Dear Commons Community,

Donald Trump has had a horrific couple of weeks of campaign publicity ignited by his insensitive comments about the Khan family.  He was skewered at the Democratic National Convention. Several major Republican supporters have abandoned him. He and his running mate, Mike Pence, are having public disagreements over endorsements of House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senator John McCain. Yet, Trump is seeing his fund raising soar especially from small donors. As reported in The Huffington Post:

 
“Donald Trump’s fundraising efforts are no longer hurting, after he raised $82 million for his campaign and the Republican National Committee in July.

 
It appears that the strength of the GOP presidential nominee’s fundraising comes from small donor contributions. The campaign says that it has raised about $64 million through digital and direct mail operations with support from the RNC. These tend to be donations of under $200, so nearly all of that money is likely headed to Trump campaign coffers. The campaign further stated that the businessman raised $16 million in larger donations for both his campaign, the RNC and a handful of state parties.

 
“We are extremely proud of our 69 percent growth in small dollar donations which shows the broad based support of over one million donors across America. Our volunteers and contributors are clearly committed to electing Donald J. Trump as President in November,” said Trump campaign finance chairman Steven Mnuchin in a statement.

 
The real estate mogul personally donated $2 million of his own money in July, according to the campaign. Trump will match small donations up to $2 million, his team said. The press release goes out of its way to mention that Trump’s contributions exceed the amount the campaign spent on companies, properties and vehicles owned by the candidate himself. “His contributions for the month far surpass the FEC required reimbursements to his related entities, i.e., airplane, Trump properties and the like,” it reads. This may be an attempt to assuage donors of concerns that Trump is using their money to line his own pockets.

 
The Republican presidential nominee had $37 million on hand at the beginning of August in his campaign account and another $37 million available in two joint fundraising committees.

 
Trump’s total fundraising still trails that of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. She raised $90 million in conjunction with the Democratic National Committee and a number of state parties. Of that total, $63 million went to her campaign and $26 million went to the DNC and the state parties. In this respect, it is possible that the Trump campaign actually out-raised Clinton.

 
This was the second full month that Trump spent raising money from donors. He raised $51 million in June, after entering the month with only $1.3 million cash on hand.”

 
Hillary Clinton and the Democrats should take nothing for granted if they hope to win the election in November. And in the words of Elizabeth Warren they need to be careful “not to screw this up”.

 
Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett Packard, has joined the likes of Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett and Mark Cuban who have endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. As reported by Reuters and the New York Times:

“Calling Donald Trump an “authoritarian character” and a threat to democracy, Meg Whitman, a prominent Republican fundraiser and chief executive of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton’s White House bid late yesterday.

“To vote Republican out of party loyalty alone would be to endorse a candidacy that I believe has exploited anger, grievance, xenophobia and racial division. Donald Trump’s demagoguery has undermined the fabric of our national character,” Whitman posted on Facebook about the Republican nominee.

In an interview with the New York Times, which first reported the endorsement, Whitman said it was time “to put country first before party” and that she would give a “substantial” contribution to Clinton’s campaign.

Whitman told the Times that Trump is a “dishonest demagogue” and said that those who look at other failed democracies and believe “it can’t happen here” are mistaken.

“Trump’s unsteady hand would endanger our prosperity and national security. His authoritarian character could threaten much more,” Whitman wrote on Facebook.

Whitman’s endorsement is the latest from a string of business leaders who have moved to back Clinton in recent days, including other high-profile Republicans.

Clinton reached out to Whitman personally about a month ago, according to the Times report. Her campaign also courted former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who delivered an endorsement speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last week.

Clinton’s campaign viewed Bloomberg, a billionaire Republican and household name, as being able to go toe-to-toe with Trump’s claims he is best suited to run the country given his own business credentials, according to those familiar with the discussions.

Dallas Mavericks owner and television personality Mark Cuban also backed Clinton last week, calling her campaign chairman John Podesta on the night she accepted her nomination to say he was ready to support the former secretary of state.

Cuban on Saturday made a surprise appearance at a Clinton rally in Columbus, Ohio, reversing course from earlier statements that he would likely vote for Trump.

“Leadership is creating consensus in our amazing country and letting everybody know that American exceptionalism and the American dream are alive and well, that’s what leadership is, that’s what Hillary Clinton is,” said Cuban.

It is likely that more business leaders will be coming out publicly to support Clinton.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A number of for-profit colleges and universities have had enrollments spiraling downward for the past five years and it appears that the trend is not changing.  ITT Educational Services Inc. which operates more than 130 campuses enrolling 40,000 students is projecting a 45 to 60 percent drop in new student enrollment in the coming six months.  As reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“New-student enrollment at institutions run by ITT Educational Services Inc. may drop by 45 to 60 percent over roughly the next six months, compared with the same period a year earlier, according to a new corporate filing by the company. ITT, which operates more than 130 campuses and enrolls more than 40,000 students, has long been under scrutiny by several agencies, including the U.S. Education Department, which last year tightened its restrictions on the company’s access to federal student aid.

The company’s disclosure, first reported by BuzzFeed News, came in its quarterly report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company has already cut its expenses extensively, according to the filing, having ended new-student enrollment on five campuses and closed another in June.

One other source of uncertainty for the company is the status of its accreditor, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, which may have its federal recognition revoked, a step that would throw the status of hundreds of colleges into limbo.”

These are troubled times for ITT Educational Services Inc. and a number of other for-profits institutions.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Seymour Papert who was a visionary in the use of computer technology in K-12 education, died at his home in Maine on July 31^st.  He foresaw in the 1960s the potential of personal computers as vehicles for teaching, learning, and education creativity.  Anyone who ever saw him speak, would never forget the infectious twinkle in his eyes that won people to his points of view. Below is an excerpt from my book, Online Education Policy and Practice: The Past, Present, and Future of the Digital University, which will be available later this year.

“Seymour Papert was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and completed a doctor of philosophy program in mathematics at the University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) and at Cambridge University.  He held several faculty appointments at European universities before accepting a position at MIT in 1963 where he remained for much of his career.  Papert made a number of contributions to the study of artificial intelligence and cognition but is most associated with the development of the Logo programming language used mostly by children.  Working with colleagues, Daniel G. Bobrow, Wally Feurzeig,  and Cynthia Solomon, Logo was developed in 1967.  The original intent of the Logo project was to develop a way to teach artificial intelligence and used LISP, derived from “LISt Processing”, as its developmental programming tool.  However, Papert, influenced by the work of Jean Piaget, converted the project into designing a programming language that could be used by children.  Papert’s philosophy behind the design, was based on experiential and discovery learning which at the time had little if any relationship to computer programming.  

Papert, who lived and studied with Jean Piaget, believed that children were able to benefit from computer technology at a very early age. The fundamental Logo concept of manipulating a friendly-turtle icon was directed specifically at the young learner and is derived from Piaget’s theories on cognitive development. Though children develop cognitively at different rates, Piaget proposed that logical thinking, at least as applied to physical reality, begins at approximately 7 to 11 years of age. Logo and its derivatives, such as Microworlds, and many other software programs directed at the young learner have been used successfully in many elementary school programs. While offered as a content area in which children learn about computer technology, Logo is also commonly integrated with other curriculum activities such as mathematics and problem solving. The success of Logo and other software packages designed for young children also suggests that many children of elementary school age are indeed cognitively ready to use and benefit from technology experiences.”

Papert inspired many of us  and was our beacon in the world of education technology. May he rest in peace.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

An algorithm is a procedure or set of instructions often used by a computer to solve a problem. A credit score, for instance, is based on an algorithm that examines an individual’s past debt and loan information.  It is also one of the few algorithms that consumers have a legal right to examine the underlying data used to generate it.  However, for most other algorithms, people are expected to read fine-print privacy policies, in the hopes of determining whether their data might be used against them in a way that they wouldn’t expect. Julia Angwin, a reporter for ProPublica, has an op-ed in today’s New York Times raising the issue of the public’s right to know and challenge algorithms that influence our lives.  Here is an excerpt:

“We urgently need more due process with the algorithmic systems influencing our lives,” says Kate Crawford, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research who has called for big data due process requirements. “If you are given a score that jeopardizes your ability to get a job, housing or education, you should have the right to see that data, know how it was generated, and be able to correct errors and contest the decision.”

The European Union has recently adopted a due process requirement for data-driven decisions based “solely on automated processing” that “significantly affect” citizens. The new rules, which are set to go into effect in May 2018, give European Union citizens the right to obtain an explanation of automated decisions and to challenge those decisions.

However, since the European regulations apply only to situations that don’t involve human judgment “such as automatic refusal of an online credit application or e-recruiting practices without any human intervention,” they are likely to affect a narrow class of automated decisions.

In 2012, the Obama administration proposed a “consumer privacy bill of rights” — modeled on European data protection principles — that would have allowed consumers to access and correct some data that was used to make judgments about them. But the measure died in Congress.”

Ms. Angwin raises an  important issue that has ramifications for many services (healthcare, criminal justice, job applications, college admissions, etc.).  This issue will become more important as various agencies and organizations collect more and more data on the populace.  There is especially a growing concern about the nature of data (grades, behavior, special education needs) that are being collected on school children and that can follow them into adulthood when applying  for admission to a college or for a job.

Tony