Educational Technology: Tool for Capitalism or Democracy?

This week on education radio, we examine educational technology in the current climate of neoliberal education reform – particularly in regard to socioeconomic inequalities – and explore other possibilities for its use that support more democratic, creative and collaborative constructions of knowledge.

The relationship between education reform, technology, and socioeconomic inequalities is multilayered and complex, and our hope in this first in a series of shows on technology and education is to raise some of the larger political and ideological concepts framing how technology actually gets used. We also examine the current market for educational technology and its impact on educational practices. 

We hear from Dan Schiller, Communication scholar at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and author of the book Digital Capitalism; Martha Fuentes-Bautista, Commuication and Public Policy scholar at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Patricia Burch, Associate Professor at the USC Rossier School of Education/author of Hidden Markets, The New Education Privatization; and Stephen Krashen, Professor Emeritus at the USC Rossier School of Education.

Program #13 on Internet Archive

Program #13 on AudioPort (podcast)

Multicultural and Anti-Oppressive Education: In theory and practice

In this week's show we speak with James Banks and Kevin Kumashiro, two prominent figures in the field of multicultural and anti-oppressive education.

James Banks

James Banks is often referred to as the founder of multicultural education in the United States. He is a professor of education at the University of Washington. Over the past four decades, Banks has constructed a body of knowledge designed to disrupt curriculum based in dominant group norms by including perspectives from marginalized groups as a way to enable students to develop knowledge, attitudes, and skills to become active citizens in a multicultural nation and a diverse world.

A son of black farmers who grew up in Jim Crow south, James Banks became the first black professor in the College of Education at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle where he is also founding director of UW’s Center for Multicultural Education. In addition to writing over 20 books, Banks has served as a consultant to school districts, professional organizations, and universities throughout the United States and around the globe.

Kevin Kumashiro

Kevin Kumashiro is professor of Asian American Studies and Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and president-elect of the National Association for Multicultural Education. His research and teaching span the field of anti-oppressive education, and include issues in teacher education, the “common sense” of schooling and the praxis of social justice education. 

Kumashiro has taught in both elementary and secondary schools as well worked with student teachers, and has written numerous books and articles. He is simultaneously a researcher, teacher, and activist in the field of anti-oppressive education. In our interview, we hear from Kumashiro about what has led him to the work that he does. He talks about the purpose and function of schooling, as well as the “common sense” of education and education reform.

You can download mp3s of this program via the following links:
Program #12: Multicultural and Anti-Oppressive Education: In theory and practice
Program #12: Multicultural and Anti-Oppressive Education: In theory and practice (podcast)

On the road with Patricia Williams and Bill Ayers

In this weeks program we speak with legal scholar and critical race theorist Patricia Williams and education scholar and activist Bill Ayers. We caught up with both of them in Chicago in November 2011, at the National Association for Multicultural Education's annual conference, for which they were both keynote speakers.

Patricia Williams is a legal scholar and was a pioneer in critical race theory.
Critical Race Theory developed in the 1980 s as a result of the desire of many black legal scholars in the U.S. to develop a critique of liberal civil rights discourse, which embodied ideals of assimilation and integration. Critical Race Theory analyzes the way that white supremacy and racial power is reproduced over time and the role that law plays in this process. Patricia Williams is a professor of law at Columbia University and writes a column for The Nation magazine called Diary of a Mad Law Professor. In this program, she shares her perspective on race and inequity in the U.S. education system.

Bill Ayers is a distinguished professor of Education and Senior University Scholar in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago where his work has focused on teaching for social justice and issues in urban education. His involvement in education reaches back decades, and includes primary school teaching and work in early innovative urban education reform efforts. Bill is well-known for his leadership in militant resistance groups during the Vietnam War, within Students for a Democratic Society, the Weathermen and Weather Underground. We spoke with Bill about resistance and hope in the movement to transform our society and our schools.

Music by Lupe Fiasco - Words I Never Said

You can download mp3s of this program via the following links:
Program #11 On the road with Patricia Williams and Bill Ayers on Internet Archive
Program #11 On the road with Patricia Williams and Bill Ayers on Audioport (podcast)

Learn more about National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME)

Patricia Williams
http://madlawprofessor.wordpress.com/

Educations Radio's Deborah Polin with Bill Ayers at the NAME conference
http://billayers.org/

Educations Radio's Tim Scott getting fresh with Bill Ayers at the NAME conference

We are the 99%: Fighting for the "Public" in Education

In this week’s program, we feature the Occupy Together movement; also referred to as the 99% movement. We share testimony of educators, parents, students, and teacher union organizers who are participating, and we reflect on the time we spent at Occupy locations in New York, Boston and Amherst, Massachusetts. We also explore the deep connections between this movement and the fight for equity in public education.

We are living in a time when banks and corporations responsible for the most recent economic collapse received massive government bailouts, many of which are now thriving more than ever, and corporate profits on a whole are at an all time high. Military spending is higher now than at any point since World War II as a means to build and maintain a much-despised empire abroad, and despite a major recession, the wealthiest Americans have grown even richer. 

Consequently, massive and extensive unemployment is making a bad situation worse for many, especially African Americans and Latinos who are experiencing further declines in employment rates, rising poverty rates, falling homeownership rates, and decreasing health insurance and retirement coverage. Additionally, the overall number of people living in poverty has reached the largest number in the 51 years for which poverty estimates are available; and the income gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 90 percent has reached a level higher than any other since 1917, which includes the “Great Depression” of the 1930s. 

Set against this context, we at Education Radio have been inspired by the 99% movement – and see ourselves not as outside of it as neutral bystanders, but as deeply connected to it, with a responsibility to use the platform we have to continue to disrupt the dominant narrative. So a group of us spent a few days down at Occupy Wall Street, observing, participating, and documenting the range of participant voices, specifically those who are invested in public education.

You can download mp3s of this program via the following links:
Program #10 We are the 99% on Internet Archive
Program #10 We are the 99% on Audioport (Podcast)

Also, find out more about the 99% Movement and the Teacher Activist Groups you heard about in this program here:
Occupy Wall Street
New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCORE)
New Jersey Teacher Activist Group
Occupy the Hood 
People of Color Working Group at OWS
Cornel West on Democracy Now
Ira Shor

Unconditional Positive Regard: Can Radical Love Survive Strict Accountability Structures? (Part Two of Two)

The Peck Full Service Community School – which is part of a district under threat of corrective action by the state -- is attempting to create aschool community where engagement, voice, shared decision making, and caringare understood to be central to student achievement. In this second part of a two-part episode, we return toPeck Full Service Community School to examine the complexities of how itadheres to its two core values -- ‘student achievement’ and ‘unconditional positive regard’ -- within thecurrent climate of high-stakes testing and strict accountability structures. As Education Radio has come to know the people and practices of Peck, wefind ourselves raising questions about not only how, but if, school communitiescan be remade to be more human and democratic under the narrowing andoppressive pressures of our current accountability systems.

In this episode we again hear from Paul Hyry-Dermith, Principal of the Peck Full Service Community School, as well as two teachers at Peck, Katie Silva and Justin Cotton. We also spoke with Alan Bloomgarden, a community partner and Peck Access Coordinator.

Use the following links to download this show as an mp3:
Program #9 on Audioport
Program #9 on Internet Archive

Family Voice and Engagement in a High Needs Public School: Radical Caring as School Reform (Part One of Two)

Community schools, wrap around schools, and full service community schools are all names used to describe a growing trend that sees school –community partnerships as a means to address the issues of poverty- homelessness-hunger-lack of health care-that must be attended to before students can be expected to focus on learning.  The connection between poverty and poor school performance is real and well documented. While the neo-liberal discourse dismisses the impact of poverty on student learning and even suggests, in the twisted manipulations of language that mark its narrative, that to attend to a child’s poverty is to somehow diminish the student’s potential, going to school hungry, living with insecurity about shelter, and struggling to meet basic needs like heating, health care, vision and dental care severely impact children as they begin the school day.

For this week's program, Education Radio went to William Peck Full Service Community School in Holyoke Massachusetts to find out how they understand, and practice, what it means to be a full service community school. At Peck, located in Holyoke, one of the poorest communities in Massachusetts, we discovered a school community where discourses of caring, of relationship, and of humanness dominate - and are seen as essential to student achievement. At Peck family engagement equates to voice, decision making, and active participation in the day to day life of the school.

This program features several different voices and perspectives at Peck - we hear from Principal Paul Hyry-Demith, Project Director Megan Harding, Family Engagement Coordinator Maria Luisa Arroyo and teacher Justin Cotton. We also hear from Peck parents and Family Leaders Gloria Aquino and Raphael Torres as well as a Peck student. 


This program is the first part of a two-part series.

To download an mp3 of this show, please follow these links:

Education Radio Program #8 on Internet Archive

Education Radio Program #8 on Audioport

For more information about what you hear on this program, please visit the following:

William Peck Full Service Community School

The Reality of Virtual Schooling

Follow the links below to download this show as a podcast:


Internet Archive
Audioport (podcast)

In this week's program, we explore the proliferation of virtual schools. Virtual schools offer on-line education to primary and secondary school students without the added expenses associated with brick and mortar structures and unionized teachers and support staff. 


We hear opinions on virtual schools from well-known education scholars Jonathon Kozol and Diane Ravitch. We investigate one such virtual school, the Massachusetts Virtual Academy in Greenfield, Massachusetts. We talk with the superintentendent of schools, Dr. Susan Hollins, who was the driving force behind the opening of that school in 2010, and we also speak with two Greenfield School Committee members, Maryelen Calderwood and Andrew Blais, who opposed it. Finally, we turn to early childhood education scholar Nancy Carlsson-Paige, who talks about the vitally important social, emotional and cognitive needs of young children that are in danger of not being met by virtual schools.


We also explore K12 Inc., a for-profit publicly traded technology-based education company that touts itself as the largest provider of proprietary curriculum and online education programs for primary and secondary students in the United States. It is also one of the fastest growing operators of virtual charter schools worldwide. K-12 Inc. was founded in 1999 by Michael Milken and William J. Bennett, a former Reagan Secretary of Education and Bush senior drug czar. We take some time to talk about the background of these men, along with several others involved with this company. 
  
To learn more about virtual schools and about what you hear on this program, visit the following links:
Education According to Mike Milken by John Hechinger
Virtual Schools Expand Students' Network by Laura Insensee
Outsourcing Information: The Rise of Virtual Schools by Nancy Hanover
The Massachusetts Virtual Academy
Susan Ohanian on K-12