Superficial and biased coverage of the controversy over personalized learning in Chalkbeat

Matt Barnum has posted an article at Chalkbeat on the controversy over online learning.  I spent nearly an hour talking to him about its myriad problems, including the negative experiences of parents and students in schools where online learning predominates, serious privacy concerns because of all the data-mining by vendors that is involved, and a serious lack of research evidence  -- but the only quote he used from our conversation is one sentence: that the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy which I co-chair. has worked with allies in right-wing groups on the privacy issue.

Instead, when I spoke to him about this, I emphasized that the concerns about the expansion of online learning and its impact on privacy was shared by groups and individuals of all political persuasion, left right and center, and many parents with little interest in politics at all.  That's why our campaign against inBloom was so successful, and that's why in NY State and elsewhere, parents and teachers in all nine states and districts that were participating were able to force them from dropping out of the program to share their children's personal data and make it more accessible to vendors without parental consent.  But he left that part out of my quote and his story as a whole, because it did not fit into his pre-ordained narrative.

Indeed, Barnum seemed eager to mischaracterize the opposition to so-called personalized learning as led by conservatives.  He is also quick to frame the pushback vs Common Core in a similar fashion --as driven by many of the same right-wing groups -- when one of the most successful protests against the standards occurred here in NY state, led by NY State Allies for Public Education, a coalition of mostly left-wing and politically moderate parents and teachers who also oppose the expansion of ed tech.

Barnum didn't mention any of the other progressive groups, medical associations, and researchers across the country who are very concerned about the expansion of online learning in schools, including Screens and Kids, Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, the  ACLU, Commonsense Media, National Education Policy Center, Parents Across America, the Badass Teachers Association and many others. 

Nor did he bother to interview any of the many prominent progressive critics of ed tech like Diane Ravitch, Peter Greene or Audrey Watters.  Nor did he acknowledge that Silicon Valley parents themselves are increasingly rejecting computerized learning,  as reported in the terrific NY Times series by Nellie Bowles.

Instead, he quotes only one non-right wing critic of online learning by name– Merrie Najimy, the President of the Massachusetts teachers - while featuring many paragraphs of rosy spin from defenders of ed tech, like Diane Tavenner of Summit and Bethany Gross of CRPE, both funded by Gates and Zuckerberg. 

Barnum cites a CRPE report also paid for by Gates that apparently says, oh yeah, teachers really like personalized learning – while ignoring the survey results in our Educator Toolkit for Teacher and Student Privacy, which showed widespread concern among teachers and administrators alike about the expansion of digital apps and online programs in our schools.  He also quotes Randi Weingarten who, surprisingly, has nothing but kind words about the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which has done absolutely nothing that I can think of to earn her confidence.

Amazingly, Barnum also manages to write an entire piece about edtech and personalized learning, Summit, Gates and Zuckerberg without once mentioning the issue of data privacy, the widespread occurrence of breaches, the potential misuse of algorithms, and the over-reach of student surveillance in schools.  The only mention of the word “privacy” is in the one sentence that quotes me about working with conservative allies on the issue.

Quite an achievement and yet more evidence of a serious blind spot in Chalkbeat’s education coverage, reminiscent of their failure to cover the parent opposition against inBloom that started here in New York and led to such a firestorm across the country that more than 120 state student privacy laws have been passed as a result of the inBloom controversy since 2013. 

Student data privacy is still huge issue among parents in New York and throughout the US, but it has been almost entirely ignored by Chalkbeat, including in their failure to report on the recent Brooklyn student walkout against Summit that was covered by the NY Post, New York Magazine, the Washington Post, Fast Company , and other major outlets. 

Too bad; this piece will yet serve as more ammunition for the many  critics  who maintain that Chalkbeat, also supported by Gates and Zuckerberg, serves primarily as a PR outlet for corporate education reform.

Here are some antidotes: check out the NPE report, What Every Parent Should know about Online Learning, or our Parent Toolkit for Student Privacy,  Educator Toolkit for Teacher and Student Privacy,on or our many articles on the problems with the Summit online platform, starting here.  

Or the presentations that the brilliant Audrey Watters, the inestimable Peter Greene and I gave at the NPE conference this fall in Indianapolis. 

Or this terrific oped by Dipayan Ghosh and Jim Steyer in the NY Times last week, entitled Kids Shouldn't Have to Sacrifice Privacy for Education, or an excellent summary posted today by Ben Williamson, which concisely explores the many substantive problems with online learning, ignored in Barnum's superficial piece.

What the NY Post left out: how Sharpton was persuaded to ally himself with Joel Klein & stay mum on term limits

Today, the NY Post ran a story about how Al Sharpton accepts money from corporations in exchange for shielding them of accusations of racism.  It contained nothing very new to report, except for Sharpton having met with Amy Pascal of Sony after the company's embarrassing email breach – though the article offered no evidence Sony has paid him a dime.  

Presumably the Post is targeting Sharpton because of his association with the Mayor: “Sharpton, who now boasts a close relationship with Obama and Mayor de Blasio, is in a stronger negotiating position than ever.”  Yet the main example cited in the article happened years ago, during the Bloomberg administration:

In 2008, Plainfield Asset Management, a Greenwich, Conn.-based hedge fund, made a $500,000 contribution to New York nonprofit Education Reform Now. That money was immediately funneled to the National Action Network [Sharpton’s organization].

The donation raised eyebrows. Although the money was ostensibly to support NAN’s efforts to bring “educational equality,” it also came at a time that Plainfield was trying to get a lucrative gambling deal in New York.

Plainfield had a $250 million stake in Capital Play, a group trying to secure a license to run the coming racino at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. Capital Play employed a lobbyist named Charlie King, who also was the acting executive director of NAN.

Left out of this account is the most interesting part of the story.  It's not just that the money for Sharpton was ostensibly for “equity” and funneled through Education Reform Now, the non-profit arm of Joe William’s pro-charter Democrats for Education Reform. The larger context is that ERN was merely a pass-through, and the money was directed to Sharpton through the Education Equity Project, founded by then-Chancellor Joel Klein, in exchange for Sharpton agreeing  to co-chair the group and adopt Klein’s aggressive anti-teacher, pro-charter stance.  Juan Gonzalez extensively reported the tangled story of how these funds went to benefit Sharpton in 2009, and how they helped him stay out of jail when he owed millions in taxes to the IRS.  

Also left out of the Post article is how Bloomberg, the Gates and Broad Foundations also put big money into EEP to Sharpton's benefit, though the DOE flack, David Cantor denied any involvement of either Bloomberg or Gates in emails he sent to our NYC Ed list serv, when I speculated about the involvement of both.  Perhaps he was lied to as well.  See my timeline of events here. In fact, Sharpton’s organization directly received a big portion of the $250,000 donation Mayor Bloomberg gave EEP, the day Bloomberg announced he would try to overturn term limits.  As a result, Sharpton never said a word against Bloomberg’s successful coup. 

Despite big infusions of cash and the coupling of Klein and Sharpton, EEP didn’t last long.  It held a  rally in DC on MLK day in January of 2009, at which Sharpton spoke.  After joining forces with Newt Gingrich, he and Klein met with President Obama.  The organization folded in 2011 when it merged with the similar corporate reform group, Stand For Children.  Sharpton had already left EEP by then, replaced by two Gates grantees, United Negro College Fund President Michael Lomax, and Janet Murguia of the National Council of La Raza. 

Perhaps the Post reporter's omissions are understandable, given that Klein now works for the Post’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, who is also a member of the Billionaire’s Boys Club, pushing for more charters along with his old friend and ally Bloomberg.  But the story should have been told nonetheless. In his new memoir, I highly doubt  Klein explains the full circumstances surrounding his cynical and mutually exploitative partnership with Sharpton.  I certainly didn't read this mentioned in any of the reviews.