By: Joel Pititto
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with the Carnegie Corporation of New York and educational representatives from seven states, spent millions of dollars on constructing a single educational student database. They revealed the database, with an estimated monetary worth of 100 million dollars, which is said to have the personal information of millions of students ranging in age from kindergarten to high school. The informational source has been filled with personal information ranging from their homework completion rate to social security numbers. Along with the seven original states with cooperative school districts (Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Massachusetts), the client list will continue to grow to New York and Louisiana, who will pour all of their student information into the server. Access to database could be given to any company selling educational services, leading to the amassing information to levels of a surveillant assemblage. The “goal” is to use the information to develop more effective lesson plans for teachers, and lead to a more uniform level of competency, thus resulting in better standardize testing results.
However, it is not the people creating the tests, or curriculum, but the teachers who are held responsible for the student’s performance. This has led to the constant surveillance of teachers’ performance. The state narrative of schoolteachers is based upon their students maintaining high-test scores on standardized tests. This process has led to teachers beginning to internalize the gaze (the need to conform to state standards of teaching to meet the state’s goals) basing their curriculum around test taking practices or be in constant fear of being held accountable by the administration. The teachers are front line workers, who are loosing their ability to use discretion with their own students and begin conforming to the state-agent narrative to maximize results on standardized testing. In story 5.3 (Maynard-Moody and Musheno), a student, who has a learning disability, could be placed in an accelerated art class but the school lacks the resources to offer one. Students, such as these, will be labeled in the database as having a learning disability (or in teacher terms “spooky”) and forced to do poorly on standardize tests having further repercussions for a policy that already adversely affects him. In the classroom, the lessons are being halted weeks before the end of the school year to prepare students for the upcoming tests, wasting money and valuable classroom time. As we move towards a more predictive educational policy, when students are based more on numbers rather than the needs of the person, should the classroom have a certain level of insularity from the administration or state?
I think your blog post points out another instance of the impact that market values has on surveillance. One would hope that the increasing need to monitor students and their achievement would be for their well being and overall educational benefit. I think that it could be useful to have some more knowledge about students and actually use it to help them. The database seems to already have been made despite parent's concerns about privacy, so individualized attention might not be so bad for teachers to use.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it seems like companies and entrepreneurs see education more as another marketable product. I think it might help if they had some sort of sense of generalized knowledge one what kids are struggling with or what they like, but market research exists for something like that. The infusion of market values in our lives has given private companies so much power. It makes me wonder if anyone has complained that there is a corporate "Big Brother" that makes use of all the dispersed surveillance and policing we have.
Anita Wu
Joel,
ReplyDeleteI question whether the true intent of this database is to help make a classroom more personalized and efficient or if it's simply an excuse to create a bunch of unnecessary software in order to raise business' revenues. I honestly think it's the latter because as we have discussed in class, market values are becoming increasingly more important than our right to privacy. It's sad to imagine a school essentially turning into a marketplace.
Lissette Morales
This is just not ok. It reminds me of the "No Student Left Behind" policy which reportedly intended to raise all students' performance but in reality created a situation where those who didn't fit the mold were dismissed and forgotten. I also agree with Lisettte that market value is becoming more and more important than our right to privacy - interesting, though, because when it impedes on education it will ultimately affect the future of businesses.
ReplyDelete-Catherine Hall
I agree with the above comments that the standardized testing results might not be the true intent of these databases, especially since the "school officials," who are allowed to make use of this information, include private companies. I don't agree, however, that this will have much impact on the behavior of the teachers with regard to the theory of "internalizing the gaze"; after all, they are already supposed to prepare them for standardized tests etc.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. Under the guise of improving test scores, corporation get access to student personal information. Should we concern ourselves with the profit driven corporations and foundations that create these databases?
ReplyDeleteYevgeniy Rokhin
I think this is a great post, especially in the context of the Rios book which points out the connection between law enforcement and schools. Rios paints the picture of school teachers and administrators becoming proxies for the police, but I think your post shows that it's not just the students who are at risk of being labelled and marginalized, but the teachers as well. Assessing both student and teacher performance in terms of numbers does lead to counterproductive practices such as taking time out of instruction to prepare for a ridiculous test -- if anyone remembers else going through STAR testing in elementary school it's astonishing how much we could have been learning during the two weeks that were taken up filling bubbles!
ReplyDelete-Molly Ruiz
In light of the above comments that have examined the nature and purpose of the comprehensive database of students' personal information, I find that I agree that it appears to be another venue through which schools and institutions can make money by giving select information away. The same way standardized testing companies are businesses at their core, not meant to improve a student's learning nor progress the paradigm of academia, this database is demonstrating the same type of intention. Teachers are frontline workers who must utilize their own discretion when teaching each individual student at his or her own pace. By creating such a database under the guise of improving teachers' lesson plans necessarily implies that education is becoming more than just an academic institution, engendering a pervasive structure that monitors lives through fear and control.
ReplyDeleteChristine Sun
This reminds me of the first part of class when Professor Musheno talked about private corporations using mass data to create differences between people to assess risks and other factors. The society then becomes a faceless, uniform entity with no room for human difference or agency - as is the case with welfare clients who cannot surpass their state of financial need out of fear of being cut off. It's disturbing because then these children become statistical figures and that could hold a lot of negative consequences for their futures. Like in Japan, everyone studies like crazy because there are no second chances; if you don't get into a good college, you have no choice to start at a community college and transfer or anything like that. The students must score high on tests because their future and their identity is basically made for them through these numbers. Employers will base their decisions of liking or hiring an individual entirely through what numbers they have to offer and that is the identity that stays throughout their lives; any personal attributes or intrinsic value has no place.
ReplyDeleteAya Kanda
One of the aims of the educational student database is to increase the effectiveness of teaching by helping teachers come up with better lesson plans. This database also aims to improve the level of competency. However, this has affected the quality of teaching because teachers tend to concentrate on the number instead of the quality of teaching given to each student. Furthermore, students with special needs will continue to suffer if teachers constantly ignore their unique circumstances.
ReplyDeleteSehun Lee
I hope California never joins the ranks of these other conformist states. It is bad enough that a "standardized" test exists when clearly there is no equality in the method of education. This method is purely objective and would completely ignore the personal needs of each individual student. Furthermore, even if a more subjective curriculum was created, it still would not take into account the lack of resources in urban areas. If these states really wanted to implement this, they should narrow it to focus solely on schools situated in areas of low socioeconomic status. Level the playing field, rather than generalize the masses.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of a much more pervasive and aggressive form of NCLB. I'm curious to know more about what specific sanctions states may be planning to impose if teachers don't produce the desired results.
ReplyDeleteAndre
From my experience working as a teacher's aid, I agree that the emphasis on standardized testing as shifted the focus from helping the students learn to simply scoring a higher test score. Also, oftentimes the student will be incredibly smart but will not treated as such because of the test score that they received.
ReplyDeleteMaria Campos
There's no question that drones are a significant and powerful surveillance tool, and as with other powerful tools can be used for positive activities as long as there is strict regulation on what it can and cannot be used for. It may save lives of officers who would otherwise do the surveilling as well as help to more effectively monitor crime through both a preventative aspect (that is, by deterring crime), and also an apprehension rate. There is a possibility of abuse by government, but again, that can be remedied through strict regulation and procedures. The public is always really apprehensive to accept new procedures when there is even a hint that it might invade their rights. This might be a provocative example, but drones are like deadly weapons: they can be used for good or they can be used for bad.
ReplyDelete-Cameron Ghazzagh
I question whether this is truly educationally driven, or politically driven. A goal of developing a more efficient lesson plan is honorable, and with so much data it seems that it would be supported with evidence. Yet, there is more to teaching than a lesson plan, and I don't think this is worth the pressures that the teachers feel to evaluate their performance based only on standardized tests.
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting everybody. My 8-year-old brother’s school district is enacting the new Common Core Curriculum and tests, which is replacing the Star Test, and school officials actually believe that only about 30 percent of students are actually going to pass the test. So it will be interesting to see how this affects the classroom climate.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if this valuable information is rightfully the students', who probably didn't know their personal information would be given out and sold to be used against them, when they entered school. Schools are becoming corrupt if they're giving out personal information for money. Perhaps one of the reasons this is going on is to make teaching more efficient and fair. However, as all other forms of surveillance, this method lacks the ability to take into consideration personal facts which cannot be numerically or statistically represented (such as learning disabilities, etc). It could also take out the teachers that are most admired by specific students, minority groups of students, who just don't learn the same way as the "bright"/"quick" students do. Also, front line workers such as teachers, historically have had a certain amount of discretion, and that could be jeopardized. Although there are privacy and fairness issues involved, perhaps this WILL bring up schools who do poorly on standardized tests. My two views about halting lessons a few weeks earlier at the end of the year is: this could positively affect students in that it re-engages them into the material and solidifies key topics that they should have a handle on at the end of the year, or it could be redundant for students who have grasped the material and don't need a review. Standardized testing makes advancement hard in general, but idealistically makes sure the disadvantaged are learning what is necessary. Therefore, I think states/counties within states, should use this method only if necessary.
ReplyDeleteDoes technology really make teaching more effective or school districts more efficient? Surveillance has penetrated our schools in a way that I am afraid will create a monster--a future where data driven decisions will reign surpreme and free will and turning points will be a thing of the past.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very well written blog and I think it highlights one of the upcoming problems for this generation. Education disparities are a huge political issue and I don't think that any one answer is right or wrong. However I think that this database will ultimately highlight the overachieving and underachieving students from a very young age and could have the potential to negatively alter their life course by assigning them a readily available label so young. Additionally it forces the teachers to teach to tests rather than reality which could have severe negative impacts on our society.
ReplyDelete