Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order to reclaim local control of education, and then handed his pen to a school teacher who was watching the event. Watch her at minute 10:00. She is tearful. This executive order meant something to her. Teachers are weary of being micromanaged, standards-whipped, undermined and data-mined. They want peace.
But it isn’t the federal government alone that has stunted teachers’ and students’ freedoms, and this executive order alone does not have the power to fix what’s broken in American education. What local control advocates are fighting is the mighty, wealthy partnership of government to corporate ed-tech. It’s the marriage of enforceable power to greed.
Possibly, an executive order might get the feds out of teacher’s laps, but guess what? Business interests will still be sitting there. Most of them think that there’s nothing wrong with businesses influencing policy– but there is. We can’t un-elect a corporation. We can’t attend their private meetings. We can’t vote for what will be put into the educational computer programs that our children are to be fed. We can’t get rid of the influence of businesses if we do not like what they’re doing; that’s why the business industry must be kept out of public education. The voice of the voter and of the mom and dad and teacher and student must never be quashed under the brute strength that industry plus government can become.
The federal government is neither the main nor the sole entity undermining local control –nor is this a left/right argument. On both the left and the right, at both federal and state levels, watch the monied partnerships combining. The huge combinations are what we’re fighting, and their huge influence are why we’re losing.
All of these combinations rely on common data standards. They must have standardization –or out of their hands slips the golden goose.
What most people don’t know, and what DeVos won’t say, is that the Common Core movement was never just a set of academic standards; it was a set of data standards from day one.
Global data-standardization of all things in education, from tests to curriculum to teacher evaluations to student pathway setting to school grading, is much more controlling than a little old set of math and English standards could ever be!
That private group was called the CCSSO. The very same CCSSO partnered with the National Governors’ Association to create the Common Core academic standards.
Both CEDS and CCSS form the heart of the Common Core movement. Neither are gone.
Those data standards and education standards are embedded into the vast ed-tech reform market and school systems. Few people outside the tech elite know this. So we fall for the rebranding efforts of lobbyists, legislatures, and even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, over and over again.
States rename their academic standards (as Utah did with Utah Core Standards) but the truth is that we still use the common core academic tests and common data standards. These are not locally controlled.
Because the federal government is only a co-creator of the monster known as the Common Educational Data Standards (CEDS), I don’t see how reducing federal overreach into local academic decision making will help us all that much; the other co-creator, CCSSO/NGA, promoting a centrally planned standardization movement itself –which feeds on investors and has trillions to play with— will thrive on.
(For those who think centrally planned standardization of education data is faulty conspiracy theory, I repeat: check the CCSSO’s official statement: “Common Education Data Standards Initiative is a joint effort by CCSSO and the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) in partnership with the United States Department of Education.”)
This is something that Trump’s executive order does not mention. Neither does DeVos.
I can’t trust DeVos to obey the spirit of this executive order. Sweet as she may come across, DeVos embodies the problem that arises when half-truths become acceptable to society. Listen to the Michigan Moms against Common Core. They have history, losing Devos when she fought against parental empowerment and against the repeal of Common Core in Michigan. DeVos’ interests were better served by Common Core’s continuation.
Ask anyone who works in education, or in the education publishing or tech industries, if Common Core is gone. They live it every day.
How can DeVos say that?
DeVos leans on the latest version of No Child Left Behind/ESEA, called ESSA, as evidence that Common Core is gone, saying that states are in the driver’s seat. She’s wrong.
ESSA does not use the term “common core” as a requirement, sure; but it requires states to demonstrate to the feds that they’ve adopted standards aligned to the same definition that the feds have promoted (common core).
Under ESSA, the feds can withhold funding and can veto states’ educational decision making agendas! (“You can have any color as long as it’s black.”)
ESSA pushes everything Obama wanted: the tsunami of nonconsensual data mining requirements; federally set moral/social values in schools (social emotional learning, or SEL); federally defined preschools and social services; and “college and career ready standards” which is code for Common Core.
For more on how ESSA/ESEA does not end Common Core nor create local control, read more: here and here and here.
Short on time? Skip straight to this quote from Obama’s Secretary Duncan, who gloated when Congress passed ESSA: “I’m stunned at how much better it ended up than either [House or Senate] bill going into conference. I had a Democratic congressman say to me that it’s a miracle — he’s literally never seen anything like it… if you look at the substance of what is there . . . embedded in [ESSA] are the values that we’ve promoted and proposed forever. The core of our agenda from Day One, that’s all in there – early childhood, high standards…”
If ESSA was such a win for local control, why was Duncan calling it a miracle for his agenda? More to the point, can anyone honestly say that DeVos’ push for ESSA isn’t promoting the Obama agenda?
Trump’s executive order aims to be a local control enforcement mechanism, but because it relies on ESSA, it can never really achieve its stated purpose, “to ensure strict compliance with statutes that prohibit Federal interference with State and local control over education“.
The order aims “to protect and preserve State and local control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, and personnel of educational institutions, schools, and school systems” which is wonderful, but the next few phrases are where I get stuck. They add: “…consistent with applicable law, including ESEA, as amended by ESSA, and ESEA’s restrictions related to the Common Core State Standards developed under the Common Core State Standards Initiative.”
This seems self-contradicting.
I will admit that I have been doing some laughing this week. I laughed hardest (probably inappropriately) when I saw DeVos say on Fox News, while standing stylishly in front of the White House, that there’s no such thing as Common Core anymore.
Realize that Secretary DeVos has been directed to examine the overreaching actions of her department, while she’s in complete denial that Common Core is a problem and in denial about any partnership between her own department and the creators of Common Core/Common Data Standards, even existing. She’s also promoting the same agenda that GSV and Obama promoted (see below).
Isn’t this like asking the arsonist to serve as fire chief?
A few weeks ago I wrote that this year’s host for the mega education tech conference was Salt Lake City, and that the conference’s co-sponsors, Global Silicon Valley and Arizona State University, had posted a white paper describing their vision and agenda. I was pretty mad that they were taking $2,795 per person to attend this ed tech conference. I was even madder that their real agenda, found in their white paper, was full of pro-Common Core and anti-local control plotting.
But now I’m madder.
The 300-plus page, foundational white paper has been deleted from the internet.
If you go to the GSV website, or to the conference website, or to my own blog’s links to that document, vamoosh! Gone.
This, just a few days before the conference is to begin? Why doesn’t GSV want its agenda widely known anymore? Why not?
I thought I’d post a screen shot of that document’s key page: page 302.
This “Strategic Battle Plan” of Global Silicon Valley and Arizona State University (and Bill Gates and everyone, pawns or knaves, on the ed-tech bandwagon) began with Common Core.
It continued with universal preschool vouchers and No Child Left Behind 2.0 (which is ESSA.) It goes on to school choice, knowledge as currency, tax credits for employee training, and the elimination of locally elected school boards.
The elimination of locally elected school boards.
This is not something that we should take lightly.
Republicans are just as guilty as Democrats in actively destroying local control by worshiping ed tech. Pay attention to this battle plan.
UPDATE 4-28-17: A friend found an online copy of that deleted document. Here is the link to the full document: http://www.educationindustry.org/assets/documents/KnowledgeCenterDocs/2012%20american_revolution%202.0%20gsv%20advisors.pdf
ON SCHOOL CHOICE:
One of the steps on that page 302 agenda (above) is school choice.
I know that many good people have been taken in by the “school choice” idea, so I want to address that briefly.
School choice is no long-term choice! The words sound good, and of course in a free country we need choices– but what do these words mean to ed reformers, and in context of government dollars?
Tax dollars will flow from government coffers to private schools, instead of parents’ dollars flowing to private schools. With government money comes government accountability; in 2017, accountability is spelled D-A-T-A. If you value student data privacy, if you value a private school being allowed to set its own academic, religious, social and moral values, then don’t be sucked in to the school choice movement. In the long run, this movement is taking away what autonomy means, or meant, to a school.
Lastly. And yes, this is related.
Do you know that there is a federal Commission on Evidence-based Policy (CEP) that exists to argue about how and where to house citizens’ personally identifiable data centrally? No one’s suing. They should be.
Data that has been nonconsensually gathered by federally designed school systems called “State Longitudinal Database Systems” (SLDS) plus data that has been gathered by a multitude of other state and federal agencies and organizations is now to be housed either in one federal repository or in a few consortia of repositories, if the CEP gets its way.
The arguments of the CEP members remind me of that line in The Princess Bride: “You’re trying to kidnap what I’ve rightfully stolen!”
Laughter is not always my response to the crazy, crazy stuff that is going on in education reform. But for today, it is.
I’m still an optimist.
Angels greatly outnumber devils. I see greatness in individuals who are doing their best, still thinking outside the box as much as they are able– teachers, principals, parents, grandparents, and yes, even legislators. I see individuals doing what they can, wherever they stand and they are making a difference. The incredible liveliness and buoyant spirit in children is not going to be permanently crushed, not even by the robotic idiocy of tech worship that is plaguing education systems today.
I absolutely believe that the oppression of standardization is less than a fleck of dust in God’s huge wind.
Here are 6 reasons that a vote for Trump will help preserve freedoms for our children– including freedom from Common Core– contrasted with 6 reasons that a vote for Hillary (or a third party who can’t beat her) will dramatically reduce the future freedoms of our children.
Reason #1:Religious Liberty and Freedom of Conscience
Hillary’s aiming to remove religious liberty and freedom of conscience from schools and from society. She has called for this:
“All the laws we’ve passed don’t count for much if they’re not enforced… laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.” (see video minute 8-9)
“‘I would like them to pray for guidance and to pray for our country because we need prayer now almost more than we’ve ever needed it before.”
How might presidential stands for or against religious liberty trickle down into school curricula, and into laws concerning churches and homes?
Reason # 2: Trump’s opposed to Common Core.
His campaign video about education explains that America must “end Common Core,” which he calls “a disaster” because “education has to be local“. At rallies like this one in Wilmington, North Carolina, he’s said: “We’ve got to get rid of Common Core.”
On a Fox News interview, when asked if he would cut departments, Trump said, “I may cut the Department of Education“.
In the March presidential debate, Trump said, “Education through Washington, D.C., I don’t want that. I want local education. I want the parents and I want all of the teachers, and I want everybody to get together around a school and to make education great.” This contrasts greatly with Hillary, who mocked local control.
She called Common Core nothing more than a “political failure.” She said, “…this was a political failure because they negotiated something and they had no real agreed-upon program for explaining it and selling it to people so that they left an opening for those who were always in the education debate, who don’t think anybody should be told anything about what to study, even if it’s the multiplication tables. You know, that that should all be left to local control. And then you get into more complicated areas, as we all know, that that’s just totally off limits.”
Reason # 3:Trump’s got Evers.
Trump’s opposition to the Common Core machine aren’t just words. Check out who Trump chose for an education advisor: Williamson “Bill” Evers.
I had the honor of helping to transport Evers to a Stop Common Core speaking engagement in Salt Lake City a few years ago. I remember the leather satchel he carried, which overflowed with books– all titles about federalism and states’ rights.
Reason #4: Trump’s free from the NEA and AFT (abortion-promoting) national teachers unions, which fully endorse Hillary.
Both the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) back Hillary Clinton, and both financially uphold Planned Parenthood and other controversial groups and initiatives.
Even so, when Hillary presented her keynote speech at the recent National Education Association (NEA) conference, she was booed –why?
She spoke of cooperation between public charter schools and public schools. She’s not talking about sporting events or dances, folks. She wants all schools to be controlled by her public-private partner-shipping elite agenda.
Democratic-leaning NEA takes an anti-charter stand, but Hillary is aiming to play both sides with her private-public school initiatives. She knows that the Common Core machine is comprised of two machines, both of whom she needs: the corporate machine, comprised of Pearson, Microsoft/Gates, etc. (these make money starting charters and selling ed tech aligned to common standards) and the government machine (this gains control by using common data mining systems and common tests and teacher evaluations). This is what Hillary is speaking of when she speaks of her educational technology agenda, built on public-private partnerships).
Trump doesn’t need Gates’, Pearson’s, the NEA’s, or the AFT’s funds, and he’s not bound to their political standards. Hillary, though, is bound; Bill Gates, her Foundation’s top $25 Million+ donor, remember, is also the leading promoter of Common Core Education and Data Mining. He was almost her vice presidential pick. Hillary’s not about to get rid of Gates’ precious baby, the Common Core.
Reason #5: Trump’s not about Hillary’s 1998 Marc Tucker successful conspiracy against local control.
The infamous Tucker-Hillary letter, a detailed plot outlining how Hillary and Tucker planned to turn America into a socialistic machine using national school standards and “large scale data management systems” (school-work data) is part of the Congressional Record from 1998. You can read the PDF files of each page of Marc Tucker’s “Dear Hillary” letter in the 1998 Congressional Record through these links:1234567.
Hillary and Tucker are still working hard to implement their plot, nearly twenty years later. Tucker‘s at NCEE, where his reports still spout sickening ideas such as: “the United States will have to largely abandon the beloved emblem of American education: local control“. Meanwhile, Hillary’s whole “Initiative on Technology and Innovation” is a detailed, updated extension of their 1998 conspiracy letter against local control.
Will Americans be smart enough to decipher her witchery of wordplay to see her plan for what it really is?
Whose vision keeps children safe? How will voting third-party bless children?
If you want your home –or local school– to have defenders– gun-owning teachers and principals— and if you believe as our founders did, that self-defense and gun ownership are vital American values, vote for Trump.
If you want to be disarmed and at the mercy of an unaccountable government, and if you are comfortable with the murder of babies, then vote for a third party candidate, or Hillary. It is the same.
A final note:
Many of my constitution-loving friends are voting for Castle (or McMullin) and tell me that Trump is only slightly, if at all, better than Hillary, and say that voting for either Trump or Hillary is condoning evil and will thus draw the displeasure of God.
I beg to differ.
God holds us accountable for the world we allow to come upon our children by our votes– far more so, I imagine, than He weighs our dream vote or “statement” vote which we might cast for a candidate who will never be elected to stand against our actual enemy.
Is just “what’s in our hearts” what matters here– or is what matters the real vote, a vote for actual power, that affects actual lives, and actual deaths?
Trump’s commitment to the American dream’s basic foundation: religious liberty, self-defense/gun rights, educational liberty, the right to life, and freedom from governmental micromanagement, are unarguably, eternally significant differences between these, the only two candidates who are within hope of winning this presidential election.
Will not the consequences of voting for Hillary (or third party)– thus enabling the loss of the basic American rights outlined above– draw greater grief and displeasure from God?
This week, a group of Florida parents, supported by parents and educators nationwide, released an executive order, demanding an end to Common Core and the parentally unauthorized student data mining that’s taking place in every state.
As parents, we claim the privilege of directing our childrens’ educations, free from SLDS (state longitudinal database tracking systems), free from Common Core-aligned testing, standards, or “model” curriculum; free from private trade group EIMAC/CCSSO data collection, free from federal micromanagement, free from federal “accountability”; free from the both student and teacher data mining and tracking that is offensive to individual liberty and to Constitutional, local control.
As parents and teachers, we claim the privilege outlined in the Declaration of Independence that government is by consent of the governed. We, the governed, have not been asked nor have we approved these unvetted standards and systems. Therefore, any governance of children or school staff under the Common Core agenda is simply invalid.
Why: The promises of the promoters of the Common Core Standards do not add up. The evidence is overwhelming, and increases daily, that the Common Core agenda damages where it claims to serve; yet those who push back against the Common Core agenda are disrespected by school boards and in hearings around the nation. This is outrageous. We are the children’s parents; children are not the government’s human capital” despite what the Department of Education repeatedly claims.
Along with the executive order, parents have issued a longer, referenced document that explains the reasoning behind the executive order. This document is entitled “Welcome to the Common Core Fuzzy Math: Common Core Equals Conditions Plus Coercion Plus Conflict of Interest.”
Please pass this message along.
Here is a partial list of all the parent-educator groups working to fight the federal-and-corporate partnered machine of Common Core.
Betty Peters of the Alabama State School Board is fighting for the privacy rights of children in Alabama by requesting documentation about what types of information is currently being disclosed without parental consent, and to whom.
Below are draft versions of the requests.
For more information about the shredding of parental rights under previously protective federal FERPA laws, see the lawsuit currently raging against the Department of Education, brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. I have written about this issue previously as have many other people.
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Memo to Alabama State Board Members:
Since there is a debate without documentation about the use of data on our students of whether personally identifiable data is released on our students, we must request the following documents to clarify and end this discussion. Once we have documents that would substantiate the use of redisclosure of data, personally
identifiable information, PII, that the US Department of Education now allows under FERPA, we can better resolve the issues and take steps to protect our children in the state of Alabama. I am requesting and demanding that all documents requested herein, be given to each State Board Members and legislators, and only then, can we make decisions to protect our students and their families. All meetings and debates should be tabled until documents are received from the Department, and/or under the Freedom of Information Act that will prove one way or another, that will substantiate whether personally identifiable information can be used or not be used without the informed written permission of parents. These documents will provide the basis of our decisions and requests to our legislators of what should be done to protect student privacy.
Sincerely,
Betty Peters
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Request for Documents, Written Agreements, Cooperative Agreements
RE: Redisclosure of Personally Identifiable Information on Students According to 99.31 of the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, FERPA Unknown to Parents and Legislators
Request the Cooperative Agreements between the US Department of Education and Partnership for Assessment of Readiness of College and Careers, PARCC, and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, to determine the use of redisclosed personally identifiable information, PII, used to evaluate individual students toward Common Core Standards.
Request the Cooperative agreement with the Department of Education allowing Florida to be the fiscal agent for each of the states in the PARCC consortium. Request the Cooperative Agreement with the Department of Education allowing Washington to be the negotiating partner for each state in the Smarter Balanced Assessment consortium.
Request the Memorandum of Understanding between Washington state as the negotiating partner, and WestEd, the project management partner, that has access to redisclosed personally identifiable information, PII, for each state in the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.
Request the Memorandum of Understanding between Florida, and Achieve, Inc., Florida as acting fiscal agent for the PARCC consortium and Achieve, Inc as project management partner. Please submit all written agreements allowing access to redisclosed personally identifiable information , PII, for each state.
Request any written agreements, memorandums of understanding, or cooperative agreements Alabama or other states not using PARCC or Smarter Balanced Assessment, has with the US Department of Education, ACT (Aspire, Explore, or Plan,) and/or Pearson, that has access to redisclosed personally identifiable information, PII,
used to evaluate individual students toward Common Core Standards.
Request any written agreements, memorandums of understanding, or cooperative agreements with other contractors who have been given redisclosed PII on student data to develop curriculum, computer adaptive digital software, and/or any testing development. These “school officials” may be identified as private sector contractors, consultants, volunteers, or other parties to whom an agency or institution has outsourced services or functions, including, non-profit organizations, corporations, or businesses to develop curriculum and/ or computer adaptive resources for individual students. These contractors may include Microsoft, Pearson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ETS, & ACT. Please submit any written agreements that allow access to PII, which was unlocked by order of President Obama, Office of Science and Technology Policy Executive Office of the President, January 19, 2012
Request the purchase agreement and amount for each written agreement between any “school official” and the US Department of Education, PARCC, and/or Smarter Balanced Assessment, for the purchase of obtained redisclosed data on personally identifiable information, PII, on individual students to develop curricula or computer
digital programming or testing materials.
Request any Requests for Proposal, RFP, or Written Agreements between any private sector working group, defined as a “school official” in FERPA, 99.31, including PARCC, Smarter Balanced Assessment, Wested, or Achieve, ACT or ETS, who are developing and expanding Common Core Standards to new individualized criteria to ”
improve instruction”, called, CCCR, College Career Citizenship Readiness, in which Citizenship, measures dispositions. Source: http://www.ccsso.org/Documents/ILN%20Knowledge%20Skills%20and%20Dispositions%20CCR%20Framework%20February%202013.pdf
Request any memorandums of understanding or cooperative agreements to test and measure disposition test items that are ” difficult to measure” and may infringe on personal privacy rights, violate federal law for redisclosing psychological information without informed written parental consent.
Request any memorandums of understanding or cooperative agreements that may be used as identifiers for interventions for changing dispositions or improving instruction, without the informed written consent of the parent violating privacy laws, personal liberty, and illegal access to mental health criteria.
Request sample test items or test blueprints with scoring criteria that will measure dispositions and values in the new College Career Citizenship Ready Standards, CCCR, that are being introduced to the Common Core Standards by the CCSSO.
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Working Draft:
Put this letter in writing to clarify requests:
Since there is a debate without documentation about the use of data on our students of whether personally identifiable data is released on our students, we must request the following documents to clarify and end this discussion. Once we have documents that would substantiate the use of Redisclosure of data, personally identifiable information, PII, that the US Department of Education now allows under FERPA, we can better resolve the issues and take steps to protect our children in the state of Alabama. I am requesting and demand that all documents requested herein, be given to each State Board Member, and only then, can we make decisions to protect our students and their families. All debates should be tabled until documents are received from the Department, and/or under the Freedom of Information Act that will prove one way or another, that will substantiate whether personally identifiable information can be used or not without the written permission of parents. These documents will provide the basis of our decisions and requests to our legislators of what
should be done to protect student privacy.
Other questions to be answered:
Was Congressional authority given to expand FERPA regulations concerning redisclosed access of data and the flow of personally identifiable information, PII to outside contractors?
Which federal law expanded FERPA to include all outside contractors as “school officials” to have access to personally identifiable information, PII,on students without the informed written consent of parents or legislators?
Why was the Hanson Memorandum rescinded in the ‘‘direct control’’ requirement contained in the policy guidance on authorized representatives allowing the flow of personally identifiable information to outside organizations, corporations, non-profits, and business to have access to personally identifiable information, PII?
Request the Presidential Executive Order providing that FERPA regulations were to be revised and changed to unlock data and allow re-disclosure of personally identifiable information, PII, to outside contractors.
Do outside contractors pay for the data? Examples:
• If outside for-profit contractors are developing tests, assessments, curriculum, or computer software to meet individual specific outcomes aligned to the Common Core Standards, including non-cognitive areas called dispositions, do these contractors pay for the data or intellectual property rights taken from individual students to research and develop testing, assessments, curriculum, and adaptive software to be re-sold to
states and individual schools for use in the classroom?
• If non-profit contractors are developing tests, assessments, curriculum, or computer software to meet individual specific outcomes aligned to the Common Core Standards, including non-cognitive areas called dispositions, do they pay for intellectual property rights? Are they violating their non-profit status to make a profit when these items that they are developing are re-sold to states and individual schools
for use in the classroom?
• Are individual states co-contributors to Redisclosure of PII?
• Is the National Center for Education Statistics co-contributors to Redisclosure of PII?
§ 99.31 Under what conditions is prior consent not required to disclose information?
(a) An educational agency or institution may disclose personally identifiable information from an education record of a student without the consent required by § 99.30 if the disclosure meets one or more of the following conditions:
(1)(i)(A) The disclosure is to other school officials, including teachers, within the agency or institution
whom the agency or institution has determined to have legitimate educational interests.
(B) A contractor, consultant, volunteer, or other party to whom an agency or institution has outsourced institutional services or functions may be considered a school official under this paragraph provided that the outside party—
( 1 ) Performs an institutional service or function for which the agency or institution would otherwise use
employees;
( 2 ) Is under the direct control of the agency or institution with respect to the use and maintenance of
education records; and ( 3 ) Is subject to the requirements of § 99.33(a) governing the use and redisclosure of personally identifiable information from education records.
§ 99.31(ii) Paragraph (a)(5)(i) of this section does not prevent a State from further limiting the number or
type of State or local officials to whom disclosures may be made under that paragraph.
(6)(i) The disclosure is to organizations conducting studies for, or on behalf of, educational agencies or institutions to:
(A) Develop, validate, or administer predictive tests;
COMMON CORE 