What's New

What's New at Asora

Advancing the Goal of Ending Education as We Know It

For First Time Visitors:
Welcome to Asora Education Enterprises, which presently consists of the Stellar Schools Franchising Project, the online courseware brokerage, a speakers bureau, and the achievement test analysis consulting service. To get started, consider reviewing our home page where there are links to descriptions of the many features of Stellar Schools. Then come back here later to "What's New" and to "What Was New" to learn more about our most recent undertakings.


What Was New In Preceding Updates:
If you have not seen our previous quarterly "What's New" updates, then you might want to peruse our What Was New page.

What's New In June 2009


June Theme Is Assessment
To use the phrase, “A Perfect Storm,” probably overstates the coincidental nature of recent developments at Asora Education Enterprises. However, every recent activity has had assessment as its key component or at least as an important aspect.

Honest Assessment Drives Reforms
The need for honesty in public school assessment reporting may go unanswered within the public systems. Thus private testing and certification proposals should be considered. We have written on this in our report, "Making Tests And Diplomas Honest Will Drive Reform." It's here for download from our Reports on Reform page.

Tipping Point
There are now several indicators that online instruction has entered a rapid growth phase and will affect nearly all aspects of K-12 education going forward- if for no other reason because of its low cost. Perhaps our realization of this sudden surge in Online Education has been late and delayed by our earlier blindness to what was going on around us. As the two book reviews (below) suggest, online instruction will dominate in about ten years. We had better get busy doing our part!

Assessment As Profit Center
Those of you who have explored our business plan (available in our Reports on Development area) know that it has many facets. In terms of instructional modes of operation it proposes up to 15 different options within each course of study. The only one required, however, was the assessment component’s proctored examinations. In every other instructional mode, the student will be free to use it or not. Implict in that will be the freedom for students to take their instruction elsewhere. It suggests that we design our service to have two profit centers: instruction and assessment. Our brand will depend more on the latter- perhaps much in the same way that the accounting industry’s designation of CPA relates to the “test” and not to the learning process.

New Mappings
One of Asora Education's services has been the estimation of what local schools and districts would have attained on the Nation’s Report Card or NAEP. The ELQ method we employed converted or mapped the state reported (and almost always inflated) proficiencies into ones on the NAEP scale. We now have written a fairly detailed report that derives the old or Simple ELQ method and derives a new more accurate Piecewise Continuous ELQ method. It checks the errors of the methods in simulated examination environments and then applies them against known demographic groups proficiencies on the two exams. The report ELQ-Mappings.docx and its supporting spreadsheet ELQ-Derivation.xlsx are downloadable from our Reports on Reform page.


Discovery Of Enhanced Deception
Our analysis in the Mappings work brought us face to face with some of the harms inflicted by the states' almost routine use of inflation in reporting assessment proficiencies. Though always there in the published data we had not realized the extent to which inflation is different for different demographics. It’s small in good schools and large in schools where disadvantaged children predominate. How convenient for making public schools “look good!” It serves inflation in small portions where only a small amount is needed to make the schools look good. And for the truly dysfunctional schools it ladles giant servings to make the horrible appear barely passable. For the public education propagandists it optimally apportions the deception to where it is needed the most- to cover up the worst situations the most.

Taken For A R.I.D.E.
As an example of the Enhanced Deception just mentioned we wrote an op-ed piece for a Rhode Island newspaper. “Taken For A R.I.D.E.,” refers to the Rhode Island Department of Education and its use of inflation to make the good look better and the bad look not so awful. It is on our Reports on Reform page for your perusal or download.

Liberating Learning - Book Review
Scholars and policy analysts Terry Moe and John Chubb (both are both), have written the book, “Liberating Learning,” which is a very interesting review and prognosis of how online instruction will grow and help reform public schools. As is my habit, I generally write an online book review on the Amazon.Com website when I purchase books from the site and I did so for this excellent book. Their book was, more than any other input, influential in convincing me of the Tipping Point mentioned above. It is on our Reports on Reform page.

Disrupting Class - Book Review
Another book we reviewed is “Disrupting Class.” It also makes arguments about how disruptive innovation will develop within the education sector and confirms we are at or beyond this Tipping Point. My review of it, "Good wheat - Too much chaff," is also on the Reports on Reform page.