The short version and the good news must come first: HB 164 (a bill about no more opting out of SAGE tests) did not pass. HB 264 (a bill about common sex ed) did not pass.
Yesterday at the Capitol, the legislative education hearing was cram-packed with standing room only, and an overflow room was available for attendees. I’m so glad that so many came.
One of the first bills, HB201 –that would remove the Common Core SAGE test from being tied to teacher evaluations, a common sense bill– was clearly popular. Three “Teachers of the Year” spoke in favor of it. They said that it’s not fair to punish a teacher if a student rebels against a test and doesn’t do his/her best work. Some said that the test itself was not valid.
When the committee chair asked if anyone in the audience wanted to speak against it, parent Jared Carman volunteered, saying that while he definitely agrees with the idea behind the bill, he disagrees with the bigger picture. Carman pointed out that since, later in this same meeting, this committee would discuss whether to tie student passing or failing of a course to Common Core SAGE testing, the logic was flawed. If it’s unfair to base a teacher’s grade on this unreliable and unvalidated test, why is it not unfair to base a child’s grade on it?
Amen, Mr. Carman.
Next up was HB 164, the opt out-or-no-opt-out bill. Sponsor Kraig Powell summarized the three versions of the bill– not in the way I would have– but he did say that there were three different doors and that the committee could choose which door to open. True. They were each different, but each called 164. Someone on the committee pointed out that this is not a game show!
Someone else pointed out that the third substitute bill was only posted online a few minutes before the hearing, making it unfair to expect a vote on it, without a reading and without giving notice for people to know about it and to come to the hearing to speak to its (very different) issues.
Still, Representative Powell hoped to pass the bill anyway, saying (amid wild, enthusiastic cheers from the audience) that it’s high time we get rid of the SAGE test altogether. For your information, he has always fought the pro-liberty, anti-common core crowd, so it was very, very odd to hear him say those words.
And I wasn’t cheering.
I asked to be allowed to give public comment on substitute 3, since I had read it while sitting in the hearing. (I had noticed that it was utterly, completely different from substitutes one and two. It was about “backpack” digital data on every child; it was about labeling schools as “turnaround” schools; it was about getting rid of SAGE testing while relying on embedded, curricular [stealth] assessment.) I didn’t get the opportunity to speak because the committee wisely decided not to hear testimony and not to vote on it, since there had been no time for reading and analysis by the committee.
So why wasn’t I cheering that we’d get rid of SAGE? Why would I want to testify against the bill that supposedly spelled the end of SAGE/Common Core testing? Simply this: substitute 3 of HB164 gets rid of SAGE, but it also gets rid of any possibility for a parent to opt a child out of testing. And it totally relies on common core and common, SLDS/CEDS, data.
HB 164 sub 3 relies on a digital “backpack,” which is like an ever deepening, longitudinal fingerprint, to assess children constantly. The child would provide an I.V. drip of continuous data to the State Longitudinal Database System, via stealth assessment, which has been set up to happen by several previous bills, including this one.
See lines 590-591: “Every school district and public school shall develop and integrate programs integrating technology into the curriculum, instruction, and student assessment.”
That matches, perfectly, ed committee member Marie Poulson’s task force and resolution of last year, which aimed to minimize the negative effects of excessive testing. It sounds so good.
Yet, there is something even more sinister than excessive testing, using experimental standards and psychometric analysis of student responses. That is: stealth assessment; that means, using continuous assessment that is embedded in the curriculum so that no parent can opt a child out of the test– BECAUSE THE TEST NEVER ENDS.
I am not against integrating technology into learning. There is nothing wrong with technology; it’s a blessing! But there is something wrong with not applying basic principles of liberty and consent to the technology being used by children. There is something wrong with forcing students to be monitored all of the time, in all of their assignments, and then to be judged thereby.
Dr. Gary Thompson has been warning us for years that the trendy notion of stealth, or embedded, assessment, would show up here; it has. Jakell Sullivan has been warning us for years that SAGE was a red herring, or not the real point; the real point was controlling the data via the SLDS longitudinal database system; that’s in HB 164 sub 3, too.
The question at the core of this issue is: Which is worse– saving children from the wasteful, stressful, data-robbing SAGE tests now, while making their tests stealthy and continuous, with no parental opt out available, or: sticking with statewide SAGE, where at least those who are aware and informed, can opt out?
Both are bad, but one is clearly worse, in terms of parental judgment, control and liberty. But embedded assessment is what Poulson and Powell and the whole educational establishment appear to be favoring. Embedded tests certainly get rid of whiny parents and rebellious kids aiming to wreck their test scores with careless bubbling in of answers. But at what cost?!
(Please contact your legislators and tell them that you are opposed to stealth assessment and digital “backpacks” on children. This will show up in many bills, now and next year.)
The third bill from yesterday’s hearing that I want to review is Rep. King’s Comprehensive Sexuality Bill, HB 264. The committee allowed public comment, but only a very few people were given time. One of the first commenters arguing against passing the bill said that Rep. King’s opening line was false. (King had said that there was “misinformation” on the internet that said that this bill had something to do with Common Core.) The commenter said that Rep. King might not be aware of the national, common standards for sexuality education, but the promoters of the common standards sure are aware of Rep. King; just today, SIECUS had posted an article about Rep. King’s Utah bill promoting their standards.
I looked at that article. It was far more revealing about what the bill aimed to do than its testifiers seemed to be: “House Minority leader Rep. Brian S. King (D-Salt Lake City) is leading efforts to change Utah’s sex ed law… Utah’s current law, passed in 1988, mandates medically-accurate sex education classes in schools but requires the stressing of abstinence-only instruction. The law stipulates that health education teachers cannot discuss intercourse nor positively discuss homosexuality…. This bill removes the instruction prohibitions on homosexuality, sexual intercourse and contraceptive devices”.
Most of the testifiers for the bill who stood to speak overtly appeared to be LGTB, a point that stood out to me. It was not mentioned by the newspapers today, of course. But think about it. If the bill was just about giving additional, medically accurate knowledge, and not about altering “values, attitudes and beliefs” as the national sexuality standards movement requires; if there was no LGTB agenda being pushed on the children through HB 246, why were all the LGTB activists there to testify for it? Since when do they go out of their way to testify in hearings for the cause of “medically accurate knowledge”?
I am not hostile toward gays. Live and let live. But I am opposed to the LGTB agenda being pushed in public arenas as if it were the new, national religion. I am opposed to the minimizing of truth about what that lifestyles’ consequences are. The national common sexuality standards do push that lifestyle and political agenda on children, while calling it education. Altering beliefs is not what reproductive health classes are supposed to be for. Altering beliefs and attitudes is the job of the family and the church.
HB 264 did not pass.
The last update that I want to share is about HB 91, Hillyard and Eliason’s bill to change the power levers of the state school board. I am concerned about the apparent power grab that the state school board is taking in this bill:
“The board may delegate the board’s statutory duties and responsibilities to board employees.”
This is bad because we, the people, cannot elect or fire employees as we can elect and fire the board.
85 (ii) temporarily or permanently withhold state funds from the education entity;
86 (iii) require the education entity to pay a penalty;
This is bad because it overreaches into the localities, pushing the state board’s will onto the local boards, which is not in harmony with the constitution.
There are also audits of localities, new rules about how a local entity interacts with a third party, and other seeming power grabs that need attention from local boards and liberty-minded representatives. We don’t want to recreate the nightmare of the beastly federal Department of Education within our state, by allowing the State Department of Education to micromanage the localities, using money and unfire-ability as leverage.
Please continue to email, text, call or write to your representatives.
They need to hear what your thoughts and feelings are. Silence is acquiescence.
What does “Orwellian” mean, and how does it relate to education –and to our current president’s latest softening commentary about high stakes testing?
George Orwell showed, in his books 1984 and Animal Farm, how tyranny looks, works, stomps on the individual and suffocates freedom. He could have been describing Obama’s CEDS/SLDS/EdFacts data exchange in its final form.
(If you haven’t, read 1984. Just read the first half and skip the nightmarish ending (my advice) –that way, you’ll see why privacy matters so very, very much, why the freedom to choose the path of your own conscience matters, and why big government control of data is deadly.)
Some see Obama’s new testing attitude as sincere enlightenment; others think it’s a move to regain popularity among teacher’s unions and angry parents; but the reason I am sure that Obama’s softening his stance on high-stakes testing is that he does not need it in his Orwellian-style, centrally managed, Constitution-be-damned kingdom.
He does not need the tests to control the people nor to get data about them, now that he has:
Student data collected in daily, continual SIS updates that is no longer protected by what used to be, pre-2009, FERPA’s consent-only privacy protections.
School systems functioning as data donors to Obama’s SLDS systems via the SLDS and the EdFacts Data Exchange
Compulsory education, so that unless parents somehow can provide private school tuitions or devote their lives to home schooling, every child is collected in the big net.
“I keep getting texts, phone messages and emails telling me how happy folks are that Obama is now listening to us – and that Opt Out has been heard. This is heartbreaking for me – because this tells me that mainstream media has done a stellar job of co-opting Opt Out…
Thenext wave involves the U.S. Dept. of Ed’s recommendations for testing reduction which also comes with funds to support states in getting there. And the scariest part is this – the GROUNDWORK IS COMPLETE. The feds/corporations did exactly what they came to do – they dangled carrots. They got high stakes testing systems in place with longitudinal data bases to carry the seamless productivity of the data. They loosened privacy regulations. They got common standards out there which are essential for easy data tagging. They pushed and pushed and pushed to support charters and alternative teacher certification. They set the groundwork for the STATES to now lead the way – and they (feds/corporations) have their people in place on school boards, schools of education, depts. of ed…
And now, they simply have commiserated with the masses and said weneed to reduce testing and make sure the testing that occurs is meaningful and does not take away from classroom instruction. This is accomplished so easily. It’s called online daily computer based testing. Followed by online daily computer based instruction. Call it mastery testing. Competency based testing. Proficiency testing. Whatever you like. It will begin to fall in place very quickly as states move away from the hated interim testing and massive amounts of end of year testing. There will be less need for these large tests with quick, tidy, END OF DAY testing TIED TO STUDENT GRADES and STUDENT PROMOTION to the next grade/digital badge – whatever it may be – and of course testing which tells the teacher what the next day’s online instruction must be. It’s already happening. And now the federal gov’t. is simply nudging it into the states’ hands with a resounding message of support, an apology for overstepping their boundaries and a few bucks along the way…”
The worst part about seeing federal (Obama) or local (Senator Stephenson, Representative Poulsen) officials suddenly seeing the Opt Out light, and suddenly pooh-pooh-ing high stakes testing– is the replacement, the “new” and bigger river of data to fulfill their stated goal of “data-driven” central decision making: it’s stealth assessment, also known as embedded assessment.
Stealth assessment is nonconsensual assessment, unannounced assessment and data gathering. (Hello, consent of the governed.)
It’s testing that happens while students are simply using their technological devices for any school assignment. And it’s being discussed right now in our Utah legislature as the solution for the ills of high-stakes testing.
What are they discussing? Which is worse, SAGE or stealth?
Let’s make a little pros and cons list together. (Also, see my top ten reasons to opt out if you want more detail on why SAGE opt-outs are so vital.)
CONS: For High Stakes Standardized Testing (SAGE/PARCC/SBAC/AIR tests)
The tests rob students of real learning by pressuring teachers to teach to the test.
They rob teachers of professional judgment by punishing and rewarding them based on test scores.
Utah’s SAGE is secretive, closed to teachers and parents.
The tests are un-valid (never having been tested).
The standards, upon which the tests are based, are un-valid (never having been tested).
The untested tests are using our children as guinea pigs without our consent.
The tests do not meet basic values for codes of ethics.
PROS: For High Stakes Standardized Testing (SAGE/PARCC/SBAC/AIR tests)
We can opt out of the tests.
That’s it.
We can opt out of the tests; we can’t opt out of stealth testing, aka curriculum-embedded assessment.
Do you see? The move away from standardized tests is also a move away from the parental or individual ability to opt out of the data mining assault on privacy.
Taking Utah as an example: if Representative Marie Poulson’s committee— that was formed after her stealth assessment (anti-high stakes testing) resolution passed— decides to kick SAGE testing to the curb, the Utah legislature will follow the federal trend of pushing all the data mining further underground by using embedded assessment (stealth testing) as its replacement.
Don’t let this happen. Talk to your representatives. Say no to stealth/embedded testing.
He was right when he said that it’s educational malpractice to use a beta-test to judge students and teachers and schools.
He was right in saying that it’s unethical to test students in January and February on content that hasn’t even been introduced for that school year yet.
But why was there no mention of privacy –or of parental rights to informed consent? Why is that not part of his stop-SAGE argument? Why is the senator pushing back against SAGE/Common Core tests now, when he never has done so before? He could have helped pass Rep. Anderegg’s student data privacy bill, two years in a row. He could have done so much to protect our children. He did not. The student data privacy bill is, once again, two years in a row, utterly dead in the water.
I do suspect, because of Stephenson’s infatuation with all things technological, that Stephenson is using the anti-SAGE argument to lead listeners toward acceptance of something just as sinister or worse: curriculum-integrated tests, also known as “stealth assessments”.
That’s what’s coming next. And stealth will hurt, not help, the fight for parental rights and student privacy rights.
A resolution just passed the Utah House of Representatives along these stealth assessment lines, called HCR7. The visible intentions of HCR7 are great: to reduce the amount of time wasted on testing and reducing test anxiety; to expand the amount of time spent teaching and learning instead of test-prepping. Its sponsor, Rep. Poulson, explained in a KSL quote: “my family were small farmers and cattlemen, and I know just from that experience that if you spend all of your time weighing and measuring, and not feeding, it causes problems.”
Agreed! Education for a child’s benefit should be its own end, not just a stepping stone toward the Capital T Tests.
But, but, but.
See line 66. It wants to “maximize the integration of testing into an aligned curriculum“. How?
The school system just hides the factthat a test is happening from its students.
The techno-curriculum can suck out a constant stream of personal data from the student’s technology use. Assignments, projects, and even games can constantly upload academic and nonacademic data about the child, all day every day, into the State Longitudinal Database Systems —and into the hands of third-party technology vendors.
As Dr. Thompson has pointed out, stealth can be honorable and valuable in a private, parentally consented-to, setting: when a parent asks a trained child psychologist to help heal a hurt child, he/she can analyze a child’s drawings, how a child plays with toys, or how he organizes objects, etc.
The difference is informed consent.
The governmental-corporate machine is suggesting that legislatures force schools to adopt compulsory testing embedded in school curriculum and activities, allowing student data collection to be pulled without informed consent.
Do we want our students to be tested and analyzed and tracked like guinea pigs all day, year after year— not by teachers, but by third party vendors and the government?
Stealth testing, or “integrated testing” removes the possibility for parental opt-outs. I’m not for that. Are you?
Why doesn’t anyone seem to care? I repeat: two years in a row Rep. Jake Anderegg’s student data protection bill has gone unpassed. I cannot understand the legislature’s apathy about privacy rights and the lack of valiant protection of children’s privacy in this data-binging day and age.
I don’t get it. Someone, tell me why this is not important in a supposedly child-friendly state. It is known all over the planet that private data is the new gold, the new oil. Knowledge about individuals is power over them. When someone knows extremely detailed information about individuals, they can can persuade them, influence them, guide them, help them –and control them. Children’s privacy, their data, is gold to corporations and governments. Yet they are notbeing protected. Our legislators don’t think it’s important enough. We can pass bills about every petty thing you can imagine, but we can’t protect our kids from having their gold robbed every single day. I can’t believe it’s just neglect and busy-ness. I think it’s greed-based.
Don’t believe it? Study what the feds have done in recent years to destroy student privacy. Search Utah code for any mention of students having rights to their own data, or ownership of it; search in vain for any punishment when data is collected without parental consent by schools or third party vendors. See corporations salivating over taken student data –collected without parental consent by every state’s “State Longitudinal Database System”.
Watch the Datapalooza event where the same type of talk is going on– absolutely no discussion of parental rights, of privacy rights, of the morality of picking up academic and nonacademic personal information about another person without his/her consent nor parental consent: https://youtu.be/Lr7Z7ysDluQ
Our elected representatives, from Governor Herbert through Howard Stephenson through Marie Poulson through our state school board, are not demonstrating any respect for parental consent. By their inaction, they are violating our children’s data privacy.
Utah is volunteering to give away our gold, our children’s private data– out of naiivete, greed, or tragically misplaced “trust”.
There is only one solution that I can see: parents, we are the only ones who really care. WE CAN SPEAK UP.
We can protect our children by pressuring our elected representatives at the senate, house and state school board. We can tell elected representatives that our children need and deserve proper data privacy protection. Tell them that FERPA is broken and we need local protection. Tell them we will not tolerate embedded tests in the daily curriculum and technologies that our children use.
Demand the dignity of privacy for your child. Say NO to “integrated curriculum and testing”– stealth assessment. Put these words in your elected representatives’ inboxes and messaging systems and twitter feeds and ears. Don’t let it rest. Be a pest. Silence is acquiescence.
Children and their private data are not “stakeholder” owned inventory. Children are not “human capital” to be tracked and directed by the government. My child is mine. He/she has a mission unrelated to fattening up the workforce or serving Prosperity 2020. I do not think the legislature comprehends that fact.
Maybe I am not barking loudly enough. Maybe a hundred thousand parents need to be barking.
I’ll repaste the elected representatives’ email information here.
———————————————————————–
Write to the Utah State School Board: Board@schools.utah.gov
COMMON CORE 