Fred Smith: Leonie brings Gloom and Doom to InBloom, Dragon Slayer Kills the Demon Seed

The accolades are rolling in for Leonie Haimson on the inBloom closing announcement. Leonie's campaign should written up in textbooks. She won a major war against the leading ed deformers.

Just look at this list from Diane Ravitch:

• The company was started with a grant of $100 million from the Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, to gather confidential student data and store it on an electronic "cloud." 
• The technology for collection and storage of student data belonged to Wireless Generation, a subsidiary of Amplify, run by Joel Klein and owned by Rupert Murdoch. 

Oh man! How delicious. For those who feel David cannot defeat Goliath, Leonie is one hell of an example.

[Any photoshoppers out there who want to do a cartoon for ed notes exploring this concept - use Gates/Klein/Rupert as face of Goliath and little Leonie with slingshot -- ball labelled "parent/student rights" as it smashes into their head.]

Leonie truly began this fight standing alone - a gang of one against some of the major forces behind the privatization ed movement. She was relentless to the point where I would say to myself, "Stop already! What's the point. She can't beat these guys." But Leonie did beat them - to a pulp. An example to me and everyone else -- they can be beat  --

The national leader of the fight was Leonie Haimson, leader of a New York City-based group called Class Size Matters, who testified across the nation and alerted parents to the possible breach of their children's confidential data.... Diane Ravitch

Thank You Leonie! This wouldn't/couldn't have happened without all you did to spearhead the pushback!... Susan

Wow, this statement shows this guy just doesn't get it. He thinks teachers don't get enough information about how their students are doing by working with them day in and day out, month after month, but need InBloom's data dashboards to feed them factoids and tell them which book to read or science experiment to do next. Unbelievable. Good riddance, and thanks to Leonie and everyone across the country who worked so hard to bring about this result! Now let's send Pearson packing! .... Jeff Nichols

Dragon Slayer Kills the Demon Seed.
Leonie brings Gloom and Doom to InBloom. Wow.
Yes, Jeff, we need to stop the Pearson juggernaut. Another impossible dream. Just as foolish as going up against the inevitability of InBloom... Fred Smith

Leonie Haimson Statement on inBloom's overdue demise

Hopefully, today’s announcement that inBloom is closing its doors will make government officials, corporations and foundations more aware that parental concerns cannot be ignored, and that they must stop foisting their “solutions” on our schools and classrooms with no attention given to the legitimate concerns of parents and their right to protect their children from harm.

Yet the statement issued by inBloom’s CEO reeks of arrogance and condescension, and makes it clear that those in charge still have not learned any lessons from this debacle. The fervent opposition to inBloom among parents throughout the country did not result from “misunderstandings”, but inBloom ‘s utter inability to provide a convincing rationale that would supercede the huge risks to student security and privacy involved.

Leonie's full statement here at the NYCPublicSchoolParent blog.

By the way, do you think Rupert has figured out that Joel Klein can't run anything?

Here are press links from Chalbeat:

• Chalkbeat,
• Schoolbook,
• LoHud,
• NY Times Bits,
• Capital New York (Pro)

Below the break is the statement from inBloom:

Reposted: Kerrie Dalman, president of Colorado teachers association writes pro-inBloom oped as metastasizing cancer keeps eating away at the NEA and AFT

Kerrie Dalman is President of the Colorado Education Association, the state affiliate of the NEA.  She’s also head honcho of Southwest TURN, a branch of the metastasizing cancer eating away at the NEA and AFT. ......

@theChalkface exposes another turncoat union leader

Colorado Educators Alert: TURNcoat, Kerrie Dalman, Promotes InBloom Student Data Mining and Storage

I'm reposting this as new links have come in. Want to discuss the internal cancer eating away at teacher unions? Come to the MORE summer weekly series this Thursday I'm helping organize: UFT Leadership; Friend or Foe.

For documentation of Gates grant to Colorado Education Association: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database/Grants/2013/02/OPP1081527

Diane Ravitch posted this Colorado teacher response:

This Teacher Does Not Love inBloom by dianerav

Peg Robertson read the article in the Denver Post in which the president of the Colorado Education Association praised inBloom and said that it would provide great learning tools.

Peg is a teacher and parent in Colorado, and she is a leader of United OptOut. She is opposed to inBloom. Here she explains why.

Read her article in its entirety.

 Another comment

10:33am Jul 20 Kerrie Dalman the president of the Colorado teachers union just wrote a pro-inBloom oped in the Denver Post; saying how the sharing of personal student data with inBloom and for-profit vendors will help teachers reach students more effectively. http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_23688519/inbloom-great-teaching-tool If you are a teacher and disagree leave a comment on the oped, and on the CEA Facebook page where they have linked to the article https://www.facebook.com/ColoradoEA?fref=ts Also, if any Colorado teacher wants to write on this -- about how sharing students' personal data with vendors is likely to hurt rather than help -- as well as the fact that inBloom is also collecting data for teachers, including your name, address, SSN, and the reason you were let go of your last teaching job, all linked to your students' test scores, in a way that puts your privacy at risk (and could jeopardize your future professional prospects), please let me know. You could offer it to the Denver Post and if they don't publish I'd be happy to feature it on my blog and ask Diane to link to it to make sure it gets maximum readership Finally, the CEA did get $300K from Gates Foundation in Feb. 2013 http://shar.es/krIDM Hope you all read the terrific expose of the Gates effect and how they use their huge wealth to buy assent in higher ed at http://chronicle.com/article/The-Gates-Effect/140323/ InBloom enables great teaching tools www.denverpost.com For a teacher, nothing beats that moment when the light goes on, when a student says,

Randi on Board of inBloom: AFT dues-paying members, how much will you stand for?

This is the question Susan Ohanian asks. Let the Unity slugs tell us how Randi is gone and MulGarten reigns while all of them go to AFT conventions and do whatever Randi wants. And they will push common core down your throats until you choke. How Vichy-like is Randi's being on this board?

Is this the crew you want running our union? But read on:

http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=443

About inBloom Inc.

inBloom Inc. is a nonprofit organization established to carry forward the mission of the Shared Learning Collaborative, which is to work to make personalized learning a reality for every U.S. student. inBloom provides technology services that allow states and public school districts to better integrate student data and learning applications to support sustainable, cost-effective personalized learning. inBloom is funded with initial philanthropic support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York. For more information about inBloom, visit www.inBloom.org.

Old Secretaries of Ed just keep getting consulting gigs. Margaret Spellings is on the board of directors of the new inBloom enterprise. Here are the rest.

Take a look at the Governance and Organization Technical Advisory Group:

In addition to seeking advice from more than 100 education, technology and business advisors, inBloom benefited from a six-member governance advisory group with a range of expertise. This former group committed significant time to help design and set up the long term governance and organizational structure for inBloom, Inc.:

Michael Horn, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Education, Innosight Institute

Michael Lomax, President and CEO, United Negro College Fund

David Riley, President, Alembic Foundation

Andrew Rotherham, Co-Founder and Partner, Bellwether Education Partners

Cheryl Vedoe, President and CEO, Apex Learning

Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers

AFT dues-paying members, how much will you stand for?

inBloom is nonprofit. All its providers are for-profits. inBloom Providers are the usual suspects.

If you can stand the horror, an inBloom white paper on standards alignment, providing chapter and verse of how they sequence learning.

This whole package provides a bit more information about what the Common Core Gates Standards are really up to.

You can see a small excerpt in Gates Foundation Anal-Retentive, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Strikes Again.

Here's an excerpt from an inBloom white paper Learning Standard Alignment in inBloom Technology, page 20. Copyright 2012 inBloom, Inc. and its affiliates. They want all the skill duckies in neat little rows. No one seems willing to put a name on this document. I don't think there's a human name in the whole paper. The paper describes:

Objective assessment results provide an important measure of student fulfillment of learning objectives. Again, for inBloom compatible applications to analyze student objective achievement, assessment results must be provided to the inBloom Data store. But assessment metadata, indicating standard alignment, must also be included in the inBloom Data store; assessment maintainers, vendors and educators will need to provide this alignment information.

 Oh, Susan, lay it on them.

http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=443