Certification

The Gates Foundation Isn’t Even Hiding It Anymore… The Complete Transformation Of Education Brought To You By Billionaires

Gates Foundation

billgateshillaryclinton

Bill Gates wants a Federal Student Data Tracking System.  That’s right.  He also wants competency-based education, more career pathways programs, and personalized learning to take over public education.  This is the same guy who funded Common Core.  Remember that when you read the document released by the Gates Foundation today.  If I had to guess, now that many education bloggers have exposed all the agendas which will lead to the Bit-Coin inspired Blockchain Initiative, the corporate education reformers (clearly led by Bill Gates) have nothing to lose by getting it all out there now.  Now I know why U.S. Senator Chris Coons (Delaware) is chomping at the bit for his post-secondary legislation to get passed by Congress.

Read this.  Every single word.  Read between the lines.  This is the endgame they have been pushing for, the complete and utter destruction of public education in anticipation of online education for all.  Where you will be tracked from cradle to grave, with data allowed to be looked at through a federal database, which will track everything about you.  The sad part is they play to civil rights groups by assuring more success for minorities.  They screw over students with disabilities every chance they get.  But their manipulation of under-served communities is at an all-time high in this document.  Words like “outcome-based funding” scare the crap out of me, and it should for every single American.  Look at all the footnotes in the below document.  Look at the companies and think-tanks that are reaping immense profits for every bogus report they come out with.  Look how embedded this already is in every single state and our national government.

While this document is geared towards higher education, its goals are for ALL education.  It is all about creating the “workforce of tomorrow”.  He mentions Jobs For the Future at the very end of the document.  Just take a look at the corporate education reform madness they push out.  I have no doubt Gates is concerned about the workforce of tomorrow.  By making sure we are all learning online, Microsoft continues to profit.  And all the other ed tech companies are chomping at the bit for their big paydays of the future.  This is ALL about corporate profit.

Hillary Clinton will, in all likelihood, be our next President.  She is all in on this.  Every single step.  And she has been since the very beginning.  The question is if we can, as everyday Americans, education enough people to rise up and tell our government to stop selling out education to investors, hedge fund managers, and ed tech companies.  That will be the challenge.  How do you stop corporations and billionaires from taking over not only education but the entire economy?  It takes courage and strength, bravery and daring.  It is in all of us.  Now we have to bring it out more than ever so we can turn the future into one of our design, not those who wish to be prophets and profit.

The above picture was from the following link: https://www.quora.com/Which-2016-presidential-candidate-does-Bill-Gates-support

 

Delaware Hispanic Commission Not Happy About Treatment Of ELL Students In Delaware

Delaware Hispanic Commission, English Language Learner Students

As I was updating the Education Meetings & Events tab at the top of my blog, I was perusing through the Delaware Public Meeting Calendar.  I found an entry in December, January, and February for the Delaware Hispanic Commission.  Their education committee is having meetings to discuss the treatment of English Language Learner students in Delaware.  This is actually becoming a VERY big topic lately.  I’ve been hearing both Red Clay and Christina are ill-equipped to handle this growing population.  The students services are not being met, and parents are not happy.

If you are a parent or a teacher of an ELL student and you want to talk about the status of ELL in Delaware, please come to their next meeting on December 15th, 3pm, at 198 Commerce Way, Administration Building in Dover.  It appears last month’s meeting of this committee was canceled.

DHCEducation

Smarter Balanced Assessment System Is Having Many Issues, A Good Sign!!!!

Smarter Balanced Assessment

Teacher, Red Clay Educators Association President and ex-blogger Mike Matthews put a post up on Facebook after fighting with the Smarter Balanced Assessment “proctor” system throughout the day.  In response, many teachers complained about the issues as well today.

Apparently, you can only get to the training system through Firefox, something the Delaware Department of Education told Matthews today after emails and tweets to them.  But that didn’t stop the problems.

Teachers of Delaware: Do you have any horror stories to tell about your attempts to get certified to proctor the Smarter Balanced Assessment via the PDMS system? Please share your stories here or private message me.

And the teachers responded!

I tried to do it yesterday and couldn’t get it to open

I’ve tried multiple times and keep getting a message that says too many on the system – try again later…

doesn’t bode for when when thousands of kids are accessing the test simultaneously.

Tried at home. I could register but not complete the course. Will try tomorrow at school. (uhm, no you won’t.  You won’t have school tomorrow.  Calling it now, snowmageddon on the way!)

I just tried as well. This. Is. Not. Working. I’ve sent an email to the District test coordinator and I put Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) on blast on Twitter. LOL

Have to wait 24 hours before viewing. Pain in the butt to find the assessments (at top of pp headings) and the paperwork admin wants is on page 5 bottom PDF. Took me three hours!!!

 I am registered but was not able to access from home, though I have been able to access from home on PDMS for other courses.

I registered Friday. Tried today. No luck.

I wonder how this is going to work when everyone in the state is taking this! (that’s actually the part I can’t wait to hear about.  I’m so glad my son won’t be taking part in this horrorfest since I OPTED HIM OUT!!!!  DELAWARE PARENTS, DO NOT LET YOUR CHILD TAKE THIS TEST! If they can ever get it running!  This should be fun.  Not for the teachers, but for the kids!)

I took it on Friday- at first it said there were too many users, but then it let me in. After the first presentation, I thought I was done, but there were 2 more. Took me the whole afternoon session of PD. Luckily, I put it on the smart board and was able to work.

Too many sections, especially for coordinators; interims training not good for “regular” assessment so you have to take double the training; separate sections for ELL, disabilities, & general accommodations- why can’t this all be in a single training???

My fave part: We’re suddenly “experts” after sitting through this ONE TIME. *sigh*

I have been trying at home since Friday = nightmarish! Weird errors, NO presentation, NO pdfs, I can only print the final “scary” completion sheets. So many pop-ups! I definitely have latest Adobe. I am using Chrome. With distaste, I opened it in Explorer – and also became too frustrated. I call myself slightly computer savvy and came to the conclusion that the “course” is crazy. I was going to try after school one day this week. grrrrrr

I’ve had trouble with PDMS at home before (on my Mac)- always works better for me at school!

Wonder what they’d say if I taught my kids this way: “Here, read this PowerPoint. Instant mastery!”

 Registering wasn’t bad. Accessing the training was and still is a nightmare

This was the point where I chimed in!

Why are you all complaining about this? This is a good thing! Maybe the whole system will explode and all the SBA files will disappear. It’s a good omen I say!  I think I’m going to write an article about this!

Please do. Include this, Kevin: Why can’t DoE do appropriate UAT to ensure that their (expletive deleted) training programs work on something other than Firefox?! They are a mess.

I tried on Firefox and it did not work on that either

All teachers should boycott this certification. (and the test and Common Core)

I figured if I’m going to write about this I should know what UAT and PDMS stand for!

Can anyone tell me what UAT and PDMS stand for?

UAT means user acceptance testing. In other words, testing all their systems and programming (ie PDMS) to ensure it can be used by all browsers and all operating systems. Clearly, this training on PDMS (Professional Development Management System) did not go through any UAT.  PDMS is the system teachers use to receive certain professional development courses.

Can we also vent about the fact that the district provided zero training, as far as I know, for the student training link or administration of SB???

Oh, is that what the DOE gave all that money to Amplify for? (that was me, I’ll admit it!)

That’s right.  That’s our honorable DOE.  I hope all these teachers working on this today get a floater or two for working on a holiday!  If the Smarter Balanced system is causing THIS many problems and it hasn’t even started yet, I’m going to predict chaos and mayhem when this thing rolls out.  It’s a shame schools don’t have free wi-fi.  Parents could sit outside the school during the test and hog up all the bandwidth watching Netflix!