National Parent Coalition Letter to Congress on Student Data & Psychological Privacy

Education Liberty Watch had the honor of helping to lead a national parent coalition of national, state and local organizations concerned about student data and psychological privacy after a recent U.S. House hearing on the topic. The following email was sent to the Education and Workforce Committee:

Dear Chairwoman Foxx, Ranking Member Scott, Chairman Rokita, and Ranking Member Polis and the Education & Workforce Committee,

Thank you for holding the recent hearing on federal education research & privacy. Please see the following link to a national parent coalition letter containing the views, concerns and recommendations regarding student data and psychological privacy after the June 28th hearing of the Subcommittee on on Preschool, Elementary, and Secondary Education titled “Exploring Opportunities to Strengthen Education Research While Protecting Student Privacy.”

http://edlibertywatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Final-Letter-to-Committee-chairs-7-17-.pdf

This coalition includes 9 national organizations and 72 state and local organizations from 33 states, representing hundreds of thousands of concerned parents and citizens across the nation.

We respectfully, but strongly urge you to not include social emotional research in any reauthorization of ESRA, rescind the Obama administration regulatory gutting of privacy in FERPA as that is reauthorized, and enforce PPRA to prohibit psychological screening & profiling in any kind of assessments, not just surveys.

I will be happy to forward any responses from you to the coalition.

Thank you for your attention to this critical education issue.

Best regards,

Karen R. Effrem, MD

President, Education Liberty Watch

Executive Director, The Florida Stop Common Core Coalition

Education Liberty Watch President, Dr. Karen Effrem made the following statement to the media:

“It is extremely important for Congress to hear from parents of students whose lives are affected by the womb-to-tomb data collection and psychological profiling,” Parent concern about the social emotional learning (SEL) research and other data collection in the Strengthening Education Through Research Act (SETRA) as well as the regulatory weakening of FERPA were extremely important in keeping SETRA from passing in the last session of Congress. All of the data breaches and the push for SEL teaching, assessment, and research without consent has made parents more concerned, not less, about their students’ privacy, and more determined than ever to protect it in this next session of Congress.”

Please contact your members of Congress about this letter and demand protection of student privacy!

The National Pulse: Mother Denied Parental Rights over Transgender Teen Appeals Court Ruling

Last month, Dr. Effrem described the bizarre and dangerous Minnesota federal court decision that “emancipated” a minor child from his mother, thereby denying her inherent parental right to direct the academic, medical, and other aspects of the care and upbringing of her own son — all without any of the due process normally involved in such situations.

The story continues:

According to the Minnesota Child Protection League (CPL), an organization which has been supporting Ms. Calgaro’s efforts, attorneys for the district made the situation painfully worse:

Attorneys for the school district went on to state that, since Calgaro had filed a lawsuit to assert her parental rights, her request should be denied in order to protect her son from “further harm.”  Consider that. The school administration is empowered to decide that Calgaro is harmful to her son because she challenged the violation of her parental rights in court.

Continue to read!

The National Pulse: Another Common Core Apologist Opts Out of Trump Admin Job

Alan Hubbard took his hat out of the ring to be considered for Deputy Secretary of Education!

As Dr. Effrrem states; this is fabulous news for parents, citizens, and activists fighting against the Common Core/Fed Ed machine. Hubbard is a strong ally of both Betsy DeVos and the pro-Common Core American Federation for Children, as well as working closely Jeb Bush and with disgraced former Indiana and Florida Education Commissioner Tony Bennett.

We will reiterate our list of excellent potential choices for the deputy secretary job that will fight Common Core and federal overreach in education:

Another Common Core Apologist Opts Out of Trump Admin Job

The National Pulse: The Student Data Grabbers Are Back At It Again

The bureaucrats and technocrats who see education as mere workforce preparation and who are devoted to monitoring, tracking and slotting free-born American citizens from womb to tomb in order to create their vision of a planned economy are continuing their dystopian efforts with a new bill.  S 1121, the College Transparency Act.

This bill is supported by all of the usual data grabbing suspects that see students merely as links in the labor market supply chain and education merely as workforce skills development. This includes the Workforce Data Quality Campaign, The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.

https://thenationalpulse.com/commentary/the-student-data-grabbers-are-back-at-it-again/