Category Archives: Blog

On September 13, 2017 I attended the Philadelphia School Reform Commission’s monthly meeting and testified to the fact that public education has become an extractive industry, one that uses children to generate profits for private interests including global finance. The poem I wrote equated student data-mining with fracking, a toxic industry that has caused great […]

The following poem was presented as my 3-minute testimony at the Philadelphia School Reform Commission’s monthly meeting held September 14, 2017. Our children, your profit centers. Their data, digital toil, your oil. Not to sell…outright,   But to collect and package for the gamblers of global finance. Titles and social standing held out. Such a […]

Or, how my day would have been very different had I worn khakis. This is a story about access; who has it, and who doesn’t. This week my friend and fellow activist Tomika Anglin and I both pushed back against a system that attempted to marginalize us in order to more easily advance private interests […]

I really need you to keep in mind that all the data run through those programs (your intellectual property, student work, correspondence, etc.) is being used to refine the AI systems destined to replace you. There is a price for this “free” convenience. The bill may come due after you leave the profession, but I […]

“What is a Smart City?” is the third entry in my slide presentation series “Education in the Cloud.” If you haven’t yet seen them, prior posts include an introductory essay and “Digital Classrooms as Data Factories.” Part 3 of Education in the Cloud: What is a “Smart” City?  A growing number of metropolitan areas are […]

Yesterday I shared an introductory essay to my series “Education in the Cloud,” which included the slide presentation “Big Data vs Teachers.” Today’s post features “Digital Classrooms As Data Factories.” Slide Presentation: Digital Classrooms As Data Factories My goal for this series is to make it clear that the “Future Ready” changes we’re seeing in […]

Ed Reform 2.0 is a different variety of privatization from the one to which we’ve become accustomed. End-of-year high-stakes testing, imposition of value-added measures, alignment to Common Core State Standards, and destabilization of districts through charter school expansion, closures, and turnarounds were actually setting the stage for the final act that is now on our […]

During the annual meeting in May, representatives of the Massachusetts Teachers Association overwhelming approved three New Business Items opposing the roll out of so-called “personalized” learning programs in the Commonwealth via the MAPLE/LearnLaunch initiative. Additionally, a commitment was made to expand research the MTA has been conducting on privatization to include “personalized” learning and to […]

Just weeks before the 2017 Annual Meeting opens in Boston, an article from NEA Today, As More Schools Look to Personalized Learning, Teaching May Be About to Change, makes it clear NEA’s top leadership prioritizes digital curriculum over the right of a student to be educated without data mining and to have unconditional, full time […]

I’m grateful to the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools for keeping tabs on the Philadelphia’s School Reform Commission’s monthly meeting agendas. They recently alerted me to a resolution about student ID cards, that in turn started me thinking about ubiquitous computing, digital classrooms as nodes within Smart Cities, and the role big data, payment systems, […]