to create narrative suspense that overrides public policy discussion with pure emotion in unscrupulous attack on teachers and their unions, among others

Timothy Tyson
Professor of African American Studies and History
Duke University

How Teaching Experience Makes a Difference

Even as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee and others around the nation are arguing for experienced teachers to be laid off regardless of seniority, every single study shows teaching experience matters. In fact, the only two observable factors that have been found consistently to lead to higher student achievement are class size and teacher experience, so that it’s ironic that these same individuals are trying to undermine both.
- Leonie Haimson on Parents Across America web site

Full article with charts here.

Weingarten/Gates Foundation announce drone-driven teacher evaluation

According to a press release issued by the Gates Foundation, the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, these three have entered a ground-breaking partnership to evaluate teachers utilizing the drone technology that has revolutionized warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A bird-size device floats up to 400 feet above a classroom and instantly beams live video of teachers in action to agents at desks at Teacher Quality Inspection Stations established by the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

When asked if the drones were authorized to drop bombs on teachers who exhibit inadequacy, Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, replied, "Don't be ridiculous. Gates money puts other methods at our disposal."

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5-million-member American Federation of Teachers said the powerful union has signed on to the drone project...

More at Substance

The Real Reason Behind Push for Standardized Tests: It's All About the Adults

On standardized testing in our schools

A must read article about the standardized test industry.
Written by an insider who has worked as a test scorer, the article outlines a multinational industry based on an army of temporary workers paid by the piece at $0.30 to $0.70 per test, translated in the need to grade 40 tests per hour to make a $12 salary. The article goes on to show how the companies gauge the grading "results" based on the need to ensure new contracts to continue profiting off of our youth. The original article is from Monthly Review. Here it is on Schools Matter blog.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/12/on-growing-use-of-corporate-test.html

Parallels between America today and Germany in the 1920's and early 30's

"Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology - even by its own standards - is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s."

The US Is Facing a Weimar Moment

Published on Sunday, March 15, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Chicago View of Unity/UFT on Charters

After many meetings and debates, the Chicago delegation succeeded in working with the New York United Federation of Teachers, Local 2 (UFT) to push the AFT to take stronger stands on charter school accountability and school closings — though many delegates from Chicago would have liked the language to have been even stronger.

Generally speaking, the New York delegation represented organizing charters as the best model for handling their role in reshaping unions, despite the fact that according to many reports few charter schools in New York have been organized as is the case in Chicago. This logic is the same touted by the Progressive Caucus of the AFT. The few that have been organized are a part of the UFT local though they have separate contracts negotiated with the help of UFT. The Chicago delegation reflection the mindset that allowing new charters to continue to proliferate while attempting to organize existing charters is an end game in which public schools and the union lose.

Jen Johnson, CTU, Local 1 in Substance

Ed Notes Greatest Hits: HSA Rally and Founding of GEM

SEE MY VIDEO ON HARLEM SUCCESS RALLY 2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEp7rg_L5JI

Angel Gonzalez and I attended that rally and used the footage to promote our conference on Mar. 28, 2009, which is where the concept of a group like GEM emerged. Until then we had basically been a committee of ICE working with the NYCORE high stakes testing group. The actions of Eva and crew helped spawn GEM. Mommie Dearest!!

I have more video somewhere. I was hoping to get Leni Riefenstahl to edit it but she died. We would have called it "Triumph of the Hedge Fund Operators."

Ed Notes Online

Ed Notes Extended