In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck stole chickens. Huck’s father had taught him how to stomach chicken theft.
That reminds me of the way the federal CEP (Commission on Evidence Based Policy) stomachs human data theft. Huck said:
… Pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don’t want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain’t ever forgot. I never see pap when he didn’t want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say, anyway.
Just as the Finn thieves lied to themselves, saying that they might do society a favor while they did themselves a favor, stealing chickens, so ed reformers and CEP data gatherers lie to themselves and to the public. After all, the CEP doesn’t do its own thieving; why should it judge or disclose the immoral origins of the data?
CEP simply says that it wants to centrally house data (that’s previously been taken, without permission from citizens, by school State Longitudinal Database Systems and by other entities.) CEP members wring their hands over the inconvenience they have endured, not fully being able to access all the pii. So also say the elite researchers and Gates-linked business people testifying at CEP’s public hearings.
Maybe you didn’t know that citizens’ data is being taken without our permission.
Think: when did you receive a permission slip from the school district, or from the state, asking you to sign away all student academic and nonacademic data for the rest of your child’s life? Never.
YetSLDS systems do track a child for life. That’s what “longitudinal” means: through time. They call it P-20W. That means preschool through grade 20 and Workforce. Life.
Well, now you know. And we can’t opt out of the data theft system. I tried. The biggest, most vibrant source of citizen data is our public school system, and the government is unwilling to stop stealing from us in this way.
I do not use the word “stealing” lightly, nor am I exaggerating. Personal data is literally being confiscated without informed consent or permission of any kind, via school databases linked with many state agencies. Every digital record created by students, teachers, counselors, school nurses or administrators can be stored (and shared) from there.
No one seems to notice these articles about stolen pii.
And on it goes. Data points are taken and taken and taken –about both academic and nonacademic lives. Schools feed aggregate data and pii into federally-created “State Longitudinal Database Systems” (SLDS). Because SLDS systems use common educational data standards (CEDS) that the federal-corporate partners created, that data is portable and re-shareable (or re-stealable).
Many people believe that federal FERPA privacy laws protect the data, but it doesn’t. It used to. The Department of Education shredded the protective parts of FERPA several years ago. What’s actually protecting student privacy right now is the territorial unwillingness of agencies to share all data.
But the CEP is out to change that.
CEP will lead you to believe that it’s all about benefiting society. But that’s a side show, because data is the new gold. Everyone wants the data!
Sadly, individuals aren’t guarding this irreplaceable gold; most people aren’t aware that this pii is so valuable, that it’s being taken –and that it’s THEIRS.
Meanwhile, the elite at the CEP speak about data as if it’s oxygen, free for all, belonging to all. It makes sense from their (bottom line) point of view; governments and ed vendors have financially benefited from SLDS’s taking students’ data since about 2009, when SLDS databases were installed in every state by federal grants, and when federal FERPA changes allowed almost anyone access, for supposed research purposes.
Luckily, there’s so much territorialism by the various holders of the taken data that it hasn’t yet been centrally housed all in one spot. The federal EdFacts Data Exchange has some data. Each state’s SLDS has tons of data. Universities, hospitals, corporations, criminal justice agencies, and other organizations have other caches of pii. But the elite (the federal government, globalists, corporate elite, and some scientists) are desperate to have one national “clearinghouse” so that they can see and use our data to their own designs. They speak a smooth line in each of their CEP hearings. But don’t forget: that data is your life. Yours. Not theirs.
There was a recent three hour conversation that you most likely missed last week. Held in Chicago, this “public” hearing of the federal Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking (CEP) discussed what should be done with the pii (personally identifiable information) that federal agencies, state agencies, counties, school systems, hospitals, criminal justice systems, colleges and other organizations have collected. They’ve been discussing this all year long.
I picture Pap with a crate of stolen chickens. I picture his pirating friends with their own crates nearby. I think there might even be a few crate-holders who ethically came by their chickens, but the federal Chicken Evidence Policy says that all chickens go in one central pen, on an ongoing basis, so all the elite can access the chickens conveniently– conveniently for everyone except the chickens and their owners.
When you listen to their hearings, you find that the federal CEP is leaning toward creating a federal clearinghouse where every individual’s data can be centrally managed. CEP is also hoping to overturn the federal ban on unit-record identifiers.
Welcome to the real live prequel to Orwell’s 1984.
Do I sound calm? I’m not. This makes me almost unspeakably angry.
While trusting parents, teachers, school administrators and students are being used as pawns in the great data-gathering heist, arrogant members of Congress, of science, of CEP, of big data, are assuming authority over MY life and yours in the form of our personally identifiable data. And who is stopping them?
Despite a huge number of public comments that told the CEP that Americans want the CEP to get its hands off our data, the CEP moves ahead at a steady pace. And why not? We can never un-elect this appointed group that Congress created less than a year ago. What motivation would CEP have to actually incorporate the public comments?
As the Missouri Education Watchdog pointed out in October, there was only one man in America who seemed to care about protecting citizen privacy at that month’s hearing. Mr. Emmett McGroarty testified to the CEP that what they were doing was wrong. Similarly, at last week’s January 5 CEP hearing, there was only one woman who spoke ethically about children’s data privacy rights. She did a magnificent job. Everyone else testified that data should be gathered in one place, or possibly in a few places; and none of the others mentioned permission or informed consent. I took pages and pages of notes, since the meeting was only public in the sense that I could listen in to it on my phone.
It wasn’t filmed. It wasn’t truly public. It’s aiming to fly under the radar because it’s theft.
Huck Finn’s father’s plan to later share the stolen chickens didn’t make the chickens less stolen. Other people’s information doesn’t suddenly become your “scientific research” or your “evidence” for “evidence-based policymaking” just because Congress created a commission and appointed you to chat about it.
Shame on the CEP. Shame on all who turn a blind eye to this evil, open assault on the basic freedom of personal privacy.
An anti-family bill, a communist’s dream bill, is sitting in the U.S. Senate right now. It’s called S1787, The Full Service Community Schools Act (bill’s full text is here; promoters’ talking points, here.)
This bill sounds friendly, but it is not friendly. Any initiative that shifts the center of a child’s universe away from home, church and family to snatch family authority and personal privacy while it strengthens government’s authority over almost every aspect of a life, is communism. History and religion have repeatedly warned us against communism. But here it is, posing as “social justice” and “community schools”.
S1787 will grant the wish that US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan dreamed would come true. Years ago, Duncan wished to see schools as the center of a child’s life and society, with 14 hour school days and 7 day per week schedules. Watch this 44 second clip.
So what’s the tyrrany of S1787? It creates micromanagement of students and intrudes into families. Powerfully fueled by data mining, including many government agencies outside school agencies, it will dangle grant money carrots in front of communities in exchange for greater federal power over the local community. It seeks to take over the local community agenda (not just the school community– the entire community’s agenda) and to absorb family time.
How? Community schools can control (“assist”) individuals because they are astronomically empowered to know everything about a child, by nonconsensual data collecting and by the wide open data-mashing that has been happening –between state and federal lines (Study the State Longitudinal Database Systems, the Common Core of Data, the SIF interoperability frameworks) –and across state and private lines (Study the private CCSSO’s partnership with the US Department of Education and with State Higher Ed in promoting Common Educational Data Standards and the Data Quality Campaign).
With a society increasingly forgetting the protections of the Constitution and increasingly buying into the nanny-knows-best philosophy of government, few people are standing against the nonconsensual collection of personally identifiable data. Ignorance or tolerance by the people is making individuals’ data-life-takeover possible.
Recall that this communistic, centrally-managed direction is the one in which our US Secretary of Education has been pushing us, unconstitutionally, for years.
“…We have pursued a cradle-to-career agenda, from early childhood programs through postsecondary graduation… [the] final core element in our strategy is promoting a career-to-cradle agenda.”
He also said: “we have to learn to think very, very differently about time. I think our school day is too short. I think our school week is too short. I think our school year is too short.”
Community schools are “social justice” (and communism) in action. There is no representation of individuals. There is no privacy. Nobody gets to opt out. Personal data of a medical, academic, mental, familial, or any other type, belongs to the nanny government. In fact, individuals owe themselves as human capital to the government. It’s in the language of the bill. In community schools, HIPPA (medical privacy rights) protections do not exist because FERPA (school privacy nonrights) usurps them. Your child has fewer privacy rights than ever in a community school.
Please don’t think it’s only academic scores that are being collected. Remember that Comrade Duncan also altered the term “personally identifiable information,” which now includes biometric data —meaning psychological and biological data: “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.”
So how could a student retain private records of a medical, mental health, academic, or family nature, under S1787? The whole purpose of the community school is to mesh and mash records and services.
Lest there be any confusion or name calling (“conspiracy wacko!”) remember that neither the data grab nor the push toward communism is theoretical or hidden. It is promoted by notable congressmen and the US Secretary of Education. Just study the words of Secretary Duncan and Congressman Fattah (PA) and Congressman Honda (CA) who were were the architects of the education redistribution program known as The Equity and Excellence Commission. Congressman Fattah explained: “The Equity and Excellence Commission…that has been established by Secretary Arne Duncan will begin to close the gap in resource distribution between rich and poor…”
Duncan prefers the term “social justice” over the term “communism.” But he fights for it! At a University of Virginia speech, Duncan said: “Great teaching is about so much more than education; it is a daily fight for social justice.” At an IES research conference, he said: “The fight for quality education is about so much more than education. It’s a fight for social justice.”
The truth is that social justice is the opposite of justice. It is forced financial equality; it means wealth and property theft and redistribution, Animal Farm style. It is communism. And there’s only one way to enforce it: top down, heavy-handed government force.
S1787 means to reassign authority (from families to governments) to crush independent businesses and churches (in favor of government-partnered ones) and to redistribute money and resources –without the consent of the people who owned and earned them.
I’m sure by now you want to see if this is really true. Time to look at the language of the bill. I’ll pose questions before each bill citation to help clarify.
Does the bill turn students into government resources rather than free agents? Yes.
“engage students as resources to their communities” -Section 5701, Purposes.
“Students are contributing to their communities.” – Section 5703
Does the bill dramatically increase the role of the government school in society? Yes.
“provides access to such services to students, families, and the community, such as access during the school year (including before- and after-school hours and weekends), as well as during the summer.” – Section 5702
Does the bill mesh and other socialist programs, such as ObamaCare, into schools? Yes.
” …to coordinate and integrate educational, developmental, family, health, and other comprehensive services”-Section 5702
“Access to health care and treatment of illnesses demonstrated to impact academic achievement.”
Does the bill integrate families into its programs without their informed consent? Yes.
” …to coordinate and integrate educational, developmental, family, health, and other comprehensive services”-Section 5702
“Participation rates by parents and family members in school-sanctioned activities” – Section 5703
Does the bill aim to influence or control children’s psychological or behavioral development under government authority?
” …to coordinate and integrate educational, developmental, family, health, and other comprehensive services”-Section 5702
Is the federal government to bribe schools to give away data about the students, families, and other residents of the community? Yes.
To get a financial grant, communities must hand over “A needs assessment that identifies the academic, physical, social, emotional, health, mental health, and other needs of students, families, and community residents.” -Section 5703
Also, to get and keep federal money, communities must show that “Families are supportive and engaged in their children’s education.” (Section 5703) How does a community measure that metric? And, if I am an opponent (nonsupporter) of Common Core or other school-adopted programs, am I to be labeled “not supportive and engaged in my child’s education”? What’s the consequence to me?
Does the bill discourage data collection opt-outs by families, by requiring multiple test measure, including inviting stealth (hidden) assessment of students? Yes.
“Multiple objective measures of student achievement, including assessments, classroom grades, and other means of assessing student performance.” – 5703
Does the bill encourage state workers to inspect families in their homes? Yes.
“Nurse home visitation services” and “Teacher home visiting” and “Programs that promote parental involvement” are “qualified services” under this bill.
Remember, a “service” is not necessarily optional in the world of big government (think: compulsory education, nonconsensual data collection).
What non-academic or after-academic programs are included?
“expanded learning time,” “summer” learning experiences, “after school” experiences, “early childhood education,” “remedial education activities,” “expanded learning time,” “programs under the Head Start Act,” “Programs that promote parental involvement,” “mentoring and other youth development programs,” “conflict mediation,” “Parent leadership development activities,” “Parenting education activities,” “Child care services” “Community service and service-learning opportunities,” “nurse home visitation services” and “teacher home visiting” and “programs that promote parental involvement” “physical education,” “Programs that provide assistance to students who have been truant, suspended, or expelled” (so you can’t get kicked out/freed no matter what you do), “Job training, internship opportunities, and career counseling services,” “Nutrition services,” “Primary health and dental care,” “Mental health counseling services,” “Adult education,” “Juvenile crime prevention and rehabilitation programs,” “Specialized instructional support services,” “Homeless prevention services,” “Other services.”
(Does this sound like a gigantic community prison to anyone? If American schools become these community schools, and all communities become sucked into this web of “services,” there will be nowhere to run. If parents aren’t “supportive and engaged” in this paradigm, they will be reeducated in “parenting education activities” or “parent leadership development activities”. A person can’t even escape by expulsion from school, because rehab and community service hours take place on campus, too. Nor can anyone escape by running away because they have “homeless prevention services.”)
Is there any local control in these schools? No.
There is no representation by those governed under the community schools act. The rulers are to be a five member, unelected, un-repealable advisory committee, federally appointed, that will call the shots for community schools. It will include: “The Secretary of Education (or the Secretary’s delegate) The Attorney General of the United States (or the Attorney General’s delegate) The Secretary of Agriculture (or the Secretary’s delegate) The Secretary of Health and Human Services (or the Secretary’s delegate) The Secretary of Labor”. – Section 5705
We are living in an upside down, black-is-white, bad-is-good, liars’ world of ed reform.
Unlike true benevolence or community care, these ed reform initiatives carry the weight of compliance and are not based in free will or personal agency. Forcing, even out of care, is still forcing. And robbing, even if the purpose is to share, is still robbing.
In S1787, proponents have again concocted a fiction that their Full Services Community Schools Act will empower parents, bless children, and benefit communities. Few things could be further from the truth.
What is so wrong about socialism, and why is it so bad that it’s being pushed and prodded into American education and all aspects of America by both sides of the political aisle?
The question is so eloquently answered from a man who knows what he is talking about– Ezra Taft Benson: (Excerpt from Benson’s 1977 speech, “A Vision and a Hope for the Youth of Zion.”)
“…Isaiah foresaw the time when a marvelous work and a wonder would come forth among men (see Isaiah 29:14). Isaiah also predicted that there would be those that “seek deep to hide their counsel from the Lord, and their works are in the dark, and they [shall] say, Who seeth us?” (Isaiah 29:15)…
“Yes, Satan works through human agents. We need only look to some of the ignoble figures in human history who were contemporary to the restoration of the gospel to discover fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. I refer to the infamous founders of communism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Today, if we are alert, we can see further fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecies…
“Through the instigation of Marx and Engels, a most successful counterfeit to the united order was introduced into the world. The declaration of principles found in their Manifesto to the World advocated the overthrow of capitalism and free enterprise, the abolition of private property, the elimination of the family as a social unit, the abolition of all classes, the overthrow of all governments, and the establishment of communal ownership of property in a classless, stateless society. All this was to be accomplished by revolution.
“On July 3, 1936, the First Presidency published this warning to Church members. I quote it in part; I hope you will get a copy of the full statement for your files. In part, the statement reads:
. . . Communism is not a political party, nor a political plan under the Constitution; it is a system of government that is the opposite of our Constitutional government. . . .
Since Communism, established, would destroy our American Constitutional government, to support Communism is treasonable to our free institutions, and no patriotic American citizen may become either a Communist or supporter of Communism.
To our Church members we say, Communism is not the United Order, and bears only the most superficial resemblance thereto. Communism is based upon intolerance and force, the United Order upon love and freedom of conscience and action. . . .
Communists cannot establish the United Order, nor will Communism bring it about. . . .
Communism being thus hostile to loyal American citizenship and incompatible with true Church membership, of necessity no loyal American citizen and no faithful Church member can be a Communist.
We call upon all Church members completely to eschew [and shun] Communism. The safety of our divinely inspired Constitutional government and the welfare of our Church imperatively demand that Communism shall have no place in America.
Signed,President Heber J. GrantJ. Reuben Clark, Jr.David O. McKayThe First Presidency
“…I have been on both sides of the Iron Curtain several times. I have talked to these godless leaders face to face. I say to you with all the sincerity of my soul that since 1933 this godless counterfeit to the gospel has made tremendous progress towards its objective of world domination, for over one-third of the human family are now under totalitarian subjugation.
“Today we are in a battle for the bodies and souls of men. It is a battle between two opposite systems: freedom and slavery, Christ and anti-Christ. The struggle today is more momentous than a decade ago, yet today the conventional wisdom, so called, is that we have got to learn to live with communism, to give up our ideas about national sovereignty. You hear that repeated today. Tell that to the millions—yes, the scores of millions—who have met death or imprisonment under the tyranny of communism. Learn to live with communism? Such would be the death knell of freedom and all we hold dear.
“The gospel of Jesus Christ can prosper only in an atmosphere of freedom. As members of his Church, we have a major responsibility to do all in our power to see that freedom is preserved and safeguarded. I pray that God will bless you to see communism for what it really is: the greatest system of human slavery that the world has ever known. May you not be deceived into believing that the communists have moderated their goal toward world domination…
“…Socialism—a Philosophy Incompatible with Man’s Liberty
“Another notable counterfeit system to the Lord’s plan is collectivized socialism. Socialism derives its philosophy from the founders of communism, Marx and Engels. Communism in practice is socialism. Its purpose is world socialism, which the communists seek to achieve by revolution, and which the socialists seek to achieve by evolution. Both communism and socialism have the same effect upon the individual—a loss of personal liberty. As was said so well by President J. Reuben Clark, Jr., “The two are as two peas in a pod in their ultimate effect upon our liberties.”
“Why is socialism incompatible with man’s liberty? Socialism cannot work except through an all-powerful state. The state has to be supreme in everything. When individuals begin to exert their God-given rights, the state has to suppress that freedom. So belief in God must be suppressed, and with that gone freedom of conscience and religion must also go. Those are the first of our liberties mentioned in the Bill of Rights.
“There are some among us who would confuse the united order with socialism. That is a serious misunderstanding. It is significant to me that the Prophet Joseph Smith, after attending lectures on socialism in his day, made this official entry in the Church history: “I said I did not believe the doctrine” (Joseph Smith, History of the Church6:33).
“Socialism Disguised under Welfare State Measures
“As citizens of this noble land, we have marched a long way down the soul-destroying road of socialism. If you question that statement, consider the recent testimonial from the Nobel prize-winning economist, Milton Friedman. He indicated that government spending in the United States at all levels amounts to over forty percent of today’s total national income. If we continue to follow the trend in which we are heading today, two things will inevitably result: first, a loss of our personal freedom, and second, financial bankruptcy. This is the price we pay when we turn away from God and the principles which he has taught and turn to government to do everything for us. It is the formula by which nations become enslaved…
“…[W]e have significantly departed from the principles established by the founders of our country. James Madison opposed the proposal to put Congress in the role of promoting the general welfare according to its whims in these words:
“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasure; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor. . . . Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for [and it was an issue then], it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America. [quoted in Donald L. Newquist, Prophets, Principles, and National Survival,p. 342]
“That statement, given as a warning, has proved prophetic. Today Congress is doing what Madison warned about. Many are now advocating that which has become a general practice since the early 1930s: a redistribution of wealth through the federal tax system. That, by definition, is socialism!
“…Compulsory benevolence is not charity. Today’s socialists—who call themselves egalitarians—are using the federal government to redistribute wealth in our society, not as a matter of voluntary charity, but as a so-called matter of right…
“The chief weapon used by the federal government to achieve this “equality” is the system of transfer payments. This means that the federal governments collects from one income group and transfer payments to another by the tax system. These payments are made in the form of social security benefits, Medicare and Medicaid, and food stamps, to name a few. Today the cost of such programs has been going in the hole at the rate of 12 billion dollars a year; and, with increased benefits and greater numbers of recipients, even though the tax base has been increased we will have larger deficits in the future.
“Today the party now in power is advocating and has support, apparently in both major parties, for a comprehensive national health insurance program—a euphemism for socialized medicine. Our major danger is that we are currently (and have been for forty years) transferring responsibility from the individual, local, and state governments to the federal government—precisely the same course that led to the economic collapse in Great Britain and New York City. We cannot long pursue the present trend without its bringing us to national insolvency.
“Edmund Burke, the great British political philosopher, warned of the threat of economic equality. He said,
A perfect equality will indeed be produced—that is to say, equal wretchedness, equal beggary, and on the part of the petitioners, a woeful, helpless, and desperate disappointment. Such is the event of all compulsory equalizations. They pull down what is above; they never raise what is below; and they depress high and low together beneath the level of what was originally the lowest.
“Are we part of the problem or part of the solution?
“…We stand for independence, thrift, and abolition of the dole.
“… Every individual who accepts an unearned government gratuity is just as morally culpable as the individual who takes a handout from taxpayers’ money to pay his heat, electricity, or rent. There is no difference in principle between them. You did not come… to become a welfare recipient. You came here to be a light to the world, a light to society—to save society and to help to save this nation, the Lord’s base of operations in these latter days, to ameliorate man’s social conditions. You are not here to be a parasite or freeloader. The price you pay for “something for nothing” may be more than you can afford.
“Do not rationalize your acceptance of government gratuities by saying, “I am a contributing taxpayer too.”
COMMON CORE 