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Gates Paying Murdoch For System To Track U.S. Kids' School Progress
theodp writes "Discussing U.S. education in his 2012 Annual Letter, Bill Gates notes the importance of 'tools and services [that] have the added benefit of providing amazing visibility into how each individual student is progressing, and generating lots of useful data that teachers can use to improve their own effectiveness.' Well, Bill is certainly putting his millions where his mouth is. The Gates Foundation has ponied up $76.5 million for a controversial student data tracking initiative that's engaged Rupert Murdoch's Wireless Generation to 'build the open software that will allow states to access a shared, performance-driven marketplace of free and premium tools and content.' If you live in CO, IL, NC, NY, MA, LA, GA, or DE, it's coming soon to a public school near you."
Through a bug it will track their physical location, everything they say, and what websites they visit. And their parents while at it.
Is it just me, or shouldn't we already have this by hiring competent, caring, understanding educators in the first place? Computer software to track an individuals 'performance' (Ie; a 'quantitative thing') is yet another step in the ass-backwardness of the modern educational system.
Why do we always forget that while test scores are important, they are FAR from the deterministic quality on which to judge an individuals intelligence or desire to learn?
We have not created successful AI; The human mind stuck inside a quality educator, no matter the level, cannot be boiled down to algorithms and pure statical data-sets.
But oh how we try. *sigh*.
What really worries me is Murdoch's general push into the field of education. The man has already succeeded in indoctrinating an entire generation of adult Republicans into his own twisted version -- a version that has neither served conservatism nor America well. Is he going to start with the children now?
Am I missing something? This sounds like a good idea except for that Newscorp is involved. Besides that, what is wrong with this? Heck, I'm even wondering if anonymous, averaged data per school would be publicly available to see how schools are doing.
It just seems like this is the sort of thing that should have a glaring hole in it.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
Or is MS no longer part of MSNBC?
...give the job to someone well versed in wiretapping.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
The obvious assumption when you're dealing with a known criminal organization is that they'll put all this effort into gathering information in order to sell it. The problem is, who will the customers be?
So... you package up a spam list of all the students who flunked financial literacy 101 and sell it to the car dealers, Realtors(tm), and mortgage brokers, "come and get em!". But they don't need the leads, because its all cross fertilized. The customers at the rent-a-center are the customers at the payday loan store are the customers at the subprime mortgage dealer are the customers at McDonalds are the customers at Walmart. They already know who these guys are.
OK so see I never took any automotive classes, so you assume you can screw me over at the stealership. What you don't know is I spent a summer helping a great-uncle rebuild a 1930's diesel tractor, helped weld a homemade lake-pier together which is still standing a quarter century later, etc ... The idea that a "college bound" student like myself would attend a votech class was unthinkable in that era, and probably today... in fact all of our suburban students are supposed to go to college to make the bankers who provider the loans rich, so I don't think shop class attendance is going to be relevant or useful data. In a way, this is great, because it encourages people to teach themselves, not attend a class. I certainly did not learn how to replace brake rotors and pads in a classroom, that's for sure.
And the rest of the data? Donno. Maybe I'm low on caffeine but I donno who can profit off the knowledge that I aced everything in 2nd year chem aka introductory o-chem or that I didn't do so well in 9th grade history because I was bored to tears (well not literally, but darn close).
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
This man and his sprawling NewsCorp media empire have almost single-handedly ruined/corrupted objective journalism, and done so across multiple countries where NewsCorp is active. Nothing good can come from allowing Rupert Murdoch anywhere near schools and educational institutions. His signature reckless profiteering and lack of a conscience/values will likely corrupt the education process, too, not enhance it. I can't believe that Bill Gates is teaming up with Murdoch... I was under the impression that Bill had gone all "good guy philanthropist". Maybe I was wrong about that... But seriously, no venture owned by Rupert Murdoch should be allowed within a mile or so of a school, or of any other institution frequented by kids. This man will just try to spread his twisted, f^cked up neocon-ultra-jingo-conservative values to school children, given the chance. Don't do it, Bill. Whatever you are trying to accomplish, its not worth collaborating with this news-bully/snakeoil salesman/jingoist warmonger. Simply... don't... do it!
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
All the amazing tools and yet education level goes downhill. Why is that? Because the most important tool of education is metaphorical belt, ominously hanging on the metaphorical wall: if you are slackin', you' get the smackin'.
And the presence of father. Not the father "figure", but the real father (who does the metaphorical smacking).
If you have this, you don't need tools, just keep giving the homework and tests.
Give parents full autonomy of their kids. Sure few families will horrendously abuse their kids, but millions of families will get an opportunity to make a better next generation: less antisocial, more productive.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Learning is an individual process. Strong focus on "metrics" hinders progress and produces educated morons that can score high on tests but cannot do anything else well and do not have any real understanding on how things work. One reason is that the metrics typically used strongly promote learning facts without understanding them. The only place such people can perform well is on bureaucracies, i.e. in jobs where their main task is to decrease the performance of others. This technology allows even better implementation of that fallacy.
The only way to improve education is by improving the teachers. And, yes, that means firing bad and mediocre teachers and hiring good ones. Of course they will be more expensive and will need significant freedom to teach as they see fit, i.e. no parent influence. (A single moron parent can ruin a whole course if they are given influence....) Nothing of that sort seems likely to happen in a country so backwards that evolution is actually a disputed subject.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Wait, wait...isn't this the same guy who had another company that got into really deep hot water by hacking into people's phones and otherwise massively abusing their privacy? As in shut-the-company-down, pay-out-millions-to-the-victims, and some-just-got-arrested bad?
There IS a place for technology in schools, absolutely, and if you're at all familiar with schools the level of useless redundant work that goes on drives you nuts. Every year it ticks me off that I have to fill out 50 pages of nonsense information to tell the school what they already know. That said, you know who you don't give the job of modernizing it to? Someone with a track record of abusing the hell out of people's privacy.
Racism....very sad...
Teachers are so opposed to performance metrics that it's impossible to tell if a B in Colorado is better or worse than an C+ Vermont.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Does Bill Gates pay immoral propagandist Rupert Murdoch to produce software?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The hallmark of a weak mind.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
There is an effort to collapse or split education into haves and have-nots in the US. Its been really going on since Integration in the US. For decades before Integration, there were policies of "Dual Schools" in the US. That's happening again, and it's going to take legislators to stop it. The only way I can see it happening is massive over haul of the Public education system and forced closure of private education systems. There is a concerted effort by the conservative power elite in the USA to splinter and collapse universal schooling. The only way is to outlaw non-state sanctioned schooling so the wealthy are forced to participate in the public schooling system.
Is you is, or is you ain't, a black people?
This is where black people meet!
n/t
You'd need to do something about districts and remove local budgeting and control of schools. Not saying I agree with you, but if you don't do that, then all you're doing is shuffling names around without actually changing anything. If you keep districts at "neighborhood" or "city" size, then you just end up replicating have/have-not based on real estate value. Which leads inevitably to lower property taxes and higher state or federal taxes, more bookkeeping, middlemen, and corruption, etc. Because taxes never reduce, that means the locals will have lots of extra money floating around, which leads to more corruption. So overall, you'd theoretically get standardized education, but probably at a lower level due to higher corruption, and the upper half would still have everything from simply caring about their kids school all the way up to private schools, so as a society I don't think we'd win because the rich would remain better off, but the median would drop. The absolute bottom of the barrel would do better, but they're just going into the prison industrial complex anyway, so I see little point in wasting educational resources on them, just what we need, smarter criminals. So in summary, I disagree with your method and your goals, each for different reasons.
There is a concerted effort by the conservative power elite in the USA to splinter and collapse universal schooling
No its a 1% vs 99% thing, and the 1% use anti-leftie PR when talking to the righties, and anti-rightie PR when talking to the lefties, to get both sides to do their bidding. Looks like you fell for it hook line and sinker.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Call student's voicemail provider
Enter 1234, 1111, or any of the other top dozen garage door codes.
Extract messages
...
Profit!
Marks will not be awarded for raw intelligence in math, chem and the hard sciences. It will turn into a sheeple score. How well you fit in as a corporate cog. Shut up, don't rock the boat, kiss the whip that beats you. How compliant you are. How much abuse and corruption you can endure, without blowing the whistle. How well can you turn your head away from the deaths at Foxconn. How well can you spin death, corruption, pollution in the media.
All you shit disturbers here on slashdot would have been marked and seperated out long before you every reached the second grade.
Jobs and Wozniak would never be hired by the Modern Apple HR department.
The kids that instintively say Hell No to the brutal psyops that marks industrial schooling, the Einstiens, the gentle geniuses, the shy creative types, everyone who was marked, scarred and terrorize by the years of indoctrination called education.
Public school is an awful place. To do well in it, 'WELL' being defined by Murdoch and Gates, that to me is some kind of new and awfull hell. Evil of a brand new kind. Evil worthy of a new word.
To everyone out there still in school, you have my deepest sympathy and greatest support. I cannot even imagine how awful and soul destroying it is now.
That's right! Kill everyone who doesn't vote for Ron Paul! Brilliant.
The "problems" in education, IMO, are multifaceted. Slapping performance metrics on top of the way things are now is only going to demoralize everyone further.
I find that teachers generally want to do well by their students. One problem is that some teachers have low or outdated content knowledge and,m accordingly, low or misplaced confidence. What is being done to "moderize" teachers? Or does that come after identifying which teachers are "bad" according to student performance on standardized tests?
Techniques to improve teaching/learning is a moving target. Teachers are desperate for that magic pill by which every student will finally understand. Like New Math. Like using computers. Like using educational games. Frankly, students will be different. Each method will probably speak to a different set of students. The "panacea" may be in maximizing the number of techniques that can be used for reaching the most students. However, we would have to ask whether the standardized student tests are set up to be able to capture the learning gained.
Also, teachers are not solely responsible for students' private lives. Maybe a student stressing over his parents' shit or being bullied. Some parents need to be involved in their kids' education and not stand by and "let" the school do the work. Learning takes some effort, so some students need to get the nonsense out of their heads enough to focus at least part of the time.
School districts need to stop being accountants for the sake of their own careers.
In US culture, everyone says they want a good educational system, yet it seems that things like money, sports, etc., receive a disproportionate amount of attention. And the role that religious nuttery and willful ignorance play serve to distract people from critical thinking skills.
I'm sure there are other points I'm missing.
Android heavily tracks people with the built-in Google spyware.
Chrome's reroutes all traffic through Google's servers and the EULA gives Google a nonexclusive right to display and distribute every bit of content transmitted through the browser.
But lets not just hit Google .... what about telcos? They track everything users do in their networks.
So how is this any different?
"I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record"
Oh yeah? Well, don't get so distressed
Did I happen to mention that I'm impressed?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
This will end up becoming a metric of parental/economic efficacy.
I'm a teacher. My students have diverse socio-economic backgrounds. The students from "better" situations, on average, perform better. The reverse is usually true also. Of course, there are always outliers, but we're talking averages.
If this information was to be used to correct those out-of-school factors, that would be great. Unfortunately, they will most likely be used to punish under-performing teachers and districts.
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
Agreed. There is no such thing as concerted effort by the "power elite". There are just lots of little groups with a lot of money each, each trying to independently do what is best for them. Because of this, they start acting in similar ways which looks appears in concert, but is really not.
It is a bit sad too. If there was a central power, at least there would be a way of fixing things simply. Instead its like trying to fix Medusa.
Psychologically abusive parents produce some pretty fucked up children.
Physical punishment is simple. It happens, and you move on. There isn't continuing manipulative nastyness.
Physical punishment methods can be taught to nearly anybody. The critical idea is that the age of the child determines how long of a badness-to-punishment delay is allowable; a baby will fail to associate misbehavior with punishment if a tiny fraction of a second has passed. Also, avoid head impact.
There, now you know the two important rules. You can stop the psychological abuse.
I'm sure it will be Fair and Balanced and not lead to more teaching to the test.
Why do we trust Bill Gates' judgment on anything related to public education? This is a man who grew up the son of a wealthy politician; he has no firsthand experience with what happens in public school. He is also a college dropout. An admittedly smart, successful man, but his life experience is so far removed from those of us who grew up as public school "consumers" that, frankly, I find him to be among the LEAST qualified people to be making judgment calls regarding public education. Add Rupert Murdoch's unabashed doctrine of extremist right-wing nonsense (which includes anti-intellectualism and teacher-bashing) and we end up with an even bigger problem on our hands.
The real education here is to get the kids used to being tracked in detail by the corporations, um, for marketing purposes.
Who are we going to believe? A 20 year old boy or Google?
The Google has judged, welcome to the male gender. It is much like the dark side without the cookies.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
A: Hitler was a horrible person
Sco08y: Have you ever heard of Stalin?
A: He was horrible too. What does that have to do with Hitler?
If only there was a way to pull Steve Jobs into this story - there'd be a Perfect Storm of hate for Slashdotters...
#DeleteChrome
On one hand, I understand (and largely agree with) the various concerns about algorithm-izing students, grade inflation, and using the money directly to fund teachers. Our public education system has a shit-ton of critical P1 bugs.
However. On the other hand, I'm reminded to Neal Stephenson's "Diamond Age" interactive primer. First, the manifestation from the book is clearly not the initial beta version; some lengthy amount of revision and improvement would clearly be necessary to achieve the level of sophistication presented in the storyline. As such, Gates' initial investment along these lines could be a key first step down this path. Second, the manifestation from the book demonstrates a clear power over educational thought that is conveyed by the approach -- that is, if creating an algorithm for more effective education WAS attainable, then it would be an algorithm which could single-handedly influence entire generations* down a path of compliance with, or rejection of, status quo systems.
* This technology would also likely be available only to the elites with money to fund it, at least initially. Perhaps GNU GPL versions would surface over time. Given the power over educational philosophy, would the developers have to be thoroughly licensed in the educational system first? With versions of the software that are considered with the same distaste as allowing middle-schoolers to read Hunter S Thompson?
Gates is also funding funding other billionaires' aligned initiatives and bankrolling astrotufing-likened school advocacy, raising concerns about undue influence and even a call for eliminating the charitable giving tax deduction. 'This year, governments may lose $50 billion because of tax deductions taken overwhelmingly by the rich for charitable givings intended primarily to enhance their status with their brethren or to attack the public sector,' writes David Morris. 'We can't stop the rich from using their money for their own purposes. But we should not add insult to injury by giving them huge amounts of public sums to attack the public sector.'
hallmarks of weak minds also include those who only listen to facts that support their ideology.. the religious right and the socialist left come to mind. if there are any cognitive differences between 'races', they'll never come to light which is too bad. it would allow us to tailor education efforts accordingly.
Looks like Billie G. has as fettish for .."Teens"!
Oh Oh Oh ... just "In-Line" with the Fettish's of Stevie B.!
Oh how homey!
Billie and Stevie butt coupling again after all these years. Land sackes. Wonder of Wonders. Perhaps their MSFT stock will ... Up and Up and Up and Up. .... Oh Oh Oh.....
Well.
I'm really not one for these faggots.
So I hope that they get their well deserved hart attack ... least ... I do not have to visit them! And that is a good thingy!
There have been standardized tests in elementary through high schools for at least 30 years. Back then they were treated as they should be: a useful data point in determining how well students/teachers were performing, but not the end-all-be-all of the education system.
In the last 15 years, the number of standardized tests for kids, paperwork and mandatory training for teachers has increased so much that students are spending almost an additional month of the year away from the classroom because of it. Classes are now being taught for test, rather than making any attempt to put the information in context. All because some stupid MBA-types don't know how to effectively administrate, and want their job boiled down to looking at a few numbers.
Trying to judge a teacher solely on metrics is as stupid as trying to judge a programmer on lines-of-code per day, or bug-fixes per week, or average time to close support tickets. If make everything of value (teacher's salary, student's opportunities) dependent on the formulaic application of metrics then all they will tell you is how good people are at gaming the metrics. The result is a worse education system, just like over-reliance on metrics in business is a great way to have a division that looks good on paper just before it blows up in your face.
There have been standardized tests in elementary through high schools for at least 30 years.
Ok, and now we have the means to have more fine-grained information.
Trying to judge a teacher solely on metrics is as stupid as trying to judge a programmer on lines-of-code per day
Depends on the metrics. Just like you CAN judge a programmer on some metrics. There are good metrics for judging teachers' performance. And, no, teacher's salary is not a good metric. It says nothing about how well they perform their job.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Metrics used to measure students, teachers, schools, and districts are the problem. Metrics are way overrated and you'd think computer programmers would understand this better than most people except lawyers. Complex metrics create more errors and loopholes/bugs as well as being difficult to understand and evaluate. Simple metrics are easily hacked and worked around; not that complex ones are that great-- because even a complex one is a simple set of rules up against a motivated human brain. Its like pitting a calculator against a chess master.
Gates has no clue. After years of working on the topic he still hasn't learned much. He is foolishly stuck to metrics as if sales numbers for windows somehow equated with quality... too many years of warped thinking probably limits him from fully grasping the issues involved.
I'm sure every parent will love to have their brat labeled by a couple bad teachers and that record to follow their brat to every teacher and school the rest of their lives... Like that Seinfeld episode about the problem of avoiding bad doctors notes in your medical record.
Most the issues with kids is psychological; they can handle old methods from 50 years ago.... they have more non-school problems to deal with and parents who are both working among all sorts of other problems. Put in psychologists instead of computers and you'll see more results (computers have yet to show proven results, not that we can trust most the metrics used to prove any point.) I would have been just fine with no computers in school; they offered no benefit, I had one at home and couldn't have done anything constructive on the ones provided anyhow.
“In addition to making instructional data more manageable and useful, this open-license technology, provisionally called the Shared Learning Infrastructure (SLI), will also support a large market for vendors of learning materials and application developers to deliver content and tools that meet the Common Core State Standards and are interoperable with each other and the most popular student information systems” link
"We truly do not value education; and in the end get what we deserve."
Our children are not getting the education they need because we do not put enough emphasis on them getting it.
Absolutely not. The solution to this problem is NOT dictatorship! Dictatorship of our education system IS the problem! I don't know exactly what the solution is, but I do know that one day I want to open my own school. A private, but affordable academy where middle class kids can get a quality education. Enjoy your outlawed private education because I will long have since emigrated to a free country to start my enterprise there, rather than in your tyrannical utopia hellhole of forced public indoctrinat..er, "education." Uruguay is looking better and better.
Fraud and world domination through deception is built in to their DNA. They just look like normal white people except of the big hook noise and dying-fish eyes.
If you take a black african and convert him to Judaism, he is still black, not a jew. Same goes with Asians.
http://www.jewwatch.com/jew-entertainment-news-monopoly-murdoch-jew-part1.html
These people will try to convert to other religion just to evade detection, but their devoutness to the Talmud is rooted deep in their mind.
http://www.revisionisthistory.org/talmudtruth.html
Twitter: @dainsanefh
You have a recursion problem.
OK, so I want to reliably identify a good teacher. To do this, I must first find a good teacher. Well then I'd better get a good teacher, but to do that I'll need a good teacher, which I will find by asking a good teacher...
The socially conformant kids could be controlled without physical discipline, and so the parents didn't have to use it. These kids, being socially conformant, naturally have little desire to commit crimes.
It's tautological: if you aren't naughty, you aren't naughty.
Bad kids turn into bad adults. News at 11.
will sort out the naughty kids for homeland security to send TSA to harass parents. It's all aboput pinging everyone for every spare sheckle ( sp). Middle class is being ground out!
good luck to you all
Murdoch aka green aka greenburg. Aint it weird that a news man should change his name three times?.. at least he is consistant at " massaging" the facts.