Joy Resmovits
Aug. 5, 2011
""We have become increasingly concerned with the proposed contract," Michael Mulgrew and Richard Iannuzzi, who respectively head New York City's and the state's teachers' unions, wrote in the note.
The letter is addressed to New York State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, state Commissioner of Education John King, Jr., and copied to State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli.
"It is especially troubling that Wireless Generation will be tasked with creating a centralized student database for personal information even as its parent company, News Corporation, stands accused of engaging in illegal news gathering tactics, including the hacking of private voicemail accounts," the letter reads.
Murdoch acquired 90 percent of Wireless Generation for about $360 million last November. At the time of the acquisition, Murdoch said he saw K-12 education as a "$500 billion sector." Murdoch's first general move in the education sector had come just a few weeks earlier, when he tapped Joel Klein, then the chancellor of New York City's schools, to lead his education ventures.
The Wireless Generation contracts were approved while Klein still ran the district, leading to speculation about the chancellor's intentions."
Liz B. Davis 5:22
"Titled, In Classroom of the Future, Stagnant Scores , the article describes a school in Arizona where, despite a huge investment in technology, there hasn't been an increase in test scores.
The article is based on one school in one town in Arizona, hardly a statistically significant sample. Larry Cuban, an outspoken critic of technology in schools since the early 1990s, is quoted multiple times. Not one of the many experts in the field of educational technology, whom we know and love, was interviewed (or at least quoted) in the article. The only reason given for the failure of technology is a lack of increase in test scores in a district that already had high test scores. Finally, there was no test comparing the technology skills of students in this school to any other school in the state.
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