MORE BLOWS AGAINST EDGYKAYSHUN FROM CORPORATE GOOFBALLS AND BUSYBODIES

I know I've been ranting lately about Amairikuhn edgykayshun and the billionaire busybodies and corporate goofballs intent on continuing the ruination begun by the billionaire busybodies of yesteryear. But I have to rant again, because of some articles shared by my co-author of Rotten to the (Common) Core, and also because of some articles shared by other teachers. And you're not going to believe it.

While this first article is not an article per se, I copy and paste exactly what Dr. Lawrence sent me:

Improving Graduation Rates: Predictive Analytics in Action

Dropping out is a process—not a single event. Disengaged students at risk for dropping out of school typically show warning signs years before the actual event occurs. However, many early warning systems only begin to identify at-risk students in late middle school or early high school and cannot detect discrete signs of risk in early grades.

West Virginia has been able to increase graduation rates by 5 percent over the last two years using information from a next generation predictive analytics early warning system. In this webinar you'll learn:

  • What predictive analytics is and how it works
  • The differences between threshold and predictive analytics systems
  • How to identify at-risk students as early as first grade with 90 percent accuracy
  • Why states should move to a predictive analytics system
  • How our guest successfully deployed a statewide early warning system
  • The cost savings that can be realized with early identification and intervention

Guests:

Kristal Ayres, director of professional services, BrightBytes

Michele Blatt, chief accountability officer, division of school effectiveness, West Virginia Department of Education

This webinar will be moderated by Holly Yettick, director, Education Week Research Center

While I've been unable to find this exact link (the constraints of time I'm afraid), a simple search for predictive analytics and education will yield a veritable minefield, such as this article (Unlocking Predictive Analytics to Improve Student Engagement and Retention). Almost uniformly, all these journals and webinars tout the wonderful benefits of this new technology for maintaining "student retention" and raising graduation rates. And to be sure, such technologies might indeed be beneficial. But there's a "flip side" to this, and Dr. Lawrence and I attempted to point this out in our book Rotten to the (Common) Core: what the corporate and billionaire busybodies are really trying to do is to build out more of the surveillance state, and not only to mine data for their predictive analytics, but also to erect an education system even more draconian in its ability to ram "loyalty tests" in the form of standardized tests which will monitor an individual's conformity to "approved narratives." Indeed, as we also pointed out, the notorious Educational Testing (Dis)Service in Princeton once liaised with, and received grants from, the CIA's MK-ULTRA mind control projects early during the tenure of its test-obsessed founder, Henry Chauncey. And from "predictive analytics" in schools, with their inevitable state-mandated "interventions," will follow the ultimate nightmare of Philip K. Dick (one of my favorite science fiction authors): the application of predictive analytics to predict individual crimes ala a Department of Pre-Crime. Indeed, already certain localities are taking the first steps in this direction. And schools, of course, would be the perfect way to accustom people to a life lived under the "predictive analytics" microscope and mandated state interventions when potential aberrant behavior or departures from the narrative are detected.

But wait, there's more!

Manuel Alfaro, a whistleblower, has pointed out that the "new and improved" Scholastic Aptitude test (SAT) is a fraud:

Of course, most of us already know that the whole idea of standardized tests is fraudulent, as are the corporations peddling them. But in this case, there's real electricity percolating in the system, for Mr. Alfaro recently posted this statement on Linked In:

The first is an Open Letter to David Coleman, letting him know that Alfaro is defiant and will see him in court. He accuses Coleman of perpetrating a “global fraud.”

Alfaro wrote to Coleman and said (in part):

You have done an excellent job discrediting me so far. You have stopped news organizations from investigating my statements and allegations of the global fraud you have committed against millions of students and their families, College Board members, state governments, and the federal government. You have convinced the heads of the Department of Education using the SAT for accountability that—to use the words of your Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel—I’m “a disgruntled former employee who has expressed anger at the college Board in a very public way. Though his employment ended over a year ago, he has not “moved on.”” However, even with all your resources, I feel that you are still at a disadvantage. So, I’m going to show you one of my cards: in order to properly defend myself against any charges you level against me, criminal or otherwise, a court will have to grant my legal team access to College Board records.

Well, anyone familiar with the racket that is the testing "industry" will know what a huge bag of gas it really is. But, now, apparently, merely questioning the whole thing can have you raided by the FBI:

And there, in a nutshell, is why standardized tests from corporations should never have been allowed to become the centerpiece of American education: they're proprietary and remove parents and teachers from the oversight of the content of students' texts and tests, and any attempt to rectify the fraud in them calls down the wrath of the federal colossus, not on those perpetrating the fraud, but on those trying to expose it.

And that means the system is broken. It works only for the 1%, and for no one else, and that 1% does not want a literate and critically thinking population of individuals; it wants only the hive, the collective, and mediocrity.

See you on the flip side...

Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

8 Comments

  1. Curt on September 4, 2016 at 5:48 am

    SAT did away with the analogies section of the Verbal Reasoning test about a decade ago… I guess since it favoured students with a deep knowledge of the language, who could recognise higher order objective relationships across contexts, i.e. two skills that won’t be ‘needed’ in humanity 3.0. The elimination of analogies (on that generally horrible exam) is yet another example of ‘analogical thinking’ on the chopping block. But, hey, why would you want your robots to do their own thinking? Just train them to ‘process’ and ‘administer’ on behalf of those who do the real thinking for them.



  2. Robert Barricklow on September 3, 2016 at 12:53 pm

    The hand of tyranny is ever extending its reach.
    This should be taught in schools.
    FAT chance!

    https://youtube.com/watch?v=XQRQdNvja00



    • Robert Barricklow on September 3, 2016 at 12:57 pm

      Go 11:15 clicks in to 2nd part.
      That’s where it gets down to business!



  3. NorseMythology on September 3, 2016 at 12:23 pm

    We took our kid out of school because of things like this. Cant wait for your book!



  4. marcos toledo on September 3, 2016 at 11:02 am

    For those who are not the children of the elites schools are day prisons to prepare the underclass to be wageslaves for their masters be they a bluecollar, whitecollar or prison laborer. We workers are all slaves to them no matter the different labels. Technology is really only good old magic to our oligarchs.



  5. Roger on September 3, 2016 at 7:21 am

    When I was in high school and the Feds were threatening to cut funding to schools who didn’t reduce their drop out rate; the county I lived in in Tennessee decided to frame and send all those they predicted might drop out to reform school until they graduated. After watching half a dozen others get told they were suspended for ten days for the very minor things the teachers and staff manipulated the kids into doing to send them off to reform school I knew what was coming when they tried it with me and moved to my mom’s in Florida to escape them. Reform school is worse than prison and the kids are often abused and raped by guards. A cousine of mine was killed by the guards in one. To this day that county has more of the most messed up people you ever met because of being victimized by an evil state policy of predictive behavior pre-action.



    • zendogbreath on September 3, 2016 at 8:38 pm

      thank you for the insight roger. glad to see you worked through it. like a fremen living through a harkonnen world.



      • Roger on September 3, 2016 at 11:34 pm

        A lot of bad things happen at the local level sometimes and its nice to be able to move to a better place when corruption becomes too much in your local area. Federalization of everything will do away with this recourse in the future. After suspending us for 10 days they then would take us to court for truancy where a corrupt judge would send the singled out drop out risks to reform school to be state raised into a hardened heartless criminal. In Florida I dropped out to go to adult high at a collage. The class rooms were smaller and I had better teachers and less homework but more tests. My grade point average went way up and I aced most tests. The county I escaped from tried to refuse giving my transcripts to my new school in Florida and said I had to pick them up in person. She said she over heard them in the back ground and they were talking of having me arrested and sent off if I went up to collect them personally. They didn’t want it to go on record that I dropped out from their school. She said she couldn’t believe how bad they were up there and didn’t blame me for getting out of there from what she over heard on the phone. She told me not to go up there and would get their legal department to get my transcripts from them. There are a conniving, heartless and sadistic people at all levels of government but not all areas are corrupt and it’s nice to be able to escape from the really bad areas of the country.



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