ELW Joins Liberty Counsel & National Coalition to Fight Invasive Mindset Profiling in NAEP

For Immediate Release! Liberty Counsel, Education Liberty Watch & Many Groups Warn of Illegal NAEP Mindset Profiling!

Liberty Counsel, an international legal, media and policy organization with an emphasis on religious liberties protected by the First Amendment, sent a letter to several congressional committees regarding the very problematic and illegal plan of the National Assessment Governing Board to assess mindsets and other subjective, socioemotional factors in the 2017 version of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). This letter was signed by eight national organizations, including Education Liberty Watch, and 69 state organizations in 29 different states, including the  Florida Stop Common Core Coalition (FSCCC).   Here is a summary of those concerns according to Liberty Counsel Attorney Richard Mast, the author of the letter:

The NAEP is poised to violate federal law by collecting extremely sensitive psychological/socioemotional data on children; it will do so in a necessarily subjective manner;  it contains a substantial risk of exposing the subject children to possible negative consequences in their later schooling and employment careers, to the extent that even supporters of such assessments are concerned; and it will entrust extremely sensitive data to agencies that are no longer governed by serious privacy law and that have proven they cannot or will not keep personal student data secure.

These proposed changes constitute potential parental rights violations, and expose the children to a litany of harms in the present and in the future. Thus, any efforts to ask questions concerning mindsets and other socioemotional parameters and to collect that data via the NAEP should be halted immediately.

“We are extremely pleased and thankful that Liberty Counsel and so many organizations around the country have joined this important national fight for student data and psychological privacy,” said Dr. Karen Effrem, president of Education Liberty Watch and executive director of the Florida Stop Common Core Coalition. “Congress must do its due diligence and properly exercise its oversight authority to stop these obvious statutory and constitutional violations and this continued federal overreach before the privacy and futures of our students are further harmed. We urge our members to help educate their members of Congress about this issue and to be sure to opt their children out of this very invasive test.”

Contact:

Karen R. Effrem, MD

dockaren@edlibertywatch.org

952-361-4931 (office)

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What You Can Do:

1) Make sure your members of Congress see this letter and demand that the planned psychological profiling of our children be stopped.

2) Also educate your congressional representatives on the dangers of social emotional research in SETRA – S 227, the Strengthening Education Through Research Act by giving or sending them this one page handout.

3) Educate your candidates for Congress on these very important privacy issues

4) PLEASE support us in this David and Goliath battle against the Washington Education Cartel trying to control the lives and futures of our children and grandchildren! 

DONATE AT http://edlibertywatch.org/donate/

Thank you for everything you are doing to protect the hearts and minds of our children!