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California just passed a bill to protect student privacy.  I want to know why Utah hasn’t done the same thing.  Those few Utah legislators who tried to pass privacy-protecting bills (Jake Anderegg, Brian Greene) were not supported by the majority of Utah politicans.

Why?!

Do we not care about student privacy?

Is privacy not a child’s fundamental, Constitutional right?

What happens when there is no guarantee of basic rights?  Think about how much privacy there is in modern day North Korea, or in China.

Privacy goes hand in hand with liberty, always.  Even in the fiction books and movies –over and over again, the theme is spot on: when government knowledge of every citizen trumps individual privacy, then comes hell.  (See The Giver, Divergent,  Anthem, The Hunger Games, 1984.)

The Fourth Amendment says that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated”.

If the government is forbidden from coming into our homes to peruse our children’s coloring books, photo albums and diaries, why is it permitted to come into our schools to seize and read data gathered there?  Do we even realize how much data is shared by schools with the state?  Look here and here for starters.

Current tracking —without parental consent— of student academic, non-cognitive, behavioral, health, familial, attitudinal, and belief-data, is happening without restraint.  Is this seizure of personal data not an unreasonable seizure of personal effects, forbidden Constitutionally?

It is clear that we must stand up for our children’s privacy rights.  But how?

First, we must define in our Utah laws that student data belongs to the student.   It does not belong to the state.   Currently, the state has made the arrogant assumption that student data belongs to the state.  That means tests, quizzes, homework assignments, and the picture the kindergartnener drew of her family which can easily be psychologically mined for student and family profiling.  Since no student or student’s parent have given written consent to share any data generated by that student, the school has no right to hand it to the state database; the state has no right to hand it to corporate or university “research partners” nor to the federal EdFacts Data Exchange nor to the National Data Collection Model groups.  That is data theft.

Knowledge is power.  Learn, then contact your school board and legislature.

What to say?  Ask them what they’ve done, what they know, what protective laws they can point you to.

Read the following brand new articles on this subject:

1.  California Legislature Passes Stiffest Bill to Protect K-12 Students’ online data – San Jose Mercury News:   http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_26444107/online-privacy-california-passes-nations-stiffest-protections-k

2. States Collaborate to Keep Track of Students – Pew Charitable Trusts – http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2014/09/05/states-collaborate-to-keep-track-of-students

3.  What Are Schools Doing With Your Kids’ Data – Yahoo Tech https://www.yahoo.com/tech/what-are-schools-doing-with-your-kids-data-95682103324.html

4. Nine Things You Can Do Right Now to Protect Your Kids’ Privacy at School – Yahoo Tech – https://www.yahoo.com/tech/9-things-you-can-do-right-now-to-protect-your-kids-95681803099.html

 

If you didn’t read them, or if you didn’t email your local school board or legislature yet, asking what they are doing to protect student privacy, I ask you why not.

If you think that our Constitutional rights are secure and that the good folks you elected are out there successfully defending your constitutional rights– including the right to personal and child privacy — think again.  All these rights are under fire.  If we don’t have proper legal protections in place specifying how student data will be protected, then we and our children are fully  un-protected.

The New York Times and Time Magazine have openly attacked and mocked the Constitution– and the rights we claim under it which include, of course, privacy and freedom from seizure of these personal effects.

Freedom and local control and individual rights, these “cool” articles say, are out of data and out of style.

Check them out for yourself:

1 Time Magazine:  http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2079445,00.html

2.  New York Times:  http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/us/we-the-people-loses-appeal-with-people-around-the-world.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1

By the way, how I found those articles was when a parent emailed them to me, saying that her child was told to write about them for a school assignment.  Thank you, education system, for yet one more corrupt dump into our kids’ minds.

What to do?

Ask yourself, first:  is privacy a fundamental right, or not?  Does the government (or corporations) have business knowing your business or your child’s business, without your consent?  If the answer is no, then ask:  Where can I find a law that protects my child’s school data?  Ask your school board.  Ask your legislator.  If they say “FERPA” tell them to do their homework.  Federal FERPA was shredded a few years back.  Bottom line is:  we need legal protections in place ASAP.  And it won’t happen until the people pressure their representatives to make those protections reality.

Please, speak up.

 

 

 

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Pearson and Gates have joined forces. 

Why is a Pearson and Gates combination a nightmare for America, for anyone who cares about competitive free enterprise, constitutional rights regarding education, and local control?

First, a few facts:
1. Pearson, led by Sir Michael Barber, is the biggest education product sales company on earth.
2. Bill Gates is the second richest man on earth, a man who has almost single-handedly funded and marketed the entire Common Core movement.

Gates previously partnered with UNESCO to bring a master curriculum worldwide in his “Education For All” program.  Gates openly values extreme socialism and says that it’s much better than American constitutional government. Listen to Gates at minute 6:20 on this clip. Gates says, “We’ll only know this works when the curriculum and the tests are aligned to these standards.”

Pearson’s CEA is Sir Michael Barber, a man whose company colludes with governments worldwide in public-private-partnerships (soft fascism) and believes that children’s data should be gathered on a global scale. Barber pushes his version of “sustainable educational revolution,” worldwide, explaining that sustainable education reforms mean “it can never go back to how it was.”  See his speeches on YouTube and his Twitter feeds.

These two mega forces for globalizing and standardizing education have now come together.

In a New York Times article on the partnership, Susan Neuman, a former Education Department official in the George W. Bush administration who is now a professor at the University of Michigan, was quoted:

“This is something that’s been missing in all the policy statements on the common core: a sequential curriculum,” Dr. Neuman said. But she worries that Pearson has few rivals.

“Pearson already dominates, and this could take it to the extreme,” she said. “This could be problematic for many of our kids. We could get a one size fits all.”

Indeed.

So when my state school board says that Common Core is just a set of minimum standards, not a curriculum, I will point them to this:  the biggest monopolizer of textbooks, technologies and teacher training–Pearson– has now partnered with one of the wealthiest foundations on earth to create a one size fits all curriculum.

Where will private schools and others go to buy books, who don’t want Common Core-aligned curriculum?  How will others stay in business with such huge competition?