Blackboard LEARN security vulnerabilities

Sandra is back after a three week blogging hiatus.

The Australian edition of SC Magazine, which focuses on IT security, reported that Blackboard Learn had serious vulnerabilities. The report revealed that "security vulnerabilities have been found in the world’s most popular educational software - holes that allow students to change grades and download unpublished exams, whilst allowing criminals to steal personal information." Initial concerns reported to Blackboard by Australian university managers were ignored or dismissed, which led to the publication of an advisory by AusCERT, a non-profit security organization funded by Queensland University. Blackboard then responded with its own advisory.

Blackboard Learn is used widely by U.S. universities and by the U.S. military. Inside Higher Ed also reported on the security concerns:

Matthew Maurer, a spokesman for Blackboard, told Inside Higher Ed via e-mail that the article was correct that there was a security flaw, and that this problem was not unique to Australian universities. But he said that the article (which has been circulating among some American IT officials) had an "exaggerated fashion" in describing the problem. "There's not a single reported case of exposure, just the theoretical," he said. Maurer said that many of the issues were very quickly fixed, and that the company is now providing information to colleges and universities so they can see that there are not serious problems remaining.

Commentary
While there may not have been a single reported case of exposure, there was a significant security flaw. Universities purchasing online learning systems and students paying tuition to access online courses should have assurance that the products do not have this level of security holes to begin with. Security issues affecting other U.S. online education initiatives remain a concern.

Previous postings on this topic:

Student Data Collection: Purpose, Costs, Risks?
Education Reform and Privacy Concerns Collide

Explaining the New Math

Years ago when I got out of the service unemployment was high, and no one really wanted Vets, the general assumption was we were all crazy– a slight exaggeration.  The construction industry was a little different, cray was normal and it paid well, provided you were willing to get paid for what you produced, instead of the time you put in…   The only problem was you were on your own for things like insurance, and the winters were rough on cash flow.   That was when I started learning there was more money in selling the materials, then there was in nailing it together..

A couple years later I was managing a lumber yard.  One evening I wrote a guy up for 160 feet of baseboard molding, and set him to the kid in back to get loaded up.. and went back to what I was doing..  A couple minutes later the came to and asked how many pieces he should give the customer.  The kid was eighteen and had graduated from High School less than a month before..

I looked at him and said ” You’ve got sixteen footers back there, the stuff’s in ten piece bundles, the customer has a racks on his truck, so sixteens are fine.

The pride of the local school system just stood there for a full minute looking at me, then he said “Yeah, but how many pieces do I give him?”

I had to explain to this kid, who had just Graduated High School that ten times sixteen equaled 160-

Over the years I’ve heard people complain about the lack of very basic skills kids have when they finish High School.  Educators have demanded and gotten more money, smaller class sizes and the latest and greatest in modern educational tools.  The result is a lower quality finished product than we had fifty years and hundreds of billions of ago.  Now we’ve gotten to the point that everyone is blaming everyone, the parents blame the schools and the teachers,  In turn the schools and the teachers blame the parents.

Every year the experts come up with a new solution, but it will cost money.  Somehow the experts don’t get blamed– they just get more money out of the deal.. Before we go any farther, take a look at the video..

I’m not so sure if I’d have been able to solve a simple multiplication problem if I’d been taught bu any of those methods.  However that’s what the experts say works.. at least while they’re selling the school districts new curriculum models, and very expensive books to go with them.

I sat my almost eleven year old grandson down and we watched the video together, he’s been taught everyone of the algorithms except the lattice method.. Then he laughed a little..

He told me last year as Florida’s FCAT  Testing Season was approaching his teacher was having a really hard time getting her students to understand the clusters, thingamajigs and whatever’s the new math calls for..  She was getting desperate.  Finally she said “Screw this”, and started erasing  everything on the black board.

Then she said.. “You don’t have to show your work on the FCAT, let me show you how to do this stuff right.  It didn’t take long for the class to figure it out, when it was taught the way it had been for generations.. before the experts made it better.

Waving along failure

VIA The Foundry

The President Barack Obama is slated to give a speech tomorrow lauding the benefits of granting waivers to states for the burdensome provisions of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Obama, unhappy with the pace at which Congress is undertaking NCLB reauthorization, has decided to grant the conditions-based waivers to states to fulfill his own timeline and push his own policy preferences. States have felt the federal heat from provisions in NCLB that require all children to be proficient in reading and math by 2014. And as that deadline approaches, many states could find the temporary relief promised through the waivers a welcome reprieve.

But any temporary relief states might receive will ultimately be swamped in the14 long term by new onerous burdens from increased authority in the Department of Education, as opposed to Congress.

Read the Rest 

Key Conservative Smacks Romney for Siding with Arne Duncan

VIA  Scathing Purple Musings

Bob Sikes. 

There are few conservative commentators with the juice that Red State‘s Erick Erickson has. In a post this afternoon, Erickson clearly distinguished the clear differences between the education policies of presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. Erickson sees that Romney supports the Barack Obama-Arne Duncan reforms while the Perry  bristles at the intrusion of the federal government into state’s school system.

Romney said today at a campaign stop in Florida that “I think Secretary Duncan has done some good things. I hope that’s  not heresy in this room.” Erickson is skeptical of Romney’s position and writes:

READ THE REST

DOJ Protects Teachers With Unacceptable English Skills

VIA Judicial Watch

Public school teachers with unacceptable English pronunciation and grammar are being protected by the Obama Administration, which has forced one state to eliminate a fluency monitoring program created to comply with a 2002 federal education law.

Singling out teachers who can’t speak proper English in American schools—funded by taxpayers, no less—discriminates against Hispanics and others who are not native English speakers, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). As a result it violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the teachers must remain in their current position.  

Unbelievable as this may seem, it’s a true story reported this week by Arizona’s largest newspaper. Ironically, the state launched the fluency monitoring program to comply with the bipartisan-backed No Child Left Behind Act, which requires states to create standardized tests that show public school students are reaching proficiency in core subjects like English, math and science.

With only a small proportion of low-English proficiency students (reading between the lines they are referring to illegal immigrants) passing the state’s standardized reading test, Arizona education officials started to look at the teachers in those classrooms. They found a common thread in dozens of districts throughout the state; many instructors don’t speak proper English and, in fact, teach in Spanish, using Spanish-language materials. Some have “unacceptably heavy accents” that causes them to mispronounce words. Others use poor English grammar.

Here are some examples of state monitoring reports listed in the article; a teacher who asked her English learners "How do we call it in English?" and teachers who pronounced "levels" as "lebels" and "much" as "mush." Last year a monitor documented teachers who pronounced "the" as "da" and "lives here" as "leeves here."

Protected by the power of their union, no teachers have been fired for fluency issues. They have simply been reassigned and districts are required to develop “corrective-action plans” to improve their English. However a group of teachers took their case to the feds last year, complaining that their accents were getting them removed from classrooms.

This is the sort of issue that makes the Justice Department’s bloated civil rights division salivate. Predictably, the agency took swift action, threatening to file a civil rights lawsuit if Arizona didn’t get rid of its teacher fluency monitoring program. As a result, thousands of children in the state’s taxpayer funded schools are stuck with teachers they probably can’t understand.

READ THE REST

Corporate Education Reform’s Coming Constitutional Crisis

Via Scathing Purple Musings
By Bob Sikes


Will it turn out that common core standards meant everything? And that it was a rising republican star who signaled the beginning of the end game?

A quick Google search this morning combining Marco Rubio and Arne Duncan netted 47 hits. A letter Rubio sent to Duncan has gone viral and conservative heavy weights are taking notice. In his letter, Rubio questioned Duncan’s authority on NCLB waivers based on three existing statutes. In addition, Rubio pointed to the federalization of common core standards as particularly troubling:

Furthermore, I am concerned that the administration’s requirements for granting a waiver from NCLB would entail states having to adopt a federally-approved “college and career ready” curriculum: either the national Common Core standards, or another federally-approved equivalent. I am also concerned that the U.S. Department ofEducation has created, through its contractors, national curriculum materials to support these Common Core standards. Such activities are unacceptable; they violate three existing laws: NCLB, the Department of Education Organization Act,
and the General Education Provisions Act. All three laws prohibit the federal government from creating or prescribing national curriculum. If you believe that conditional waivers tied to content standards do not violate these laws, I invite you to explain the reasoning underlying that belief.

Rubio is not alone in conservative circles. Writes influential CATO institute analyst Andrew J. Coulson:

READ THE REST

The State Op-Ed: South Carolina parent asks why students cannot opt out of high stakes assessment

In a September 7, 2011 Op-ed published in South Carolina's newspaper, The State, parent Sarah Johnson asked why the carefully organized individual education plan (IEP) for special education students is pushed aside and "a seventh-grader who is reading on a first-grade level due to a low IQ will be tested on the seventh-grade level. That means he is being tested on material he has not been taught and on levels he cannot comprehend. This is not only unfair and cruel, but completely useless to the teacher and student."

Johnson says that South Carolina "spends millions of dollars on these tests, when we could instead just let our teachers use work samples, or a running record of achievement, or countless other methods to show a student’s progress. We need to eliminate the state standardized tests and use the money where it is actually needed: in the classroom. The less time spent on preparing for and administering The Test, the more time there is for valuable teaching and learning."

She was informed that the school district does not have the authority to excuse students from testing; but last year her son, a special-needs student was allowed to sit out based on her parental refusal.

Read the entire Op-Ed here.