Compulsory Dyslexia Screening: A Trojan Horse To Advance Data Collection For Predatory Pay For Success Deals in Pre-K and Early Literacy – Wrench in the Gears

Compulsory Dyslexia Screening: A Trojan Horse To Advance Data Collection For Predatory Pay For Success Deals in Pre-K and Early Literacy – Wrench in the Gears

Compulsory Dyslexia Screening: A Trojan Horse To Advance Data Collection For Predatory Pay For Success Deals in Pre-K and Early Literacy

I put together a presentation to warn California educators, parents, and elected officials about Boston Consulting Group’s ties to compulsory dyslexia screening legislation. See the consulting firm’s July 2020 white paper, The Economic Impact of Dyslexia in California. This is the cost-offset analysis that will be used to justify future data extraction schemes. BCG was behind the closure of 23 schools in Philadelphia in 2013. That event launched my personal journey into researching human capital finance. This article I wrote in 2018, Silicon Valley: A Laboratory of Smart Surveillance and Privatization, provides useful background on impact investing in the Bay Area. Pay particular attention to the parties involved with the Strong Start and Big Lift pay for success deals (pre-k and early literacy). The latter effort is backed by the San Mateo County Office of Education one of the funders of the UCSF dyslexia risk screening tool AppRise, which has ties via Curious Learning to global ed-tech investors and defense / neuroscience interests. CONTINUE READING: Compulsory Dyslexia Screening: A Trojan Horse To Advance Data Collection For Predatory Pay For Success Deals in Pre-K and Early Literacy – Wrench in the Gears

Los Angeles Schools Embrace Microsoft’s “Daily Pass” QR Health Portal – Wrench in the Gears

Los Angeles Schools Embrace Microsoft’s “Daily Pass” QR Health Portal – Wrench in the Gears

Los Angeles Schools Embrace Microsoft’s “Daily Pass” QR Health Portal

This past week many people on social media have been expressing concern about a video promoting the Los Angeles Unified School District’s adoption of a health-screening data portal that was developed by Microsoft in partnership with Anthem Health, the country’s largest membership health system. Anthem is affiliated with Blue Cross Blue Shield in fourteen states. The Daily Pass portal feeds data to Stanford and Johns Hopkins Universities, both with extensive ties to pay for success finance, as well as to UCLA where Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock the world’s largest asset manager, obtained his MBA.

In this 90-minute conversation with Kevin Jenkins of Urban Global Health Alliance I went into detail regarding concerns I have around weakened student data privacy protections, pay for success provisions in the Every Student Succeeds Act, planned expansion of tele-health and tele-therapy services through Medicaid, community school wrap around services, and the potential for social welfare systems to be weaponized against low income families with school-age children. In order to scale outcomes-based contracting deals tied to education data, social-emotional data, and healthcare data, social impact investors need for students to be assigned a digital identity that will aggregate data for predictive analytics and assessment of investor “success metrics.” I believe that is the end game for medical status passports like Daily Pass. You can access the slides CONTINUE READING: Los Angeles Schools Embrace Microsoft’s “Daily Pass” QR Health Portal – Wrench in the Gears

Open Letter to Dr. Miguel Cardona On The Future Of Public Education And Indigenous Resurgence – Wrench in the Gears

Open Letter to Dr. Miguel Cardona On The Future Of Public Education And Indigenous Resurgence – Wrench in the Gears

Open Letter to Dr. Miguel Cardona On The Future Of Public Education And Indigenous Resurgence

Dear Dr. Cordona,

I am writing this open letter as the parent of a young adult child who spent thirteen years in an under-funded urban school district, a district targeted by consultants, corporate interests, and predatory philanthropists who sought to leverage the challenges faced by our city’s vulnerable children and families as sources of “social impact” profit under the guise of benevolence.

Being the parent of a Philadelphia Public School District student changed my life in ways I could never have imagined. It connected me with fierce, big-hearted activists across race and class who took strong stands for the rights of children to be celebrated as cherished gifts rather than packaged as perceived deficits profiled on data dashboards with assigned growth metrics attached.

The decade since the last economic crash has been about normalizing the idea of an inevitable global gig economy where work is meted by artificial intelligence. Who will get microwork? Well, it will be determined by stackable credentials in a person’s online learning locker combined with social-emotional learning behavioral compliance scores. They’ll call it “anytime, anywhere learning,” or “lifelong learning.” This competency-based education system will ultimately be detached from neighborhood schools and outsourced to community partners through public private partnerships. Navigating these “learning ecosystems” children will be programmed with playlists of “free” Open Education Resources (OER) consumed in virtual reality headsets or games built on behavior modification and persuasive computing. They will collect badges for projects tracked with wearable technologies and pay for them using digital vouchers set up to deliver performance data.

It’s a scary prospect given that the next phase of globalization involves not just platformed labor, but remote-robotic work in advanced manufacturing. Future workers are meant to don haptic suits in co-working spaces in “Zoom-towns,” or living rooms depending on health status, to complete against one another to build and secure CONTINUE READIN: Open Letter to Dr. Miguel Cardona On The Future Of Public Education And Indigenous Resurgence – Wrench in the Gears

Secretary of Education Dr. Miguel Cardona, Connecticut Hedge Funds, and Human Capital – Wrench in the Gears

Secretary of Education Dr. Miguel Cardona, Connecticut Hedge Funds, and Human Capital – Wrench in the Gears

Secretary of Education Dr. Miguel Cardona, Connecticut Hedge Funds, and Human Capital

Tonight my friend Zakiya Sankara-Jabar of Real Talk With ZSJ invited me to discuss the appointment Dr. Miguel Cardona, former Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning in the Meriden, CT School District, to the position of the US Secretary of Education. We covered a lot of ground including: how pay for success finance was layered into the Every Student Succeeds Act, considerations around community schools, tele-health and data privacy, interoperable data systems, the transition to competency-based education and learning ecosystems, adoption of Open Education Resources, virtual reality, behavior and skills badges tied to lifelong debt, social-emotional learning, and the ethical implications of social impact investing in early childhood education. It was a packed three hours.

For other recent podcasts and interviews visit my Youtube channel here. A playlist of interviews can be accessed here, including two previous interviews Zakiya and I did together here and here.

CONTINUE READING: Secretary of Education Dr. Miguel Cardona, Connecticut Hedge Funds, and Human Capital – Wrench in the Gears

Population Health, Human Capital Bonds, and Black America – Wrench in the Gears

Population Health, Human Capital Bonds, and Black America – Wrench in the Gears

Population Health, Human Capital Bonds, and Black America

The following document was prepared as a briefing paper for a group working in the population health arena. The intention was to revisit the breadth of my research with a specific focus placed on what it means for Black America. A similar document could have been written for the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. This material is currently under review pending future distribution in a more digestible format. I am long form, always. Since this document was referenced in a panel discussion I recently participated in and was distributed to a wider audience, I feel comfortable sharing it with you here. Please know that this is a work in progress.

Briefing Document:

We find ourselves in this season of the shortest days and longest nights. Yet in these long nights we are graced with guiding stars and hands to hold in the darkness. I have heavy information to share here. But first I want you to know that we were made for these times.

On a knife’s edge, teetering between sacred and profane, I know in my heart that through fortitude and moral courage humanity will prevail. Black America has lived for generations under this nation’s broken social contract. With the Fourth Industrial Revolution pushing to make natural humans obsolete, many more are awakening to the lived experience of Black and Brown America. This nation grew its power on broken treaties and stolen bodies. Now is a moment of profound reckoning to face off against the threat of artificial intelligence stealing the rights of ALL sovereign beings.

Who better to lead the world towards healing and justice than Black and Brown people? Consider WEB DuBois’ “Black Reconstruction,” the general strike, the power of Black bodies to throw a wrench in the gears of anti-life CONTINUE READING: Population Health, Human Capital Bonds, and Black America – Wrench in the Gears

How The Children Won Over The Cloud Beings – Wrench in the Gears

How The Children Won Over The Cloud Beings – Wrench in the Gears

How The Children Won Over The Cloud Beings

Quite a few times I’ve been asked how I would explain my research to a child. This week that line of thought led me to imagine what a fairytale about it might look like. It wouldn’t, of course, have the specifics of my “follow the money” investigations, but rather come from a place of the heart. In this moment of more and more extreme behavior on the part of world governments, holding onto that space, clinging to hope and love and empowerment feels like a vital contribution. I’m not a writer of fiction, but I’ve done my level best to step up to the challenge I’ve set myself. I’m grateful to have embraced an odd-ball format for my blog – everything and the kitchen sink. This week it’s ogres.

Once upon a time, there was a community of ogres living on a remote mountaintop. Their great-great-great grandparents had trekked above the tree line years ago, no longer wishing to be friends with lesser beings. They chose an isolated spot where they could look down on everyone, and within a few years everyone forgot the path down off the mountain. They spent their days sipping lichen broth, feeling self-satisfied, and generally being irritable with one another.

The ogres’ village was so high up that cloud beings were their only companions, mysterious creatures who spun weather spells and gathered the stories of far-flung lands. Most days, clouds encircled the ogres’ compound bringing news to the desolate outpost. These transmissions were limited to ones and zeros, so the stories lacked vibrancy. Still, the ogres craved their daily dose of information and invented machines to capture and interpret it. Every bit of data they stowed away in a labyrinth of caves extending far back into the heart of the mountain. CONTINUE READING: How The Children Won Over The Cloud Beings – Wrench in the Gears

Standing Against New York’s Covid Vaccine Mandate And Fourth Industrial Revolution Tech-No-Logic – Wrench in the Gears

Standing Against New York’s Covid Vaccine Mandate And Fourth Industrial Revolution Tech-No-Logic – Wrench in the Gears

Standing Against New York’s Covid Vaccine Mandate And Fourth Industrial Revolution Tech-No-Logic

This weekend I was invited to take part in a rally to protest the proposed Covid vaccine mandate outside the office of the New York Bar Association and Governor Cuomo’s mansion in Albany, New York. Below is a video of the speech I gave. I realize I spoke pretty quickly, and it may be hard to hear the audio, so I am providing the transcript below. Please feel free to share it however you feel is useful – online, written, or spoken. It seems that the vaccine mandates are advancing, and it’s imperative that we get the word out that it’s not just about Big Pharma profits and vaccine injury, but the normalization of biometric health passports and the unlocking of human capital bond markets for the stakeholder capitalists of Davos – in other words a future of digital chattel slavery for the masses. We do not consent!

I’d like to start with a moment of gratitude for the efforts of those who brought us together, to the creator for putting this work on our hearts, and to the Kanien’keha:ka on whose lands we have gathered today. John Trudell, a leader of the American Indian Movement and prophetic voice for this time, said that it is our responsibility to use the intelligence given to us by the creator to be thinkers willing to put our minds and bodies against the machine of tech-no-logic now epitomized by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

We are called to act or face a future of digital chattel slavery, our freedoms stolen by automation, artificial CONTINUE READING: Standing Against New York’s Covid Vaccine Mandate And Fourth Industrial Revolution Tech-No-Logic – Wrench in the Gears