The only good thing about the huge Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) dropped on Monday, November 30 that sailed through the House Wednesday evening, December 2, to move on to the Senate is that we finally have a truly fixed body of language to analyze. After writing my book Credentialed to Destroy: How and Why Education Became a Weapon back in 2012 examining the actual implementation and what its true effects would be, and now this blog dealing with real time subsequent confessions, I have joked that ESSA read to me as smoothly as if it were written in Latin and I was Cicero.
Before anyone jumps to the conclusion that my reference to greed is merely the Pay for Success language that is unmistakably there, let me say the Greed I am talking about is not just for Success or Social Impact Bonds. It is Greed for Compliance that permeates ESSA. What local school districts and governments as well as states must agree to do, in schools and to children, in return for those luscious federal dollars. First though here is a news release from a well-connected organization bragging that just the Pay for Success components of ESSA add up to $2 billion a year. http://results4america.org/press-room/press-release-michele-jolin-evidence-based-policy-provisions-essa-game-changer-federal-education-funding/
Results for America with its ties to President Obama’s Office of Social Innovation and Civic Engagement and Cass Sunstein’s Nudging initiatives along with the UK Behavioural Sciences Unit and its interest in cities (Remember my Learning Regions post November 11, 2015) http://www.bloomberg.org/press/releases/bloomberg-philanthropies-announces-first-cities-selected-to-join-what-works-cities-initiative/ . They also created a relevant vision back in March with Atlas Network member AEI. http://www.results4america.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2015-3-18-Moneyball-for-Education-Report.pdf
The co-author of that report, Bethany Little, is a partner at the same Education Counsel that is tied to Clinton’s Ed Secretary Richard Riley. It was hired by the Common Core’s sponsor, CCSSO, to create the competency-based education successor for the Next Generation States pushing innovative practices. Not a surprise then to see that paying for Success or just Compliance with the same reading, civics, or math constructivism that political radicals who call themselves Social Reconstructionists have fought for decades to impose on K-12 (Chapters 2-4 of my book, which is how I recognized what ESSA described) features so prominently in what ESSA really forces. The local school district, charter school or any eligible entity, wanting those luscious federal dollars to flow to their local economy (think of students as just the excuse), agree to do whatever is specified. Is that really returning ‘control’ to the states and local schools with just federal ‘guardrails’?
The answer of course is it depends on what those requirements are. In addition to the insights only my book covers that are now more pertinent than ever because of what is in ESSA, I think the best summary of what schools must do in return for federal dollars is contained in Title IV–21st Century Schools. Of course every state and school wants those funds so let’s see what they must agree to do. First, provide “access to, and opportunities for, a well-rounded education for all students.” Secondly, create “school conditions for student learning in order to create a healthy and safe school environment.” Lastly, provide “access to personalized learning experiences supported by technology and professional development for the effective use of data and technology.”
Anyone out there saying, “what’s wrong with that? Next thing she’ll be complaining about apple pie.” Here’s the problem. ESSA was trying very hard not to have any damnable sound bytes that might have stopped passage. Most of the egregious language in what passed the House or Senate originally is gone. Instead we get euphemisms. Fortunately for us Tyranny Busters with Axemaker Minds my research is like a glossary of euphemisms. Part 1 on well-rounded education is the UNESCO term used all over the world now to denote non-transmissive or examination type education. Instead education must now be geared to develop the human personality as a harmonious integrated being. (Tarbiyah calls this education for shakhsiyah (personality/identity) for anyone craving an explicit link to the previous post.)
Maybe not such a good euphemism then to fend off scrutiny from what is really being promised in return for federal dollars. Part 2’s promises also sound glorious and vague. Apart from implicating all the Positive School Climate and that nesting a la Matrushka doll model from the previous post, what do I really have against Part 2? Well, in researching that last post I spent time researching what is going on the UK. The madrassas there are terribly pleased about legislation adopted since 2000 imposing obligations of social cohesion and racial equality on every school and community. Ofsted is the inspector to check for school compliance in the UK and in 2009 they defined the legally required community cohesion that schools must also demonstrate as follows:
“…working towards a society in which there is a common vision and sense of belonging in all communities; a society in which the diversity of people’s backgrounds and circumstances is appreciated and valued; a society in which similar life opportunities are available for all; and a society in which strong and positive relationships exist and continue to be developed in the workplace, in schools, and the wider community.”
I know everyone reading will be shocked that this also fits with Intercultural obligations UNESCO adopted in 2004 and has now moved to force globally as part of its Rapprochement of Cultures decade and the initiatives from the last post. There goes the supposed ambiguity attached to complying with Part II’s obligations. How about Personalized Learning and that data obligation? That of course is where the true manipulation and reengineering of each student at a neurological level comes into play. I have written about this some and it is what my second book’s research covers in depth.
Luckily for us this http://www.educationdive.com/news/new-measurements-promote-efficacy-of-personalized-learning/409798/ states Gates has spent $5 billion promoting personalized learning. Part 3 is not terribly ambiguous either in its intentions. This is especially true when the chosen evaluator Rand is also who the White House chose to create the Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Competencies it wishes to make the new focus of education. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/confessions-of-a-coordinated-cabal-intent-on-psychological-rape-with-impunity/
Rand was also the chosen evaluator for the federally-financed Change Agent Study in the 70s that was used to create strategies for effective implementations of the behavioral sciences in schools going forward. I am sure none of their Effective Schools template is embodied in ESSA.That would be why the new chosen statutory phrase is ‘evidence-based.’ It is how the compliance of the local schools is to be judged. Literally as in “is the school or district providing programs, activities, and experiences that comply with these listed objectives for 21st Century Schools?” Compliance and greed is how the Social Reengineering gets forced with hardly anyone, I suppose, truly aware of what Congress is mandating.
The real problem is the total reimagining of economies in the 21st Century by think tanks supposedly on the Right and Left, by governments at every level, and on a Bipartisan and Bicameral basis (as Congress is describing its support for both ESSA and 2014’s related WIOA (see tag)). In a 2014 report called “Impact Investment: the Invisible Heart of Markets” the true vision of the 21st century global economy is laid out. This is what both WIOA and ESSA (as well as other legislation and programs) intend to quietly force on the US. It is to be quite lucrative as well for the insiders, foundations, and investment banks cited in the report. Would anyone be shocked to know Gates and Soros are both involved and all the UN entities and the OECD?
As former Obama Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is quoted as saying “This is ground zero of a big deal.” Under Paying for Outcomes, we learn that “impact-driven organizations need access to markets in order to generate income from the products and services they offer.” Me too, please. It’s thus not people creating a market for things they want. It is governments creating markets by mandating that every person in the world has a right to have their needs met. Think of impact investing as trying to monetize poverty for the benefit of politicians wanting political and social control and high-net worth individuals looking for a certain return. To quote:
“the largest markets, however, could be provided by governments paying for impact. There is an urgent need for a revolution in government purchasing, with paying for the successful delivery of specific outcomes at its core.”
Precisely what Ofsted looks for or Rand. What impact investing or as it is now called in the US–Moneyball for Government–needs is specific standards or measures of ‘success’ or when objectives have been ‘achieved.’ Can anyone say Common Core or Competencies? In fact, it was the constant recurrence of words used in both the House and Senate ESEA Reauthorization drafts that first caught my eye. This is also how charters, and whether they get renewed or the lucrative ability to expand at taxpayer expense, really work. Fascinatingly enough though the well-connected KnowledgeWorks that is tied to Education Counsel and thus Moneyball issued a frightening Forecast 4.0 this week. It not only made reference to Impact Investing as the “New Civic Funding,” it also mentioned under ‘Educating for Impact’ that “What if School Social Impact Scores became critical metrics for attracting funding, partnerships, and community engagement?”
It would also go well with a forced community cohesion mandate a la UK or all the communitarian obligations in Positive School Climate and Democratic Education too. There is a lot of information in this post so let me close with another document that came out today as the UN announced a “Global Alliance to Monitor Learning.” Interesting timing, huh? With ESSA just passing the House, but there is a mention of A4L. Not a lot of new acronyms in my world at this point, but that was one. When I looked it up http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/assessment-for-learning.pdf , it showed me a Theory of Change that fits completely with what ESSA has just set up to send money to local communities in return for compliance with the UNESCO vision. The one no one locally has to even now about.
Quality Learning for all children and youth turns out to be first about Activities, then Intermediate Outcomes, Outcomes, and finally Impact. All in a document tied to the Brookings Institute and its sunsetting Learning Metrics Task Force. I wrote about LMTF and its use of Competencies and the nice Rockefeller Foundation letting them use its Bellagio retreat. That would be the same foundation that coined the very term ‘impact investment’ back in 2007.
How coincidental, huh? Behind a push globally along with others about using tax dollars to force “measurable social outcomes” including reengineered human personalities. Each to be primed and motivated for fundamentally transforming existing social, political, and economic structures.
Perhaps to a motto of Not Serfs Yet, we should add “And No Ambiguity Left as to True Intentions.”
Monetizing Poverty. Yep. That is the crux of it. They are creating and growing via Ed a disabled and debilitated ( but Compliant! ) electorate whose mental vacuousness will contribute to generational stagnation and poverty and all the while the Planners will feed off their taxes encouraging the serfs entitlement to More and Better and Equal everything . How Impactful.
Nightmare.
NESTA (remember Up from the Swamp and their work with Michael Barber), the Skoll Centre that is also involved with the Social Impact report I quoted from, and the Rockefeller Foundation in 2013 helped finance a Social Frontiers conference in Glasgow, Scotland. The same Roberto Unger who was Obama’s law prof and who I wrote about after he spoke at RSA about education, gave a keynote. It has now been turned into a “Conclusion: The Task of the Social Innovation Movement” for a just released book New Frontiers in Social Innovation Research. I read it yesterday after this post and am trying to read the entire book this weekend.
So education becomes a means of bringing money into communities, but the real goal apart from creating government managed Learning Regions where people do as they are told and we get no genuine innovation to interfere with plans is that “A second project is the reform of education and through education, of consciousness.” Now that’s not a surprise to me or my book’s readers, but it is a shocking confession to most people. I would hope it terrifies the Congressmen and women who voted yes on ESSA and the Senators about to approve it on Tuesday. As I said, there is no longer ambiguity on intentions.
Here is more Unger, but first this is my Unger post from more than two years ago. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/multiple-recent-proclamations-laying-out-commitment-to-revolutionary-transformation-of-our-entire-society/ This is also why derivative knowledge pretending to be an expert is so dangerous in this area. The clear links get missed, while people falsely believe they are getting the complete story. There’s a reason when I speak I will open it up to questions and tell people they can ask me anything they want. That’s how well I know this from years in Primary Sources. By the way, from that knowledge I know the equivalent to Every Child Succeeds in the UK is Every Child Matters and I also have read that compatible framework from birth.
Unger: “For the social innovation movement, the role of the school under democracy is to serve as the voice of the future rather than as the tool of either the state or the family. It is not enough to make the student capable of moving within the present order; it is necessary to equip him to distance himself from that order, to resist it, and to reshape it bit-by-bit and step-by-step. The school must allow him to be both an insider and an outsider, an agent who participates without surrendering.”
Mentally and emotionally, we will get students who are pliable silly putty running around as teenagers and young adults a la Black Lives Matter. They will be horrifically outraged and motivated to act based on narratives that actually are not true. In some UNESCO works on this well-rounded education from a Pole and behind the Iron Curtain in the early 70s (same time as the Faure Report) there was a mention of “it requires an appeal to imagination and possession of the developed creative imagination which is necessary to counteract the already acquired cognitive blueprints.
Doesn’t that sound like math taught conceptually as Rigorous that is really about rewiring the logical Axemaker Mind that was developed at home with attentive parents who read unapproved books and atypical vocabulary?
Here is one more link and shows the links now between the Promise Neighborhoods that are part of ESSA and the Strive Network owned by Knowledge Works. I suspect they will be a Moneyball eligible entity under quite a few of the ESSA programs. It is more than education but the whole framework has the name “Aligning for Impact: Connecting Promise Neighborhoods and the Cradle-to-Career Civic Infrastructure.”
Impact is becoming a ubiquitous word now, isn’t it? http://www.promiseneighborhoodsinstitute.org/sites/default/files/Strive%2Band%2BPN%2BAlignment.pdf
ASCD also has a comparable framework I pulled over Thanksgiving as I was preparing to read ESSA in a very short time as if I were Cicero.
This guy is great. Why would we not believe him? It has all come true! Its the playbook. Boom.
Yuri Bezmenov (former kgb) Psychological Warfare Subversion & Control of Western Society – Complete – YouTube
They are also monetizing things like rape. They take elements of reality and dissect them and turn them on us, then create the moneyball all around them, nonprofits, univ departments, philanthropies, pundits, call centers, action groups, tv programs, celebrity spokes persons, advocacy funraising, walks for awarness. Its a formula which necessitates loads of useful idiots, ergo they need to accumulate them and channel them starting in preschool.
I read stuff like this and my head wants to explode, partly because it’s so vast and hydra-like and partly because most people don’t have any idea what is happening or don’t want to know. In plain English, what exactly is the endgame here?
This is the June 2014, just the US document, from the US National Advisory Board of Impact Investing http://www.socialimpactinvestment.org/reports/US%20REPORT%20FINAL%20250614.pdf
It is not just education, which is why there is language in ESSA about removing the barriers that prevent revenue pertaining to families and children and communities from also flowing based on ‘needs’ and the terms of other legislation. We have the Earned Income Tax Credit, now refundable and Moneyball All Star Paul Ryan wants to join Obama and make it refundable even for single men, being celebrated by Bookings as a means for communities to build prosperity. These programs turn the factual existence in all societies of people with ‘needs’ and now make their presence in a given community a means of bringing federal dollars into that community. The pay for success apart from social impact bonds (which are not bonds in the traditional sense and are manipulating these changed definitions as well as using the behavioral sciences to create the very effect that allows payment at 10% returns ROI) essentially turns into a revenue producing opportunity for any entity, school district, United Way, Strive Network, Catholic charity, etc, that provides the stipulated services under the terms insisted upon.
The terms are to teach reading and writing as Whole Language activities (this is drawing on my knowledge of Amartya Sen’s literacy work for UNESCO and the Wye Conference in 1986 that are both covered in my book. It is teaching math or civics as projects and role playing and conceptual activities. It is the 21st century schools example I gave here.
One more example, this is the 15 page UK doc from 2007 on the “Guidance on the Duty to Promote Community Cohesion”. I have much more than this, but it dovetails with this perfectly. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130401151715/http://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/DCSF-00598-2007.pdf
This is both idiotic gibberish and heinious maliciousness, wrapped in fiendish deception and hitlerian sickness. Hard to fathom that this is happening. Their “Passion” creeps me out so totally!
“we passionately believe that it is the duty of all schools to address issues of ‘how we live together’ and ‘dealing with difference’ however controversial and difficult they might sometimes seem.”
This Civil Rights letter on attending to the local implementation to ensure community cohesion certainly augments my analysis of where ESSA is intended to go. http://www.civilrights.org/press/2015/civil-rights-and-education-coalition-ESSA.html
Well as a former single man, though one who was never eligible for EITC, I think that if there’s a refundable EITC, single men (nearly a synonym for workers without children) should not be excluded. Single men aren’t any less worthy than anyone else. My sons will probably be single men for some period of time.
I guess single women are expected to have a child and have custody of that child somehow — and it usually works out that way. If making this (and welfare programs) less dependent on having children around, it will reduce perverse incentives for having children that will have to be supported by everyone else.
And if you don’t like it for single men, I can understand that. Just take it away from everyone else too.
It feels a little off topic, but if EITC refundable for single men is an example of an outrageous idea, I’m sure we can find worse ones than that.
The EITC discussion was in the context that entire community economies and prosperity can be built around the EITC. That is why it is being pushed for single men and it ties to this view of ESSA where backpack funding from students and addressing their needs can also be the expected and codified stream of revenue communities can build an economy around.
Do we really think prosperity can come from these transfer programs apart from the DC area and State Capitols?
Funny, here is the Reason Foundation that Lisa Schell works for touting Finland’s recent announcement of a minimum guaranteed income. https://reason.com/blog/2015/12/07/finland-to-test-basic-income-guarantee
Fascinating how every entity listed as touting a universal basic income is a listed member of the Atlas Network. We seem to be zooming in on the real commonalities and adults and students are just excuses to move revenue around as a matter of right and law. Take in refugees and this would make local areas ‘prosperous.’
I did not know Reason had pushed that. I simply saw that Finland had pushed this http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/12/07/basic-income-finland_n_8739898.html and remembered Stalin always said Finland was where the USSR practiced innovations it wanted the West to then ape. When I went looking for the link to show you where this all seems to be going with Brookings in the lead along with PolicyLink and the Center for American progress, there was Reason. I was looking at its Board this morning just from yesterday’s presentation and it is loaded, as usual, with financial types.
All of this also bolsters offline discussions that certain groups want ESSA while not being seen to want it lest it impede fundraising. Apparently my recognition of what WIOA did from the get-go and its mere existence is still upsetting to our Dirigiste class and their abettors.
A sentence from “Credentialed to Destroy” that summarizes the endgame: “Bureaucrats and social radicals want a personality that can be oppressed and exploited with impunity” (p. 174).
Thanks Bob. More pertinent than I ever dreamed when I wrote it. Who would have thought Congress would legislatively enshrine these notorious education practices and theories for instruction while simultaneously insist they are not requiring the Common Core.
They are treating the world as a semantic game, while using the law to bind individuals to a vision of the future virtually no one would accept knowingly and voluntarily.
m
That’s certainly a pithy comment.
‘m’ means my PC posted on ts own before I could finish the message. Ooops.
Ftm:
I have had the same “multi-headed hydra” thoughts for a very long time. I have really struggled with how to summarize why we should care. Robin’s saying that the endgame is creating a more obedient/malleable student mind is good.
I have tried to come up with an answer to the question below for a long time and I have trouble. Nothing I say is hostile BTW.
Q. Why should we care about all these non-profits and NGOs and education conferences and the fact that they are inter-connected and say much the same thing and say similar things to organizations in the 1990s, 1960s, 1930s, etc. ?
I ask this question as in “What is the topic sentence?” or “What is your elevator pitch?”
Some feeble beginnings:
1. Follow the money. These organizations exist for themselves and their own ideologies. They have little concern for the negative effects on students. They provide a living for their members.
2. Maybe list the slogans used year by year to obtain grant money to make people ask why these slogans change every couple years?
3. Large international organizations have wanted to force ideologies on schools for decades but states and local school boards resist such take over, so federal money is used to encourage schools to adopt the ideologies.
Like Madmommy said, this is gibberish. How can one argue with gibberish, especially when it sounds so warm and fuzzy?
Regarding these ‘bonds’: As I understand it, they allow connected organizations to get federal money if they know how to play the game.
The entities provide the services and if the outcomes desired are obtained they get paid an amount over what they have spent providing the services. Virtually every one I have seen is taking advantage of unappreciated shifts in the nature of what is going on in education via the switch from the transmission of knowledge. So there will be Growth, but it is actually in sel measures, but extrapolating from the Growth they will model that students are less likely to be in prison or not learn to read or need special ed so the group gets paid. No waiting to see how things turn out.
If I give you spelling list of twenty words and a week to get ready for test, you ought to do well even if you are a bad speller. Likewise when knowledge is largely conceptual and those concepts, themes, core ideas are all specified, students will ‘know’ what is desired while still not knowing much or even anything that is accurate.
Most of the ones involving education seem to be relying on the insiders knowing this new behavioral science focus and gaming what qualifies for payment around that knowledge.
It matters fundamentally because if we tell people they have a right to have others’ meet their needs regardless of personal effort while we simultaneously make sure no student knows much, we have no one to maintain the prosperity everyone seems to want to take advantage of. Plus I just finished that book from the Social Frontiers conference and they all admit we and our children are in this vast social experiment on all this. Our kids, our money, known bad ideas all add up to needing exposure on the front end not the back.
http://urbanedge.blogs.rice.edu/2015/11/23/austin-wonders-if-social-impact-bonds-can-cure-social-ills/#.VlRp4b_QNVf is a good overview of social impact bonds, but much of this is pay for desired outcomes of the compliance variety. Money gets renewed if goals are met. Related but the later absolutely permeates ESSA.
http://www.gov.scot/Resource/Img/313416/0091190.gif
in December 2013 both the UK and the US announced that “subjective well-being” is the new purpose of governments going forward. This link is from the Sottish brand.
Whenever you see These Twee graphics you know they are seeking legitimacy for something completely absurd and unpalatable.
Thanks for that mm. I mentioned the Every Child Matters framework as the UK’s version of what we are enshrining legislatively in the US as “Every Student Succeeds” but with comparable language. Remember the Learning Regions work for UNESCO came out of the UK and here is there 2009 vision for 21st Century Schools. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130401151715/http://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/21st_Century_Schools.pdf Look at that title “Your child, your schools, our future.” Your child’s cognitive blueprints must be changed so he is amenable to a collectivist, planned future. Everything I know from history says the world cannot be redesigned like this and that this is all a kleptocratic dream until we wise up to what is being attempted.
Looking at the UK lets us see about five years ahead of schedule what is to be put in place here. Remember the ‘returning authority to local areas’ hype and sales pitch is there too. They call it Devolution.
When I listened to Paul Ryan last night on the news talking about healthcare (the other component to subjective wellbeing apart from education as personality development) I remembered that AEI is doing a presentation next week that I suppose will be Moneyball for Healthcare. http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/hostedemail/email.htm?CID=30836696251&ch=B52D7CFE7AFF2A5DCCC3ABDC6C8F6ED6&h=1c755f6cea9af7789464cd908b62b612&ei=WKLEjVyCN Notice Tom Price, who heads the House Budget Committee, will be there. I noticed he was a Yes vote on ESSA, clearly on board for the Moneyball vision of the future. Wish I had known that when he and I shared an elevator ride to the Georgian Club where I had gone to hear him speak on healthcare. It’s also a reminder of how many physicians around Atlanta have talked about Tom’s vision for healthcare.
When I look at the Boards of the Atlas Network members, what I see are executives of businesses that wish to benefit from this government-Big Business planned economy nexus. I think much of the anti-Common Core hype was actually trying to steer the conversation away from recognizing that reality. I am a corporate and securities lawyer by experience and training before I got into first healthcare and now education. First thing I will always do is check any organization’s Board of Directors and funding sources if available. The Atlas Network members tend to have insiders with ties to public utilities of one type or another or other beneficiaries of Dirigisme. That’s not an insult. It’s simply the reality of who the Principals are and where their interests really lie.
What are some examples from history that make you think that this redesign can’t work? I’m just curious which episodes stand out in your mind and how you think today’s technology could perhaps affect the outcome this time around.
I didn’t say the redesign would not work. In words that have probably never escaped my mouth and fingers before, I think Cass Sunstein is right. For governments to be redesigning the brains and personalities of their citizens through the schools and an alliance with the media is openly tyrannical.
Unlike Cass, whose wife of course is the US Ambassador to the UN, I do not think that the purportedly ratified global human rights legislation like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, trumps the US government’s restraints against being openly tyrannical.
As the Gates funded Henry County Competency-based ed link put it from yesterday above, this model needed a ubiquitous computer and universal standards and those are in place.
I bring this up to point to method and outcome and because i just found out that my 8th grade son is reading oneof these books about RAPE UbD style in his english class. WELL Not for long, eh heh.
This quote illustrates EXACTLY the technique used by religious cults, Rogerian therapy, and prisoner of war torture. Break them down, rebuild.
http://www.penguin.com/static/images/yr/pdf/LessonPlans_LHA.pdf
“While some people see contemporary realistic fiction for teens as “problem literature”, the organizing principle of this guide
is different. Some time ago, an educator told Anderson that these books are best described as “resilience literature,” and we agree with that categorization. Resilience is the ability to persevere or cope when faced with stress or trauma. We demonstrate resilience when we adapt, stabilize, or reorganize after suffering.These books are best understood by reading them as a collection of stories that emphasize the resilient nature of teenagers.”
This illustrates the effort and intentions to break normal healthy children down by dwelling on the negative the traumatic the ugly implanting ideas, enticement even false memories to alter the bahaviors, such as free will and individualism, while demoralizing and causing fear neurosis. I see Woody Allen as the outcome they seek. Neurotic, anxiety filled, perverted, deceptive, immoral, negative, deluded, narcissistic, willing to go quisling style with the leader of the moment and do his bidding. ( black lives matter, yale screaming girl..)
Madmommy:
I am ignorant of this teen literature. ALWAYS argue both sides of an issue in my head. If I read one of these books I might understand instantly what you object to.
If I were a CC person or a sales person from the book seller I would say:
1. What is wrong with teaching resilience?
2. These are just modern versions of the Horatio Alger stories about a person who over comes adversity.
What is your response to this?
I am just trying to understand what I know nothing about.
BTW my favorite book as a boy was Silver Chief Dog of the North. Lots of grit ad perseverance in there.
The difference is no triumph over adversity, man vs man, man vs nature. It is just dark dwelling on negative and inappropriate topics such as rape in an uncrious contemporary setting. Girl hates high school, girl gets raped at a party, girl diary like expels all her hatred for school, individuals, life, herself and the rape is described. They tead this book out Loud in class. They dwell. My son said its depressing. It lacks literal integrity, the story ends in a doubtful and sad ugly way. It is merely a vehicle to deliver provocative sexuality wrapped in a social justice man hating grungy tee shirt.
Nary a likable character, interesting setting, clever scenario or amusing anecdote. Just inappropriate blekk.
It is my decision when or if this topic is addressed with my children and the idea of a young teacher thinking this is ok, clouding their developing psyche’s with this assault makes madmommy see red.
It is the whole international CSE movement crouching behind the word literature which is nefarious at best and a form of grooming at worst.
Resiliance is a byproduct of nature and should be part of family life, not artificially inserted into fake stories or roleplaying to satisfy some coercion agenda of a teacher.
General be nice, play nice when necessary in a classroom is fine but data mining snooping delving into personal sexuality and relationships is crosding the line big time.
By the way what you think is grit and perseverance in reference to your favorite book, is not what those words mean in todays eduspeak. Robin has written extensively on that. Angela Duckworth comes to mind.
Curious wording
“If we want everyone’s kid to succeed, we need to bring vocational education back to the core of high school learning.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholaswyman/2015/09/01/why-we-desperately-need-to-bring-back-vocational-training-in-schools/2/
Not really. That perfectly aligns with UNESCO’s focus consistently as I laid out here more than three years ago now. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/values-and-vocational-creating-citizen-drones-via-education-worldwide/ Citizen Drones is definitely another one of my pithier metaphors.
Yesterday there was a Behavioral Science workshop in the UK and this man was one of the presenters. http://www.michaeldalyresearch.com/#!esrc-future-leaders-project/c42r It aligns perfectly with the subjective wellbeing focus of governments in the UK and US and states it wants to marry techniques for economic planning and psychology techniques. http://economicspsychologypolicy.blogspot.com/2015/12/summary-of-workshop-on-behavioural.html
Most importantly a behavioral science of ‘self-control’ as this calls for aligns with one of the two favorite euphemisms for the cybernetic/developmental new focus that personalized learning and ‘well-rounded education also refer to.
So many lost invites and with my passport all ready to go.
By vocational ed, they don’t simply mean mechanics and woodshop, do they? Many parents don’t realize it’s no longer about learning a trade. It’s “training” fot the “21st century,” which is code for “developing collectivist mindsets.” You can see examples of what this training looks like with TE21, a company who has partnered with MasteryConnect’s analytics platform to create continuous, formative assessment: http://www.te21.com/case
Just one example of many. I sure hope parents understand that by less testing the current administration and ESSA bill are actually pushing continuous, formative assessments of HOTS. Students will be caught in a loop that circles from learning to testing until each “standard” i.e., “behavior” is met. Yay for technology! (eye roll). So, schools won’t have to work too hard for their success $$. The desired results are–by design–preprogrammed into the interoperable, global, learning standards that work by matching desired outcomes (standards) to learning materials (content). Of course, we have a long way to go and many wrinkles to iron out before all schooling takes place in computer adaptive environments. Maybe this is our saving grace?
Robin’s earlier comment “…when knowledge is largely conceptual and those concepts, themes, core ideas are all specified, students will ‘know’ what is desired while still not knowing much or even anything” is something every parent with school aged kids needs to understand. Sooner rather than later.
The Gates Foundation is pushing $4 million on Henry County schools for this in a story that started local and is being pushed as the national model at the same time it just happens to fit with what is to be moneyball for education ‘outcomes’ and thus ‘impact’. http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/12/02/competency-based-learning-290/ Notice all the references to ‘concepts’ and even being able to draw your ‘understanding’. Yes, I promise this will influence how I interpret my experiences and what motivates me to act. Therefore I understand.”
On the computer adaptive environments, if private companies can supply the equipment first and then get 10% over what they spent because this type of model shows ‘results,’ then the desired equipment will quickly come into place.
Cass Sunstein in “Nudging and Choice Architecture” from January referred to a 2015 World Bank Development Report that I remember being horrified by at the time. I am going to go back and reread it again today in light of ESSA as well as the now-specified SDG language.
Yesterday my husband brought home a bottle of champagne to brighten my spirits after the emotional angst of the last several days on this blog. He thinks the misinformed stupidity and hubris being repeatedly demonstrated is being driven by groups wanting to distract me from my on-the-money analysis of ESSA as well as Radical Ed Reform generally in my book. It is more pertinent than ever, which is why some want to appropriate its accurate insights and others want to make sure it does not gain a widespread readership.
Its insights rip those scales right off as they are based on facts cited, as is this blog, but they are not factual per se.
“He thinks the misinformed stupidity and hubris being repeatedly demonstrated is being driven by groups wanting to distract me from my on-the-money analysis of ESSA as well as Radical Ed Reform generally in my book.”
Robin, your husband and I are in complete agreement on this point. No accidents here I am afraid. Fight for your proprietary research and do not back down. But know too that they want you less focused on your insights and discoveries for reduced dissemination and Impact. ( sorry had to use the word. )
They are not messing around. But neither are you or the rest of us. Don’t let the turkeys get you down.
I also know the old adage about lawyers who represent themselves which is why my responses have been so measured. I got on this immediately though and have the names I need.
Did discover I had irritated a nerve in my right arm with all that reading over a short period of ESSA. Now though as I read that World Devt Report I can see 100% alignment between what they want to target and every practice, technique, or curricular method ESSA stipulated as to be used to qualify for funding. No coincidences indeed.
More proof on the alliance/convergence between the acknowledged Left think tanks like Brookings with its ties to so many UN or Rockefeller Foundation backed ideas and the Atlas member AEI, who was also behind the Moneyball for Education report written into ESSA.
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Reports/2015/12/aei-brookings-poverty-report/Full-Report.pdf?la=en
Wow, the definition of ‘opportunity’ being used paraphrases Karl Marx’s vision of the Human Development Society and then pulls up this Center and this clearly Prog board. https://www.newdream.org/about/board
I also noticed that Stuart Butler, who left Heritage to join Brookings, while he was working so diligently with the Convergence Policy Center on their new vision for ed with the NEA and AFT, is also on this Working Group. Notice the financial sponsorship of the Ford and Annie B Casey Foundations.
Obscuring this convergence seems to be behind a great deal of the anti-CC rhetoric that only wants to obscure the entire story. Manipulation that will simultaneously call attention to Tim Ryan’s speech, while calling as this does for Whole Child education.
This fits with the mostly offline discussion we have been having on what the true intent of the Gates-funded Achievement Standards Network actually is. https://hypothes.is/annotating-all-knowledge/
Can you say Circumscribe? My metaphor about trying to uninvent the printing press just continues to gain saliency.
Look, the first meeting is in spring 2016 in Portland, Oregon.
And this pushing the Growth Mindset? http://www.educationdive.com/news/does-a-growth-mindset-enable-better-cognitive-functioning-in-students/410644/ Guess what now qualifies as duly authorized reengineering as ‘evidence-based policy’? Reengineering neurologically does yield data showing an impact even if many would regard such meddling as tyranny. Isn’t affirmative public policy via federal law so much fun?
If you click through you will see that these methods are to be used on 5-10 year olds.
Look at this report that came out today. Impact, impact and then the graphic on page 18 is just like the student-centered learning, Matrushka dolls Nesting model we saw with the Tarbiyah Project or with the Bronfenbrenner Ecological Systems Theory the C3 Social Studies Framework pushes. http://democracycollaborative.org/sites/clone.community-wealth.org/files/downloads/CanHospitalsHealAmericasCommunities.pdf
This is really the other half that attaches to this new type of transformational, personality redesign education to supposedly create a desired ‘subjective well-being.’
It even keeps repeating ‘Body. Mind. Spirit.’
More on your personal pet peeve. http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/dec/06/two-simple-mindful-meditation-exercises-for-teachers
Looking overseas is as close as we can get to a crystal ball. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-35026032 Abolished ‘high stakes testing’ more than ten years ago. That would be when Scotland went to a theory of ed grounded in human potential, which is where we are being driven. Notice the references to everyone being assessed now on the Curriculum of Excellence.
I wonder if Mihaly Csiksentmihalyi has visited to anoint the joining of what is thought, wished for, and felt into behavior as the point of ed now? Interesting too given that Glasgow Behavioral Science conference last week with the emphasis on ed as fostering self-control. I waded into that and Carol Dweck (Growth Mindset), Angela Duckworth (Grit, Perseverence), and Martin Seligman (positive psychology) all popped out. This time though their work was merely cited as part of the science of socially engineering desired characteristics under the self-control vision for ed.
Finally there is this https://theconversation.com/schools-need-to-do-more-to-improve-childrens-religious-literacy-51926 , which plays right into the social cohesion required agenda now legally imposed in the UK.
Deerstalker hat remains firmly attached despite all the angst of the past week.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/science/beyond-paris-climate-change-talks.html?mtrref=undefined&gwh=25DC16843FC06A1BD2D7EA978C6CD2C5&gwt=pay
A fine example of local governance. Our mayors and governors are going off to Paris and signing voluntary “treaties” that they forgot to get approved by their constituents or even tell them about.
I guess they’re nonbinding, and hopefully a subsequent mayor or governor can just ignore them, but then there would be a lot of grief from the other side, because of something that should not have been done in the first place.
I was at a program yesterday on Student-Based Budgeting and Lisa Schell of the Reason Foundation (another Atlas Network member) tried to propagandize the room that ESSA was about returning power to local governments and was consistent with how federalism is supposed to work. Such BS, but it makes the localities and schools the areas where politicians and business cronies are going to try to use data and the insights of the behavioral sciences to lucratively rule over us in the name of ‘needs.’
This vision of federalism is that policy gets developed nationally and internationally and the implementation point is local. Big difference. The local is where mayors, school boards, principals, and city councils all think they can dictate and codify how people and places can be socially reengineered. Several commenters from this blog listened to a webinar yesterday I suggested on how states and localities intend to use data to redesign how they govern.
We all need to remind the bozos they were hired to lead executive offices or serve in legislatures and that is NOT a mandate to presume to govern people. We do not need to be governed by conflict-ridden public figures with little or no private sector experience and frequently the mental capacity of an amoeba.
Amen, Robin. Going a little nutty today as I keep getting emails from people (who should know better) about how pleased they are that ESSA passed, restoring local control.
Maybe they are listening to the Reason Foundation. Make sure you look at those links where our so-called free marketeers interested in liberty want a universal guaranteed income.
Just made meatloaf. Ooey, gooey, is a good way to relieve frustration apart from throwing still shrink-wrapped post-it notes.
In order to make sure the implementation worked this time, the language ended up having to mirror what I already had pulled together. I guess Book 2 will be nicknamed Axemaker Mind goes HOTS with that new appendage of ‘understanding.’
This false propaganda piece on ESSA is from another Atlas member, the Manhattan Institute. http://www.city-journal.org/2015/eon1209cs.html
Sounds like the emails are coming from people being led to believe these sorts of false talking points, while these think tanks’ primary funders rejoice in the combo of what WIOA and ESSA are actually doing.
Behavioral sciences thoroughly embedded in every aspect of K-12, civil rights laws as forced drivers of equitable outcomes at a neurological level, local and state planned economies. When I pointed out Tuesday that both Brookings and AEI were saying that the real reason for Student-Based Budgeting was to force socioeconomic integration in all public schools, there was a gasping admission that that was the goal but it would take a while to get there. I pointed out that parents were not being told that money following the child was to abrogate any right to a neighborhood school, full of students from local areas.
Here is the Brookings overview http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2015/12/10-improve-education-under-every-student-succeeds-act-dynarski/download-the-paper.pdf I guess it was all printed up waiting for that pro forma Senate vote. The students as guinea pigs feel is strong here. Formative assessment, after all, is quite effective since it is based on neurological redesign of the student in ways no parent or even the student gets to choose.
I was told by our citycouncilman, when our neighborhood objected to a nighttime event in our tiny park in residential area, that he could not be ” parochial” when dealing with the cities public parks. ok this guy is elected by our geographical area, and he tells us blatently that he does not represent us, but in fact represents the mayors agenda TO us. councilman and mayors are useful idiots weilding power and $$$ kowtowing to regional agenda guides from above… the sickest thing about is that the poulace keeps electing these rubes. so it comes down to the hypnotized destracted poulace not doing their duty to protect themselves staying blissfully ignorant.
Was very happy to see today that NOTHING binding resulted from Paris. The climate stuff they’ve so proudly agreed is just suggestions and plans for more meetings, nothing binding at all. Nothing for the Senate to vote in or out as there’s nothing there that anyone here is required to do.
Full of WIN!
Except that the mayors have all agreed to implement it locally and, I believe, the coal plants are still targeted.
Apparently John Kerry believes unicorn farts will suffice for US power needs.
I have been mulling what ESSA actually binds us to as well as other documents I have that coordinate with it. Hard for me to celebrate what may not be legally binding on the federal government when educators intend to convince our kids at a visual, emotional level, that it is morally binding and that the threat is imminent. Can you imagine the graphics that will be embedded in all that mandatory digital learning?
Economist Don Boudreaux said it well and certainly describes politicians accurately. http://cafehayek.com/2015/12/some-conspiracies-are-real-theyre-headline-news.html
I see this in connection with both WIOA and ESSA as well. Politicians at every level have determined they will exercise sovereign power over people and places who, relying on the language of the Constitution and the tradition of the US and its historic reverence for the individual, do not recognize what is clearly being planned. Whatever the fate of this December agreement in Paris, we still have the declarations signed in July and ratified in September. It’s not just federal agencies and local mayors pushing those either. Someone in the last week sent me something from Colorado where the Workforce Development initiative created by the state kept referring to the ‘right’ of ‘Inclusive Prosperity’.
I have one more source I want to read today before writing again, but this repeated insistence that as a matter of federal and state law people, especially children from birth on, have a ‘right’ to have their ‘needs’ met translates into an insistence that we all have the legal obligation to meet those declared needs. Both WIOA and ESSA codify that obligation. Universal Basic Income and Student-Based Budgeting are tools that turn people and students into revenue streams for the places where they physically live.
I think that is why we keep hearing that alliterative phrase “Bicameral and Bipartisan” used to describe both pieces of legislation. In many ways, both are the ultimate in logrolling by creating a right to federal money. Simply comply with the statutory terms and all that money rolls into the home turf of each of the 535 Senators and Congressmen and women. It’s why WIOA especially passed with such huge margins since it appoears to have been the federal legislation no one was supposed to be aware of. ESSA is the federal legislation people are aware of, but their knowledge seems to be calculatingly inaccurate.
Greed as the Driver indeed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/us/politics/campaign-to-lower-voting-age-to-16-in-local-races-ignites-a-debate.html
Never even imagined this idea would be floated. It’s so obviously wrong.
Of course the high school teachers wouldn’t try to influence how the juniors and seniors voted in the school board election would they? And what a great way to tear families apart during some sensitive teenage years!
Character.org is excited that ESSA is headed to the president! Here are the cited reasons.
1. There’s broader criteria for accountability. The new bill explicitly cites “student engagement,” “educator engagement” and “school climate and safety” as indicators of success for English Language Learners.
2. States will be required to collected data on school quality. These measures include suspension rates, chronic absenteeism, bullying and harassment and more.
3. There is funding devoted specifically for “safe and healthy” initiatives. “Districts that get more than $30,000 will have to spend at least 20 percent of their funding on at least one activity that helps students become well-rounded, and another 20 percent on at least one activity that helps kids be safe and healthy.” This is great news for advocates for the whole-child movement and character development.
My interpretation-
Student engagement of an indicator of success for ELL students? Really? They may not actually be learning to read or write the language fully but by golly they are engaged and attending a safe school where positive desired behavior is taught!
Collecting data on school quality? Quality no longer means they are churning out students with the proper knowledge of facts for a bright future but at what level are the desired behavior and thought transformations working on students.
Money for well-rounded students, well-being and whole child meaning wrap around services. Why don’t we just make DHS move into the school building along with the health centers. No need to fund DHS independently lets just make it part of the education funding so all ‘needs’ are met on site.
Good thing the president has now staffed behavioral scientists to analyze all that collected data.
For one moment I wish to be the person who hands the bill to the president at the same time holding the remote from the movie “click” so I could issue the same treatment to Obama that Adam Sandler’s character gave to his boss eating a tasty salad. Now you know my awful sense of humor. 😉
My disgust with this nonsense is at an all time high. Can you tell?
I am glad though that there will no longer be an ability to dissimulate what the public sector and cronies intend to do to the American people using behavioral science insights. All the people celebrating would be sickened by how closely the precise language of ESSA tracks the precise language in books CASBS has underwritten over the decades.
Hard to believe they have passed something that so thoroughly fits my accumulated research and insights that I have never shared. I guess it was a really good time to be featured in that Masters of Deceit trailer.
I’m CHOMPING at the bit for your second book Robin. I’d like to read it out loud on a street corner in downtown Philly by the Liberty Bell. Great image huh?
Absolutely. I am very glad it was fully researched before ESSA came out because it sure made reading it much easier.
Look at this confession from the new head of the National Governors Association what has a long history of working for TOGAs. http://www.routefifty.com/2015/12/states-national-governors-association/124459/?oref=rf-today-nl
Notice the acknowledgment that “we are tying” K-12, workforce development, and employment all together. As I said in yesterday’s post, WIOA needed ESSA and ESSA assumes all the tying forced by the terms of WIOA and those required state plans and local councils–a dirigiste dream with all of us as both the dilly putty and the financiers of the social engineering.
I am getting so tired of seeing references to the “Human Science” https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/12/14/new-paper-argues-bigger-focus-human-elements-can-make-or-break-team
One of the co-authors Veronica Boix Monsilla has done much work on K-12 for Project Zero as well as IB’s new template. This is not really about just higher ed.
Take a look at this Declaration. World Class Brain Research to Fuel Best Starts for Kids video. http://www.routefifty.com/2015/12/king-county-early-childhood-development/124348/?oref=rf-today-nl
I have been looking over numerous materials on ESSA and we seem to have the law acting to use behavioral science to enshrine the mental models to support a Human Development Society a la that video and what various entities agree they will do. Then we have the false narrative that seems grounded in the very Structured Design Dialogue Alexander Christakis has prescribed. Those are meant to obscure the reality while public officials falsely believe they are ‘well-informed.’
It also reminds me of that Communication for Social Change initiative the Rockefeller Foundation established and wanted other philanthropies to use too. I feel like shaking something as I recognize the blueprints being used, but the typical parent, legislator, or school board member will just nod their head and presume the information is accurate and act accordingly. It’s a good plan if only I did not have all those CASBS created templates going back decades. Makes me feel like Alice behind the Looking Glass peering out, but unable to get out. Although truthfully I guess that’s what I did at the Student-Based Budget luncheon Tuesday. That was the best day for book sles in several months. “She knows this stuff and asks good questions.”
Universal income talk. Here is an invite!
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-case-for-a-universal-basic-income-registration-19856509354?ref=ebtn
And London will be decorated so nicely. So RSA that likes to have radical Roberto Unger as a speaker and published that Google UK socialist globe vision, Finland, and the Reason Foundation with its listed ties to the Kochs are all pushing for the same vision? Looks like what works for the Social Justice warriors also works for advocates of a Dirigiste economy planned around meeting human needs.
Use personalized learning to create the advocacy for the fundamental transformation in the minds of students (remember the UNESCO motto) and false talking points about the nature of ESSA and the existence of WIOA and state required plans to create a useful false narrative in the minds of any parents, taxpayers, or politicians who are paying attention. Whoever said the behavioral science insights were only going to be used on the children?
It’s not just Reason. Here is another Atlas Network member. http://www.cato-unbound.org/2014/08/04/matt-zwolinski/pragmatic-libertarian-case-basic-income-guarantee
Also reading that this was part of MLK’s dream and is thus what fulfilling his Beloved Community vision is all about. I am mulling over all the deceit surrounding ESSA and the opposition to it that made no genuine attempt to be effective opposition.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/martin-luther-kings-economic-dream-a-guaranteed-income-for-all-americans/279147/
And 13 more What Works Cities announced yesterday http://www.routefifty.com/2015/12/what-works-cities-13/124402/?oref=rf-today-nl . “evidence-based’ as used in ESSA means data showing an impact, even if the impact is not what taxpayers or parents desire and is instead geared to enable the fundamental transformation starting at the level of the human mind and personality.
Then that altered personality is embedded in a community also being run now on the basis of data. The two parts of the Learning Region vision of the future being quietly put in place globally. People and Place needs a local focus for a reason. That’s the physical location of what is being targeted for alteration and adaptation. Continuous improvement imposed by plans and the law. The UN’s Global Pulse and data revolution installed on people who have never heard of either and imposed by people who may never have heard of them either.
yes a slice of pie from the movie The Help is in order.
Terrible Awful Served up with a Smile. 😉
What do you think about picking out lit for middle schoolers to help them build up their sense of Identity? http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/11/middle-school-woes/415482/