It might surprise you that a citizen of Utah is going out of her way to ask you to oppose the Common Core agenda taking root in Kansas.
I have studied the Common Core thoroughly. I urge you to study it closely.
1) It isn’t state-led, despite the rhetoric. Legislators and voters were totally bypassed. The NGA is not a constitutionally recognized entity to rule on the national stage.
2) The academic standards are highly controversial, are untested and are based on no evidence to support their theories (diminishing classic literature, slowing math, etc.)
Common Core: The Vehicle of our Educational Future
–Driving Away Freedom
The chart below is adapted from J.R. Wilson’s article at Education News, Common Core and the Vehicle of our Future. Thanks to J.R. Wilson for sharing this insightful metaphor.
You decide what car best fits your needs. You shop around and find the best car for your money.
You had no say in these standards. They are not the best. You didn’t get to test the standards – or see any testing of these standards – before they were bought for you with your tax money.
Decision to Buy
You make the decision to buy, or – just as important – to not buy.
You bought these standards though you may not know it, and even if you protested their purchase. The decision to buy, or to not buy, was never up to you.
Purchase
You get to select the make, model, package, and options you want.
You don’t know what you’re buying. The Common Core began with math and language arts standards. Then it included tests; then social studies, science, and civics; then curricular materials; a data system; and an early learning program. Then it included public colleges.
Selling Points
Most car salesmen are knowledgeable about the features of the car. Buyers still need to be responsible and do their own fact checking.
Many of the selling points used to sell these standards sound wonderful, but in truth are deceptive. The deeper you dig, the more dismayed you become.
Costs
You know exactly how much the car will cost you once you have settled on a price. Once the car is paid for it is yours.
There was no state cost analysis. Costs will be ongoing. The public does not own Common Core and has no ability to change it although they must pay.
Safety & Quality Control
The car has to meet required safety standards. The automaker has put the car and many components through a lot of testing and checks to make sure the components work well together.
There are no required safeguards to protect our children’s academic success, their future, and our liberty. It is unknown how anyone will be held accountable for outcomes.
Insurance
You can get insurance for your car when you buy it.
No insurance is available although you still have to pay premiums. There is no protection for children’s academic success or liberties.
Maintenance
You can take the car to the dealer or any other auto mechanic. If you don’t like the car, you can get rid of it and buy a different car.
There is no dealer for repair. Modifications can only be made by the owners (two non-government entities). Parents or teachers cannot change the standards.
Warranty
Most cars come with a warranty.
No warranty is available.
Lemon Laws
There are some protections provided by state and federal lemon laws.
There are no lemon law protections.
CarFax
Records of maintenance and repairs are kept in a database with information available to others.
The data is compiled in a state longitudinal data system with intergovernmental access to data, without parental knowledge or permission and with no opt-out alternative.
Heritage Foundation hosted a multi-day conference recently in Orlando. Below is a video which is available at Heritage Foundation’s website and on YouTube, taken from a panel at that conference, which was followed by Q & A about Common Core.
Panelists included Lindsey Burke of Heritage Foundation, Jim Stergios of Pioneer Institute, Ted Rebarber of Accountability Works, Heather Crossin of Hoosiers Against Common Core, and me.
Today I called Jerry Winkler, Utah Information Technology Director to ask questions about the federally paid-for State Longitudinal Database System.
He was very gracious and I appreciated his willingness to answer questions.
I asked him if he could verify the information I’d received from the state school board, that the reason that a Utah student is not able to opt out of the SLDS tracking system, is because of limitations of technology.
( I had received that idea from the state school board: “Current data systems do not allow for individual student data to be withheld from the data submission process.”
But Jerry Winkler told me that it’s not a technology limitation.
“It’s a policy question,” he said, and directed me to inquire further about the policy from Carol Lear, the top lawyer at the Utah State Office of Education.
I shuddered. I know more than I want to about Carol Lear,the top U.S.O.E. lawyer. Just FYI: Carol Lear told me last year that since “the whole point is to be common” — it was of no importance that there’s no amendment process to Common Core. She also told me she believed a cost analysis had been done on Common Core in Utah, when there had not –and still has not. She displayed zero respect for the 10th Amendment and the General Educational Provisions Act. and told me that she had never heard of the Cooperative Agreement and she thought it was a hoax. Finally, she refused to respond to further questions and told me to go talk the the public relations department. With no sense of valiance in defending states’ rights, would Lear balk at caving in to any request the federal Dept. of Education made of Utah?
Back to today:
I asked Jerry Winkler how compliant our state has been, so far, to the requests from the federal government at the Data Quality Campaign and the National Data Collection Model, those federal websites which request hundreds of non-academic data points about children from schools (including nicknames, family, voting, income, health and psychological information, etc.)
He verfied that Utah does submit information gathered by schools to the federal government, but assured me that right now, Utah is giving only aggregated (grouped) information to the federal government (He verified that this takes place at the portal called the Edfacts Exchange )
Winkler said that right now, Utah is keeping dis-aggregated data (personally identifiable data) inside the state at the SLDS database.
“Who or what would change that?” I asked, “At what point will Utah give in to federal requests to give up disaggregated (personal) data to the federal government, as well? Who makes the call to be more “compliant” with the federal requests?
Carol Lear, he said. She is the one who would make the call.
Yikes.
Jerry Winkler also told me he believed that students could opt out of being tracked by the State Longitudinal Database System at the local LEA level, but if the data was entered by the LEA, it would automatically be sent to the SLDS and Utah Data Alliance, at which point opting out would end.
I had not heard this. I will be asking my LEA how to accomplish that.
I want to share this most VITAL point recently articulated on the Utahns Against Common Core website by Utah parent Oak Norton:
“We totally agree [with the State Office of Education] that we should strengthen privacy laws. In fact, the most secure way to secure our children’s personally identifiable information is to NOT STORE IT IN A DATABASE. It’s pathetic that the USOE and State Board signed us onto this whole mess with grant and wavier applications and now go running to the legislature (whom they constantly criticize for interfering in education), and ask them to protect them from themselves. HELLO??? Who signed the waivers and applications? The Board President, State Superintendent, and the Governor.
The best way to protect this data is to unwind it.”
Thanks to Jamie Gass for this compilation of news outlets that are covering the national Common Core controversy.
“The Common Core is in trouble,” said Randi Weingarten, the AFT union president, “There is a serious backlash in lots of different ways, on the right and on the left.”
After a whole year of never receiving an email response from Asst. Superintendent Judy Park, today she wrote back! Wow.
But. The billion dollar question was dodged again. It’s been dodged in emails for over a year. It was dodged twice more at last night’s Common Core (S.A.G.E./A.I.R.) presentation, both during and after the event. But I wrote an email asking it again.
Here it is, and here’s her answer.
My Question:Please direct me to documentation of the claim that the common core standards, upon which this test is built, are legitimate and that they have been empirically tested, rather than being the experimental idea of unelected noneducators?
Ms. Park’s Answer: You have received a great deal of information about the common core from Brenda Hales, Associate Superintendent. I would encourage you to direct your questions about the common core to her.
Another dodge! Another D O D G E!
Utterly, completely unbelievable!
This dodge is like building a house (a new Utah educational system) on quicksand (illegitimate standards) and insisting that everyone to keep admiring the roof (nifty technology) –and telling the homeowner (teacher/taxpayers/parents) who paid for the whole thing and will live in it for life, to quit asking the pesky questions about those sinking wobbly motions in the foundation, directing that homeowner to ask an irrelevant wallpaper hanger why the home was built in quicksand.
There comes a time when you either keep yelling at the t.v./radio/computer screen/newspaper, or you make a move.
Utah, I am asking you to make a move. Call. Write. Tell our Governor, School Board, legislature and U.S.O.E. that we deserve answers to these most basic of all questions that affect our children and grandchildren in dramatic ways, for the rest of their lives. Please act.
This is what I wrote to Assistant Superintendent Judy Park today.
Judy,
Thank you for taking the time to partially respond to some of my questions.
Please– stop dodging the most important question, for me and for all Utahns.
“First, do no harm” applies to education as well as to medicine. Please show us proof that the USSB/USOE is doing no harm by implementing Common Core; this should be easy. Brenda Hales, the public relations person is not an academic expert; you are. By dodging the question to her it appears that you don’t even know whether Common Core is snake oil –or not.
Don’t teachers, parents and legislators deserve to know that hundreds of millions of dollars and hours and children’s minds all pushing toward Common Core implementation is being spent wisely?! Do we not deserve to see evidence and references backing up the oft-repeated claim that these standards are helpful?
Where is the study showing that long-term, lives are enhanced when high school seniors are deprived of 70% of their classic literature? Where is the study showing that long-term, students who are deprived of the knowledge of how to convert fractions into decimals, are blessed by that fact? Countless examples could be shared.
You serve on the CCSSO, the D.C. group which developed and copyrighted these unproven standards. You have been doing this longer than our State Superintendent and you stand uniquely qualified to answer questions about the academic legitimacy of the standards and about the lack of any empirical evidence to back up the U.S.O.E.’s claims– which have been replicated on every district website in this state– and which are false.
The standards are not serving children honorably. They take away from, rather than raise, Utah’s educational hopes. Less classic literature. Less traditional math. Slowing of the age at which algorithms are introduced. Less narrative writing. Less parental consent. No district-held control over the sharing of student data. And worst of all, the standards and connected reforms and mandates have robbed Utah of educational sovereignty, a constitutional right. We have no voice, no amendment process. For such a trade, the standards must surely be magnificent.
Yet you cannot even point me to the documentation that these standards are more than a blind experiment on our kids, written by noneducators and adopted at grant-point, rather than after thorough and honorable academic vetting in Utah?
This is an absolute outrage.
In the name of integrity, what are you going to do about it?
@ParentLedReform is also hosting an expert panel and a multi-state coalition of organizations to talk discuss #stopcommoncore in conjunction with the rally.
Join LIVE via Twitter to listen or share your view about Common Core Standards. Twitter is free and easy to join.
This is a public event. Please share with your friends and neighbors.
This diminishing of parental authority is re-emphasized by the fact that in the common core tests, (the Linda Darling-Hammond- led CSCOPE and Common Core tests) parents cannot view the tests.
Why have our school systems have done this? When will a majority of parents and teachers join this fight for the children and fight to repeal the Common Core?
Please write or call our governor and school board. board@schools.utah.gov
Tell them that you are opposed to Common Core which makes student data mining –without parental consent– possible. Tell them that you are opposed to the Common Core tests which are not viewable by parents, except for (in Utah) for a panel of 15 governmentally-appointed parents.
Tell them you want local control, especially parental control, back. Now.
Education Week reports that hackers got into the Department of Education’s site and so they shut their site down indefinitely.
Baloney! No hackers got into the system. I’ll tell you what’s going on.
Researchers from around the nation have been gathering research from US Dept of Ed documents so we can get them to you directly from the source to prove everything we say. Because everyone is now linking to this site and because now we have so many national groups joining the fight, they pulled the curtain closed and are hiding behind it.
The Dept of Ed is hiding from US citizens! Not only do we have huge groups in every state looking daily at these documents now, but we also have the research crews of Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, Freedom Works, Fox News, United Families International and many others all across the nation for the FIRST TIME this week paying attention to what is going on with our education system and realizing we’re being lied to.
The same thing happened a few days after Agenda 21 was exposed nationally. After a year of researching the U.N. site easily, all of a sudden they went dark and no one can access their pages anymore. How dare they blame their lack of transparency on hackers. You know you are onto something really big when the entire U.S. Department of Education website closes down because you have exposed them. What a smokescreen!
Thank you, Susie Schnell, for researching and writing this post. I agree with Susie. Time will prove it to everyone, one way or another. In a reasonable amount of time, if the Department reposts what was there before, we’ll be proven wrong. Then there really were hackers desperate to get to the educational secrets that hadn’t been posted openly. Hmm.
But if time passes and the documents and speeches never resurface, then the Dept. of Ed really is deliberately hiding from the American citizen-researcher. Can you believe it?
Either way, we are not shut down, because we’ve saved the important documents and speeches offline.
Today, Alisa and I spoke with Chicago History teacher Paul Horton about Common Core and his group, Citizens Against Corporate Collusion. A few highlights:
1. What’s wrong with high stakes testing?
2. How does Common Core turn teacher artisans into teacher widgets?
3. Dept. of Ed Secretary Arne Duncan graduated from the high school where Horton teaches; what does Horton say about Sec. Duncan?
4. Why does Pearson Company stand to face legal trouble?
5. What does Horton see Bill Gates doing Common Core pushing for?
6. Why are Democrats and Republicans increasingly seeing eye to eye on the need to stop common core?
The following page is not written by me. It’s pasted word for word, directly from the Texas Student Data System, the group which collects data on every student in every governmentally funded school in Texas. They are not even pretending to protect student privacy anymore.
TSDS Unique ID is necessary in order to integrate the various subsystems of TSDS smoothly and accurately. Since TEA will run both TSDS and the legacy EDIT+ systems in parallel for some time, Unique ID must be used with both systems.
NOTE: Unique ID training is now available from the ESCs! Contact your ESC for details.
Local education agencies (LEAs—Texas school districts and charter schools) must use Unique ID numbers to load student and staff information to the TSDS Education Data Warehouse (EDW). Each student and staff member will have a single unique identifier for his or her entire career within the Texas educational system (from early education programs through the twelfth grade). Individuals will retain the same unique identifier even if they leave the Texas education system and return years later or transition from being a student to a staff member.
Implementing Unique ID is the first phase of TSDS project implementation. TEA will create the initial Unique ID database from the existing Person Identification Database (PID). Once Unique ID is in production, all student and staff additions and changes will be made through Unique ID instead of PID.
All LEAs must implement TSDS Unique ID in Spring, 2013 in order to load their PEIMS data for the 2012-13 Summer Collection.
How Will TSDS Unique ID Benefit my LEA?
The TSDS Unique ID system provides enhanced matching logic to assist users in reconciling individuals who have closely matching demographics (first name, last name, date of birth, etc.). Through Unique ID’s user-friendly interface, LEA users will be able to assign IDs and update student and staff demographics more quickly and efficiently than in the past.
What Does My LEA Need To Do?
NOW: Contact your source vendors to ensure they are:
Developing the batch file process needed to (a) upload student and staff data for the initial assignment of Unique IDs and (b) import the resulting assigned Unique IDs into their systems
Adding the required Unique ID data elements to their databases
Revising their PEIMS submission extracts for the upcoming PEIMS 3 and 4 submissions
TEA is currently working with many vendors on the changes for Unique ID.
FEB – MAR 2013: Attend training provided by your Education Service Center (ESC) Unique ID champion. A Unique ID champion has been identified by each ESC. TEA will train these champions the first week in February, and the champions will offer training to LEA staff in February and March.
FEB – MAR 2013: All TSDS Unique ID users will need a TEAL account. Further instructions will be available prior to the go-live date.
Unique ID TEDS Standards
LEAs and vendors must ensure that their Unique ID extracts are compliant with TEDS Section 9 standards. Unlike all other TEDS extracts, extracts for Unique ID must be in comma-separated variable (CSV) format.
Feb – Mar 2013 – Ensure all TSDS Unique ID users have a TEAL account and have applied for access to the TSDS application and Unique ID role.
Mar 11, 2013 – TEA will create the TSDS Unique ID database. PID and Person Enrollment Tracker (PET) updates through EDIT+ will no longer be available. PET Files cannot be submitted March 11 – 25, 2013.
Mar 25, 2013 – The TSDS Unique ID system is in production (except for web services). Unique IDs are made available to LEAs. Demographic updates will be made through the TSDS Unique ID system.
Mar – Apr 2013 – LEAs upload batch files to the TSDS Unique ID system containing any student or staff member active in the 2012-13 school year in order to assign them Unique IDs.
Apr 2013 – TEA adds student and staff Unique IDs to EDIT+ for PEIMS Submission 3 and 4.
Apr 8, 2013 – LEAs populate their student/staff source systems with Unique IDs, enabling the data to be submitted to EDIT+ in Submissions 3 and 4.
Jun 1, 2013 – The Unique ID application is available to LEAs via web service interface.
Aug 2013 – TSDS early adopters submit data to the EDW, which requires student and staff Unique IDs.
PET and TREx
TSDS Unique ID will be added to the PET submission file and the TREx extraction file in the 2013-14 school year.
March 11 – 25, 2013, LEAs cannot submit a PET file while the TSDS Unique ID database is being created.
Starting March 25, 2013, the PET submission file will be checked against the TSDS Unique ID database to ensure the student has a Unique ID.
Starting March 25, 2013, all demographic updates will need to be made through the TSDS Unique ID system.
LEAs will be able to assign Unique IDs to student and staff in two ways: via a batch file created in CSV format or via individual record entry through the Unique ID application.
Monday at Wasatch School District – April 8th at 4:00 p.m.
101 E 200 N Heber City, UT 84032 (435) 654-0280
Presentation on Common Core Assessments:
American Institutes for Research (AIR) Tests
Utah children will be subjected to Common Core tests for the first time this coming school year, to be provided by the behavioral scientists at American Institutes for Research (AIR).
Children in every public and charter school in 46 states will be subjected to AIR’s (or SBAC’s, or PARCC’s) Common Core tests for the first time in the 2013-14 school year.
So on Monday I will drag myself to hear the Utah State Office of Education leadership speak about the Common Core tests and test company here in the Wasatch School District.
I dread Monday. I dread more evidence of how cemented we are becoming into the Common Core via its testing, which is the vehicle for federal and corporate data mining. (Data mining of our children will go into fifth gear as testing begins.)
I dread hearing more lies and misrepresentations by education leaders about the cure-all snake oil of Common Core. Many don’t realize that they are lying; they are trusting people who haven’t done their own homework and don’t even know that the Common Core is an experiment on our kids unsupported by empirical study. In repeating the false phrases that our too-trusting local leadership has been handed by D.C. groups, our locals are guilty, too, of naiively promoting false claims.
I dread experiencing more evidence of my lack of voice as a Utah teacher and as a citizen. I know I will not be allowed to speak Monday. Our local school board does not give local citizens the courtesy of even two minutes’ time for a citizen or teacher to stand up and raise concerns.
The state school board does allow two minutes per visitor at state meetings. But not the local.
Should I speak anyway, and let them call the police to drag me to jail for exercising my freedom of speech about this important issue? I’m so tempted.
But I’m here to talk about AIR tests.
I have not done that much research on AIR because it’s so hidden; it’s hard to find out much. I will share what my research friends and I have found as we simply read the AIR website, the AIR facebook page, and email our state superintendent and board.
Of itself, AIR says: “AIR is one of the largest behavioral and social science research organizations in the world… AIR’s purpose is to conduct and apply behavioral and social science research… with a special emphasis on the disadvantaged… “
So, Utah’s using behavioral and social science research –to give math and English tests. We are going to conduct and apply behavioral research on Utah children, with special emphasis on a disadvantaged group, without causing neglect to those lucky enough not to be labeled disadvantaged, somehow.
Moving on. Let’s look at the leadership hierarchy of AIR. Right after the CEO and the Director of Longitudinal Analysis comes a committee of people creating tests. After that committee comes another whole committee to develop education. I am sure this cannot mean developing model curriculum because we were promised that Common Core would be limited to guidelines and standards, and the USOE never lies. Right?
On its website, right under the CEO, the AIR leadership lists Jane Hannaway, Director of the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research.
Translation: Ms. Hannaway’s job is to analyze children’s lifelong data, as collected by the state and by the ongoing common core tests.
FYI, this information will be held in the state’s longitudinal database system and shared among the many agencies in our Utah Data Alliance –not just education agencies, but workforce and other agencies. And it may be shared federally, too. All without parental consent.
Don’t believe me? Study it yourself. Read the SLDS grant conditions. Read the Utah Data Alliance press release. Read the Dept. of Ed Cooperative Agreement with other testing consortia. It’s all online. (Wow. It was online. I just checked and they’ve taken away the online Cooperative Agreement from the Dept. of Ed website. But if you click on the link, you’ll be able to read most of it because I pasted much of it on the blog.)
Superintendent Martell Menlove told me in an 2-14-13 email that:
“We will not see each individual test but we will see and review every test item. Every test item, as required in Utah Code will be reviewed by a 15 member parent committee… We will develop an adaptive test that has the main purpose of providing academic achievement data…” -Martell Menlove
State School Board member Joel Coleman wrote to me in an email that “Our children will be tested on academics.” So we can expect that the tests will not test psychometrics or behavior– despite AIR’s main focus as behavioral and social science testing research? I hope, I really hope, that’s true. But we’re already pushing the creepy SHARPE surveys in our local schools. So why wouldn’t we add AIR behavioral/psychometric testing? And then there’s the legislative language about behavioral assessments in the tests. (See below)
I asked Mr. Menlove and Mr. Coleman to clarify something else. I wrote:
“I am grateful that the test questions can be read by at least 15 Utah parents. I wish it were more. [Isn't it illegal to have tests that all parents cannot view?] What still remains unclear is how Utah will avoid the influence of the AIR when the AIR makes the test. I am referring to AIR’s mainstreaming of globalism (as opposed to constitutional Americanism); promoting two-spiritedness, transgender, gay and lesbian, and such issues published as priorities on AIR’s website.”
To this email I did not get a response.
Why? Why don’t our state educational leaders see any red flags or causes for concern?
I think there are several reasons. One problem is that the state school board and superintendent are extremely trusting of all education reformers; they don’t do extensive homework as my research friends and I do, and they don’t know what is now obvious to us.
Example: both the state superintendent and school board member felt that only academics will be tested. But in a bill that was held in committee, SB69 http://le.utah.gov/~2013/bills/sbillint/SB0069.htm in the paragraph about the computer adaptive testing that will be administered by AIR, it reads:
“line 66 - (d) the use of student behavior indicators in assessing student performance”
So, even if Mr. Coleman and Mr. Menlove aren’t aware of the psychological profiling aspects of the testing, someone who helped write this bill felt it important to include this in the written statute that would govern assessments.
The same bill set up a 15-parent (appointed, not elected) panel to review the test questions for all grade levels on behalf of ALL the parents in the state.
Do we realize how many questions are in a database pool for each grade level for each test in a computer adaptive testing system?
“…computer-adaptive testing (in which items are geared to the student) requires a larger and better-designed pool of test items than does traditional testing… High-stakes tests will require a larger pool of items—likely 1,600 or more—than low-stakes tests, which might require closer to 200,” explains Mark D. Reckase, a professor of measurement and quantitative methods at Michigan State University. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2011/05/computer-adaptive_testing_pose.html
So 15 unpaid parents, without any expertise in how “behavioral indicators” are applied to tests, will review upwards of 12,000 questions? Reckase reviews the process of creating and adding questions to a computer adaptive testing pool, which in scope sounds prohibitive to the resources Utah has assigned to this and may likely result in our using the same test questions created for AIR under the Smarter Balanced Assessments Consortium that are reviewed and controlled by the federal government.
We don’t want any more one-line assurances; we would like the people who are responsible for submitting our children to these tests to show some deeper understanding of the technology, the processes for creating the tests and the sheer enormity of the undertaking before they assure us that Utah remains “in control.”
AIR really does come with indoctrination strings attached and our leaders don’t want to think deeply about their intended and unintended consequences of AIR’s stated positions, such as:
Twenty Percent of Children are Mentally Ill ?
Our leaders must surely have seen that the AIR company website takes the stance that a huge percentage of children are mentally ill and need to be treated that way: “…One in five children and adolescents (20 percent) may have a diagnosable mental health disorder,” says AIR.
Every Nation’s Ed. Standards Should be the Same?
Utah leaders must surely have noticed that the AIR company also believes that every nation should adopt the same education standards. ”We are currently working to benchmark individual state tests to international standards,” AIR’s site states.
The Disadvantaged or Nontraditional Student is More Important?
Utah leaders must have noticed that AIR takes the position that it is not local or parental prerogative, but a “public health issue” to test and assist “disadvantaged” children, defined as most children– the mentally ill (which they call 1/5 of all kids); and the gay, lesbian, transgender, two-spirited, or bisexual.
Another issue: test start-up costs are $39 million dollars, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
Why waste money on the socialist AIR company and common core tests, when we need that money for legitimate learning goals, like buying desks and pencils and actual (not Pearson electronic) books and increasing teachers’ salaries?
And why is the public being told, rather than asked? After the fact.
Utah did not have to choose AIR. Why did we? Does AIR represent Utah’s values or goals? I do not think so.
A wise Utah leader has written: “Schools should be reminded that their primary field of competence is academic, not social adjustment, or world citizenship, or sex education. Parents should stand firm on this and not be intimidated by ‘professional educators.’ After all, it’s their children and their money.” -Ezra Taft Benson, “An Enemy Hath Done This” p. 232
Do parents want a company of psychologists to store test results in a database for which there are no laws governing how long data can be stored, how it can be used or with whom it can be shared?
One last issue for those who want to study this further: AIR is partnered with SBAC, with Linda Darling-Hammond, with George Soros, and with many, many, many other groups that are frighteningly socialist or anti-American.
Please write to our governor, legislators, and school boards. Tell them we want out of Common Core, out of the AIR/Common Core testing, the SLDS data mining, common core aligned textbook adoption, and the unvetted and unreasonable financial waste.
Here’s the state school board’s email address: Board@schools.utah.gov
The AIR presentations will be happening statewide. Find your area’s scheduled presentation event on the USOE website. Or call them at (801) 538-7500.
- - - - - -
Alyson Williams and Morgan Olsen contributed to this report.
Jamie Gass – Pioneer Institute – has been speaking about Common Core for many years; knows why Massachusetts had the best standards in the nation prior to Common Core. http://youtu.be/SBROaOCKN50
Dr. Sandra Stotsky, who served on the Common Core validation committee and refused to sign off on their adequacy: http://bcove.me/ws77it6d see min. 55:30
This is the fifth in a countdown series of introductions, a list of the top ten scariest people leading education in America. For numbers 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, click here.
The biggest philanthropist on earth comes across as the epitome of sincere, nerdy nice-guy. And he probably is very nice and very sincere. But does sincerity trump truth?
The truth is, Bill Gates’ herculean attempt to fund and market Common Core to Americans, and to circumvent the voting public on educational issues, is dangerously, dangerously misguided.
Thus, not everybody is happy in philanthropy land. The biggest philanthropist in the world got behind the unproven experiment of Common Core and –using money rather than the voice of the American voter– he pushed it into schools, circumventing any vetting by legislative, educator or parent groups.
Gates’ astronomical wealth has persuaded millions that Common Core is the solution to education problems, the argument from everywhere, approved (by him) and beyond debate. But let me repeat the fact: regardless of whether the standards are horrible or glorious, the truth remains that whenever unelected philanthropists are permitted to direct public policy, the voting public gets cut out of the process. It’s happening all over the U.S., but not just in the U.S. The Gates-directing-world-education effect is happening everywhere.
Since Gates has no constituency he can’t be un-elected; so it’s not the the wisdom of experienced educators, but simply one man’s money that is directing implementation of the controversial Common Core. His money has bought, besides technology, work groups, and a seat at the policy making table, extreme marketing success.
No wonder, then, even educators don’t seem to know the full truth about Common Core. They’re reading Education Week and the Harvard Education Letter. Translation: they are reading Gates’ dollar bills. (By the way: want to make some money selling out your fellow teachers? Gates is searching for a grant recipient who will receive $250,000 to accelerate networking of teachers toward acceptance of Common Core. )
Wherever you see advocates for Common Core, you see Gates’ influence. He gave a million dollars to the national PTA to advocate to parents about Common Core. He gave Common Core developer NGA/CCSSO roughly $25 million to promote it. (CCSSO: 2009–$9,961,842, 2009– $3,185,750, 2010–$743,331, 2011–$9,388,911 ; NGA Center: 2008–$2,259,780.) He gave $15 million to Harvard for “education policy” research. He gave $9 million to universities promoting “breakthrough learning models” and global education. Gates paid inBloom 100 million dollars to collect and analyze schools’ data as part of a public-private collaborative that is building “shared technology services.” InBloom, formerly known as the Shared Learning Collaborative, includes districts, states, and the unelected Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). The list goes on and on and on.
It’s hard to know exactly how much money Gates has put toward the promotion of Common Core because of the chameleon-like wording of educational granting areas. For example, he gave $3 million Stanford University and $3 million to Brown University for “college and career readiness.” (The average person wouldn’t know that college and career readiness is a code phrase defined as common core by the Department of Education.) Sometimes he’s promoting “support activities around educational issues related to school reform” for the CCSSO (common core developer) and other times he’s “helping states build data interoperability” –which not everyone would recognize as Common assessments’ bed-making.
According to Gates himself, he’s spent five billion dollars to promote his vision of education since 2000.
And not just in America– he wants global education standards.
Gates’ company, Microsoft, signed a cooperative agreement with the United Nations’ education branch, UNESCO. In it, Gates said, “Microsoft supports the objectives of UNESCO as stipulated in UNESCO’s constitution and intends to contribute to UNESCO’s programme priorities.” UNESCO’s “Education For All” key document is called “The Dakar Framework for Action: Education For All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments.” Read the full text here: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001211/121147e.pdf
So Gates partners with the U.N.’s educational and other goals via UNESCO’s “Education for All” which seeks to teach the same standards to all children (and adults) on a global scale. Why is this a problem? It supercedes local control over what is taught to students, and dismisses the validity of the U.S. Constitution, all in the name of inclusivity and education and tolerance for all nations.
At this link, you can learn about how Education For All works: “Prior to the reform of the global EFA coordination architecture in 2011-2012, the Education for All High-Level Group brought together high-level representatives from national governments, development agencies, UN agencies, civil society and the private sector. Its role was to generate political momentum and mobilize financial, technical and political support towards the achievement of the EFA goals and the education-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). From 2001-2011 the High-Level Group met annually.”
The six goals of “Education For All” are claimed to be internationally agreed-upon. On the linked Education and Awareness page of the U.N. website, we learn:
Did you get that? Education is indispensable for the U.N. to get its agenda pushed onto every citizen worldwide. They just admitted it out loud. They want a strong hand in determining what is taught worldwide.
So then we click on Chapter 36. In 36.2 it says we should “reorient” worldwide education toward sustainable development. (No discussion, no vote, no input needed on this reorientation plan, apparently.) 36.3 says: “Both formal and non-formal education are indispensable to changing people’s attitudes…. It is also critical for achieving environmental and ethical awareness, values and attitudes, skills and behaviour consistent with sustainable development… To be effective, environment and development education should deal with the dynamics of both the physical/biological and socio-economic environment and human (which may include spiritual) development, should be integrated in all disciplines, and should employ formal and non-formal methods”
The take-away? What does Bill Gates agree to in his Microsoft – UNESCO partnership?
Environmental education will be incorporated in formal education.
Any value or attitude held by anyone globally that stands independent to that of the United Nations’ definition of “sustainable education” must change. Current attitudes are unacceptable.
Education will be belief-and-spirituality based as defined by the global collective.
Environmental education will be integrated into every subject, not just science.
The stated objectives (36.4) include endorsing “Education for All,” and “giving special emphasis to the further training of decision makers at all levels.”
Hence the need for people like Gates to influence the training of decision makers. When asked what matters most to him, Gates said: education. His version of education. The Huffington Post reported:
“I’d pick education, if I was thinking broadly about America,” Gates responded. “It’s our tool of equality.” Is it coincidence that equality and redistribution are also concepts that Linda Darling-Hammond, Chaka Fattah and Arne Duncan are promoting in the federal Equity and Excellence Commission?
How committed is Bill Gates to the United Nations having a say in American education?
In his annual letter, Gates emphasized the importance of following the United Nations’ Millennial Goals and measuring teachers more closely. One of those UN Millennial goals is to achieve universal education. Also, Gates helped create Strong American Schools (a successor to the STAND UP campaign launched in 2006, which was an outgrowth of UNESCO’s Millennium Campaign Goals for Universal Education). It called for U.S. national education standards. (link 1) (link 2)
Also, Gates’ Foundation funded the International Benchmarking Advisory Group report for Common Core Standards on behalf of the National Governors Association, Council of Chief State School Officers, and ACHIEVE, Inc. titled, “Benchmarking for Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-Class Education.” This report showed the United Nations is a member of the International Benchmarking Advisory Group for Common Core Standards. (link)
It appears that Bill Gates is more than a common core philanthopist; he is a promoter of global sameness of education as defined by UNESCO and the U.N.
Does every state have a federally funded, interoperable State Longitudinal Database System that tracks people throughout their lives? Yes.
Every state has accepted 100% federally funded data collection (SLDS). The Data Quality Campaign states: “every governor and chief state school officer has agreed to build statewide longitudinal data systems that can follow individual students from early childhood through K-12 and postsecondary ed and into the workforce as a condition for receiving State Fiscal Stabilization Funds as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). A condition of getting the funding (ARRA money) was that the system would be interoperable.
Is the SLDS accessible by the federal government? Yes.
The SLDS grant explains that the SIF (state interoperability framework) must provide interoperability from LEA to LEA, from LEA to Postsecondary, from LEA to USOE, and from USOE to the EdFacts Data Exchange. The EdFacts Data Initiative is a “centralized portal through which states submit data to the Department of Education.”
The P-20 workforce council exists inside states to track citizens starting in preschool, and to “forge organizational and technical bondsand to build the data system needed to make informed decisions” for stakeholders both in and outside Utah. — http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/2/prweb9201404.htm
Is personally identifiable student information gathered, or only aggregate group data? Personal, identifiable, individual data is collected.
Many of us in Utah were present last summer when UT technology director John Brandt stood up in the senate education committee and testified that there are roughly twelve people in the state of Utah who have access to the personally identifiable information of students which is available in the Utah Data Alliances inter-agency network of student data. So it is not true that we are talking about only aggregate data, which leaders often insist. The Utah School Board confirmed to me in writing, also, that it is not allowed for any student to opt out of the P-20/ SLDS/ UDA tracking system, (which we know is K-workforce (soon to include preschool) citizen surveillance.)
Is the collected private student data accessible to agencies beyond than state education agency? Yes:
There are state data alliances that connect agencies. The Data Quality Campaign states: “states must ensure that as they build and enhance state K–12 longitudinal data systems, they also continue building linkages to exchange and use information across early childhood, postsecondary and the workforce (P–20/workforce) and with other critical agencies, such as health, social services and criminal justice systems.”
What data will be collected? According to the new FERPA regulations, pretty much anything. Social security numbers, psychometric and biometric information (see pg. 4 and 6) are not off the table. According to the National Data Collection model, over 400 points. Jenni White mentioned another federal model that asks for thousands of data points.
Data linking changes being made in regulations and policies make former privacy protection policies meaningless. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) suedthe Dept. of Education, under the Administrative Procedure Act, arguing that the Dept. of Ed’s regulations that changed the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act in Dec. 2011 exceeded the Department of Education’s authority and are contrary to law. http://epic.org/apa/ferpa/default.html
The Federal Register outlines, on page 51, that it is not now a necessity for a school to get student or parental consent any longer before sharing personally identifiable information; that has been reduced to the level of optional.
The Federal Register of December 2011 outlines the Dept. of Education’s new, Congressionally un-approved regulations, that decrease parental involvement and increase the number of agencies that have access to private student data: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-12-02/pdf/2011-30683.pdf (See page 52-57)
Although the Federal Register describes countless agencies, programs and “authorities” that may access personally identifiable student information, it uses permissive rather than mandatory language. The obligatory language comes up in the case of the Cooperative Agreement between the Department of Education and the states’ testing consortium http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop-assessment/sbac-cooperative-agreement.pdf
Effectively, there is no privacy regulation governing schools anymore, on the federal level. Khalia Barnes, a lawyer at EPIC disclosed that these privacy intrusions affect not only children, but anyone who ever attended any college or university (that archives records, unless it is a privately funded university.)
Why did the Dept. of Ed need to alter FERPA regulations?
To match their data collection goals (stated in the Dept. of Ed cooperative agreement with testing consortia) which contracts with testing consortia to mandate triangulation of tests and collected data. This federal supervision is illegal under G.E.P.A. law and the 10th Amendment). http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop-assessment/sbac-cooperative-agreement.pdf
Who can access collected data?
The National Data Collection Model (the federal request for what states ought to be collecting) represents 400 data points schools should collect and “it is a comprehensive, non-proprietary inventory… that can be used by schools, LEAs, states, vendors, and researchers”. Vendors are already using this.
How can we get free of this system?
Jenni White of ROPE (Restore Oklahoma Public Education) states that the only way to get free of this federal data collection invasion is to put political pressure on our governors to give that ARRA money back. As long as we keep it, we are in data collection chains by the federal government; also, our increasing buy-in to common core exacerbates the educational tech scam on the corporate side. Dept. of Education infringements upon state law and freedom are explained in the white paper by Jenni White entitled “Analysis of Recent Education Reforms and the Resulting Impact on Student Privacy” – http://www.scribd.com/doc/94149078/An-Analysis-of-Recent-Education-Reforms-and-the-Resulting-Impact-on-Student-Privacy
What else is at stake?
Sheila Kaplan has provided expert testimony about the student data collection, but has also said that an educational data monopoly is an issue, too. She explains that a group exists, including Bing, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc., that assigns high or low attention to content and directs internet traffic. So if code uses hashtags and common core aligned taxonomies, your education data will get traffic. If not, it won’t. If you are searching for any educational data it won’t come up unless it’s using that coded taxonomy. This wrecks net neutrality and is, in her educated opinion, an anti-trust issue of the internet. She mentioned the CEDS, (common element data system) that is ending net neutrality. She also finds appalling the Learning Registry, funded by the Department of Defense and the Department of Education, which is a place for teachers to advertise for common core aligned products– all using stimulus money.
Why did the Dept. of Ed redefine FERPA’s meaning of the term “educational agency” to include virtually any agency and redefine “authorized representative” to mean virtually anyone, even a “school volunteer?
When FERPA is weak, linking of data allowseasy access to data, both technologically and in terms of legal policy. It also trumps other laws, such as HIPPA. For example, as both Gary Thompson and Jenni White have pointed out, the new, weak FERPA law takes precedence over HIPPA (patient privacy) when medical or psychological services are provided in schools or when educational services are provided in jails.
In that document, states are obligated to share data with the federal government “on an ongoing basis,” to give status reports, phone conferences and other information, and must synchronize tests “across consortia”. This triangulation nationalizes the testing system and puts the federal government in the middle of the data collecting program.
For understanding of the motivation of the federal government, read some of US Dept. of Education Arne Duncan’s or Obama’s speeches that show the passion with which the federal agency seeks access to data to control teachers and educational decisions. http://www2.ed.gov/news/speeches/2009/06/06082009.pdf
Are teachers also to be studied like guinea pigs, along with students? Yes.
The Common Core of Data (CCD) is another federal program of data collection that studies TEACHERS as well as students. It calls itself “a program of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics that annually collects fiscal and non-fiscal data about all public schools, public school districts and state education agencies in the United States. The data are supplied by state education agency officials and include information that describes schools and school districts, including name, address, and phone number; descriptive information about students and staff, including demographics; and fiscal data, including revenues and current expenditures.” http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/
How does Common Core relate to the federal and corporate data collection movement?
Chief of Staff Joanne Weiss at the Dept. of Education has been publicly quoted saying that “data-mashing” is a good idea. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gives speeches calling for ”more robust data.” And at the recent White House Datapalooza, the CEO of eScholar stated that without Common Core tests being “the glue” for open data, this data movement would be impossible.
Try this on for an explanation: it’s a speech she gave last summer at a UNESCO conference in Paris.
In the speech, Darling-Hammond says that “we allow this extraordinary inequality” in America which may cause us to “innovate our way to failure.” She shows a chart entitled “The Anatomy of Inequality” (see minutes 15:06- 16:00) that explains that taking away money from the areas of richer kids’ schools is a good idea (she mentions rich schools having too many swimming pools).
In her book, “A Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity will Determine our Future,” she further explains why pushing for equity (communism) will solve the problems of education. The book illustrates poverty’s effect on education (tell us something we didn’t know) and she comes to the false conclusion that a governmentally forced attempt at financial equity (redistribution) can create better education. She doesn’t mention how this is to happen without harming individual liberty and without punishing the kids in financially stable schools.
Her ideas are being absolutely shoved down the throats of state school boards and legislators nationally.
And she is dead set on Common Core being the means to these ends. Always has been. She knew that others on the Common Core validation committee refused to sign off that the standards were legitimate; she was aware that common core would be an experiment on millions, implemented without any empirical data supporting its superiority claims. She not only supported this baseless decision making and the copyrighting and implementation of the common standards –but she’s now helping to write the common tests!
Darling-Hammond and her ideas are mentioned 52 times in the EEC report For Each and Every Child, a ”strategy for equity report” that she co-wrote. In the words of Congressman Honda, another EEC member, it’s a “bold new vision on the federal role in education” that wants to see “transformations in school funding.”
Take a look at the EEC’s Opportunity to Learn Campaign. Included in the “opportunity” is also the cessation of any semblance of liberty. Dropping out is not an option; you can’t get suspended or expelled from school no matter how hard you try. The EEC calls this “positive discipline.” Also included in the “Opportunity to Learn Campaign” are “wraparound supports” such as extended learning time which might sound good until you realize that we’re moving away from a family-centered to a school-centered way of life that pushes parents to the periphery of children’s lives.
To translate: Linda Darling-Hammond pushes for communism in the name of social justice, for a prison-like view of schooling in the name of extended opportunity, and for an increased federal role in education in the name of fairness. She gets away with it because she comes across as sweetly compassionate.
But she scares me. And people who listen to her scare me too.
This is the fourth in a countdown series of introductions, a list of the top ten scariest people leading education in America. For number 8, number 9 and number 10, click here.
Sir Michael Barber of England, Chief Education Advisor at Pearson and Common Core promoter extraordinare, is also a global education standards promoter.
Did you catch that? Global standards. Barber wants every child in every country learning the same thing at the same time. Barber talks about “sustainable reform” as “irreversible reform” and he directs education policy makers to “make it so it can never go back to how it was before.”
Talk about scary. So, freedom advocates (including me) are regularly labeled “misinformed” by state school boards and governors. We jump up and down, shouting at the top of our lungs that Common Core creates irreversible damage to traditional education and to local autonomy. But our leaders assure us –I even heard the legislative lawyer advise our Senate Education Committee say that ”We can get out of Common Core anytime we like.”
But you see, Sir Michael Barber, CEA of the world’s largest educational sales company, is openly selling “irreversible reform.”
“If you want irreversible reforms, work on the culture and the minds of teachers and parents.” Otherwise, he says, people might repeal what’s been done because of their “wish for the past.”
Barber is praised and even quoted by the U.S. Secretary of Education. And Barber’s famous book, Deliverology 101, is dedicated “specifically for leaders of American Education reform.” (Yes, the reformers who listen to those who are on this “Scariest People” list.)
At a recent British Education Summit, Barber gave a speech entitled “Whole System Revolution: The Education Challenge For the Next Decade“. http://youtu.be/T3ErTaP8rTA He likes the word “revolution” and he uses it a lot. Just check out his twitter stream.
Meanwhile, another British management guru, the president of Vanguard, John Seddon, says Barber is wrong. Check out Seddon’s speech entitled “Why Deliverology Made Things Worse in the UK.” Seddon says, ”I don’t go around the world bashing Deliverology, but I think I should.” Why?
Seddon says that Barber’s “deliverology” imposes arbitrary targets that damage morale. He explains that Deliverology works because it’s merciless. Deliverology, says Seddon, is “a top-down method by which you undermine achievement of purpose and demoralize people.” http://youtu.be/2sIFvpRilSc
Barber uses his Deliverology method to push global education reform because, in Barber’s view, education reform is a “global phenomenon,” no longer to be managed by individuals or sovereign countries. Education reform has “no more frontiers, no more barriers,” he said at the August summit on education.
But as we all know, under the U.S. Constitution, education is to be state-led, not a federal and especially not an internationally-determined, issue.
Sir Michael Barber has not been dubbed “a control freak’s control freak” for nothing. Barber promotes global data collection and “whole system revolution” . See the chart during his summit speech, displayed at 12:06 minutes, and pinpointed as:
Systemic innovation + Sameness of standards + Structure + Human capital
(Whenever anyone uses the term “human capital” I run screaming from the room. It sounds like somebody owns the humans. It sounds like slavery. But add Barber’s passion for Mcstandardization and top-down structuring of systems and what do you envision? Not self-determination. Not freedom. Not local control.)
“We want data about how people are doing. We want every child on the agenda,” he says. At minute 6:05 (above) he specifies that “every child” means every “global citizen.” –What’s wrong with being a global citizen, you ask? Well, for starters, when you give yourself to the globe rather than to your nation, you lose your constitutional and property rights as they are swallowed up in a global governance system.
Absurdly, this British Pearson sales advisor, Barber, praises Common Core in American interviews. He says, “Can I congratulate the CFR for getting into this issue? I think it’s great to see education as an issue of national security…”
Pearson “invests,” says Barber, by purchasing cheap schools in developing countries in partnership with governments. Pearson works hand in hand with both nongovernmental agencies (NGA and CCSSO) and with governmental agencies (U.S. Department of Education) to promote global education and Common Core. Because he sees global control of education and U.S. Common Core as one and the same.
Barber says that every country should have exactly the same definition of what it “means to be good at maths”. At 4:00 he says that “citizens of the world” including every single child, “all 9 billion people who will be alive in 2050″ must know E(K+T+L) –which stands for (Knowledge + Thinking + Leadership) multiplied by the “ethical underpinnings” of environmentalism.
Barber explains that the “ethical underpinning” is “shared understanding” of earth “sustainability” that every child in every school around the world will learn.
Ethics, to Barber is all about global collectivism. So is he a communist? He certainly doesn’t use the word. But he does talk about the need for America to remove its gun rights, to remove diversity to replace it with standardization, to install top-down control of systems, and to promote thinking as citizens of the world rather than as citizens of nations. You do that math.
It wouldn’t be so bad if he was a loony bin off in a cabin. But this man directs curriculum production for the largest curriculum producer on earth. His company, Pearson, is everywhere. Pearson textbooks and technologies are in virtually every school and university in America. Pearson does teacher professional development. Pearson runs EnVision math. Pearson does early childhood education assessment. Pearson pushes millions to implement Common Core.
Common Core is very big business for Pearson. In fact, Pearson has long been partnered with Achieve Inc., a co-author of Barber’s “Deliverology 101.” And Achieve also helped write the Common Core. Achieve says the company joined “with NGA and CCSSO on the [Common Core] Initiative, and a number of Achieve staff and consultants served on the [Common Core] writing and review teams.” It’s BIG business.
The Wall Street Journal quotes Pearson’s CEO on Common Core as a gold mine:
“‘It’s a really big deal,’ says Peter Cohen, CEO of Pearson’s K-12 division, Pearson School, ‘The Common Core standards are affecting literally every part of the business we’re involved in.’”
When the BBC interviewer accused Sir Barber of leading Pearson to take over nations’ sovereign educational systems, Barber said, in defense, “I worked for government. I love government. I think government is a really important, a big part of the solution.” Of course he does. It’s all about Public Private Partnerships, the collusion of business and government under the guise of improving education.
Advising governments from the U.S. to Pakistan on how to implement nationalized education is Barber/Pearson’s specialty, according to the UK Guardian:
“… he has set up a US Education Delivery Unit (albeit as a private sector rather than government venture), co-authored books that claim to identify what makes national education systems successful, and taken the joint chairmanship of a taskforce in Pakistan to establish “national standards” in basic subjects. Now he’s becoming chief education adviser to Pearson, owner of Penguin Books and the Financial Times and also, in its own description, “the world’s leading learning company”, with interests in 70 countries…”
If Pearson were siphoning off American taxpayers’ money to sell books and technologies that would teach American to value America and to learn traditional math and other good things, I would not be writing this article; this is not a criticism of corporate greed.
It is a criticism of the American school boards, teachers and taxpayers who allow ourselves to blindly purchase countless Pearson technologies and teacher trainings when that organization and its curricular content is led by Sir Michael Barber, advocate of globally standardized education, of irreversible reforms, of global data collection, and of the dismissal of individual voices of representation through the promotion of public private partnerships.
How much momentum is the Common Core pushback movement gaining nationwide? What do people need to know about Common Core? How does Common Core hurt education? Why is classic literature diminished? Is there any actual evidence that the standards are of good quality? Why were the standards written behind closed doors? Who is getting rich with taxpayers’ funding of Common Core? How does Common Core end local control of education? Are unelected people and organizations making education policy for our children? Are teachers afraid to speak out against Common Core? Who paid the PTA to advocate for Common Core without showing any pros and cons? How does the test data collection process change how education had been done in the past? What can one person do?
Did you see the recent view that Missouri Education Watchdog has taken on “Datapalooza” at the White House? Most telling is a pleasant sounding speech by eScholar CEO Shawn T. Bay, given at the White House, in which he states that although aggregate data (not individual) is useful, it’s most useful to look at the individual consumer or the individual student. He says, too, that Common Core is so important to the open data movement, because it’s “the glue that actually ties everything together.”
Common Core tests begin in 2014. The tests are to be the vehicle for the nationwide student data collection, both academic and nonacademic. Without Common Core, the federal and corporate invasion of privacy could not be effective. I do not think many people, including the speaker in this video, understand the underhanded (nonconsensual) alterations to privacy law of the Department of Education.
There may be someone in America who has studied the education data collection scheme more than Jenni White of Restore Oklahoma Public Education. But I haven’t found that person. Here’s a video interview that Alisa, Renee and I filmed with Jenni this week.
Highlights:
What is the State Longitudinal Database System?
Why does every state track every citizen with the SLDS?
What is the P20 system?
Why did the federal government pay every state many millions to build the system?
Why did they require states to build interoperable systems if they were not to share data outside the state?
How do schools, prisons, hospitals and military agencies now share data?
Is this really just career path assistance or is it citizen surveillance?
This first portion of the show is a clip of Glenn Beck introducing common core and its “Equity and Excellence Commission” which aims to use the educational system to redistribute; to redistribute not only exactly the same standards and testing nationwide, but also the nation’s wealth. Glenn calls the Common Core issue bigger than any other issue facing America today.
The next clip introduces the scarily non-traditional Common Core math, the dumbing-down via “student-centered” rather than teacher-directed instruction; and shows –my favorite part– the moment Glenn was stunned to find out that state legislatures were not a part of the adoption of Common Core, in any state.
Notice when Sherena Arrington describes this. She calls it the executive branch being ”off the chain.” Great choice of words. Off the chain– like a mad bulldog. Yes, there is a chain and American needs to stay attached to it because it’s an umbilical cord to mother freedom. It’s a chain forged by the U.S. Constitution, the process of voter representation, the importance of due process and the separation and balance of powers.
I mentioned one of the seminal documents of the Common Core movement, the Cooperative Agreement between Secretary Arne Duncan and the SBAC testing group, which says that the SBAC and PARCC (the other testing group) have to synchronize their tests and data, and that student-level data (personal, identifiable data) must be shared. That creates a national testing system, nationalizing education just like China or any socialist/communist country. This is so offensive, considering the fact that both the Constitution and U.S. GEPA law (General Educational Provisions Act) specify that the federal government may not direct or supervise educational programs or curriculum or tests in any way.
Then I brought up the fact that the Department of Education went behind Congress’ back to alter FERPA law (privacy law) so that parental consent is no longer a legal requirement to access student information. The National Data Collection Model asks for hundreds of data points to be collected on our loved ones, including family income, religion, nicknames, psychological issues, and so much more.
Yes, the executive branch is way off the chain and does need to be brought to account by Congress. By We, The People.
Thank you, Glenn Beck. Thank you for exposing to parents and other viewers nationwide what common core is really all about: it’s so much more than just academic standards.
Michelle Malkin’s true to her word. She said her New Year’s Resolution would be to expose the truth about Common Core, and she’s well on her way. Her fourth installment in the series “Rotten to the Core” is out.
In “The Feds’ Invasive Student Tracking Data Base” Malkin brings up the fact that while millions of Americans worry about government drones spying on citizens from the skies, millions are unaware that Washington is already spying on us using a web of recent “education reforms” known as the Common Core Initiative.
Malkin shares a link to the National Data Collection Model which asks states to report intimate details of an individual’s life, including bus stop times, parental names, nicknames, languages spoken, and more.
Reading her article made me think of last year’s ”child privacy no more” revelation.
Last year, when I first learned these student data tracking facts, I contacted my state school board to ask if there was an opt-out privilege. Could my public school attending child NOT be intimately tracked by the state’s SLDS data collection system? The answer came back, eventually. They said NO. They blamed it on the technology: the technology doesn’t allow us to opt certain children out.
The idea of “data driven decision making” has become a passion to many educrats, corporate icons and government leaders (Think Obama, Duncan, Joanne Weiss, –or Utah’s own John Brandt, David Wiley, and Judy Park).
“Data Driven” is a concept used as justification for behavior that in the end amounts to corporate/government stalking of children –without any parental consent.
I’m not using the word “stalking” facetiously. Does the governmental obsession with personal data collection differ from stalking?
I can think of only one answer to the question of how these differ: an individual stalker tends to stalk just one person at a time and rarely ”inspires” millions to help stalk.
So what do we do? Let’s look at our options. We can:
My hat is off to the wonderful pastors of Oklahoma who have joined together this week to write this letter to Oklahoma’s governor, state school board –and to all Americans.
February 19, 2013
To the Honorable:
Governor Mary Fallin
Lieutenant Governor Todd Lamb
State School Superintendent Janet Barresi
Members of the Oklahoma Legislature
The most concerning thing about last November’s Presidential election was not the outcome, but that almost 60 million people thought reelecting Barak Obama was a good idea. How did a man who openly supports unfettered abortion, homosexual marriage, record setting deficit spending and the redistribution of wealth garner the support of nearly 60 million voters? The reason: That is what the voters have been taught in an educational system that is controlled by the Federal Government.
Beginning with LBJ’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Federal Government began an unconstitutional power grab over public education. Then in 1991, President
George H. W. Bush tied American education into the standards set by the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization. Since then, every few years the Federal government rolls out the latest version of the same old UN standards. Whether you call it Goals 2000, No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, or Core Curriculum it’s the same old junk and we keep buying it.
The Founder’s design was for local control of education. Unfortunately, the school busses in my town still say “Edmond Public Schools”, but they really aren’t. They are the Edmond branch of an educational system controlled by Washington D.C. We voluntarily have sold our freedom for the sake of funds that come from a bankrupt government, that forces conservative, God fearing Oklahoma children to abide by the government mandated curriculum which is birthed by UNESCO with the intent on creating a sustainable earth
without borders.
We have kicked God out of school and replaced Him with Darwin and Marx. If there is no God, then government is the grantor of all rights including my Obamaphone and Obamacare. That is why American Exceptionalism is no longer taught, but evil American Imperialism is.
Rather than teaching our kids to be thrifty, hardworking and self-reliant, we are taught government dependency. Since God doesn’t exist, there is no absolute truth and consequently right and wrong has been replaced with tolerance and intolerance. We are taught that Islam is good and Christianity is bad. We are not taught to be good citizens (as our founders demanded) we are taught to be global citizens. We are taught about “rights”, but we aren’t taught responsibility. We aren’t taught that no one has a right to do wrong.
Core Curriculum may be the most dangerous Trojan Horse that has yet been brought to our gates for the following reason. With the new push toward the [Common] Core Curriculum Standards, the ACT and SAT tests are adjusting to reflect those same standards. All text books will then conform to these new standards as even “homeschool” and “private school” will be forced to be taught to the test. If we do not stop this program now, it will become America’s next Medicare or Social Security and millions of children will be lost inside a one size fits all system to create equal mediocrity among the new “global citizens.”
Let’s restore American exceptionalism and reject the [Common] Core Curriculum. We’re smart enough to make decisions about our own children and our own schools. Let’s return Oklahoma
Schools to Oklahoma control.
Sincerely,
Pastor Paul Blair, Fairview Baptist Church – Edmond
Reverend Dr. Perry Greene, South Yukon Church of Christ
Reverend Tim Gillespie, Seminole Free Will Baptist Church
Reverend Dr. Steve Kern, Olivet Baptist Church
Reverend Dr. Tom Vineyard, Windsor Hills Baptist Church
Reverend Gerald R. Peterson, Sr. Pastor, First Lutheran Church – OKC
Reverend Dan Fisher, Trinity Baptist Church – Yukon
Reverend Christopher Redding, Stillwater
Reverend Dr. Kevin Clarkson, First Baptist Church – Moore
Reverend Bruce A. DeLay, Church in the Heartland – Tulsa
Reverend Chilles Hutchinson
Reverend David Evans, Highland Baptist Church
Reverend Dr. Bruce A. Proctor
Reverend Dr. Jim D. Standridge, Immanuel Baptist Church – Skiatook
Reverend Donnie Edmondson
Reverend Paul Tompkins
Reverend Craig Wright, Faith Crossing Baptist Church – OKC
Reverend Jesse Leon Rodgers, Gateway Church of Ada
Reverend Ken Smith, Sunnylane Baptist Church
Reverend Dr. Charles Harding
Reverend Rod Rieger, Newcastle Christian Church
Reverend Ron Lindsey, Suburban Baptist Church
Glen Howard, Retired Pastor / Missionary and current host of Senior World Radio
Reverend Dr. Jim Vineyard, Pastor Emeritus, Windsor Hills Baptist Church
I’m posting the bills from South Carolina, Indiana, and Missouri which have attempted to reclaim state educational decision-making for those states. I’m also posting the resolution unanimously passed by the Alabama Republican Women’s Federation, cosponsored by the Republican Women’s Federations from Delaware, Tennessee, Nebraska, etc.
So far, we have nothing like this in Utah, although at every political meeting I go to or hear about, the majority of citizens are extremely interested in getting our state free of Common Core.
Utah representatives, do you hear your constitutents?
—– —– —– —–
SOUTH CAROLINA S.604
South Carolina General Assembly
119th Session, 2011-2012
Download This Bill in Microsoft Word format
S. 604
STATUS INFORMATION
General Bill
Sponsors: Senators Fair, Grooms, Bryant, Campsen, Bright and S. Martin
Introduced in the Senate on February 23, 2011
Summary: Common Core State Standards
——————————————————————————-
2/23/2011 Senate Introduced and read first time (Senate Journal-page 19)
2/23/2011 Senate Referred to Committee on Education
A BILL TO AMEND ARTICLE 5, CHAPTER 1, TITLE 59 OF THE 1976 CODE, RELATING TO GENERAL PROVISIONS CONCERNING EDUCATION, BY ADDING SECTION 59-1-490 TO PROVIDE THAT THE COMMON CORE STANDARDS MAY NOT BE IMPOSED ON SOUTH CAROLINA.
Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina:
SECTION 1. Article 5, Chapter 1, Title 59 of the 1976 Code is amended by adding:
“Section 59-1-490. The State Board may not adopt and the State Department may not implement the Common Core State Standards developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Any actions taken to adopt or implement the Common Core State Standards as of the effective date of this section are void ab initio.”
SECTION 2. This act takes effect upon approval by the Governor.
—– —– —– —–
INDIANA SENATE BILL No. 193
DIGEST OF INTRODUCED BILL
Citations Affected: IC 20-19-2-14.5.
Synopsis: Common core state educational standards. Provides that the state board of education may not adopt as standards for the state any common core educational standards developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Voids any action taken to adopt common core educational standards.
Effective: July 1, 2013.
Schneider
January 7, 2013, read first time and referred to Committee on Education and Career Development.
First Regular Session 118th General Assembly (2013)
SENATE BILL No. 193
A BILL FOR AN ACT to amend the Indiana Code concerning education.
Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Indiana:
SOURCE: IC 20-19-2-14.5; (13)IN0193.1.1. –> SECTION 1. IC 20-19-2-14.5 IS ADDED TO THE INDIANA CODE AS A NEW SECTION TO READ AS FOLLOWS [EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2013]: Sec. 14.5. (a) As used in this section, “common core standards” refers to educational standards developed for kindergarten through grade 12 by the Common Core State Standards Initiative. (b) Notwithstanding section 14 of this chapter, the state board may not adopt as standards for the state or direct the department to implement any common core standards developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative. (c) After June 30, 2013, any action taken by the state board before July 1, 2013, to adopt common core standards as standards for the state is void.
—– —– —– —– —–
MISSOURI SENATE BILL 210
FIRST REGULAR SESSION
SENATE BILL NO. 210
97TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
INTRODUCED BY SENATORS LAMPING AND NIEVES.
Read 1st time January 24, 2013, and ordered printed.
TERRY L. SPIELER, Secretary.
1218S.01I
AN ACT
To amend chapter 161, RSMo, by adding thereto one new section relating to the
Common Core Standards Initiative.
Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Missouri, as follows:
Section A. Chapter 161, RSMo, is amended by adding thereto one new
2 section, to be known as section 161.855, to read as follows: 161.855.
Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary,
2 the state board of education and the department of elementary and 3 secondary education shall not implement the Common Core State 4 Standards developed by the Common Core Standards Initiative. Any 5 actions taken to adopt or implement the Common Core State Standards 6 as of the effective date of this section are void. Common Core State 7 Standards or any other statewide education standards shall not be 8 adopted or implemented without the approval of the general assembly.
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF REPUBLICAN WOMEN RESOLUTION
Defeat National Standards for State Schools
Passed Unanimously at the NFRW36th Biennial Convention Kansas City, MO – October 1, 2011
WHEREAS, The national standards-based “Common Core State Standards” initiative is the centerpiece of the Obama’s Administration’s agenda to centralize education decisions at the federal level;
WHEREAS, The Obama Administration is using the same model to take over education as it used for healthcare by using national standards and boards of bureaucrats, whom the public didn’t elect and can’t fire or otherwise hold accountable;
WHEREAS, National standards remove authority from States over what is taught in the classroom and how it is tested;
WHEREAS, National standards undercut the principle of federalism on which our nation was founded;
WHEREAS, There is no constitutional or statutory authority for national standards, national curricula, or national assessments and in fact the federal government is expressly prohibited from endorsing or dictating state/local decisions about curricula; and
WHEREAS, The Obama Administration is attempting to evade constitutional and statutory prohibitions to move toward a nationalized public-school system by (1) funding to date more than $345 million for the development of national curriculum and test questions, (2) tying national standards to the Race to the Top charter schools initiative in the amount of $4.35 billion, (3) using the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) to pressure State Boards of Education to adopt national standards with the threat of losing Title 1 Funds if they do not, and (4) requesting Congress to include national standards as a requirement in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary School Act (No Child Left Behind);
BE IT RESOLVED, That the National Federation of Republican Women vote to encourage all State Federation Presidents to share information about national standards with their local clubs; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That State Federation Presidents ask their members to (1) contact their State Boards of Education members and request that they retain control over academic standards, curriculum, instruction and testing, (2) contact their Congress Members and request that they (i) protect the constitutional and statutory prohibitions against the federal government endorsing or dictating national standards, (ii) to refuse to tie national standards to any reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, (iii) defund “Race to the Top” money, and (iv) prohibit any more federal funds for the Common Core State Standards Initiative, including funds to assessment and curriculum writing consortia, and (3) spread the word about the threat of a federal government takeover of education.
Submitted by: Alabama Federation of Republican Women
Elois Zeanah, President
Co-Sponsors:
Nebraska Federation of Republican Women, Delaware Federation of Republican Women, Wisconsin Federation of Republican Women, Georgia Federation of Republican Women, Tennessee Federation of Republican Women
After a recent town hall meeting, I stood in line to mention to my visiting Congressman that the Department of Education had gone behind Congress’ back to alter FERPA (family privacy law) that circumvented parental consent and broadened definitions of who gets access to personal student data, including nonacademic and family data.
This is, of course, dangerous to student privacy and ultimately, to citizen autonomy.
The Congressman said he was interested in more information about what the Department of Education had done. So, here is what I have shared, and I share it here, too, for anyone who’s interested in parental consent laws or student privacy protection.
The interplay of the several Dept. of Ed. actions reveal to me that a main reason the Executive Branch alloted so much money toward incentivizing Common Core to states, is this fact: common, national tests will collect so much data, to be perusable by the federal government –and others.
“Others” will include public-private-partnerships (PPP’s) as modeled by global-education sales giant Pearson. Pearson’s CEA, Michael Barber –who is quoted often and praised by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan– says that education standards should be the same globally, and that global data must be perused “without borders”. See Pearson’s new global education data bank .
Arne Duncan is aware of the limitations of the federal role in educational decision making and data collection, legally, in America.
Still, he meddled. He altered the Family Education Rights Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations to benefit the Dept. of Education’s testing/data collection goals; the FERPA alterations will continue to benefit corporations, notably Pearson; and will link to various state and federal agencies under the Data Quality Campaign. Any “authorized representative” who claims to be a “stakeholder” –even a school “volunteer” can access the now loosened rules about seeing personally identifiable information (PII) unless a school refuses to collect it in the first place. You will notice that the Federal Register speaks out of both sides of its mouth about loosening and preserving privacy rights. It is impossible to do both, and the Dept. of Education has not done both.
It loosened the requirement that school systems previously were under; previously, schools had to get parental consent (or above 18-yr-old students’) consent, before sharing data. It also altered definitions of terms including “directory information” and “educational agency.” Very dangerous stuff.
The alterations by the Dept. of Education really need a context, to understand the motives, and why the Dept. didn’t wait for Congressional approval.
So, in addition to recommending you read the incredibly boring but vital Federal Register vol 76.232: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-12-02/html/2011-30683.htm which laid out the alterations to FERPA– in addition to that, I’m also recommending reading:
3. A link to the National Data Collection Model’s recommended data points, for schools to collect (including health-care history, family income, nicknames, family voting status, gestational age of students at birth, student ID number, and bus stop times among other pieces of information on the student and the families. http://nces.sifinfo.org/datamodel/eiebrowser/techview.aspx?instance=studentPostsecondary
5. The SLDS (State Longitudinal Database System) information. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/slds/index.asp SLDS was bought with ARRA Stimulus money; every state bought one and they must be interoperable; they track students/citizens using personally identifiable information that includes biometric, psychometric, nonacademic and academic info.
7. Another link to how FERPA alterations of the USDE allow DNA, fingeprints, voiceprints and other biometric records to be used to identify persons. http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/pdf/ferparegs.pdf This link states: “’Biometric record,’ as used in the definition of “personally identifiable information,” means a record of one or more measurable biological or behavioral characteristics that can be used for automated recognition of an individual. Examples include fingerprints; retina and iris patterns; voiceprints; DNA sequence; facial characteristics; and handwriting.”
By stealth, and by financial incentivization to states (increasingly to school districts directly, in states that rejected Common Core data collection tests), it appears that the Department of Education used school systems to create a strong citizen surveillance web, better known as “robust data.”
It turns out that the Constitutional rights-saving fairies are off duty. They’ve left it up to you and me.
We, the People, must call the Dept. of Education on this.
1. ALL UTAHNS ARE TRACKED VIA SCHOOLS USING A FEDERALLY PROMOTED AND PAID-FOR SLDS.
I have an email from the State School Board that says there is no possibility for my student to opt out of being tracked. When a parent signs his/her child up for school, the information is gathered and added to, throughout the life of that child because of the State Longitudinal Database System (SLDS). The SLDS was paid for by the federal government and all states accepted the money and built this interoperable system. It works with the P-20 (preschool through workforce) council, which is appointed by the Governor. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/slds/state.asp?stateabbr=UT
2. THE TRACKING OF CITIZENS GOES BEYOND THE SCHOOL DISTRICT AND STATE OFFICE OF EDUCATION.
The Utah Data Alliance, directed by John Brandt, links six state agencies to share the data collected by schools. These include workforce services; the system is a socialist program to align education and workforce and manage the people as “human capital,” one of their favorite phrases. According to a John Brandt online powerpoint, federal agencies also receive access to the data in the Utah Data system. According to the Joanne Weiss, chief of staff of the Dept. of Education, federal agencies are mashing data and are going to be “helpful” to states “wishing” to do the same.
3. INTEROPERABILITY WAS REQUIRED OF ALL SLDS SYSTEMS FOR FEDERAL PURPOSES.
4. REGULATIONS HAVE BEEN ALTERED WITHOUT CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL CONCERNING PRIVACY LAW.
The Dept. of Education changed definitions and broadened allowances of the Family Education Rights Privacy Act. Though they have been sued for this move, the fact remains that without parental consent, researchers, federal agencies and any “authorized” volunteer can look at the collected data, which includes biometric information (personally identifiable).
5. DATA POINTS TO BE COLLECTED BY STATES HAVE BEEN “RECOMMENDED” BY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT:
According to the National Data Collection Model, the government should collect information on health-care history, family income, family voting status, gestational age of students at birth, student ID number, and bus stoptimes among other pieces of information on the student and their families. You can view the National Data Collection Model database attributes (data categories) at http://nces.sifinfo.org/datamodel/eiebrowser/techview.aspx?instance=studentPostsecondary
6. DEPT. OF EDUCATION COOPERATIVE AGREEMENTS CONTRACTED WITH TESTING CONSORTIA MANDATE INFORMATION SHARING
1. John Brandt has not revealed the exact number of people or agencies in Utah (or elsewhere) who have access to the personally identifiable information collected by schools on individuals. He does not return emails or phone calls.
2. At what point does “allowance” to share information turn into “must” share information? The FERPA alterations right now only removed the requirement for schools to keep the data on students private without parental consent. They have not yet mandated that schools must share the data without parental consent. But we also don’t know which identified information is being shared with which agency in Utah, or which agency outside Utah. We just don’t know.
3. What effect will the Common Core (national) testing have on the data collection and ease of persual by the federal agencies? Is there a “Cooperative Agreement” between Utah’s test writer, the American Institutes for Research, and the federal government, as there is with the other testing consortia SBAC and PARCC?
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary…[for parents and teachers] to dissolve the [educational policy] bands which have connected them with [Common Core Governance] and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, [Educational] Liberty and the pursuit of [Educational] Happiness [while free from surveillance tracking by government longitudinal databases and P-20 Councils].
–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government [such as the Common Core Initiative] becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it [Common Core Initiative], and to institute new [education policy], laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that [High standards, such as those held previously by Massachusetts, California and other states] long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations [such as those brought by Common Core and its testing and data collection] pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government [False Educational Standards], and to provide new Guards for their future security.[State-vetted standards]
–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies [States] ; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government [Education policy]. The history of the present [Governance of Common Core] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
[Common Core Governance refuses to allow those governed by it, to vote or consent to its standards, tests, data collection and rules] which is wholesome and necessary for the public good. [Common Core Governance has made promises of academic grandeur without showing empirical evidence or references for these claims; when pressed, Common Core governance has] utterly neglected to attend to them.
[Common Core Governance has, by sliding under the public radar, essentially forbidden state legislators] to [have time to see rules] of immediate and pressing importance, [dealing with Common Core's cost and academic veracity.
[Common Core Governance] has refused to [allow Constitutional education and has asked] large districts of people [to] relinquish the right of Representation in the [Common Core Governance], a right inestimable to them…
[Common Core Governance] has called together [teacher professional development conference] bodies at places… for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
[Common Core Governance has bribed and/or deceived state leaders and thus] has dissolved [the rights of sovereignty of states and school districts] repeatedly, [and has dismissed with mislabling, as extremists, any who stand] opposing with manly firmness [these] invasions on the rights of the people.
[Common Core Governance has refused to provide a method of amendment for the Common Core] and has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States [from having a fair voice in their creation]; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for [writing and amendment of standards]; refusing to [ask Congress] before altering family privacy regulations; and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of [Private Student Data], the States remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of [privacy] invasion from without, and convulsions within.
[Common Core Governance] has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by [breaking Constitutional law and the General Educational Provisions Act] by [entering into micromanaging Cooperative Agreements with test-writing consortia].
[Common Core testing Governance] has made [all schools and teachers] dependent on [its] Will for the tenure of their offices, and the [continued] payment of their salaries.
[Common Core Governance] has made [school districts and teachers] dependent on [its] Will [even in states that rejected Common Core, such as Texas, by bribing districts with money under Race To The Top], a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars.
[Common Core Governance] has erected a multitude of New Offices, [and technologies] and sent hither swarms of Officers [propaganda-wielding spokespeople] to harrass our people, and eat out their [hearts and minds] substance.
[Common Core Governance] has kept among us… standing [educational standards and citizen surveillance tools, including P-20 Councils and federally funded State Longitudinal Database Systems] without the Consent of our legislatures.
[Common Core Governance] has affected to render the [unelected boards such as Council of Chief State School Officers and National Governors' Association] independent of and superior to the Civil power.
[Common Core Governance] has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; [this includes quoting from, accepting money from, and/or aligning with the goals of, anti-constitutional activists such as Bill Gates, Bill Ayers, and Sir Michael Barber and UNESCO,] giving Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of [unwanted educational rules such as the rule that eliminates cursive writing for all children, the deletion of the majority of classic literature for all students, and the diminishment of traditional math teaching] among us:
For protecting them, [the unwanted rules] by a mock Trial [Common Core Validation Commttee], from punishment for any [damages] which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our [ability to innovate via the 15% limit on improvements to Common Core]:
For imposing [Common Core education, data collection, and tests] on us without our Consent [nor a vote]:
For depriving us … of the benefits of [a standards] Trial [the standards having not been tried anywhere before their imposition on the States]:
For [figuratively] transporting us beyond Seas to be [indoctrinated into 'global citizenship' above U.S. citizenship]
For abolishing the free System of [state sovereignty over education], establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies [States]:
For taking away our [local control], abolishing [or severely altering] our most valuable Laws [such as theFamily Educational Rights Provisions Act], and altering fundamentally the Forms of our [localeducational] Governments:
For suspending our own [local decisionmakers], and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all [educational testing, datat collection and standards] cases whatsoever.
[Common Core Governance] has abdicated [Constitutional] Government… by declaring [Common Core to be state-led], thus waging educational War against us [using lies].
[Common Core Governance] has plundered our [literature], ravaged our [math], [ended ourcursive writing lessons], and destroyed [freedom from student surveillance and longitudinal tracking] of our people.
[Common Core Governance] is at this time transporting large Armies of [social studies and science standards] to compleat the works of [educational damage]….
[Common Core Governance] has constrained our fellow [teachers] taken Captive on the high [propaganda] to bear [false witness in support of Common Core] against their [consciences], to become the [executers of Common Core and its tests] upon [students] friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by [losing their jobs].
[Common Core Governance] has excited domestic [corporations] amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless [Common Core Implementation Opportunist] Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of [formerly cherished traditional education] for all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. An [Educational Governance system] whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the [educational sovereign] of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our [state school boards]. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by the [Common Core Governance] to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our [high quality and control of education]. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the [teachers and parents] in the united States of America… appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these [local school districts], solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be [Educationally] Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the [Common Core Governance] and that all political connection between them and the [Common Core Governance] is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as [Educationally] Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy [Educational standards], conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish [non-CC-aligned educational] Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which [Educationally] Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our [Educational] Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Here’s a facebook thread from today that I think is significant.
Governor Gary R. Herbert wrote:
Preparing to testify before Congressional Committee on education and workforce alignment in Washington, D.C. tomorrow. Talking to Rod Decker about how Utah continues to impress the nation. Tomorrow I will tout Utah’s goal to attain post-secondary degrees or certificates for 66% of Utah’s working age population by 2020.
Like · · Share · 2 hours ago
15 people like this..
Alisa Olsen Ellis wrote:
I wish it were true that UT was leading out but in actuality we’re just following the crowd. We may be louder but we’re just going along with Obama’s 2020 goal. Look around every state has a 2020 plan. Even many other countries have a 2020 plan. UT’s was originally named Vision 2020 along with most other states but then we changed it to Prosperity 2020. Google Vision 2020 and you’ll see we’re just a follower. I wish you luck though….
Jason Christensen wrote:
Yes, please explain where exactly the 20 million is coming from and where the feds are to get the 20 million from? Or the near 1 billion cost to move the prison? Or your sell out on Obama’s/UN’s Common core? Or why you just will not have a back bone to enforce the US Constitution against the feds?
2 hours ago · Like · 3..
Christel Lane Swasey:
I wish that our state actually stood for Constitutional principles as it thinks it does. Whether it’s agreeing to obey federal gun control initatives above the 2nd Amendment, or agreeing to Obama’s 2020 plan (and calling it Utah’s) or whether it’s adopting the Common Core takeover of education and giving up our local control, I do not see Utah taking the lead in sustaining and defending the sacred Constitution.
26 minutes ago · Like · 5..
Anissa Wardell:
And we are giving personally identifiable information to the state without knowing how the state (office of education) is collecting and storing this information and giving it to other state programs who are tracking our children. Let’s be real honest here, Governor. We are not in that great of a position, and parents are just beginning to wake up to the fact that our own state school board has sold us out and you are siding with state employees on this issue as well as large corporations who stand to make a great deal of money with our children’s information not to mention with all the new curriculum that we will be having our money spent on! Utahns have entrusted people to protect our children and you are our very last line of defense and even you won’t stand up for them! Be a real Republican and stand up for constitutional principles….
10 minutes ago · Like · 1..
Alisa Olsen Ellis:
I couldn’t have said it better. I keep hearing reports from across the State that Common Core is one of the main topics brought up at town halls and yet we’re still doing nothing about it! The people with money and power want it and the parents DO NOT! What are we going to do about it? The career push is sickening. Do we seriously care about appearing as the “best managed state” so much that we’re willing to match education to the workforce and create a managed economy? Cradle to Career reform doesn’t match the values of this state…
Anissa Wardell:
What is happening is we are being turned into a socialist state…grooming our children for trades rather than letting them choose when they have a better idea of what really interests them. I changed my mind from 6th grade (which is where I hear they are beginning this garbage) through graduation at least 4 times! I want smart kids, I don’t want pre-programmed workers! The Utah State School Board/local school districts/the state of Utah are now in the business of data tracking and no guarantee as to the safety of this information has ever been given to parents. Maybe its time to get with LifeLock and suggest some products that the state can purchase for our children to guarantee their personal info is safe (at the expense of the state, not the children/parents)! Listen to the parents, Governor, not your business buddies!”
Alabama has cut its membership ties with both of the Common Core testing consortia– with PARCC and SBAC.
This is big news because those who want to federalize eduation and control citizens thereby cannot do so very easily without the shackling effect of having virtually every person in America labeled and tracked using the common testing data collection system. Yay for Alabama.
Alabama hasn’t cut ties with the whole Common Core State Standards Initiative, but according to Truth in American Education, Governor Bentley of Alabama said:
“Every state is different. Every Legislature is different. I think having one standard goes against the intent of the founding fathers of the United States.”
The Governor cast his vote against the standards. State Board of Education Members Stephanie Bell and Betty Peters also voted against the standards.
“In an email to EdWeek, the state’s assessment director, Gloria Turner, confirmed that Alabama has bowed out of both the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. She said the department of education “has decided to go in another direction,” but didn’t offer any more detail.
The move wasn’t yet official within the two consortia, since the requisite processes haven’t yet been completed. The decision leaves PARCC with 22 members and Smarter Balanced with 24.
Alabama, you might recall, has been one of the dwindling number of states that have been playing ‘participating,’ or ‘advisory’ roles in each consortium.”
Fox News interviewed Emmett McGroarty of the American Principles Project concerning recent, federal moves that allow federal access to the private information of students nationwide.
Things I am thinking as I watch this video:
First:
The Department of Education is, right now, in the middle of a lawsuit brought by another group, EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center). EPIC has alleged that the FERPA regulations that the Department made without Congressional approval violate student privacy law (by new redefinings of terms and by stretching definitions “past the breaking point” to allow access to data by almost anyone claiming to be an “authorized representative”–without any parental consent requirements by school administrators.) Not pretty.
Second:
Read this official statement from the Department of Education:
“Parents can rest assured that their children’s personal information is protected better now than it has ever been.” (This official statement is also read in this video clip.)
Third:
Emmett McGroarty responds to that statement:
“It’s important to note that these regulatory changes allow the sharing of data not just from department to department in both the federal government and state governments, but also –also– to private entities. So this is just a radical, radical change. I would beg to differ with the department’s response in that respect. “
The Indiana news outlet “Indystar” discussed Common Core today.
Indystar author Russell Pulliam quoted Emmett McGroarty’s observation, that criticism of Common Core has transcended liberal-conservative ideological differences.
“The opposition to Common Core cuts across the left-right spectrum,” he said. “It gets back to who should control our children’s education — people in Indiana or people in Washington?”
Emmett McGroarty
To which Pulliam added: “Who elected the big foundations who are helping drive the Common Core?”
Talk given by Christel Swasey at the Weber County Republican Women’s Meeting Jan.7, 2013
A few months ago, a University of Utah exhibit displayed original documents, newspapers, books and letters written by Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin and many others. The exhibit did not only show the freedom fighters’ side of the argument, but also displayed articulate, meaningful debate from the other side. The heated 1700s argument boiled down to either standing for local freedom or standing for America remaining a managed colony under England’s non-representative government.
In retrospect, how obvious it is to us which side was correct; America should be free. But at the time it was not so clear to all. Both sides had strong arguments that made some sense.
There is a similar, heated battle going on in America over education now. Will we retain local freedom or will we be a managed colony under the Department of Education’s rule, with no say over testing, education standards and innovation? Unconstitutional though it is, this is the battle we face today– a battle for control of American classrooms. Most parents, students, teachers, governors and even State School Board Members seem unaware that it is going on at all.
It’s a battle for constitutional education with local decision making, versus nationalized education without representation. It’s a battle between states retaining the freedom to soar, versus having mediocre sameness of education across states. It’s a battle between teaching the traditional academics versus teaching the extreme political agendas of the Obama Administration; it’s a battle for who gets to decide what is to be planted in the mind of the child.
One of America’s strengths has long been its educated people. The world flocks to our universities. We have had one of the most intellectually diverse public education systems in the world.
But this is changing dramatically.
The Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) leads the changes. The vast majority of states have already replaced previous education standards with Common Core. These national standards standardize– McDonaldize– a dreary and mediocre education plan for the country that lies far below the previous standards of top-ranking states, such as Massachusetts. Although many respected organizations have pledged support for the Common Core, evidence is painfully lacking to support Common Core’s claims. The common core proponents are quick to make sweet-sounding claims, but their claims are not referenced and are, in fact, false.
Many independent reviews suggest supporters of Common Core are sorely misguided. Dr. Michael Kirst of Stanford University pointed out that the standards define college readiness as being the same for 4-year, 2-year, and vocational colleges, essentially dumbing down expectations for university students.
Dr. Christopher Tienken of Seton Hall University pointed out that the standards are meant to save us from what is a myth– the idea that American students are lagging behind international peers; Tienken writes: “When school administrators implement programs and policies built on faulty arguments, they commit education malpractice.”
Despite claims to the contrary, Common Core Standards do not meaningfully increase academic rigor, are not internationally benchmarked, do not adequately prepare students for 4-year universities, were never assessed by top curriculum research universities, were never voted upon by teachers nor the public, do not allow a voice for the individual; have no amendment process, and do rob states of control of education and students of privacy.
The Common Core is an untested, federally promoted, unfunded experiment.
The standards creators (NGA/CCSSO) have not set up a monitoring plan to test this national experiment, to see what unintended consequences the Core will have on children. The standards slash the vast majority of classic literature, especially from high school English classes; minimize narrative writing skills acquisition, and push student-investigative, rather than instructive, math at all levels.
COMMON CORE HISTORY:
The Constitution and 10th amendment have long made it clear that only states –not any federal agency– have the right to direct education. Americans seem to have forgotten that we do not live in a top down kingdom but in a Constitutional republic. Many believe the federal government has power to rule over the state governments. This is false. States alone hold the right to educate.
Our Constitution was set up with a vital balance of powers between states and federal powers, and each maintains separate roles and authorities. Nowhere is any authority given to the federal government to direct education.
In addition to the Constitution’s and the tenth amendment’s giving states sole authority to direct education, another law called the General Educational Provisions Act (GEPA) states: “No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system, or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials by any educational institution or school system…”
So the Common Core standards are a set of national education standards which the federal government are forbidden, by law, to control or supervise. Yet the standards were foisted upon the states by the federal government with the repeated assertion that they were state-led standards. The Dept. of Education paid others to do what they were forbidden to do. The common standards were not written by the federal government, but they were financially incentivized by the federal government and then were promoted by private interests. Bill Gates, for example, spent $100M and plans to spend $150M more to push Common Core.
He gave the national PTA $@ million to promote it in schools. Common Core represents an ongoing cash cow for many groups, which explains why the media does not cover this issue. Many media outlets, even Fox News via Wireless Generation, are entangled in the massive money-making factory that is Common Core implementation. Microsoft and Pearson and others are seeing what a huge opportunity it presents them, as they benefit financially from the newly created false need: millions of new textbooks, teacher development programs, and new testing technologies are called for under the common core and its nationalized tests.
The standards were solely developed –and copyrighted– by nonacademic groups– the National Governors’ Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). Neither state education agencies nor major curriculum research universities were asked for meaningful input.
We were told that the Common Core was voluntary and “state led,” but it was a case of arm-twisting and financial bribery on the part of the Dept. of Education. States did not come together to write and share great ideas. (If that had been the case, we would likely have adopted high standards, instead, like those previously had in Massachusetts.)
The first time states were introduced to these national standards was when the federal government bribed states with a shot at a huge grant (our own tax money) in 2009. It was called Race to the Top, a grant for states. The Department of Education made a state’s promise to adopt common standards –sight unseen– a prerequisite to getting points in the grant contest called “Race to the Top”. There were 500 points possible. Adopting Common Core and its tests gave us some 70 points. Making the federal tracking database on students, the State Longitudinal Database System (SLDS) gave us 47 additional points.
Not by any authority of Congress, but by the lure of money –the Stimulus Bill– was Obama’s Race to the Top funded. States were given only two months to apply.
States competed for this money like a taxpayers’ lottery with a points system. There were 500 points possible. By adopting Common Core tests and standards, a state could earn 70 points. By implementing the SLDS (State Longitudinal Database System that serves as surveillance on citizens) a state could earn 47 points. Even though Utah didn’t win any money at all, we took the Race to the Top bait. Then we were stuck with Common Core standards as well as the SLDS database which would track and control citizens.
We were repeatedly assured, “states can get out of Common Core any time they like” but, like the story of Gulliver, tied down by many strings, we are in fact bound– unless we realize our rights and privileges and assert them firmly to free ourselves while we still may, to shake off the ties that bind us down.
Gulliver’s First String: No cost analysis
One of the strings that ties us down is the financial obligation of Common Core. No cost analysis has been done by Utah to date. It’s like a family agreeing to build a house without knowing what it will cost beforehand. It’s absurd. Virginia and Texas rejected Common Core, citing on both educational and financial reasons.
While textbook companies without exception are on a marketing spree with “Common Core Alignment,” it is taxpayers who will carry the burden for the unwanted texts, tests, the professional development, testing technology, data centers, administration and more.
If corporations were getting wealthy at taxpayer expense yet we had agreed to it, by a vote after thorough public vetting, that would be acceptable.
But Common Core never had pre-adoption teacher or parent or media attention, had no public vetting, no vote, and now we see that some of the corporations providing implementation of the common core standards have alarming political agendas that will harm our children. One example is Pearson, headed by Sir Michael Barber, with whom the Utah State Office of Education has multiple contracts.
Gulliver’s Second String:
The myth: that Common Core solves educational problems
The second string tying states down, Gulliver-like, is the problem-solving myth, the myth that our many educational problems, such as low expectations or college remediation, are to be solved by Common Core. Without a doubt, Common Core will worsen our educational problems.
Professor Sandra Stotsky and James Milgram, English and Math professors who refused to sign off on the adequacy of the common standards when they served on the official Common Core validation committee, have written and have testified before legislatures that the standards are not sufficiently rigorous at all.
Students in our schools and universities are required to provide references for their reports. Yet the information provided by official Common Core sites, as well as by our state office of education, is unreferenced and contains half truths and false claims about Common Core.
I asked the Utah State Office of Education to provide me, a Utah teacher, with references to verify the “facts” about Common Core, but the office refused to do so. Why?
The myth that Common Core solves educational problems is far-reaching and is far from being harmless.
There’s a questionnaire that must be answered by any person wishing to be a candidate for Utah’s state school board. The first question on it is: Do you support the Common Core State Standards?
So anyone who for any reason opposes Common Core may not even stand in the candidates’ pool to run for this vital, elected position as a member of the state school board.
The emperor of Common Core is wearing no clothes. Yet, the myth that Common Core solves educational problems is so widespread that most teachers and principals fear raising concerns.
We are experiencing a huge Spiral of Silence. The Spiral of Silence is a well-known communications theory by Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann. The Spiral of Silence phenomenon happens when people fear separation or isolation from those around them, and, believing they are in the minority, they keep their concerns to themselves.
The Spiral theory arose as an explanation for why many Germans remained silent while their Jewish neighbors were being persecuted in the 1940s. This silence extends to parents and legislators who do not know enough about the common standards to feel comfortable arguing that we should be free of them. Truly, this movement has slid under the public radar.
Gulliver’s Third String: One Size Forever, For All
The third string tying us down, Gulliver-like, is the fact that we will never have a vote or a voice in the one-size-fits-all-standards.
Common Core’s copyright, placed on the standards by the National Governors’ Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, takes away educational flexibility. There is no way a local voice or voices can alter the standards when we discover the system doesn’t fit our needs. There is no amendment process.
Additionally, the NGA/CCSSO has zero transparency. Though the Council of Chief State School Officers holds over one hundred meetings per year, CCSSO meetings are closed to teachers, taxpayers, and the general public.
I asked a lawyer at the Utah State Office of Education what the process would be to amend the standards. She told me, “Why would there need to be [an amendment process]? The whole point is to be common.”
Her response illustrates the tragic fact that many of our state education leaders do not appreciate local, constitutional control over education for our state.
There is a 15% cap placed on the NGA/CCSSO’s copyrighted standards, a cap placed on top of the copyright by the Department of Education. We may delete nothing. We may add no more than 15% to any standard.
So when we run into a disaster –such as the rule that 12th grade reading material in an English class can contain no more than 30 percent classic literature, and must be 70% informational text, we are stuck. When we run into another disaster –such as the rule that Algebra I be introduced in 9th grade, when it used to be an 8th grade topic, we are stuck. We are literally voiceless and bound by the 15% rule plus the copyright it is based upon. But it gets worse:
Gulliver’s Fourth String: Problems with national testing
The fourth string tying us down, Gulliver-like, is nationalized, federally-supervised, compulsory testing. It commits our dollars without our input. And the content of the tests will be dictated by the NGA/CCSSO to test writers.
There isn’t even the tiny bit of 15% wiggle room on tests. I wrote to a test writer how they would incorporate the 15% variation in state standards and they told me that it is “in each state’s best interest” not to have “two sets of standards.” Why? Because the test won’t be incorporating anything in addition to the national standards.
Why is this bad? What we are valuing and testing is extremely narrow and cannot be altered by any state, but only by the NGA/CCSSO. It opens the door for a one-track, politicized agenda to be taught and tested.
Our local leaders continue to refer to “The Utah Core” as if it were not the exact same core as all the other states. This is misleading.
Teachers and principals will be evaluated and compared using these national tests’ results, so what would motivate them to teach anything beyond or different than what will be tested? The motivation to be an innovative educator is gone with the high stakes national tests. Right now Utah has only adopted math and English standards, but soon the NGA/CCSSO will be releasing social studies and science standards. One can only imagine how these subjects will be framed by the “progressive” groups who write the tests and shape the curriculum. And the test writers will be providing model curriculum for states to follow to prepare students for the tests.
Gulliver’s Fifth String: Common Core English:
David Coleman’s version of what is appropriate for the rest of the nation
The fifth string tying us down, Gulliver-like, was wrought almost singlehandedly by one wrongheaded man with too much power, named David Coleman.
Coleman was the main architect of the English standards for Common Core, despite never having been a teacher himself, and is now president of the College board. He is now aligning the national college entrance exams with Common Core standards. He holds a dreary, utilitarian vision of the language, without appreciation for classic literature or narrative writing. He has deleted much of it, and has deleted all cursive for students.
It was Coleman’s idea to make all children read 50% informational texts and 50% fiction in English classes, and then gradually to get rid of more and more fiction and classic literature, so that when a student is in 12th grade, he or she is reading 70% informational text and very little classic literature.
Does this differ from actual book burning?
It is as if Coleman mandated that all English teachers must put 70% of their classic textbooks outside the classroom door to be picked up for burning. Would the teachers put Dickens, Austen, Shakespeare, Melville, or O’Connor on the pile? Which classic books would you remove from a high school English classroom? And what informational texts are being recommended by Common Core proponents to replace the classics? Among the suggestions: Executive Order 13423. Writings by the Federal Reserve Bank. And more. (See: http://www.corestandards.org/assets/Appendix_B.pdf )
David Coleman explained why he decided that narrative writing should not be taught:
“As you grow up in this world you realize that people really don’t give a sh__ about what you feel or what you think… it is rare in a working environment that someone says, ‘Johnson I need a market analysis by Friday but before that I need a compelling account of your childhood.’”
If Coleman were to value a diamond, he would base its worth solely on the fact that it’s the hardest substance in nature. The diamond’s beauty, or its history as the symbol of eternal romance, would not matter. Just so long as the darn rock can drill. That’s how he thinks about reading and writing.
This is why he has gotten rid of all things beautiful in education:
• No more cursive.
• Very little classic literature, to make room for mostly informational text.
• Informational texts to include Executive Order 13423, in the English classroom.
Gulliver’s Sixth String: Weakening Math
The sixth string tying us down, Gulliver-style, down is weak math. While the Common Core math standards may be an improvement over previous standards in some states, they are deficient for most, including for Utah.
Scholars have written extensively about these standards in reports published by Pioneer Institute and others. They say:
– Common Core replaces the traditional foundations of Euclidean geometry with an experimental approach. This approach has never been successfully used but Common Core imposes this experiment on the country.
– Common Core excludes certain Algebra II and Geometry content that is currently a prerequisite at almost every four-year state college. This effectively redefines “college-readiness” to mean readiness for a nonselective community college, as a member of the Common Core writing team acknowledged in his testimony before the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.
– Common Core fails to teach prime factorization and consequently does not include teaching about least common denominators or greatest common factors.
– Common Core fails to include conversions among fractions, decimals, and percents, identified as a key skill by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
– Common Core de-emphasizes algebraic manipulation, which is a prerequisite for advanced mathematics, and instead effectively redefines algebra as “functional algebra”, which does not prepare students for STEM careers.
– Common Core does not require proficiency with addition and subtraction until grade 4, a grade behind the expectations of the high-performing states and our international competitors.
– Common Core does not require proficiency with multiplication using the standard algorithm (step-by-step procedure for calculations) until grade 5, a grade behind the expectations of the high-performing states and our international competitors.
– Common Core does not require proficiency with division using the standard algorithm until grade 6, a grade behind the expectations of the high-performing states and our international competitors.
– Common Core starts teaching decimals only in grade 4, about two years behind the more rigorous state standards, and fails to use money as a natural introduction to this concept.
– Common Core fails to teach in K-8 about key geometrical concepts such as the area of a triangle, sum of angles in a triangle, isosceles and equilateral triangles, or constructions with a straightedge and compass that good state standards include.
There is already evidence that book publishers’ revisions to texts that align with the standards are highly likely to be “inquiry-based”. Discovery and group learning approaches to math have had poor results when they have been used in classrooms across the country.
Gulliver’s Seventh String:
Neither Local Education Leaders Nor Federal Educational Leaders Value American Rights
• A current Utah State School Board member said to me, “I have always understood it is the principle of “equality” not “freedom” that was the guiding principle of our constitution… I have always understood the theme to be equality… you continue to reference freedom over equality.”
• The Dept. of Education has created regions for all America. These regions are to be answerable to the Department of Education. The creation of regional identities ignores the existence of states and consequently, of states’ rights, under the Constitution. This is a dangerous affront to our rights as states.
• Predestining kids: Secretary Arne Duncan says the government needs to control education and teachers via data-driven decisions. The data will be collected: “… so that every child knows on every step of their educational trajectory what they’re going to do.” He says, “You should know in fifth and sixth and seventh and eighth grade what your strengths are, what you weaknesses are.” He’s talking about a managed society, not a free society, where children are to be compliant tools for the government’s purposes, not the other way around.
• The Utah Data Alliance, SLDS system, and the federal Department of Education each seek data at all costs, even without parental consent. Sec. Duncan often says, ”We have to be transparent about our data.” (What Duncan really means is, states have to be transparent about their data to be supervised by the federal government– which is not Constitutional by any stretch of the imagination.)
Duncan’s data transparency statement explains much: why Duncan aims to triangulate data Common Core tests which will be collected and compared under his (unconstitutionally) watchful eye; why Duncan rewrote FERPA regulations without authority or Congressional oversight, why the Department of Education paid states to create SLDS systems to track citizens; why federally, states are pushed to have P-20 tracking councils, and more.
Duncan’s desire to grab private data is further illustrated by the changes Duncan has led in redefining key terms.
For example, you may notice that federal education leaders seldom refer to this movement as the Common Core. They use a code phrase (you can verify this on the definitions page at ed.gov) which is “college and career readiness”. But that code phrase is a deception. College and Career Readiness does not mean what you think it means; there is a new mediocrity to the standards which has made the same standards appropriate for 4 year universities, 2 year colleges, and technical colleges. It has essentially dumbed down the expectations for 4 year universities. So college readiness actually means nothing other than common and mediocre standards. By this definition, states can’t be preparing students for college unless standards are the same as every other state’s and country’s standards. It’s like the old Ford Advertisement: You can Have Any Color As Long as it’s Black.” Secretary Duncan’s version is– “You can have any standards as long as they are the exact same as all other states’ standards.”
Another phrase you’ll hear a lot is “world class education” which doesn’t mean “excellent education.” It means “non-competitive education.” Yikes. Some other phrases that have been officially redefined by the Dept. of Education in federal regulations are: “authorized representative” “education program” and “directory information”
What is the effect of these re-definings?
According to a group that has sued the Dept. of Education, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, this redefining has removed legal duties for state and local educational facilities that used to be in place to protect private student data.
The redefinings open up what used to be tightly protected. But why?
Because the Dept. of Education is using the testing consortia to triangulate the tests and to oversee the data collection. They want access to the data. Words give them access. This brings me to Gulliver’s string, and it’s a whopper.
The eighth string tying us down, Gulliver-like, is a set of horrific privacy violations. It begins with the fact that Utah built a State Longitudinal Database System (SLDS) system, as required by the federal government in exchange for money. The SLDS was supposed to be a benefit to Utahns. The argument was that the more data they collect, the smarter decisions could be made about education. It sounded logical at first.
But the SLDS tracks children from preschool through workforce. It interacts with six other Utah state governmental agencies, beyond the K-12 system. It essentially guides and monitors citizens.
When I found out about this, I wanted to opt out for my children. I asked the Utah State Office of Education myself whether it is even allowed to have a student attend a school without being tracked by the Utah Data Alliance and the federal SLDS.
They finally gave me a straight answer, after I nagged them many a time, finally, and it was simply ”No.”No child, no citizen may escape tracking. We are all being closely tracked. Schools are the starting point.
Unknown to most parents, children’s data is being shared beyond the school district with six agencies inside the Utah Data Alliance and with UTREX, according to Utah Technology Director John Brandt. The student data is further to be “mashed” with federal databases, according to federal Education Dept. Chief of Staff Joanne Weiss: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2012/07/ed_urges_states_to_make_data_s.html
While Utah’s John Brandt assures us that only a handful of people in Utah have access to the personally identifiable data of children, recent alterations to federal FERPA (Famly Education Rights Privacy Act) regulations which were made by the U.S. Dept of Education, as we noted earlier, have radically redefined terms and widened the window of groups who can access private data without parental consent. (For more on that, see the lawsuit against the U.S. Dept of Education on the subject: http://epic.org/apa/ferpa/default.html)
In America, a law is a representative thing. Laws are made by people who either directly vote for that law, or who vote for a representative who votes for a law. Then the people must obey the law, or be forcibly punished.
But watch out for rules and regulations, which are not laws, and which come from unelected boards with appointed members who cannot be repealed by us. Rules and regulations are a form of nonrepresentation, and can be dangerous. Common Core is quickly becoming a snare because of its rules and regulations. FERPA regulatory changes are a prime example. Congress never changed the privacy law that FERPA was written originally to be. But the Department of Education made un-approved regulatory changes to FERPA that are being treated as if they were law today.
Our schools (teachers, adminstrators, and even State Office of Education workers) are being used: used to collect private data, both academic and nonacademic, about our children and their families.
I choose the word “used” because I do not believe they are maliciously going behind parents’ backs. They are simply expected to comply with whatever the U.S. Dept. of Education asks them to do. And the Dept. of Education is all for the “open data” push as are some notable Utahns, such as Utah Technology Director John Brandt and even some BYU Education professors, notably David Wiley. I have heard these men speak and they are passionate about getting data at all costs, even at the cost of not pausing for students’ parental consent.
What it means: Courses taken, grades earned, every demographic piece of information, including family names, attitudes and income, can now legally be known by the government via schools.
There are 12 elements that states had to share or they would not have received ARRA stimulus money. The twelve elements of the SLDS (State longitudinal data system) include enrollment history, demographic characteristics, student’s scores on tests; info on students, even those who are not tested; transcripts, grades earned; whether they enrolled in remedial courses; and the sharing of data from preschool through postsecondary systems.
While all this data gathering could theoretically, somehow, benefit a child, or community, it can definitely hurt a child. Denial of future opportunities, based on ancient academic or behavioral history, comes to mind. The databases are to share data with anybody they define as “authorized.”
The now-authorized groups who will access student data will most likely include the A-list “philanthropists” like Bill Gates, as well as corporate educational sales groups (Microsoft, Pearson, Wireless Generation, and K-12 Inc., Achieve, Inc., SBAC, PARCC, NGA, CCSSO, for example) as well as federal departments that are far outside of education, such as the military, the workforce agencies, etc.)
Furthermore, even psychometric and biometric data (such as student behavioral qualities, DNA, iris and fingerprints) are also acceptable data collection points, to the Dept. of Education (verify: http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/pdf/ferparegs.pdf )
Verify these facts on the government’s public sites, such as:
Our country is a miracle in the history of the earth. No other country has ever had such a Constitution that limits and spreads out the power of the government to ensure the maximum liberty of each individual, balancing the need for limited government to prevent anarchy. It is important to understand the document. “The powers not delegated to the United States Government are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Nothing could be more clear. It is unconstitutional for the federal government to exercise any power over education.
Our Department of Education is aware of this. Recent speeches by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan include the fact that the Department is “limited” in this country. Yes, very limited. Like, not allowed at all.
We may not be able to take back all the ground we have lost by allowing the federal government to dictate regulations to us in return for our own tax money. But we must not allow them any further ground.
The states (except for the handful of states that rejected Common Core) are otherwise like the neighbor who does not know where his rights are and can never know when they are taken and is thus unable to defend them. This neighbor believes he owns a piece of ground which his neighbor also claims, but he doesn’t know its boundaries. The other neighbor continues to encroach further and further onto land which the first neighbor suspects is his, but since he is never certain where the boundary is, he cannot stop the encroachment.
Until we take a firm position and say: “no further,” there is no line. Unless we remember our rights, we have none. My hope is that as a state, we will say “no further,” and hold onto our own right to educate our own children without interference.
Common Core does not improve college readiness. The educational value of the standards is low. And even if they were to be significantly improved, remember that educational standards are meaningless without political freedom.
There is no amendment process for Common Core. The standards have no checks and balances. Common Core was never voted upon. Common Core administrators cannot be recalled by a vote. Common Core represents an assumption of power never delegated by the voice of the people. The Common Core Initiative has transferred sovereignty from states to a collective controlled by the National Governors’ Association and by the Council of Chief State School Officers. It also transferred educational sovereignty from states to testing groups to be overseen by the Department of Education.
We must realize the strength of our position as states under the U.S. Constitution, and must hold up the Constitution, thus holding the Dept. of Education away from monitoring and directing states’ education.
Senator Mike Fair of South Carolina stated: In adopting Common Core, states have sold their birthright without even getting the mess of pottage. He is right.
Currently, thousands of people have signed the petition at Utahns Against Common Core. Websites and organizations are forming all over the country to fight Common Core. At least six U.S. Governors staunchly oppose Common Core. The majority of Utah legislators have said they oppose it. Americans deserve high quality education without federal interference and this will not happen without first dropping all ties to the Common Core Initiative.
Please let state leaders and school boards know we expect them to be valiant in that effort.
Thank you.
—– —– —–
Contact information: Utah Governor Herbert 801-538-1000 Utah State School Board. Board@schools.utah.gov
I just finished watching a documentary called “Agenda: Grinding America Down,” which you can access here: https://vimeo.com/52009124
I learned a lot.
At 52 minutes, it discusses why the hard left has tried so hard to take over education, turning children into willing tools and dependents upon the socialist state rather than individuals with self-reliance, intellect and moral character. The left pushes “social justice” in schools (meaning, we must steal from the rich, to redistribute to the poor) and teaches “relative truth” rather than truth. At 58:15 the film discusses the education unions and cites the National Education Association platform as being openly anti-parent. At 1:00 it discusses an NEA resolution to take children from parents as close to birth as possible. It discusses the new “pledge to the world” that is replacing the “pledge to the US flag” that is being chanted in an increasing number of schools.
Without using schools as a vehicle of socialist propaganda, these socialist/communist revolutionaries would never have been able to change the thinking of the majority of Americans from traditional, Constitutional Americanism to socialism (which they have successfully done, as evidenced by the latest Obama election.)
If there is any doubt where Arne Duncan, Sec. of the Dept. of Education, is pushing our American education system (using Common Core as a vehicle) please compare his speeches– here–
The Utah Legislative Session begins in two weeks. It is short.
Please call legislators, state school board members and Governor Herbert and ask for the following:
• UT LEGISLATORS MUST WRITE FREEING LEGISLATION – Utah should reclaim its educational sovereignty by following the lead of states such as Indiana and South Carolina which are attempting to break free of Common Core by writing legislation that halts it.
WHY?
• PRIVACY ISSUES – Common Core testing requires that every student be tracked using personally identifiable information that is sent beyond the local school and district to six Utah agencies (Utah Data Alliance) and uses the federally instated “State Longitudinal Database System” (SLDS) which allows interoperability for all states and federal oversight. The Dept. of Education has been sued because it altered Family Educational Rights Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations without congressional approval to empower common core testing data to be accessed by them and others. These alterations redefine terms such as “authorized representative,” “directory information” and “educational program” to remove the obligation of school systems to keep family information private.
• NO COST ANALYSIS – It is utterly irresponsible to have no cost analyis on Common Core. One of Texas’ and Virginia’s reasons for rejecting it was financial. Texas estimated $560 million just in CC professional development costs. Utah just spent $39 million just on CC test development alone. Corporations such as Pearson, Microsoft, Wireless Generation, and countless others will become wealthy at students’ learning expense and at taxpayer expense as they implement the mandates of common core in textbooks, teacher development courses and technology and sell them to us.
• NO ACADEMIC ANALYSIS – The standards and the preschool- through-workforce system they promote (P-20 system) are not only what amounts to an unfunded mandate; they are academically inferior to what we had before and far inferior to what top states (Massachusetts) had before. The line about “rigor” is a false claim, especially at the high school level. Members of the official CC validation committee Dr. Sandra Stotsky and Dr. James Milgram refused to sign off that these standards were rigorous or legitimate. We note that CC was written without input from any of the major curriculum research universities and is an unpiloted experiment without any metric to measure intended or unintended consequences. Its harms are less marked for lower grades, yet it slashes classic literature by 70% for high school seniors and dramatically dumbs down high school math.
• ILLEGALITY ISSUES – There is a Constitutional ban on federal direction of instruction which is underscored in the 10th amendment and further clarified in a law called the General Educational Provisions Act. Yet the Dept. of Education has gone around the law and congress to promote the copyrighted CC standards (developed by the National Governors’ Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers) and has put a 15% cap on top of it, so that no state may add freely to the supposed “minimum” standards. Additionally, the CC national tests are written specifically to CC standards, to divest the 15% allowance of states’ “wiggle room” of meaning. The Dept. of Education has coerced states into adopting the CC, using the lure of possible grant monies, and this financial incentivization has not put the best academic interests of children first.
Additionally, share a video link:
There are five short videos which explain Common Core very simply and with verifiable references (point out that the State Office of Education does not provide references for claims in any explanation of what Common Core is.)
There are 5 videos and each is short. The American Principles Project created them, with Concerned Women of Georgia.
He added: “Within a few days of finishing this article and it being published at Education Week I happened across some additional information. I found an article that stated that three pieces of information can uniquely identify an individual 87% of the time—-those three pieces of data—-gender, five-digit zip code, and birth date. You can bet that information is in the SLDS. Wouldn’t that constitute personally identifiable information?”
Parents Need to Know About Student Data Privacy
Trusting Parents
When enrolling or filling out forms during the school year, parents give schools personal information about themselves and their child. A school employee enters the information into the school office computer. No thought is given to this since computers are a good way to store, organize, and manage data. Most parents don’t realize the data doesn’t stay In the school office computer. The computer is networked and shares data with other computers. This information or data once it is entered becomes a part of a district or multi-district database that is uploaded to a state longitudinal data system at least once a month.
Are parents informed this is happening with personal information they provide? Are parents asked permission, or consent, for their information to become part of a database beyond the confines and use of the brick and mortar school? Should parents be made aware of this practice? Should they be required to give consent?
State Longitudinal Data Systems, Purposes, and Prohibition
The state longitudinal data systems are for preschool through grade 12 education and post secondary education or P-16. Basically, states are collecting data on all preschool through grade 16 individuals. It is interesting to note for the purposes of data collection, the “P” for preschool means birth to school. They want to collect data from the time of birth through an individual’s career.
Federal legislation calls for the collection of data to include:
gender,
ethnic or racial groups,
limited English proficiency status,
migrant students,
disabilities,
economically disadvantaged,
assessment results,
demographics,
student-level enrollment,
program participation,
courses completed,
student transcript information,
transfers, teachers,
family income.
Will state longitudinal data systems collect data beyond what is called for in legislation? What is the purpose of the data collection? How will it be used? What will be next? Collecting prenatal data? The pre-conception gleam in the eye data? In addition to the state longitudinal data systems containing far more information on students, parents, and teachers than necessary for educational purposes, I believe the system will eventually include information on all taxpayers with or without kids (twowks) so they may be held adequately accountable for how others spend their hard earned tax dollars.
There has been a push for state longitudinal data systems for many years. As early as 1965, the initial Elementary & Secondary Education Act (ESEA) mentions providing support for collecting and storing data and using automated data systems. Federal legislation and programs encourage or require data collection systems and the development of state longitudinal data systems. These include:
The early stated purposes for data collection was to determine things like graduation rates, job placement rates, and program effectiveness. The Race to the Top created mandates for data systems to be used to inform decisions and improve instruction. While this is laudable, it is questionable as the driving need for data collection. An abundance of available data and research findings has been ignored in the reform education decision-making process. Many reform measures being pushed from the federal level on down have no evidence of effectiveness–some have evidence of negative effectiveness — yet continue to be foisted upon the states and local districts to implement. Are our decision makers Confusing Evidence and Politics? Do they really have our students’ academic interest as a top priority? Does anyone know how to make effective decisions based on this information? Will the information be so overwhelming as to be useless except for cherry picking to support pet programs? Who will benefit most? Our students? Private corporations? Non-profit corporations? Individuals and groups in positions of power and authority?
Our society’s moral and ethical values may have slipped to the point that individuals and groups in positions of power and authority feel it is appropriate to publicly release information that most people feel is confidential. Recently, state officials in Oklahoma posted private educational records of several students online. This information may not have come from their state longitudinal data system but think of the control and power such information provides, especially if one is able to personally identify individuals. When big brother has the informational goods on the public, are people likely to speak up or will they maintain a cautious place in line?
There is a prohibition on the development of a nationwide database of personally identifiable information (PII). The Act that created No Child Left Behind says:
PROHIBITION ON NATIONWIDE DATABASE.
‘‘Nothing in this Act (other than section 1308(b)) shall be construed to authorize the development of a nationwide database of personally identifiable information on individuals involved in studies or other collections of data under this Act. 20 USC 7911.
Does that mean it is okay to develop a nationwide database provided no personally identifiable information is used? It appears the federal government is dancing around the issue of developing a nationwide database. While the federal government is not developing it, they are supporting, promoting, encouraging, and funding with tax dollars the development of state longitudinal data systems. An effort, the Data Quality Campaign (DQC) is well underway, with federal encouragement, to have the state longitudinal data systems compatible for data sharing between and among states. This effort will result in a defacto nationwide database.
The Data Quality Campaign’s report Data for Action 2011 Empower with Data indicates no states having all 10 Essential Elements of Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems in place in 2005. In 2011 every state had at least 7 of the 10 Elements in place and thirty-six states had all 10 Elements in place.
The Data Quality Campaign lists the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) among its Partners. The NGA and the CCSSO joined efforts in an initiative to develop the Common Core State Standards and shares some of the same partners. Both the Data Quality Campaign and Common Core State Standards Initiative have been supported with grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (see 1, 2, 3). The Common Core State Standards has provided investors and entrepreneurs with a lucrative market place. Besides the technology industry and service industry, who stands to financially gain from the Data Quality Campaign and the state longitudinal data systems?
The U.S. Department of Education will facilitate the leveraging, and where needed, the development of model common data standards for a core set of student-level variables to increase comparability of data, interoperability and portability of data, and reduce collection burden.
It is difficult to determine how much taxpayer money states have spent on longitudinal data systems. As indicated above, there are numerous sources of funds available. The Statewide Longitudinal Data System Grants Program does show how much grant money has been awarded to each state from their program. Since 2006 over $612 million has been awarded with $254 million of that in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (stimulus) funds. Information from this program’s website has been compiled into a table showing amounts each state has been awarded.
Personally Identifiable Information, Data Mining and Matching, and Security Breaches
State longitudinal data systems are not to permit students to be individually identified by users of the system. What about abusers of the system? Data from state longitudinal data systems can be matched with data from other databases enabling the identification of individuals no matter how much effort is put into keeping personally identifiable information (PII) out of the state longitudinal data systems. Records can be matched by identifying overlapping data.
Eventually, whether for sport, competition, or profit, hackers will compromise the state longitudinal data systems. Perhaps they already have been exploiting these systems and the public and parents are never informed it is taking place. Below is a notice that I have written and which I believe should be provided to parents and all of the media. For obvious reasons it never will.
We have discovered that our state longitudinal data system servers were attacked, resulting in a security breach. The hackers were able to access information on all students, parents and teachers in the state. Our team has worked to secure the state longitudinal data system against this type of attack from recurring.
Please understand that we are under no obligation to inform you that sensitive data about the students, parents, and teachers in the state has been accessed and copied by unauthorized and unknown individuals. Since our data system contains no personally identifiable information you should comfortably know we assume no liability for any damages resulting from the hacker’s ability to personally identify individuals by matching overlapping information with other database information for which we have no control.
We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience. Should you find the consequences of this security breach to be devastating to your life, we suggest you consider assuming another identity and start a new life. Should you wish to exercise this option, for a fee we can assist you in this effort. We take the security of our data seriously and can assure you we are taking measures to protect the system from this kind of breach until it happens again, at which time we will simply send you another message similar to this one reassuring you there is nothing to be concerned about.
J.R. Wilson is a parent and an education advocate with 25+ years experience in public education as an elementary teacher, curriculum consultant, staff development coordinator, and principal.
This article was originally published August 27, 2012 on EducationNews.com at
A Statement of Common Purpose: Chief State School Officers and State Higher Education Executives Promote the Voluntary Adoption of a Model of Common Data Standards
Select Legislative and Program Encouragement and Requirements for State Longitudinal Data Systems
There has been a push for these longitudinal data systems for many years. The 1965 Elementary & Secondary Education Act (ESEA) (P.L. 89-10) in Section 503 (a) on page 49 says:
(2) providing support or services for the comprehensive and compatible recording, collecting, processing, analyzing, interpreting, storing, retrieving, and reporting of State and local educational data, including the use of automated data systems;
(d) DATA COLLECTION SYSTEM.—In the development and design of a system to provide data on graduation or completion rates, job placement rates from occupationally specific programs, licensing rates, and awards of high school graduate equivalency diplomas (GED), each State board for higher education shall develop a data collection system the results of which can be integrated into the occupational information system developed under this section.
(v) provides for the collection of data on the achievement and assessment results of students disaggregated by gender, major ethnic or racial groups, limited English proficiency status, migrant students, and by children with disabilities as compared to other students, and by economically disadvantaged students as compared to students who are not economically disadvantaged;
and
(1) INGENERAL.—The Secretary may collect such data, as necessary, at the State, local, and school levels and conduct studies and evaluations, including national studies and evaluations, to assess on an ongoing basis the effectiveness of programs under this title and to report on such effectiveness on a periodic basis.
B) USE OF ASSESSMENTS.—Each State educational agency may incorporate the data from the assessments under this paragraph into a State-developed longitudinal data system that links student test scores, length of enrollment, and graduation records over time.
‘‘(D) DATA.—A local educational agency or school shall only include in its annual local educational agency report card data that are sufficient to yield statistically reliable information, as determined by the State, and that do not reveal personally identifiable information about an individual student.
SEC. 9531. PROHIBITION ON NATIONWIDE DATABASE.
‘‘Nothing in this Act (other than section 1308(b)) shall be construed to authorize the development of a nationwide database of personally identifiable information on individuals involved in studies or other collections of data under this Act. 20 USC 7911.
(2) GRANTS FOR STATE WIDE P–16 EDUCATION DATA SYSTEMS.—
(A) ESTABLISHMENT OF SYSTEM.—Each State that receives a grant under subsection (c)(2) shall establish a statewide P–16 education longitudinal data system that— (i) provides each student, upon enrollment in a public elementary school or secondary school in the State, with a unique identifier, such as a bar code, that— (I) does not permit a student to be individually identified by users of the system; and (II) is retained throughout the student’s enrollment in P–16 education in the State; and (ii) meets the requirements of sub-paragraphs (B) through (E).
(3) IMPROVING COLLECTION AND USE OF DATA.—The State will establish a longitudinal data system that includes the elements described in section 6401(e)(2)(D) of the America COMPETES Act (20 U.S.C. 9871).
(D) REQUIRED ELEMENTS OF A STATE-WIDE P–16 EDUCATION DATA SYSTEM.—TheState shall ensure that the statewide P–16 education data system includes the following elements:(i) PRESCHOOL THROUGH GRADE 12EDUCATION AND POST SECONDARY EDUCATION.—With respect to preschoolthrough grade 12 education and postsecondary education—(I) a unique statewide studentidentifier that does not permit a student to be individually identified byusers of the system;(II) student-level enrollment, demographic, and program participationinformation;(III) student-level informationabout the points at which studentsexit, transfer in, transfer out, dropout, or complete P–16 education programs;(IV) the capacity to communicatewith higher education data systems;and (V) a State data audit system assessing data quality, validity, and reliability.(ii) PRESCHOOLTHROUGHGRADE12EDUCATION.—With respect to preschoolthrough grade 12 education—(I) yearly test records of individual students with respect to assessments under section 1111(b) of theElementary and Secondary EducationAct of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 6311(b));(II) information on students nottested by grade and subject;(III) a teacher identifier systemwith the ability to match teachers tostudents;(IV) student-level transcript information, including information oncourses completed and grades earned;and(V) student-level college readiness test scores.
Supporting data systems that inform decisions and improve instruction, by fully implementing a statewide longitudinal data system, assessing and using data to drive instruction, and making data more accessible to key stakeholders.
To foster public accountability for results and help focus improvement and support efforts, states must have data systems in place to gather information that is critical to determining how schools and districts are progressing in preparing students to graduate from high school college- and career-ready. States and districts will collect and make public data relating to student academic achievement and growth in English language arts and mathematics, student academic achievement in science, and if states choose, student academic achievement and growth in other subjects, such as history. At the high school level, this data will also include graduation rates, college enrollment rates, and rates of college enrollment without need for remediation. All of these data must be disaggregated by race, gender, ethnicity, disability status, English Learner status, and family income. States and districts also will collect other key information about teaching and learning conditions, including information on school climate such as student, teacher and school leader attendance; disciplinary incidents; or student, parent, or school staff surveys about their school experience.
State-level data systems that link information on teacher and principal preparation programs to the job placement, student growth, and retention outcomes of their graduates.
Data Quality Campaign
10 Essential Elements of Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems
A unique statewide student identifier that connects student data across key databases across years
Student-level enrollment, demographic, and program participation information
The ability to match individual students’ test records from year to year to measure academic growth
Information on untested students and the reasons they were not tested
A teacher identifier system with the ability to match teachers to students
Student-level transcript information, including information on courses completed and grades earned
Student-level college readiness test scores
Student-level graduation and dropout data
The ability to match student records between the preK-12 and higher education systems
A state data audit system assessing data quality, validity and reliability
10 State Actions to Ensure Effective Data Use
Link state K-12 educational data systems with early learning, postsecondary education, workforce, social services and other critical agencies
Create stable, sustained support for robust state longitudinal data systems
Develop governance structures to guide data collection, sharing, and use
Build state data repositories (e.g., data warehouses) that integrate student, staff, financial, and facility data
Implement systems to provide all stakeholders with timely access to the information they need while protecting student privacy
Create progress reports with individual student data that provide information educators, parents, and students can use to improve student performance
Create reports that include longitudinal statistics on school systems and groups of students to guide school-, district-, and state-level improvement efforts
Develop a purposeful research agenda and collaborate with universities, researchers, and intermediary groups to explore the data for useful information
Implement policies and promote practices, including professional development and credentialing, to ensure educators know how to access, analyze, and use data appropriately
Promote strategies to raise awareness of available data and ensure that all key stakeholders, including state policymakers, know how to access, analyze, and use the information
Data for Action 2011 Empower with Data, Data Quality Campaign
Our schools (teachers, adminstrators, and even State Office of Education workers) are being used. –Used to collect private data, both academic and nonacademic, about our children and their families. I choose the word “used” because I do not believe they are maliciously going behind parents’ backs. They are simply expected to comply with whatever the U.S. Dept. of Education asks them to do. And the Dept. of Education is all for the “open data” push.
Unknown to most parents, children’s data is being shared beyond the school district with six agencies inside the Utah Data Alliance and UTREX, according to Utah Technology Director John Brandt. The student data is further being “mashed” with federal databases, according to federal Education Dept. Chief of Staff Joanne Weiss: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2012/07/ed_urges_states_to_make_data_s.html While John Brandt assures us that only a handful of people in Utah have access to the personally identifiable data of children, recent alterations to federal FERPA (Famly Education Rights Privacy Act) regulations which were made by the U.S. Dept of Education, have radically redefined terms and widened the window of groups who can access private data without parental consent. For more on that, see the lawsuit against the U.S. Dept of Education on the subject: http://epic.org/apa/ferpa/default.html
I like this article because it exposes the facts plainly, that parents are unaware that their children’s information is being shared without parental permission, beyond the school, beyond the district, and even beyond the state. It is verifiable and true.
What it means: Courses taken, grades earned, every demographic piece of information, including family names and income, is being watched by the U.S. government via schools.
There are 12 elements that states had to share or they would not have received ARRA stimulus money. The twelve elements of the SLDS (State longitudinal data system) include enrollment history, demographic characteristics, student’s scores on tests; info on students who are not tested; transcripts, grades earned; whether they enrolled in remedial courses; and the sharing of data from preschool through postsecondary systems.
While all this data gathering could theoretically, somehow, benefit a child, or community, it can definitely hurt a child. Denial of future opportunities, based on ancient academic or behavioral history, comes to mind…
These databases (State Longitudinal Database Systems, SLDS; also, P-20 and state data combinations such as the Utah Data Alliance) are to share data with anybody they define as “authorized,” according to alterations made to FERPA (Family Education Privacy Act) regulations by the Dept. of Education.
These now-authorized groups who will access student data will most likely include the A-list “philanthropists” like Bill Gates, as well as corporate snoops (Microsoft, Pearson, Wireless Generation, and K-12 Inc., Achieve, Inc., SBAC, PARCC, NGA, CCSSO, for examples) as well as federal departments that are far outside of education, such as the military, the workforce agencies, etc.)
Furthermore, even psychometric and biometric data (behavioral qualities, dna, iris and fingerprints) are also acceptable data collection points, to the Dept. of Education (verify: http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/pdf/ferparegs.pdf )
This is a nightmare of Big Brother in action, except it’s not a fiction. You can verify it all on the government’s own public sites, such as:
States would not get stimulus money if they didn’t agree to build the SLDS system.
So they all agreed. All.
I happened to ask the Utah State Office of Education myself whether it is even allowed to have a student attend a school without being tracked by the Utah Data Alliance and the federal SLDS.
They finally gave me a straight answer, after I nagged them many a time, finally, and it was simply “No.”
No!
No child, no citizen may escape tracking. We are and will be tracked.
I ask you, dear readers, to turn your feelings about this intrusion toward positive action.
Sometimes I look at the search terms that have brought you here. Some of you have typed terms like “I can’t stand teaching anymore common core,” for example.
I would like to hear and share your stories- especially students, teachers’ and parents’ stories.
Please email me if you would like to post your experiences, perspectives and stories here, anonymously or not. 212christel@gmail.com Write “What Is Common Core” in the subject heading so I can recognize and open the email.
At a recent conference of “Agency Based Education,” Alisa Ellis spoke about the goals of the U.S. Department of Education as they align with the United Nations’ “Universal Education” goals. This informative video explains how the nice-sounding plans of the United Nations actually harm us. They take away parental rights over children and take away teachers’ and school boards’ rights about what will be taught in local schools.
There is a battle going on for control of American classrooms.
It’s a battle about which many students, teachers and State School Board Members are still blissfully unaware.
It’s a battle between the rights of each individual and each locality, versus the collective, as defined by the United Nations and, now, even by the U.S. Dept. of Education.
It’s a battle for what gets planted in the mind of the child.
It’s a battle for constitutional, local control (of students’ standards, tests, and curriculum) versus worldwide control (with education to be determined by federal and global cooperatives without any significant local representation.)
It’s also a battle between teaching the traditional academics: reading, writing, math, science and history, versus teaching the United Nations’ Agenda 21, which envisions a new “education” –that many are calling indoctrination.
The new “education” marginalizes academics.
It calls itself ”World Class Education” but it is only a communistic sameness of learning across all countries. It prioritizes “sustainable development,” “Social Justice” (redistribution of global wealth), the “collective good,” “going green” and “global citizenship” far above teaching academics.
And it presents “climate change” as if it were a real and settled science.
In the U.N. Disability treaty, the word “disability” is fuzzily defined. Not really defined. It uses an “evolving” definition. Slippery! Does “disabled’ mean a child with a mental handicap, including dyslexia or another common academic struggle? Does it mean someone with a missing finger? A missing leg? A missing tooth? And why should the government be the one to determine what is in such a child’s best interests, over the parents’ feelings? This is a slippery slope of giving another sacred, hard-won American freedom, of parental rights over the child, utterly away.
This United Nations treaty poses as a helpful move, to ensure rights for the disabled, but what it really does is make the government, and not the parents, decision makers about what is in the best interest of a child, including whether home schooling is legal.
That provision, in the words of Rick Santorum, is “a direct assault on us and our family.”
Some also say that the treaty calls for people with disabilities to have “access to the same sexual and reproductive health programs as others” which means it might be linked to abortion.
So often, what starts off as an apparently kindly socialistic “access to” a thing, soon becomes compulsory.
Former Utah Supreme Court Justice Dallin H. Oaks ruled that:
“Family autonomy helps to assure the diversity characteristic of a free society. There is no surer way to preserve pluralism than to allow parents maximum latitude in rearing their own children. Much of the rich variety in American culture has been transmitted from generation to generation by determined parents who were acting against the best interest of their children, as defined by official dogma. Conversely, there is no surer way to threaten pluralism than to terminate the rights of parents who contradict officially approved values imposed by reformers empowered to determine what is in the ‘best interest’ of someone else’s child.”
—Dallin Oaks’ point is so vital. Parents’ idea of what is in the best interest of their children does NOT necessarily match the “official dogma” of governments.
No education reformers –U.S. Dept. of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, President Obama, Pearson CEA Sir Michael Barber, Bill Ayers, UNESCO– have the right to determine what is in the best interest of someone else’s child. Period.
Arne Duncan’s 2010 speech exposes the U.S. Dept. of Education’s stance: that education should be the same everywhere, globally, and that competition and innovation is of the past. Listen to this communist speak. He is our U.S. Secretary of Education. He is in charge of American K-12 children. He even quotes Sir Michael Barber as if that’s a good thing.
“It is an absolute honor to address UNESCO. During the last 65 years, UNESCO has done so much to advance the cause of education and gender equity… The promise of universal education was then a lonely beacon—a light to guide the way to peace and the rebuilding of nations across the globe. Today, the world… faces a crisis of a different sort, the global economic crisis. And education is still the beacon lighting the path forward—perhaps more so today than ever before.
Education is still the key to eliminating gender inequities, to reducing poverty, to creating a sustainable planet… education is the new currency…
… the Obama administration has an ambitious and unified theory of action that propels our agenda. The challenge of transforming education in America cannot be met by quick-fix solutions or isolated reforms. It can only be accomplished with a clear, coherent, and coordinated vision of reform.
Second, while America must improve its stagnant educational and economic performance, President Obama and I reject the protectionist Cold War-era assumption that improving economic competitiveness is somehow a zero-sum game, with one nation’s gain being another country’s loss.
I want to make the case to you today that enhancing educational attainment and economic viability, both at home and abroad, is really more of a win-win game; it is an opportunity to grow the economic pie, instead of carve it up.
As President Obama said in his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo last year, “Any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.”
There is so much that the United States has to learn from nations with high-performing education systems… I am convinced that the U.S. education system now has an unprecedented opportunity to get dramatically better. Nothing—nothing—is more important in the long-run to American prosperity than boosting the skills and attainment of the nation’s students… Closing the achievement gap and closing the opportunity gap is the civil rights issue of our generation. One quarter of U.S. high school students drop out or fail to graduate on time. Almost one million students leave our schools for the streets each year. That is economically unsustainable and morally unacceptable.
One of the more unusual and sobering press conferences I participated in last year was the release of a report by a group of top retired generals and admirals. Here was the stunning conclusion of their report: 75 percent of young Americans, between the ages of 17 to 24, are unable to enlist in the military today because they have failed to graduate from high school… education is taking on more and more importance around the globe. In the last decade, international competition in higher education and the job market has grown dramatically…
Yet there is also a paradox at the heart of America’s efforts to bolster international competitiveness.
To succeed in the global economy, the United States, just like other nations, will have to become both more economically competitive and more collaborative.
In the information age, more international competition has spawned more international collaboration. Today, education is a global public goodunconstrained by national boundaries.
… economic interdependence brings new global challenges and educational demands…. America alone cannot combat terrorism or curb climate change. To succeed, we must collaborate with other countries.
These new partnerships must also inspire students to take a bigger and deeper view of their civic obligations—not only to their countries of origin but to the betterment of the global community. A just and socially responsible society must also be anchored in civic engagement for the public good.
…Yet even as the United States works to strengthen its educational system, it is important to remember that advancing educational attainment and achievement everywhere brings benefits not just to the U.S. but around the globe. In the knowledge economy, education is the new game-changer driving economic growth.
Education, as Nelson Mandela says, “is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
From Indonesia to Pakistan to Kenya, education has immeasurable power to promote growth and stability. It is absolutely imperative that the United States seize the opportunity to help Haiti build a stronger school system from the ruins of its old, broken one—just as America coalesced to build a fast-improving, vibrant school system in New Orleans after the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina.
…Educating girls and integrating them into the labor force is especially critical to breaking the cycle of poverty. It is hard to imagine a better world without a global commitment to providing better education for women and youth—including the 72 million children who do not attend primary school today.
And don’t forget that a better-educated world would be a safer world, too… My department has been pleased to partner with the U.S. Agency for International Development to help ensure that our best domestic practices are shared world-wide.
The United States provides over a billion dollars annually to partner countries working on educational reform.
Our goal for the coming year will be to work closely with global partners, including UNESCO, to promote qualitative improvements and system-strengthening…
Ultimately, education is the great equalizer. It is the one force that can consistently overcome differences in background, culture, and privilege…
Now, it is true that not all will share equally in the benefits of the knowledge economy. College-educated workers will benefit the most. That makes President Obama’s 2020 goal, the goal of once again having the highest proportion of college graduates, all the more central to building U.S. competitiveness.
… President Obama, a progressive president… wants to improve teacher evaluation…The President and I both recognize that improving educational outcomes for students is hard work with no easy answers. And transformational reform especially takes time in the United States…
The North Star guiding the alignment of our cradle-to-career education agenda is President Obama’s goal that, by the end of the decade, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. That goal can only be achieved by creating a strong cradle-to-career continuum that starts with early childhood learning and extends all the way to college and careers.
In the U.S., early learning has come into its own. It is now recognized as the first and most critical stage in human development. We have a special opportunity today to build a bigger and better coordinated system of early care and education that prepares children for success in school and life—in place of a system with uneven quality and access.
…Tragically, low-income and minority students do not have equitable access to effective teachers in the United States. Too often, the children who need the most help get the least. Too often, we perpetuate poverty and social failure—and that has got to stop.
…The United States cannot substantially boost graduation rates and promise a world-class education to every child without ending the cycle of failure in the lowest-performing five percent of our schools. Year after year, and in some cases for decades, these schools cheated children out of the opportunity for an excellent education. As adults, as educators, as leaders, America passively observed this educational failure with a complacency that is deeply disturbing.
Fewer than 2,000 high schools in the United States—a manageable number—produce half of all its dropouts. These “dropout factories” produce almost 75 percent—three-fourths—of our dropouts from the minority community, our African-American and Latino boys and girls.
…Our vision of reform takes account of the fact that, in several respects, the governance of education in the United States is unusual. Traditionally, the federal government in the U.S. has had a limited role in education policy.
Before the 1960s, almost all policymaking and education funding was a state and local responsibility. In the mid-1960s, the federal role expanded to include enforcing civil rights laws to ensure that poor, minority, and disabled students, as well as English language learners, had access to a high-quality education.
As the federal role in education grew, so did the bureaucracy.All too often, the U.S. Department of Education operated more like a compliance machine, instead of an engine of innovation. The department typically focused on ensuring that formula funds reached their intended recipients in the proper fashion. It focused on inputs—not educational outcomes or equity.
The Obama administration has sought to fundamentally shift the federal role, so that the Department is doing much more to support reform and innovation in states, districts, and local communities. While the vast majority of department funding is still formula funding, the Recovery Act created additional competitive funding like the high-visibility $4.35 billion Race to the Top program and the $650 million Investing in Innovation Fund, which we call i3.
I’ve said that America is now in the midst of a “quiet revolution” in school reform. And this is very much a revolution driven by leaders in statehouses, state school superintendents, local lawmakers, district leaders, union heads, school boards, parents, principals, and teachers.
To cite just one example, the department’s Race to the Top Program challenged states to craft concrete, comprehensive plans for reforming their education systems. The response was nothing less than extraordinary. Forty-six states submitted applications—and the competition drove a national conversation about education reform. Thirty-two states changed specific laws that posed barriers to innovation. And even states that did not win awards now have a state roadmap for reform hammered out. [UTAH]
The i3 program also had a phenomenal response. The $650 million i3 fund offered support to school districts, nonprofit organizations, and institutions of higher education to scale-up promising practices.
…I said earlier that the United States now has a unique opportunity to transform our education system in ways that will resonate for decades to come. Last year and this year, the federal government provided unprecedented funds to support education and reform.
…In March of 2009, President Obama called on the nation’s governors and state school chiefs to “develop standards and assessments that don’t simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity.” Virtually everyone thought the president was dreaming.
But today, 37 states and the District of Columbia have already chosen to adopt the new state-crafted [state-crafted]Common Core standards in math and English. Not studying it, not thinking about it, not issuing a white paper—they have actually done it. Over three-fourths of all U.S. public school students now reside in states that have voluntarily adopted higher, common… standards… That is an absolute game-changer …
The second game-changer is that states have banded together in large consortia to develop a new generation of assessments aligned with the states’ Common Core standards. In September, I announced the results of the department’s $350 million Race to the Top assessment completion to design this next generation of assessments.
Two state consortiums, which together cover 44 states and the District of Columbia, won awards. These new assessments will have much in common with the first-rate assessments now used in many high-performing countries outside the U.S. When these new assessments are in use in the 2014-15 school year, millions of U.S. schoolchildren, parents, and teachers will know, for the first time, if students truly are on-track for colleges and careers.
For the first time, many teachers will have the assessments they have longed for…
Sir Michael Barber’s book, Instruction to Deliver, reminds us that the unglamorous work of reform matters enormously…
…we are committed to establishing a different relationship with the 50 states—one more focused on providing tailored support to improve student outcomes.
… America has a great deal to learn from the educational practices of other countries…
…I welcome this international dialogue, which is only beginning. In December, in Washington, I will join the OECD Secretary General for the global announcement of the 2009 PISA results. In March, we will be sponsoring an International Summit on the Teaching Profession…
Thinking of the future as a contest among nations vying for larger pieces of a finite economic pie is a recipe for protectionism and global strife. Expanding educational attainment everywhere is the best way to grow the pie for all…” – U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, 2010 speech
Bob Schaffer was the man who blew the whistle on Marc Tucker and Hillary Clinton’s plot to take over American education. Schaffer got their letter recorded in the official Congressional Record years ago. http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/marc_tucker/
Robert Scott was the very wise Education Commissionar who, together with Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, rejected Common Core for Texas –and enraged Sec. of Education Arne Duncan.
Bill Evers, who is a Hoover Institute, Stanford University research fellow, also served on Mitt Romney’s Education Committee. He spoke on the danger of Common Core education this summer, to a standing room only group in Salt Lake City.
Sandra Stotsky served on the official Common Core Validation Committee (and refused to sign off on the standards because, among other things, they cut out classic literature and call it improving education.)
Jim Stergios and Ted Rebarber spoke this summer, here in Salt Lake City, to our senate Education Committee, testifying of the alarming error it was to adopt Common Core on educational and on Constitutional grounds.
This is going to be a great meeting. If you get to go, please leave a comment here, letting others know what you learned.
