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Code.org Wants Participating Students' Data For 7 Years
theodp writes "As part of its plan to improve computer science education in the U.S., the Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates-backed Code.org is asking school districts to sign a contract calling for Code.org to receive 'longitudinal student achievement data' for up to seven academic years in return for course materials, small teacher stipends, and general support. The Gates Foundation is already facing a backlash from the broader academic community over attempts to collect student data as part of its inBloom initiative. The Code.org contract also gives the organization veto power over the district teachers selected to participate in the Code.org program, who are required to commit to teaching in the program for a minimum of two school years."
What else could be expected from names like Zuckerberg and Gates?
I'll bet they'll veto anyone who tries to use Linux or teach kids about privacy.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Billionaires can be trusted. Money is virtue. It says so, in the Bible.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Stands to reason if there is some tracking, stalking, mining or following to be done the American tech companies will gladly help especially if there is a buck to be made.
Follow someone in the street and you will be arrested, do it with a computer and its somehow called innovation and forward thinking, makes you wonder what kind of society they want to create ?
It is a Mark Zuckerberg project - he hasn't exactly got a good track record for respecting people's privacy and not trying to build profiles that can be exploited down the road.
Honestly, even in a supposed "philanthropic" venture, I would always question the motive.
"Push until you meet resistance, then pull back, then push again when people aren't looking" that is the facebook/zuckerberg motto.
From our benign corporate overlords.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I can't say I'd trust either of these individuals with my personal data for the last seven days, let alone the last seven weeks.
He thinks people that trust him with their personal data are "Dumb F*cks" (actual quote). He probably thinks that about teachers and students that join this program.
I'm not saying I'd trust them either, but it is hard to determine how successful your program is if you don't get some kind of feedback. Seven years does seem excessive, but without knowing the results of the program, they can't modify it to be more effective.
Noice! With that data they can make sure to create job descriptions that cannot be filled by US students, brilliant!
Bill, Zuck,
Here's an alternative approach. Take your money out of offshore tax havens and pay your taxes so that voters can determine school policy. That may mean public schools, school vouchers, or any other approach with widespread support. Zuck, you've still got majority voting power, so you can even do that with your Face(whatever it is) company.
How else do you tell what works? Look at the friggen results.
This right to privacy you think you have does not apply to many areas:
* infectious disease control
* crossing borders
* ruining the next generation with your Texas creationist "science"
Don't like it? Take your precious little flower out of these schools and put them in church school where they already have a book with all the answers.
I want that data, too. Why isn't performance data public record? These are public schools which operate completely on tax payers' dollars. All teacher salaries are public record as is all public employee data. Why shouldn't performance metrics be public record? I doubt they are asking for students to be named by name. I am sure they would be happy with just the student performance data in a way that keeps students names impossible to find. I would like to know that data, too. Certainly when I pay property taxes I'd like to know what they buy me.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
This right to privacy you think you have does not apply to many areas:
It doesn't say they want private data. It says they want performance data. This does not have to identify students.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
This is what code.org communicates to me.
Become an asshole CEO and become filthy rich, and let the little coding folks do the work for you.
But it easily does identify them, even if the names are left off.
How many people in your graduating class took all the same course as you?
How many scored the same marks?
How many had the same GPA?
How many applied to other institutions with detailed lists of the above?
Enough to make impossible any Bayesian inference (that you are suggesting without naming it by name or maybe not even wittingly).
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Anyway... Putting all the privacy/Evil Overlords/Brainwashing arguments aside it hasn't been signed by anyone under duress. It is really just a starting point for negotiations between the "entity" and code.org. In the corporate world you never sign anything without legal looking at it. If it is for something important (like this is) you always negotiate better terms especially when the other party needs you more than you need them (code.org needs the schools more than the schools need code.org).
The first contract isn't much more than a wish list by the one drafting it. Sometimes they only include unreasonable terms just so they have something to give up in discussions instead of something less extreme that they need more. If schools/districts/whoever sign up to this unmodified they need a change of management.
[The Universe] has gone offline.
That's how much those two years the teachers are required to teach are to the students.
Where did these educational innovations come from? Where have they been tried before?
And, more importantly, why are they performing these human trials in public schools?
I'm not sure we need to improve CS education. What we need is to give CS grads jobs that actually require using their CS skills rather than just becoming glorified code monkeys. Or worse yet, managers.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
The Times Union recently had a front page story on how the New York State Department of Education was selecting curriculum and programs like InBloom. There's a small, secretive group of private workers (not bound by state worker rules). They raise donations from big companies/individuals and set educational policy. One of their biggest donors? The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Like that donation to the group setting the educational policy didn't result in InBloom being implemented at all.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
When they list the 'longitudinal student achievement data' for up to seven academic years as one of the requirement, all alarm must be sounded
Students must be treated and be respected as individuals
They must not be treated as mere numbers or drones
The students' "academic achievement" are but a small part of what makes up their individual selves
Our society must understand that if we continue to treat the students as drones, as " yet another brick on the wall ", the future will be very bleak.
We do not need drones to lead the human civilization in the future. We need WHOLESOME HUMAN BEINGS to carry out that task !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Gates and Zuck want Moar! Money! So they want 7 years of data of kids so they can then tack, identify, and sell micro targeted data. Kid has a poor reading comprehension? How much would an insurance company pay for that in seven years time when the kid is say, 20? Kid has poor self esteem, poor body image, weak math skills? How much is the individual weaknesses, failures, etc of miilions of kids worth to private industry sold by the millions?
Gates and Zuck are ostensibly billionaires. But they act like their billions could evaporate at any moment.
I admit. I was even tempted to post an answer. Once. Never again. The Javascript/cookies hoops I've had to jump through were enough for the rest of my life.
Not my culture.
Throw in the fact that Microsoft has now completely dropped the employee training and assessment policy that BG is basing his education programs around. Yet one of the main arguments used to support introducing it into schools is that it was successful at "knowledge companies" like Microsoft. The problem is that, unlike a company, once it's got its claws into education policy you can't remove it by putting a new person in charge (as at Microsoft HR), it'll be a decade after there's a general consensus from educators that it has failed before any senior decision-maker will dare make a change on the same scale.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
How are they supposed to function without metrics?
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