Recently I was asked to allow my son to participate in a
survey at school. The "opt in" survey form specifically stated,
"the questions on the survey relate to peer relationships, how safe
students feel at school, and the quality of student-teacher relationships."
It went on to say that the questions might make my son feel uncomfortable and
that this was all voluntary, with the ultimate goal being to "inform a
more effective bullying prevention program and help improve the safety, social
and emotional skills, and well-being for all students."
There it was. Social
Emotional. The new cash cow in corporate assessment building. ESSA created an additional
data point which schools must use to report their progress. Each year schools
must report back on school quality in some shape or form; in other words, how
is the school climate? Is there bullying? Is it safe? How well are students or
teachers engaged and are they feeling confident, successful? More or less, it's
about feelings. How we feel and interact as humans, is complex and incredibly
difficult to confine to a data point. Confining learning to a data point is not new. They've managed to confine
academic learning to data points by defining finite standards which must be
measured in small bites in order to create the ability to control teaching and
learning (therefore humans) and profit off of public schools. Corporate assessments are not about helping
children, they are simply about making money - assessing social emotional learning is the new cash cow.
True assessments, created by teachers, are messy and include
teacher commentary, student commentary, pieces of student work, teacher observation
and more - true assessment occurs by teachers who know their students and develop solid student/teacher relationships with them. It's impossible to plug all of that into finite data points because humans
are not robots. We feel. We read each
other's body language, we make choices and decisions every day that are
influenced by our background, our surroundings, our mood, our daily interactions with
others, our health, and more. To think that we can now accurately assess
student feelings and catalog these feelings into social and emotional
competencies, well, it's just ridiculous and unnecessary. But that's what they
are doing because there is huge profit
to be gathered and ultimately all of this data can be funneled to create more
effective artificial intelligence, therefore our children can further learn via online learning versus humans - less need for teachers and less need for teachers with
actual teaching degrees.
Social emotional data will confine children to specific finite social emotional competencies that will define who they are, what they are capable of, and what intervention is needed to make them act and behave as demanded by the requirements of the corporate online assessments.
Recently a contest
was held to review social emotional learning assessments. I watched the webinar
to view the results of the contest, and in a nut shell, well, the results were
just plain stupid. I'll try to recap
quickly for you as I would hate for you to have to sit through the webinar as
it's absolutely mind numbing boring.
The webinar reviewed the assessments of the winners. The
first presenter (from NWEA) had assessed students who rapidly guessed during test
taking and the presenter decided that if they did indeed rush through the test,
there was a high likelihood that this child could not self manage and was not
engaged. He showed data demonstrating
that this most definitely could lead to suspensions and dropping out of school.
Therefore, it's important to intervene with these rapid guessers and modify
their behavior so that they no longer rush through some mind numbing corporate
online test. Emily Talmage has blogged about this happening in her classroom
during testing - you must read it to see how absolutely ridiculous and wrong this SEL assessment is.
But according to NWEA, rapid guessing = low engagement and lack of self
management.
Goodness, these wild unmanageable children!! Umm...how
about, these kids think the test is STUPID? How about maybe they are tired or
hungry or worried that they may have to sleep in the car again tonight and
therefore they simply don't give a rat's ass about this stupid pathetic excuse
for an assessment? Seriously I could go on for pages and pages about all the
reasons the children flew through the test. Hey, maybe their parents told them
it's bullshit and said just fill in the bubbles and get out of the online program
and go read a book and use your time wisely. Truly the number of reasons for
rapid guessing are infinite. Maybe these kids are revolutionaries in the making
- better squelch that quick, huh?
It was very surreal watching this webinar and listening to adults talk about this like it was deep stuff. Seriously, these people have PhDs
and this was absolute idiocy.
On to the next assessment......this one really did me in. This
assessment was about becoming a social detective and being able to really
understand how someone else feels. In other words, walk in their shoes. This
assessment, courtesy of Panorama, had children watch interviews of people and
then determine what the person was like - how does that person feel? Who are
they? Are they shy? And so on. If you
didn't perceive the person as the author of the test determined you should, you
lacked the ability to read people more or less. And therefore.....you were
given strategies on how to improve your ability to really understand people.
Okay. Again, stupid. Why? Because number one, students can
actually interact with real people in real life and get real feedback from one
another and/or parents, teachers, and other adults involved in their lives. Two,
maybe the student thinks this assignment is stupid and the actors in the
interviews seem fake? Maybe the student would rather go outside and kick a ball
around with his or her friends? Why waste time meeting people on a computer
that you don't care about and DON'T KNOW??? Seriously I could care less about these people they interviewed. I don't know them. They aren't real to me. So, does this mean at parent/teacher
conference a parent might be told that the child lacks the ability to really
perceive others due to this assessment when in reality the child has great
friendships and gets along well with everyone? Sheesh.
The third assessment dealt with puzzles. Let me tell
you a bit about my experience with puzzles. Every Christmas I buy a puzzle and as soon as I get it out
to start the puzzle the family all gives one another a "look" and
then suddenly, they vanish. Poof. Gone. I like puzzles. They hate them. When I
first started doing puzzles they would all pretend to like them because they
didn't want to hurt my feelings. As the years wore on and every year they
watched me excitedly purchase a new puzzle they finally had to come clean and
confess that they do NOT LIKE PUZZLES. Yup, catalog all those social emotional
competencies that went into those family interactions.
So...if my boys were asked to do this assessment which asks
if you would like a more challenging
puzzle they'd both say umm...no thank you. And at parent/teacher conference I
would be told that they were not "challenge-seeking." Hilarious.
Okay, I'll stop there, but you get the picture at this point
I'm sure. If you want to feel the gut wrenching pain that accompanies watching
(catalog that emotion competency) the webinar here it is.
The hard part about this particular blog is that I have so
much more to say, as this is one small piece of a very big and very scary
picture of where we are headed, but I truly need to stop before I lose my
audience. I'll write more on this again I promise. Also check out
www.emilytalmage.com , www.wrenchinthegears.com , and www.educationalchemy.com
.
Bottom line, the gathering of social emotional data, is a new frontier in
corporate assessment creation. ESSA created major funds for this to occur -
ESSA being the federal bill that the unions supported - yup THAT ESSA. ESSA = fast track to privatize. Thank you AFT
and NEA - oh, and the unions are also happily
unionizing those charter teachers who will be absolutely stellar in monitoring
all this online learning and assessment needed to gather SEL data, but that's
another blog for another day.
Regarding $$$ for SEL, I found a quick summary of the SEL funding via
ESSA. I can't speak to how this actually rolled out, but the total sum appears
to be around 21 billion in 2016. Correct me if I'm wrong, see here.
Quoting this NPR
article: But, at the root of it all, is the fact that "emotion
data" is not the same thing as the real, vivid, present, enacted emotional
experiences we have being human. Our emotions are not our faces or our voices.
They aren't data. They can't be pulled out like a thread, one by one, from the
fabric of our being.
Big picture - this is about compliance. This is about colonization.
Compliance is necessary in order to profit and control a population so that the
outcomes fit the needs and demands of the market and the elite. Children
living in poverty must learn to regulate their emotions as the corporations see fit and they must comply with the
system, even when they are hungry and tired.
How about taking that SEL funding and feeding, housing and
providing health care for these children and their families? Oh wait, this
isn't about the children. It's about profit.
So, back to my original story about the survey my son's
school wanted him to take.....I, of course, refused it. I researched the behavior curriculum they are using at my son's school. The name of
the program is Second Step and as of August of 2017 they have joined forces
with Panorama (the same Panorama I discussed above in the SEL contest) to
create a technological platform to gather social emotional data. Big surprise.
And even more fascinating, Panorama came out with a rigid list of social
emotional competencies in 2015, the same year ESSA rolled out. Again, there are
no coincidences here.
So, as a parent, I sat down with Luke and discussed all of this
and he is aware that he is not to participate in any surveys or online learning
that is related to Second Step. And of course, I informed the school of all of
this before the school year even started.
So, that's a small window into the brave new world we have
entered. Back to my chickens who make me happy.
How does one catalog chicken happiness?
Fyi...I rejoined Twitter. My love/hate relationship with social media is never ending. I didn't de-activate, I literally deleted it so I lost all my followers. If you are interested in keeping up with me once again follow me @itspegrobertson
