ECAA is the acronym for the new federal K-12 legislation–the Every Child Achieves Act of 2015. Since Senator Lamar Alexander, assuming unknown to me powers never discussed in Civics in that “How a Bill Becomes a Law” brochure, has pulled what unanimously passed his Senate subcommittee and substituted this more than 200 page longer bill http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-114s1177pcs/pdf/BILLS-114s1177pcs.pdf , we are going to interrupt our trilogy to take a look. Especially since the lack of any genuine public notice of the “Yoohoo, Heads Up” variety makes it appear none of us were supposed to have a chance to notice and object to the switch. I was not fond of the old bill’s language and wrote several posts explaining why back in April.
The new language though requires, as a matter of binding federal law, two revolutionary shifts in American schools. It imposes the UNESCO/OECD Seven Domains (and accompanying subdomains explicitly in numerous instances too often to be coincidental) of Universal Education. I intuited that after I finished the 792 page bill and then located the 3 reports created by the Brookings Institute Learning Metrics Task Force (LMTF) and published in February 2013, July 2013, and June 2014. All the reports start with “Toward Universal Learning”. Report 1 is then titled “What Every Child Should Learn” and lays out those 7 domains of Physical wellbeing, social and emotional, culture and the arts, literacy and communication, Learning approaches and cognition, Numeracy and mathematics, and science and technology. Report 2 is “A Global Framework for Measuring Learning” and Report 3 lays out “Implementing Assessment to Improve Learning.”
Report 2 gives the perfect rationale for why ECAA has had such a stealth approach and why the Opt Out movement seems to really be about shifting to formative assessments and a Whole Child approach. Let’s listen in on this useful confession:
“While measurement may have different purposes at different levels, the systems for measuring and improving learning at the classroom, national, and global levels should not be working in isolation. Globally tracked indicators should be aligned with what is measured nationally and in schools or classrooms, while measurement at the national level should be aligned with the competencies measured in classrooms or schools.”
That is why ECAA is so intent on ensuring that all states and local school districts are using “high-quality assessments” and measuring “higher order thinking and understanding.” Now I have written about the meanings of these terms before, most particularly here http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/muzzling-minds-all-over-the-globe-while-trumpeting-higher-order-skills/ , but it is time to reveal that second revolutionary shift mandated as a MATTER OF LAW by ECAA. It forces a vision of theoretical learning and “mastering of the technique of theoretical concept formation” developed in the Soviet Union to create ideological thinkers who could be manipulated by state authorities (or anyone else who knew about the methods). This relates to what is described in Chapter 3 of my book and is also why it is so alarming that ECAA has the National Science Foundation providing recommendations on Best Practices in STEM coursework.
After I had finished reading both the new ECAA and those three Universal Education reports, I pulled a 1984 book Psychology in Utopia: Toward a Social History of Soviet Psychology for insights into what was being mandated via ECAA as “personalized, rigorous learning experiences that are supported through technology” and a repeated obligation to “personalize learning”. This is all under the Innovative Technology Expands Children’s Horizon’s (I-Tech) part that begins on page 551. In other words, after normal people have become too frustrated with ECAA to continue. I have known for a while that the phrase “personalized learning” is a quagmire of misunderstandings and psychologically intrusive practices to lock-in, at a neurological level, how the world will be interpreted going forward.
The book’s author did not think much of this theoretical learning and called the project an “outright utopia,” which should not be extended “illegitimately, to the whole of society.” Can’t imagine then why we should enshrine it in 2015 as an obligation under federal law. The book described all the programs that Vasily Davydov and his group created in the 70s that, from my knowledge of the actual Common Core implementation as detailed in my book, is the basis for all those planned learning tasks and literacy instruction now. Oh. Good. Kozulin noted though that by 1981 Davydov’s research showed that “object-oriented activity” alone had no effect on mental development. To have that effect, a “personalized form” of “educational activity” must be found. I am guessing that is what ECAA means with its constant references to “well-rounded educational experiences.”
To be ‘personalized’ according to the research of the Soviet psychologists, the focus “of the psychological program” must get at “problems of motivation and personal reflection and the construction of individualized programs of educational activity.” That would be what ECAA calls data to ‘personalize learning’ and ‘inform instruction’ and specifically calls for the “use of data, data analytics, and information to personalize learning and provide targeted supplementary instruction.” See what I meant by Windows on the Mind from the last post?
I have a lot to cover so here’s why Universal Design for Learning had to be in ECAA and why it is vital to personalizing learning http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/05/19/udl-personalized-939/print/ . Here is the Gates Foundation-funded and tied to OECD work and the Achievement Standards Network we have also covered on the Next Generation Learning Environment and its ties to personalizing learning. https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eli3035.pdf
So why really must Learning be personalized and why is what now constitutes ‘content’ under ECAA really behavior or the kind of theoretical concept knowledge or principles we have now tracked to the USSR and its visions for utopia in the future? This is from the 2nd Universal Education LMTF report. I put up a link yesterday from 2013 of Arne Duncan hyping this very global agenda of the UN Secretary-General. It is worth quoting in full, but I am bolding the real stunners. Remember the UN Dignity for All by 2030 Agenda I have covered previously.
“The world faces global challenges, which require global solutions. These interconnected global challenges call for far-reaching changes in how we think and act for the dignity of fellow human beings. It is not enough for education to produce individuals who can read, write, and count. Education must be transformative and bring shared values to life. It must cultivate an active care for the world and for those with whom we share it. Education must be relevant in answering the big questions of the day. Technological solutions, political regulation or financial instruments alone cannot achieve sustainable development. It requires transforming the way people think and act. Education must fully assume its central role in helping people to forge more just, peaceful, tolerant and inclusive societies. It must give people the understanding, skills and values they need to cooperate in resolving the interconnected challenges of the 21st century.”
That is precisely what ECAA does when you go through its actual language as I have done. By the way, that quote was from a section of the report titled “An Adaptable, Flexible Skill Set to Meet the Demands of the 21st Century.” In the US and other countries all over the world this gets sold as students having a Growth Mindset. It’s no accident that before hyping that euphemistic term Carol Dweck was a well-known Vygotsky scholar. The 1970s Soviet work is an updating of Vygotsky’s work and what this blog has tagged CHAT-cultural historical activity theory. We have met it all before http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/treating-western-society-and-its-economy-as-a-train-in-need-of-rebuilding-and-central-direction/ and now we know why. These global plans and using education as the vehicle are far more extensive even than what is already alarmingly detailed in my book.
ECAA though is the mother lode because it makes regulating our behavior and personality at a neurological level not just something schools may do, but something they MUST do. As a matter of federal law to further an admitted global agenda. LMTF Report 3 talks about how the countries are to get the global Learning agenda and the Seven Domain emphasis into schools and classrooms as a binding obligation. By the time we trace through the schoolwide PBIS, Positive School Climate, “supporting activities that promote physical and mental health and wellbeing for students and staff,” creating and maintaining “a school environment that is free of weapons and fosters individual responsibility and respect for the rights of others” and other ECAA mandates that the local schools and districts must now provide we can see how Ban Ki-Moon’s transformation through education vision quoted above makes it all the way into each classroom and each child.
I have mentioned the repeated use of “well-rounded educational experiences”. It appears to be an obligation to implement not just a Whole Child emphasis, but also to make up for whatever deficits poverty in the community, a dysfunctional family life, or any other problems like being a migrant that does not speak English may have created. All means all. Physical education language in ECAA turns quietly into a mandate to promote the “social or emotional development of every student” and “opportunities to develop positive social and cooperative skills through physical activity participation.” Again mirroring subdomains laid out in those 3 LMTF reports.
I am going to close with yet more proof that ECAA is all about fostering desired behaviors, emotions, and values as it contains repeated references to meeting students “academic needs”. Now I wouldn’t be much of a lawyer if I did not recognize defined terms left mischieviously undefined. Sure enough here’s a link to a February 2009 statement from the National Association of School Psychologists. http://www.nasponline.org/about_nasp/positionpapers/AppropriateBehavioralSupports.pdf No wonder there are so many references to school counseling programs and mental health providers in ECAA.
I have notes on everything I have described here. If I could draw a jigsaw puzzle to show how tight the actual fit is with everything I have described, I would. It’s impossible to get this level of fit accidentally or this level of correspondences coincidentally.
I joke about speaking ed. I understand intuitively and from years of practice how the law can be used to bind people and places against what they would wish. I have put both those skills together to bring everyone a heads up.
I only wish I was speculating on any of this. Hopefully this post will reach enough people in time.
Robin Eubanks, I might call you a prophet. I believe you have put the puzzle together; certainly enough. I will share this far and wide (Alice Linahan’s share got me here). But, I’m afraid, very afraid. Do you know how many ‘opt out’ of the assessments parents can’t comprehend this? Not that I can blame them; it is unbelievable. Have too many been lulled asleep? Is it too late? Please, help us save ourselves.
Debbie-welcome to ISC. I am just a bad person to lie to or tell an implausible story to and I am afraid Georgia has long been a cutting-edge state. Given just how recently I learned some of what let me accurately recognize what we are looking at in ECAA, I have to believe this story is supposed to be told.
This is actually not a hard story to tell parents if you can get their attention. Many want to believe they have protected their child by Opting Out and they certainly are not thinking about CEPAs-Curriculum-embedded performance assessments or gaming happening all year long.
Both Linda Darling-Hammond who headed SBAC and Lauren Resnick, who chaired the HOTS task force in 1987, developed the definition of Rigor, works with Engestrom and Michael Cole of CHAT on ISCAR, co-chaired the New Standards Project, and who developed the Literacy Standards for the Common Core, are involved with the OECD’s The Nature of Learning initiative that ties to all this. I went back last weekend and reread that 2013 report that had a chapter on formative assessment. Assessment is what serves as the bridge between teaching and learning and is what allows personalizing in the sense I described in this post. The OECD also hyped Effective Learning Environments as being at the heart of its ed vision just like the Next Generation Innovative Learning Environment digital system I also described.
Willem’s precise quote was “formative assessment is proposed as a process of capitalizing on ‘moments of contingency’ for the purposes of regulating learning processes.” The whole intent is to lock in these desired new behaviors, values, concepts and strategies to guide perception at a neural level. That is what is now being imposed as a matter of federal law. Hardwiring the brain is what the behavioral sciences are after. Properly understood that way, and the research could hardly be less ambiguous or more corroborating at the point I am at, we have proposed federal legislation that clearly violates what ought to be constitutionally protected under the First Amendment.
These are theories and techniques totalitarian governments created to force obedience before the fact at a psychophysiological level. And ECAA has us adopting them wholly, not just with NSF bribes to states and school districts through systemic initiatives and Math-Science Partnerships. That’s why the statutory reference to working with the NSF was so alarming. I know that story. It is what flushed out the beginnings of what became Chapter 3 of my book.
The really alarming assessment language is on page 182 of ECAA. It was too long to put in post but here its is:
“Evaluating student academic achievement through the development of comprehensive academic assessment instruments, such as performance and technology-based academic assessments that emphasize the mastery of standards and aligned competencies in a competency-based education model, technology-based academic assessments, computer adaptive assessments, and portfolios, projects , or extended performance task assessments.”
The last part is straight out of High Tech High or the NUHS Project and will be how the blurring of CTE and college prep gets hidden for suburban parents who just hear it called Project-based Learning.
I bolded the Competencies language because that too is straight out of the LMTF documents.
Now think about all these state groups against ccss that have aligned with opt out and teacher task forces to create this hub to move to formative assessment.
Are you saying that most know what they are contributing to? Or a selection of individuals at the level of Ravitch and Mercedes?
I’ve been warning all along that pushing certain types of work like yours and Anita’s gets you labeled and tossed out. That’s why Alice’s effort is so valuable. I hate to see so many people think that groups have best interests at heart when some are clearly devious in nature. Leading the minds of children and freedom to slaughter.
I would say only a selection and only at the very top. It’s why it matters that Resnick and LDH were simultaneously involved with the Common Core and the OECD’s Nature of Learning.
Never ever forget the Inadvertant Change Agent principle either. That;s the beauty of pushing these practices and theories. The consequences come through via the creator’s intentions, not the implementers.
JT mentioned history earlier. http://www.journalofthought.com/Issues/2010vol45issue12pdf/07slekarhaefner.pdf from one of the co-founders of United Opt Out is clearly Davydov’s vision, whatever his personal intentions. What are the odds that that interest in where instruction should go did not impact the decision to push Opt Out, especially given his expressed desire in other writings to push democracy education?
Take a look at this story from yesterday being used to push UDL and Personalized Learning. http://www.personalizelearning.com/2015/05/the-story-behind-my-passion-to.html
Ask yourself why on Earth this woman did not teach her child to read herself under this set of facts and with her background. Notice she says it was a Whole Language first grade and yet it is not until high school when the son is sent away at school district expense to learn Orton-Gillingham method.
All those years lost when she could have taught him herself, but no she is waiting for the State to step in and do it and finance it. Now she tells the story as why everyone needs personalized learning and she should get lots of ed consulting contracts paid by taxpayers. Why couldn’t she as an individual mom see this as her individual responsibility?
We need personalized learning for all students that just happens to be omnipresent in 1177 now because an omnipotent state does not care for fluent readers as its citizens and as a mom she could not be bothered to do this herself?
By the way the story says she has a Masters from Lesley, which along with Ohio State, is ground zero for Whole Language in the US. Fountas is at one and Pinnell at the other and as we know from the book their LDC is behind all the CC learning tasks for elementary school. These are guided activities a la Davydov and also Marie Clay’s work.
Lesley also has ties to educators for social responsibility and its sel curriculum and Responsive Classroom and is where Matt Damon’s mom pushes peaceable classroom. I wrote about it all in the early days of the blog. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/locusts-of-the-mind-boring-gaping-holes-altering-wiring-and-living-on-our-dime/
What I did not know then but do now was that Tony Wagner of Harvard and his Rigor Relevance and Relationships slogan and pushing High Tech High as he did when I heard him in Atlanta was the first Executive Director of ESR. That vision fits closely with the new 1177 vision as well as this 2008 paper on Effective Education from NASP. http://www.nasponline.org/advocacy/2008educationpolicydocument.pdf
This is interesting considering just how much we are evaluating the affective areas in children. Look at the definition on page 6 #18. Then #99 in regards to the survey.
http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/Draft%20PISA%202015%20Collaborative%20Problem%20Solving%20Framework%20.pdf
We know problem solving is explicitly a LMTF subdomain. Page 413 of ECAA calls for using “music and the arts as tools to promote constructive student engagement, problem solving, and conflict resolution.” Conflict resolution is another subdomain. I remembered that Elliott Eisner quote on that Deweyan use of the arts I used in the book. It’s a good time to remember that Ken Robinson and Howard Gardner both came out of arts education. It is active and involves the senses instead of having a mental focus necessarily.
Interesting connection to the arts. We have several districts funding Electronic Arts (EA)–
Also, Fullan is making rounds across southern CA scaling his new pedagogy for deep learning, which hinges on digital classrooms / assessments. Fits right in with what you are pulling out of ECAA.
Think of the physical consequences of any of these initiatives emphasizing aesthetic experience given the intrusiveness of personalized learning and “high’quality assessemnts” coupled to neuroscience research like this from your backyard. http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~immordin/papers/Immordino-Yang_EPAT_2011.pdf
The name of the 6 page article is “Implications of Affective and Social Science for Educational Theory.”
It’s not taking much pulling. The research that went into ascertaining what was involved with positive psychology and the Positive School Climate research bore fruit as I read ECAA because it was all there. Daly’s for the common good and Amitai Etzioni’s communitarianism are just two things that came out in my search of the bibliography database the ed lab’s had assembled once I began to look into the implications of a Positive School Climate. No wonder there was so much determination to get performance standards in place and to make the definition of content in ASN what students are able to do.
Interesting article.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/03/universal_design_for_learning_brings_emotions_into_education_technology.html
Wow! That excerpt couldn’t be clearer, or scarier–and it’s just one quote from an 800 page bill! You’re right that the way all of this fits is not mere coincidence.
The language in “High Quality Teachers, Principals and Other School Leaders” starting on 247 is also horrific once we understand what learning is.
What exactly good comes from federal law insisting on “a well-rounded and complete education for all students”? Personalized is not getting students to different places. It’s about figuring out who they are and what they value so they can be effectively taken to the same place.
Binding local schools and districts to create assessments “that validate when students are ready to demonstrate mastery or proficiency and allow for differentiated student support based on individual learning needs.” A learning need would be a noncompliant strategy or concept or set of values. It’s about students unable to develop goals and then coordinate at a psychomotor level the ability to act on those goals and plans in the real world. We got a taste of this last summer in that Flyvberg post on what social science is really about and what Competency and Proficiency really mean. The Soviet psychologist work is very descriptive, especially Luria’s autobiography in English The Making of Mind.
So now we are to have as federal law that we must “help all students develop the academic and nonacademic skills essential for learning readiness and academic success.”
Did you notice there are several places in the statute where local schools have an obligation to work with civil rights organizations and leaders?
There’s already an alarming curriculum called Project Citizen and now we area calling for “hands-on civic engagement activities for teachers and low-income students.”
There’s also some fascinating language on 406 that indicates poverty itself must be eradicated and on 415 that the schools have an obligation to respond to the needs of the community and not just the students. Of course 416 makes the schools responsible for providing students “with a healthy, safer and supportive school environment that promotes school safety and students’ physical and mental health and well-being.” That’s not of course so they can then learn history or chemistry or to read properly. The point is to have a place to physically interact and to come to believe and value what is desired to accommodate the UN and the OECD’s plans for transformation in a collectivist direction. In their zero sum fallacy, American students need to know less so they will materially have less so that other parts of the world can have more. The last LMTF Report says that 80% of the participants in the meeting that created it were from the Global South. It was held at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio retreat in Italy in July 2013. Same place used for so many of the CitiStates and Metropolitanism events that we know relate to the same vision.
Another lost invite.
Here’s the Flyvberg post. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/police-power-to-compel-adult-beliefs-meanwhile-values-manipulation-captures-young-minds-forever/
Making this all a matter of federal law is again using police power–the power of the state to coerce–to compel what students believe, value, and guide when and how they are likely to act.
When I was a kid, school was for academic learning, and one learned “project based” skills through work experience, starting with summer jobs, for which the pay was low but nice to have. My first summer and after-school job was at McDonalds. They raised the minimum wage while I was there so my pay zoomed up from $1.65 to 2.10 an hour. It was unpleasant but valuable work experience.
Then there started to be “internships” which sounds much cooler but it means working for free. Those summer jobs are much harder to get; instead they’ve become “careers” for some people. Now there is some sort of protest by McDonalds employees demanding $15 an hour “at least”.
Now the idea is that one will do project-based work in schools, and the parents and other taxpayers will pay for their kids having the experience.
What a moronic country this is becoming.
Something has bothered me as I have been going through S1177. In the other reauthorization bills there are lots of references to No Child Left Behind and amendments specifically placed in the bills. However, in S1177 NCLB is not referenced except to be eliminated in many sections of the bill and those sections are to reference the 1965 version of ESEA. Many more references and amendments to ESEA of 1965 are in S1177. Is there some special reason for this? Is there something in the 1965 version that has been blocked by later versions, including NCLB, that S1177 needs?
anon-all the bills after esea in 65 were compromises and we know Ralph Tyler who created the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences in the 50s largely wrote ESEA. We know from Chapter 6 of my book what he and Goodlad said they sought in that 1966 Yearbook I quote from and what Brameld thought ESEA would lead to.
1177 enshrines education as a tool to create the desired behaviors and personality traits at a biological level that CASBS and the Soviet scientists have always chased after. Kozulin, in the book I quoted from, says that from the 60s forward the Soviet psychologists became entranced with the systems science theories of Bertallanfy and treating man and the mind as ‘systems’ that could be wired via educational practices and techniques to create the desired characteristics to alter the future. I just happen to know where Bertallanfy was when he created those theories–CASBS. That particular link is something I had intuited but did not have the explicit link for until the other day. I have a great deal more of this kind of common collaboration around using education to force the desired changes at a neurological level.
The Rewrite in 1994 gave something needed that had not existed before–a mandate that all school children be held to common standards of knowledge and skills. That is retained in 1177.
NCLB offered language about proficiency in the Flyv sense from that post above even though the true importance of that and the meaning of a performance standard were not appreciated at the time.
Now those compromises are gone. We are back to what the Social Reconstructionists wanted from education in the 60s coupled to what we now know digital learning and cybernetic learning theory can do to the mind. 1177 also fits into the CERN research on ‘learning’ coming out of Europe that I mentioned above and all the untranslated from Russian psychological research that still exists there on these learning theories and what Luria, for example, learned from brain injuries during World war 2 when he worked as a medical doctor treating those injuries.
Remember UNESCO’s digital learning HQ has always been in Moscow. I have found papers from those seminars that are largely in Russian still. All of that research and its implications on using educational practices to alter what the human brain is and can become are pertinent to the view of education enshrined in this law.
No more compromises. This weekend is probably a good time to reread Chapter 6 or to buy the book for anyone who has not yet read it. It is just getting more pertinent with time.
Here’s that old post that is now even more pertinent. The Paris UNESCO conference in 2012 where the New Humanism agenda was laid out and Russian was the new language of choice instead of English and the entire Media Education initiative launched. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/decreeing-the-interdependence-of-environment-economy-society-and-cultural-diversity-in-the-21st/
New report bears out speculation about emphasis in S1177 and administration’s support for behavioral focus. Link follows
http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/~/media/publications/pdfs/education/re-imagining_accountability_wp.pdf
So does Lerner’s background and her involvement with both the Mind, Body and Behavior Initiative at the Ed school at Harvard while also teaching at the Kennedy School of Government. http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jenniferlerner/files/jennlernervitae_feb.6.2015.pdf Notice she has also gotten funding recently from the Hewlett Foundation that underwrote deeper learning and those LMTF reports I mentioned.
Meosky is actually a Harvard student in the Class of 2016, but he won this scholarship http://www.aft.org/press-release/east-amherst-ny-high-school-grad-wins-robert-g-porter-scholarship that goes to children of AFT members. AFT is also involved with the LMTF in the first listed meeting in NYC.
This report that was posted to SSRN last week called “Behavioural Approaches: How nudges lead to more intelligent policy design” http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2604377 starts with this quote:
” There is a quiet revolution happening in most government and public agencies across the world. Experts and policy-makers are discovering how to use insights from the study of human behaviour to design better public policies. While the quest to understand behaviour has always been an important part of social science and regularly informed public policies, recent work in economics and psychology has given a much more powerful impetus to behavioural science and made it much more appealing to those wanting to solve public problems and to improve the quality of public services.”
That report was being touted by the transformational GoVLab Project at NYU. NYU, of course, is where Ravitch is on the faculty and where Lamar got his law degree.
Fascinating, huh?
And Gill of Mathematica also has a law degree. http://www.csg-erc.org/wp-content/uploads/2013annualmeeting/documents/Gill2013charteroverview.pdf
He would certainly understand the instrumental use of the law then.
And he is apparently the Principal Investigator for the Mid-West ed lab. http://www.ewa.org/source/brian-gill
And hi is with the Behavioral Science and Policy Association which has Brookings listed as a partner. http://behavioralpolicy.org/about-bspa/partners-2/ Small world.
Now it turns out that the Advisory Board of the Behavioral Science Policy Center Gill is tied to http://behavioralpolicy.org/journal/board/advisory-board/ features two of the people featured prominently in that ssrn paper–Kahnemann and Sunstein. Plus cognitive scientist John Seely Brown late of the Xerox Center during his 90s work and now with Deloitte.
All of this further fits with the FuturICT initiative we tracked and the declared use of Big Data http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/science-fiction-made-real-were-we-ever-to-know-in-time/
Plus it fits with what is laid out in the new “Technical Advisory Group Proposal: Thematic Indicators to Monitor the Post-2015 Education Agenda” and the obligation it places on countries in showing the effect on individual children, young people and adults of how education changes behaviors and values. The members of that TAG are UNESCO, the OECD, UNICEF, and the World Bank Group. That’s also where the Equity obligation in Learning Outcomes comes from. Here’s a link to the story and where I got report copy. https://efareport.wordpress.com/2015/05/22/the-global-education-monitoring-report-has-a-new-mandate-for-the-next-fifteen-years/
I am not sure speculation is the right word. If something looks like a duck, quakes like a duck, moves like a duck, and calls itself a crow, what is it? It is what it functions as and appears to be, whatever it chooses to call itself. If every behavioral concept and theory extant shows up in a piece of legislation, then we have shifted to K-12 education and preschool as behavioral data collection places that further serve as a means to mold behaviors, beliefs, and values as the State desires. It would be nice if Lamar had noble intentions and will now pull the bill in horror as the realization sets in, but his personal intentions do not affect how that bill’s language was designed to operate on schools, students, and communities.
And there is certainly nothing in Lamar Alexander’s background that would lead one to believe that his intentions are anything but dishonorable regarding education.
Here is a list to make your stomach turn. She has done conferences with Gardner, Brookings cites her. Good timing for her new book to come out in 2015.
http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~immordin/
I think I may be ill. http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~immordin/papers/Immordino-Yang_2008_SmokeAroundMirrorNeurons.pdf
or this http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~immordin/papers/Immordino-Yang+Damasio_2007_RelevanceofNeurotoEdu.pdf
Where did you find her? I know I am right, but I think I would prefer to be stuck in the holiday traffic than to graphically see what has clearly always been hiding in the background.
Look at this. http://www.learner.org/courses/neuroscience/ In the weeks after the Aurora theatre shooting the neuroscience community was on pins and needles thinking that the shooting would bring to light the kind of research they had been doing. I read a commentary of relief about a month afterwards that the public never focused on what activities his graduate program had actually been pushing. Hard not to think of that now with those papers’ grpahic confessions.
Found her here, original search was affective research on Pisa and NAEP. Nearly tying her to unesco now but not directly yet.
http://www.aera.net/tabid/15823/mid/35960/default.aspx?dnnprintmode=true&SkinSrc=%5BG%5DSkins%2F_default%2FNo+Skin&ContainerSrc=%5BG%5DContainers%2F_default%2FNo+Container&TabId=15823
Page 91 of the ECAA is where it mentions “data from NAEP and other comparable international assessments.”
The first LMTF task force behind the original report was chaired by the IEA head behind PIACC (measuring adult competencies), PIRLS (measuring literacy) and TIMSS (math). Remember all the PIACC hype a few months ago? Plus IEA was set up by Benjamin Bloom, whose work fits the explicit mastery language. The OECD Nature of Learning report part on Formative assessment also had Willem mentioning Bloom’s work. Another IEA founder, Torsten Husen, wrote explicit books The Learning Society from 1974 and The Learning Society Revisited from 1986 which I have read and have tabbed at every relevant confession.
ECAA’s language is extraordinary given what we just happen to know and are in a position to prove.
Was also looking at atc21s with affective . Do you recall last year looking at the Ross Institute ?
https://youtu.be/THUtgrVQzug
No but i really want you and others to read this and appreciate who Learning First is. http://www.learningfirst.org/forced-perspective-defining-your-life#sthash.SlVPFoKN.dpuf
This is what behavioral sciences and data are manipulating. Chilling.
Is this what has caught your eye? http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/news/2006/5/1/steinhardt_collaborates_with_ross_institute_on_new_charter_public_school
Chilling is an understatement!
the Ross institute and it’s spiral curriculum /wellness is odd. Has that new age vibe.
http://rossinstitute.org/mobile/
They are immersed in project based learning. Immordino was involved, but what I was looking for was additional information on a nsf grant for universal design she worked on.
―Turning Experiences into Understandings: Using Universal Design for Learning to Harness the Power of Positive Emotion NSF, Informal Science Education Research Program (PI is G. Rappolt-Schlictmann; Co-PI is P. Gupta; at Center for Applied Special Technologies and New York Hall of Science; award period 3 years)
Fits right in with this http://www.6seconds.org/2013/05/29/healthy-classrooms-emotional-intelligence-and-brain-research/
It also fits in with the OECD announcing fairly recently in a Metacognition paper that “self-regulation” would be the new purpose of K-12 education globally. Basically the idea is coming up with goals and plans and acting on them. Not much of a threshold for maintaining civilization, but no one seems to be able to see beyond the thirst for political power and the desire for government or foundation grants.
Immordino-Young is also involved with this 2011 confessional document from Canada. http://www.learninglandscapes.ca/images/documents/ll-no9-final-lr.pdf
How the neuroscience calls for a new kind of education.
I was taking a break from this to read a book Robert Tucker wrote about Stain, thinking I would get more insights into the USSR. Instead he is trying to make everything that went wrong about Stalin’s paranoid delusions instead of problems with communism per se. I should not have been shocked, but was particularly not looking for it this time, Tucker’s confession at the beginning of the book on the Soviet Political Mind, his thanks for the time spent at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences where he wrote much of the book.
Have you seen this group before?
http://qedfoundation.org/transformational-change-model-2/
interesting partnerships, the all kinds of minds section is up on neural research.
That was a page in a presentation Paul Leathers of New Hampshire, Innovation Lab network, and competency-based education did on Transformational Learning. In Connecticut I believe. Graphic, huh?
By the way it turns out Benjamin Bloom ‘fessed up in the mid-70s in ways that tie to ECAA, UDL, personalizing learning, and getting Equality of Outcomes by getting everyone to common levels that are minimally acceptable. High levels of attainment are just what I have been warning. Not high levels of attainment personally, but a high percentage attaining the Basic Skills and desired affective characteristics specified.
If you really want to feel what transformational learning is about, read Jack Mezirow. http://transformativelearning.ning.com/profiles/blogs/deaths-of-jack-and-edee-mezirow Nothing like starting with Jurgen Habermas and Paulo Freire as your guides. Speaking of the 70s, he launched his push in 1978 and as you can see from that link or just putting his name in a search engine he had lots of supporters for his vision.
A sample. http://insightu.net/content/library/journals/jtevol01no01january200358-63.pdf
Notice his citing of Robert Kegan who is involved with Ken Wilber, transpersonal psychology, and is the source for the OECD’s Key Competences as my book discovered. Remember Hewlett hired him and Peter Senge to ensure that PARCC and SBAC would be measuring deeper learning? That would be the same Hewlett that sponsored the three Brookings/UNESCO LMTF reports discussed in this post. Kegan has a tag and was mentored by Lawrence Kohlberg whose Theory of Moral Development gets cited as a key component of the global values vision to be inherent in citizenship.
Do you think somewhere this weekend some of the people with tags whose names keep coming up are hanging out together at a lake and drinking a beer? Many are getting too old to water ski.
It definitely fits all that you are writing about. Rather interesting that they link to jobs for the future here. Must fit with wioa, yes?
http://qedfoundation.org/the-changing-face-of-education/
Everything fits with WIOA and that State Plan doc in the previous post.
Neuroscience To Shift Brain Algorithms?
I think it’s still an imperfect science — the non violent 180 degree mind shifts. But they’re trying, as these experiments, papers, initiatives, 21st C L, etc. attest.
But, here is a video about a REVERSE BIKE that gets at the concept. It took the adult 8 months to ride the new bike and unscramble his brain. It took his son a few days to shift his normal algorithm. So much food for thought here. Why getting at the young — the younger the better — is so important.
I think this is where technology, gaming, is headed in this intended programming.
http://www.dailyliked.net/backwards-brain-bicycle/
I know you are right Tunya. I am rather stunned by how closely the language in ECAA turns out to track the declarations of some of the most notorious personalities in education.
Oh, and more confirmation on what is meant by aligned levels of performance in that mischievous definition of Challenging State Academic Standards. http://jfmueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/rubrics.htm
Authentic assessment to boot. Not like any of us parents haven’t been told that phrase in school meetings.
Happy Memorial Day Weekend everyone. I watched the movie The Longest Day the other night and contemplated that bloody day and the courage it took and then compared it with what Congress is ready to do with this Every Child Achieves Act language. They died to overcome tyranny and we appear to have elected them on a Bipartisan basis. It was all the more poignant because one of my kids had been at Omaha Beach and the American Cemetery that very day.
Not Serfs Yet remains a good way to deal with all these aspirations of our public sector.
“Schools are for showing off, not for learning. When we enroll our children in school, we enroll them into a never ending series of contests—to see who is best, who can get the highest grades, the highest scores on standardized tests, win the most honors, make it into the most advanced placement classes, get into the best colleges. We see those grades and hoops jumped through as measures not only of our children, but also of ourselves as parents. We find ways, subtly or not so subtly, to brag about them to our friends and relatives.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201309/schools-are-good-showing-not-learning?fb_action_ids=692016120825990&fb_action_types=og.likes
ugh… this one made me angry!
Talk about a desire to delegitimize the truly bright or hard-working. Reminds me of something Benjamin Bloom wrote in really describing his vision for Mastery Learning, not as a pathway to factual knowledge, but as a means of redefining school into cognitive behaviors, psychomotor skills, and desired affective characteristics that could be achieved via tasks that would gradually build up the skills and behaviors. That 95% of students could meet these “acceptable levels of needed adult interactive skills” if only we would redefine the purpose of school and what constitutes adequate performance.
As a practical matter that’s what ECAA does especially when joined to High School remake I will finally finish our trilogy that will now be a Quartet that started with the Fraud of the Century post. I also read Bloom’s description seeking Equality of Outcomes and thought how easily what he sought could fit under a masking heading of Competency-based education and Project-based learning. Then Davydov’s concept meaning vision we also see in the PME work described in the book and the Close Reading called for by the Common Core joins in to guide how experiences and events are interpreted and what actions are likely to occur.
None of my kids, thankfully, are boasters even when they have something worth touting. My book’s bio says that I was Phi Beta Kappa at Davidson, but what it doesn’t mention is that when I called my parents my senior year to tell them I had been selected, my mom said “that’s nice. What is it?”
Now I keep up the tradition by never checking grades.
This plays right into that article and is about the RSA/Google vision linked to in that Fraud post. https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/rsa-blogs/2015/05/harnessing-shared-learning-and-creativity/
Cites the UK accounting firm that will no longer use A-Level scores in recruiting candidates because it’s not fair to those from a disadvantaged background.
Also notice the desire for a new Governance Framework to ensure greater equality of outcomes. Just like what Bloom wanted. I doubt if any of this is coincidental. I should not have been able to read mid-70s visions and seen the clear description of what is now described as ‘learning needs’ or ‘personalization’ or the call for UDL to allow different ways to demonstrate learning.
And the genuinely talented will begin to feel like they are being asked to carry the whole village with hardly a thank you.
This ppt from New Hampshire really does fit well with what we know about competency based education.
http://tinyurl.com/n6w27y7
Paul Leathers was featured prominently in this post http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/listening-in-on-the-confessional-drumbeat-of-the-common-cores-true-purpose-jettisoning-traditional-high-school/ and was a panelist at that new form Of Accountability conference last June where Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference announced that he was not going to let the Constitution get in the way of using education for social justice.
We have to wonder why ECAA at several points explicitly names civil rights organizations or its leaders as named stakeholders with a right to be consulted. I guess minds are just more turf in the redistribution/reparations/I am owed mindset that will quickly turn from zero-sum to negative sum on the overall effects.
As you know New Hampshire has also used David Conley extensively in pushing this competency-based vision there. It helps in interpreting all this to have the insights from Chapter 4 of my book on Transformational Outcomes Based Education or as I nicknamed it for easier reference-Tranzi OBE. What CPW’s link adds is the extent of psychological predation that is intended and ongoing as the students are forced to surrender and then keep offering up their very worldviews and value structures to be ‘dynamically’ rearranged. In actuality it all boils down to amenability to Public Sector looting. No wonder the state legislature in the runoff for Governor back in 2010 showed a marked preference for the Fiscal Bankrupt (in the literal sense of the word) over the admired administrator with a track record.
Look at next to last paragraph on what PISA is adding and notice how the word ‘competencies’ obscures this quite non-academic focus. https://efareport.wordpress.com/2015/05/26/want-proof-of-whats-possible-in-education-youll-find-it-in-korea/
I noticed this last week in the pisa drafts I was reading. Mentioned at least 17 times.
“Therefore, PISA addresses non-cognitive outcomes like attitudes, beliefs, motivation and aspirations, and learning-related behaviour, such as self-regulation, strategies and invested time. These non-cognitive
outcomes are measured mainly within the Student Questionnaire (StQ), but also in the School Questionnaire (ScQ). They may be of a general nature, such as achievement motivation and well-being of
students and drop-out rates of schools, or related to the domains of the cognitive assessment, such as reading engagement, interest in mathematics, or enjoyment of science. Domain-specific non-cognitive
outcomes are also mentioned in the respective definitions of literacy, so this array of constructs serves as
a link between test frameworks and context framework. Especially, students’ self-efficacy beliefs—i.e. the strength of their belief in being able to solve tasks similar to the ones tested in the cognitive PISA tests—have been shown to be a strong correlate of student achievement both within and between
countries.”
http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/PISA-2015-draft-questionnaire-framework.pdf
Of course Oregon is used as an example.
http://tinyurl.com/m2wgzpr
Believe it or not the worst I have encountered on this haughty attitude on achievement is from our local classical conversations homeschooling group. Nearly bite my tongue off every Luncheon.
How timely given the language of ECAA. http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/05/22/how-schools-can-help-nurture-students-mental-health/
To see these things all come together in real time, check out the proposed application for the Athens- Clarke County, Georgia application to become a charter school district. It’s all there including the institutionalization of community education.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8U0imqlmoA-alFFRU1aNGxBQjQ/view?pli=1
Before I comment on the tyranny involved with mandating “personalized, dynamic learning experiences” I want to call attention to the antithesis of the personal intrusiveness that charter represents. http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/05/happy-memorial-day-2015-freedom-isnt-free/
That charter is the worst I have ever seen and there’s clearly a progression. While I gather my thoughts, let’s also remember that charter represents using the law to bind the individual to a vision someone else is choosing for him, without notice. Plato said that was the very definition of slavery. Yet we have Lamar in his 1177 and Clarke County in this reprehensible vision of the future and students doing precisely that. Contractual law and appointed board fiats from the State Board of Education are used to be the invisible chains imposed at the level of the mind.
At least slaves in the South before the Civil War knew they were the object of dastardly appropriations for the benefit of others. Not today’s students or Clarke County parents or Fulton for that matter because this is clearly where they are going under their charter too.
http://oregonlocalplanning.weebly.com/redesign-and-planning-technical-assistance.html
If you look under the local planning and career pathways you can see it all listed by county. Nothing like freedom of choice in life right? Yuck.
Now imagine those counties get a charter in place like the one SPW linked to above. I covered some of the implications of “personalized dynamic learning experiences” and thus a transformational learning mandate in today’s post.
That one wore out my brain from making all the connections and drawing those 4 posts together.
Then roll in the city officials deciding to build this. http://muninetworks.org/content/morristown-fibernet-spotlight
I will look into the number of charters for each county. My district made a charter of their own, IB, of course. I have yet to locate the contract, uncertain if one would exist since it was created by the district.
I did find this. Looks like they have an upcoming event.
http://www.oregonleaguecharters.org/
That Clarke County charter includes the IB MYP and Diploma programs that thus in turn brings in all those unappreciated mandates without actually listing them in the charter to tip people off.
We have those awful IB statements I quoted in the book and how I have always seen it as a stalking horse. Then we have the subsequent changes we have covered on the blog a while back.
Oregon is not charter school friendly, but as we have discussed before, the do not need to be to get the desired transformation to occur. My school district made their own charter school. Not a single district has become a charter district . This isales my local indoctrination station.
http://oregontrailschools.com/ota/
This week we have learned that the legislature wants to remove the Governor as state school super. This would make education totally in the hands of state school super. Currently this individual sits on the board of EPIC. This violates state constitution but still trying to pass it.
http://grist.org/cities/can-the-whitest-city-in-america-deliver-green-living-for-all/
And with that a good morning to you. I just finished reading it and it is so telling about the actual end game for all of this. It’s about Equity and Climate Justice period. The rest are means and rationales for political control over people, resources, and property to be dictated to.