Education Liberty Watch Congratulates Senator Vitter & Joins Wave of National Support For Data Privacy Bill – S1341

Education Liberty Watch is pleased to join a broad coalition of state and national groups in supporting The Student Privacy Protection Act introduced by Senator David Vitter (R-LA) today. The text of the bill is available HERE.

Here is Senator Vitter’s Statement from his press release:

“Parents are right to feel betrayed when schools collect and release information about their kids. This is real, sensitive information – and it doesn’t belong to some bureaucrat in Washington D.C.,” Vitter said. “We need to make sure that parents and students have complete control over their own information.”

Here is Dr. Karen Effrem’s statement from that same release:

“While this bill is very strong in a number of areas critical to student, teacher, and family data privacy, we are especially pleased with the language that prohibits psychological and attitudinal profiling of students in surveys or academic assessments, ” said Dr. Karen Effrem, president of Education Liberty Watch and executive director of the Florida Stop Common Core Coalition.  “Senator Vitter deserves great thanks for his tireless efforts to roll back the intrusive data gathering, psychological profiling and career tracking of our children by the federal government and corporations.” (See Dr. Effrem’s research paper “Psychosocial Manipulation in the Common Core Standards and Aligned Tests and Curriculum”  for more details on this issue.)

What follows is a national unity statement with the  initial strong and very likely to increase list of state and national organizations supporting the legislation:

We; the undersigned groups that have grave concerns about the loss of student and family data privacy, psychological profiling, and career tracking related to the Common Core standards, aligned state tests and longitudinal data systems; are grateful to Senator David Vitter for introducing and do strongly support The Student Privacy Protection Act.

This legislation provides important protections in the following areas:

• Rolling back the disastrous extra-congressional regulatory changes that vastly expanded access of third parties to our children’s personally identifiable data, now limiting that access and requiring parental consent in all cases
• Holding educational agencies, schools, and third parties liable for violations of the law through monetary fines, damages, and court costs
• Prohibiting psychological or attitudinal profiling of students or gathering of sensitive family information via any assessments, including academic assessments or surveys
• Extending data protections for homeschooled students required to submit educational data to public school districts
• Prohibiting educational agencies, schools, and the Secretary of Education from including personally identifiable information obtained from Federal or State agencies through data matches in student data.
• Banning Federal education funds to states or districts that film, record, or monitor students or teachers in the classroom or remotely without parent or adult student and teacher consent.

We strongly urge the senators of our respective states to co-sponsor this critically important piece of legislation and our congressional representatives to author and co-sponsor this bill in the US House.

NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS:

American Principles in Action

Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee

Eagle Forum

Education Liberty Watch

Home School Legal Defense Association

Women on the Wall

Special Ed Advocates to Stop Common Core

Stop Early Childhood Common Core

STATE ORGANIZATIONS:

Arkansas

Arkansans for Education Freedom

Arkansas Against Common Core

California

Faithful Christian Servants

Florida

The Florida Stop Common Core Coalition

Florida Parents RISE

The Tea Party Network

Georgia

Georgians to Stop Common Core

Idaho

Idahoans for Local Education

Indiana

Hoosiers Against Common Core

Iowa

Iowa RestorEd

Iowa for Student Achievement

Kansas

Kansans Against Common Core

Louisiana

Louisiana Against Common Core

Massachusetts

Common Core Forum

Stop Common Core Massachusetts

Michigan

Stop Common Core in Michigan, Inc.

Minnesota

Minnesotans Against Common Core

Missouri

Missouri Coalition Against Common Core

Pennsylvanians Against Common Core

Pennsylvanians Restoring Education

South Dakota

South Dakotans Against Common Core

Tennessee

Tennessee Against Common Core

Texas

Truth in Texas Education

Truth in Catholic Education

West Virginia

WV Against Common Core

Wyoming

Wyoming Citizens Opposing Common Core