Dear Commons Community,
The New York Times has a featured article today on Amplify, a company owned by Rupert Murdoch and led by Joel Klein, former New York City’s schools chancellor. Amplify is promoting a tablet computer for every child hooked into a database maintained by the company. Surely there are benefits to using technology in education. Tablets and other digital equipment can be important providers of content, instruction, and improved communications among students, teachers, administrators and parents. The article reviews several of these issues well. However, there are several concerns.
First, Murdoch, Klein and company represent the view that public education as a system is broken and has to be disrupted by privatization. Supported by Arne Duncan and Bill Gates, Amplify represents “reforms that increase the role of market forces — choice, competition, the profit motive — in education…[They] want private enterprises vying to make money by providing innovative educational products and services…” Klein’s basic strategy as chancellor was to close down public schools and open charter schools in their stead. While chancellor, he raised ethical questions by working for a charter schools lobbying group to help them to raise money.
Second, Joel Klein has absolutely no people skills. He created a toxic environment that vilified teachers and ignored parents. He bashed teachers mercilessly and blamed them for all that was wrong in the NYC public schools. He had absolutely no relationship with the United Federation of Teachers and was incapable of negotiating with them on education issues. His handling of school closings was abysmal with parents screaming and shouting at public hearings for their children and neighborhood schools. He consistently ignored any of their pleas.
Lastly, there is a serious question regarding privacy and having student data in any private enterprise’s database let alone one owned by Rupert Murdoch. The article references Josh Golin, the associate director at the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood: “When you are talking about Rupert Murdoch and his empire, there are a number of ways that data could be valuable to his companies beyond instruction.” In response, Klein says flatly, “The data belongs to the district.” The agreement…requires Amplify to secure the district’s permission if it wants to use any of that data — in anonymized form — to improve its products. “The more you rely on big data to improve the human experience, the more risk there is,” Klein says. “But we shouldn’t be able to freelance with the data. I’m not Amazon..” However, after what happened in the United Kingdom with Murdoch’s well-publicized scandals involving hacking into phone and voice mail and then bribing of police officials, school district administrators should not trust a Murdoch-owned company with their children’s data.
In closing, school districts would be wise to steer clear of any product produced by Murdoch, Klein and company. Their attitudes, personalities, and previous performance should set red warning lights going that they are all about profit and nothing else. It is a shame because education technology does have a lot to offer but not from these two.
Tony
