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STEM and Education Tech: Two But Not Two Frauds

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By Thomas Ultican / Tultican

Last year, IBIS Capital produced a report for EdTechXGlobal stating, “Education technology is becoming a global phenomenon, … the market is projected to grow at 17.0% per annum, to $252bn by 2020.” Governments in Europe and Asia have joined the US in promoting what Dr. Nicholas Kardaras called a “$60 billion hoax.” He was referring specifically to the one to one initiatives.

An amazing paper from New Zealand, “Sell, sell, sell or learn, learn, learn? The EdTech market in New Zealand’s education system – privatisation by stealth?” exposes the promoters of EdTech there as being even more bullish on EdTech. “The New Zealand business organisation (they spell funny) EDTechNZ, indicates on its website that educational technology is the fastest growing sector of a global smart education market worth US$100 billion, forecast to grow to US$394 by 2019.”

These initiatives are fraud based agendas because they focus on advancing an industry but are sold as improving schools. Unfortunately, good education is not the driver; money is. Speaking this month to a class at MIT, Audrey Watters shared insights into the phenomena,   [Read more…]

Union-Tribune Editorial: A Spurious Attack on Teachers and Public Education

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By Thomas Ultican / Tultican

An editorial in The San Diego Union Tribunesays that Democrats in the Trump era see themselves as protecting the disadvantaged but that’s not true when it comes to schools. The editorial claims, “When it comes to public education, however, there’s fresh evidence that state Democratic leaders are the ones siding with the powerful forces over the disadvantaged.”

Those powerful forces – in an era when billionaires like Carrie Walton Penner, Reed Hastings and Eli Broad flex their financial muscle to privatize schools –  are teachers and their unions. The evidence presented is bogus and the conclusions reached are based on willful ignorance.   [Read more…]

False Narratives Drive Charter School Advocacy in UT Op-Ed

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Thomas Ultican / Tultican

Another editorial in the San Diego Union attacks teachers and the California public education system. The author has a personal work history of harming California’s public schools by scheming to privatize them. The editorial was written by Rae Belisle. She is identified as a former member of California’s State Board of Education, but she is so much more than that.   [Read more…]

Higher Education and the American Political Imagination

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As I enter my thirtieth year as a professor at a public college of one kind or another, I’m used to the constant political fray that comes with being in the middle of funding battles, debates about education reform, and the culture wars, but this may be the first time in my long career that I have begun a new semester with the knowledge that a large number of Americans no longer see higher education as a public good.

Over the summer, the Pew Research Center released an interesting poll that helps explain where we are at this political and cultural moment in America. The survey revealed that most Republicans now believe that institutions of higher education have an adverse effect on the United States.   [Read more…]

A Tale of Two Very Different School Board Meetings

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By Thomas Ultican / Tultican

It’s not always pretty when the public gets a chance to voice its opinion, but it is democratic. Recently, I attended the Sweetwater Union High School District (SUHSD) and the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) school board meetings. It was reminiscent of Dicken’s depiction of Paris and London.

Sweetwater, which has been living a nightmare for most of the previous decade, was like being at camp sitting around a bonfire singing “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt.” It wasn’t quite “Kumbaya,” but it was close.

SDUSD was the opposite. Parents, teachers and various community leaders came to engage in public debate. It was a war of words and philosophy. It was far from a kumbaya moment. People made their case in a public forum and with one dreadful exception, they did so in a respectful manner.   [Read more…]

A Journey of Self Discovery and Giving Back

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When Juan Martin Sajche left his small village in Guatemala in 1997 at the age of 15, he never dreamed he would one day be a respected Spanish teacher at Morse High School in San Diego. The past twenty years have been quite a journey!   [Read more…]

UT Editorial Peddles School Privatization Agenda

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By Thomas Ultican / Tultican

The San Diego Union-Tribune editorial board deserves the bunkum efficiency award for packing so much baloney into a scant five paragraphs. The first sentence of the editorial headlined “Still more bad faith from state ED board” says:

“The State Board of Education’s defining characteristic is its ardent defense of an education establishment more worried about the interests of teachers than students.”

It’s true that the education establishment in California does listen to input from teachers and their unions, however, today the establishment is dominated by billionaires like Reed Hasting and Carrie Walton Penner. There are many other establishment powerhouses like the California Charter School Association (CCSA), representatives of the education testing industry and education technology profiteers.   [Read more…]

‘Go Public’, Trauma Informed Education and EnCorps

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By Thomas Ultican / Tultican

A story of intrigue, real education reform and wealthy ignorance.

A film maker, Rita Grant, called asking me to join an expert education panel at San Diego State University (SDSU). She said she found me when reading Diane Ravitch’s blog and thought I would be a good fit. The event was a screening of the film “Go Public” at EnCorps’ Summer Residential Institute, followed by question and answers with the panel. I was not familiar with EnCorps, “Go Public” or Rita but nothing ventured nothing gained. So, I went.

I met a wonderful group of people, but their organization’s reason for being is misinformed. It’s another education reform organization created by a well-connected misinformed rich person with little relevant training or experience in education, Sherry Lansing.   [Read more…]

Rediscovering Japan: Keio University

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In early June 2017, I visited my family and friends in Tokyo, Japan. An additional purpose of this trip was to present a paper on theatre education in the United States at the Japanese Society for Theatre Research Conference.

This event is held on the campus of Keio University located in Hiyoshi, Yokohama, about 12 miles west of the central Tokyo, my alma mater. During my stay, I also visited the Tsukiji Fish Market, one of the most famous fish markets in the world. This essay is about Keio University.   [Read more…]

Are We Witnessing the End of Public Education as We Know It? — Part Two

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By Kelly Mayhew

This is how the privatization story goes: demonize public schools and their teachers, hold charter schools up as excellent alternatives, create corporate charters and charter chains that use management companies to do the daily operations and siphon public tax money for schools into private businesses, employ non-union teachers who you can hire and fire at will. That’s how it works in a nutshell.

Organizations such as the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) in concert with rich philanthropists fuel the flames of parents’ fears about public schools and use the rhetoric of “competition” to justify their actions—that they “help” public schools improve by competing with them.

They also fund efforts to stack school boards with charter school proponents to grease the wheels for more to open.
  [Read more…]

San Diego Schools Embrace Untested “Depersonalized” Learning

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By Thomas Ultican / Tultican

San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) is spending lavishly on technology despite their budgets being decimated by California’s unaccountable charter school industry. During the 2016-17 school year, SDUSD bought digital badging and 16,000 new Chromebooks.

“The district is struggling with a projected $124 million shortfall to its $1.4 billion budget, and have issued in the neighborhood of 1,500 layoff notices to full and part-time employees” reports the San Diego Union.

This kind of insanity seems to be a national movement. There is almost no evidence supporting these new theories of technology driven education. Yet, the leaders of financially strapped SDUSD are spending to have their students become experimental subjects for learning products produced by technology companies.   [Read more…]

Are We Witnessing the End of Public Education as We Know It? — Part One

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By Jim Miller / Kelly Mayhew

These are dire times for public education. With Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education leading the charge for big budget cuts, charter schools, and a radical privatization agenda, the possibility that free quality public education for all in America could soon be a thing of the past is real.

One would think that such clear and present danger to a cornerstone of our democracy coming from the right would unite Democrats behind the mantle of defending public education.

Sadly, however, that is not the case as even now, in the face of this assault, we see Democrats lining up with the billionaire-funded charter school lobby to wage holy war on teachers’ unions in name of making it easier to get rid of “bad teachers” to save the children.   [Read more…]

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