Urgent! Submit Comments Against Global Pre-K SEL Data Mining

Please submit comments before MIDNIGHT, MONDAY 2/13 opposing this latest global taxpayer funded psychological data mining scheme of our youngest children for invasive, ineffective, and harmful government pre-K programs at the federal register. It can be as short as:

I oppose this latest study because there are already dozens of studies showing that preschool is minimally effective, that beneficial effects fade with time or is academically and emotionally harmful. Social emotional assessment, especially for young children, is extraordinarily subjective and unreliable, violates parental autonomy, and the private right of conscience of free American citizens. This is especially true when data security within the U.S. Department of Education is so poor.

You can also do something more in depth. Here are details:

The federal government is joining with the globalists at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in a new study that seeks to expand social emotional data gathering (psychological profiling) on our very youngest children, collect sensitive family information and try yet again to show that preschool is effective when there are so many studies to the contrary. Here is the pertinent language from the federal register notice:

FR Doc No: 2016-29749
Abstract: The International Early Learning Study (IELS), scheduled to be conducted in 2018, is a new study sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental organization of industrialized countries. In the United States, the IELS is conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The IELS focuses on young children and their cognitive and non-cognitive skills and competencies as they transition to primary school. The IELS is designed to examine: children’s early learning and development in a broad range of domains, including social emotional skills as well as cognitive skills; the relationship between children’s early learning and children’s participation in early childhood education and care (ECEC); the role of contextual factors, including children’s individual characteristics and their home backgrounds and experiences, in promoting young children’s growth and development; and how early learning varies across and within countries prior to beginning primary school. In 2018, in the participating countries, including the United States, the IELS will assess nationally-representative samples of children ages 5.0-5.5 years (in kindergarten in the United States) through direct and indirect measures, and will collect contextual data about their home learning environments, ECEC histories, and demographic characteristics.

We have warned for years of the dangers and ineffectiveness of both government preschool programs and the indoctrination and profiling inherent in social emotional learning. This study combines the worst of both. Here is our bullet list of why this study should be opposed:

1) According to this compilation of over two dozen studies, there is already plenty of evidence that, at best, preschool is only minimally effective and there is significant evidence that these programs cause academic and emotional harm.

2) With so much evidence of ineffectiveness and harm, there is no reason to embark on yet another study at taxpayer expense.

3) This data gathering is unconstitutional – There is no constitutional, statutory or moral authority for the federal government to create standards and norms for the attitudes, values and beliefs, for innocent American citizens, conduct psychological research on them and to keep this data in perpetuity in federally mandated state longitudinal databases that according to this proposal are going to be shared with a large international agency with unknown data privacy protection standards.

4) It goes against several Supreme Court precedents affirming parent’s inherent rights to direct the education and upbringing of their children.

5) These types of standards and questions are highly subjective, especially when used for young children, as admitted by leading experts and organizations in the fields of education and mental health.

6) Overworked, untrained teachers essentially become psychotherapists to their classrooms of patients.

7) There is a clear link to Common Core and potential for both indoctrination and danger to student and family freedom of conscience covering such controversial topics as climate change, Buddhist mindfulness techniques, social justice, transgenderism and the LGBT agenda.

8) Because of the weak and gutted federal privacy law, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), this very sensitive data can be shared with various agencies of the federal government and third parties and re-disclosed and used for “predictive tests,” which are notoriously subjective and inaccurate. Data may then well be used to make life altering decisions for children affecting college entrance, employment, etc.

9) According to information uncovered by the US House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearings, the state of data security at the US Department of Education is appallingly bad, so this sensitive data, that the government should not have in the first place, is not safe from hackers. We have no idea what the data protection situation is at OECD.

DeVos Confirmed by Historically Narrow Margin

Thank you to all who contacted the U.S. Senate. Betsy DeVos was confirmed by the full U.S. Senate on February 7th by a razor-thin one vote margin of 51-50 and only after Vice-President Mike Pence was called on to break the tie for the first time in  American history.

Jeb Bush and the Establishment wing of the GOP were thrilled with her confirmation, while there was much disappointment from all points on the political spectrum, but especially by the “grassroots education activists from across the country who were looking to Trump to begin the dismantling of the federal education department,” the “constitutionalist base of the GOP,” as noted by Dr. Susan Berry at Breitbart. She reported the comments of several important experts and leaders of that group and their recommendations for now Secretary DeVos:

Jane Robbins of the American Principles Project:

DeVos should make it clear that states won’t be penalized in any way if they ditch the Common Core national standards and the aligned tests. She should minimize the federal influence on state education policies any way she can, letting states chart their own courses as they’re entitled to do under the Constitution. She should eliminate the policy of federal bribery and threats to get the states to adopt certain policies. If the federal ESSA law gets in the way of this, or of her winding down the US Department of Education, she should recommend legislative changes to reinstate local control.

Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institute:

“The best things DeVos could do to demonstrate a commitment to scaling back federal involvement in education would be to issue ESSA regulations that really leave decisions up to state and local governments, and refrain from endorsing big federal school choice initiatives…The former is the right thing to do no matter what, and the latter would show that she knows that even something demonstrably good—school choice—is not something that Washington is either constitutionally permitted to advance (outside of DC itself, for military families, and on Native American reservations), nor is it wise to extend federal tentacles into truly independent schools.”

Dr. Karen Effrem, President of Education Liberty Watch and Executive Director of the Florida Stop Common Core Coalition:

Dr. Karen Effrem, president of the Florida-based Education Liberty Watch, tells Breitbart News parents want DeVos to fulfill Trump’s promise to stop Common Core, shrink the federal education department, and protect student data privacy.

“Parents do not want Betsy DeVos to implement the views and philosophy of Jeb Bush, who was soundly defeated because of his support of Common Core and highly regulated school choice,” Effrem asserts, and suggests that DeVos “does everything she can to work herself out of a job by shrinking the USED.”

Additionally, Effrem recommends DeVos “promptly accept any state plans as is her purview under ESSA even if they totally repeal Common Core and defer to parents about opting out of the state tests.”

“At the very least,” she continues, DeVos should also “make sure that any kind of school choice effort coming from DC to the states does not require the states to implement the Common Core/state tests on private or home schools.”

Anne Marie Banfield, parent activist and education liaison for Cornerstone in New Hampshire

“People like Bill Evers, Sandra Stotsky or Peg Luksik have been fighting against the Common Core reforms, supportive of parental rights and understand the problems with the federal overreach we’ve been fighting against,” she says. “Any one of those three would have been a huge improvement over DeVos based on her record of supporting Common Core in the past. Now we have to ‘hope’ for the best when we had the best available for this position.”

At the same time Mrs. Devos was being confirmed Freedom Caucus member and Kentucky Republican was offering a bill, HR 899, that seeks to abolish the USED. In a statement, he said:

“Neither Congress nor the President, through his appointees, has the constitutional authority to dictate how and what our children must learn.”

Secretary DeVos said in her first speech at USED:

“I am here to serve – with you. I am committed to working with everyone and anyone – from every corner of the country, from every walk of life, from every background, and with those who supported my nomination and with those who did not – to protect, strengthen, and create new world-class education opportunities for America’s students.”

Let us hope this is more than rhetoric and that she will follow through on that commitment while she is serving as the last US Secretary of Education.

Final DeVos Vote Tuesday 2/7 – Make Your Voice Heard!

After skating by with a one vote margin in her HELP Committee confirmation vote, two Republicans, Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Susan Collins (ME), have announced their opposition to her confirmation. Unless another Republican joins them, the vote will be 50-50 and the tie will be broken by Vice-President Pence. Michelle Malkin, Susan Berry  at Breitbart, Jane Robbins at APP, and Joy Pullman at the Federalist, there has been near silence in the media. DeVos and the Jeb Bush team being placed at USED will undermine the Trump education promises to the grassroots parents.

Please send the talking points HERE or in this document to any Senate Republicans in your own state and to any of the rest at this Senate contact information and social media directory from PatriotJournalist.com or to the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.

Thank you!!

Senate Committee Vote 1/31 – The Betsy DeVos Record on Pro-Islamic Curriculum, Common Core, Data Mining & Marriage

Karen R. Effrem, MD – President

The US Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee is voting Tuesday, January 31st at 10 AM on the nomination of Betsy DeVos to serve as Secretary of Education. Members and contact information for the committee members is at http://www.help.senate.gov/about/members  and information for the full Senate is at: https://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/ or at the Senate Switchboard 202-224-3121. Please make the HELP Committee and your own senator aware of this concerning information and urge a NO vote!

Here is new information about the DeVos record along with summarized information on Common Core and data mining.

[A PDF version of this information is available at http://bit.ly/2jDvtcp]

DeVos Support of Pro-Islamic Curriculum

This screenshot shows that the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation funded curriculum used in many states, including Florida, promoting global citizenship and favorably comparing Islam and the Arabian culture with America when the Sharia law of Islam is not at all compatible with the US Constitution or our free society. http://teachmideast.org/about/featured-partnerships/

More specifics of this above curriculum are available at: https://www.nextlesson.org/project_details/bridges-at-school-a-snapshot-of-the-arab-world/42e154d251f1f0a990862ceb5e75156216474d28434d0161f01b17b6

Lessons Plans and Activities -There are eleven (11) Classroom Lesson Activities for the teacher to use. These activities are:

Arab Literature: Poetry Paired Texts — Pairing two poetry texts, one Arabic and one non-Arabic, students will analyze points of similarity, difference, and meaning, in particular looking at issues of family, love, and friendship. The students will write short essays on these two texts. Arab Literature: Values-Based Paired Texts — Pairing two values-based texts, one Arabic and one non-Arabic, students will study the topics of service and charity in both Arab and Western cultures. This will examine the values affinity between Arabs and Americans in particular and will compare texts about charity from the Quran and the Bible. 

Common Core – Betsy DeVos’ first statement against Common Core was the day she was appointed. She never worked with and frequently opposed Stop Common Core in Michigan, the grassroots parent organization. All of the organizations she has founded, funded, chaired or on the boards of which she served have been strong supporters of Common Core. Michigan Republican legislators knew to not to oppose Common Core because they could expect a primary challenge by DeVos-funded groups. The charter, voucher, and Title I portability programs she supports most, all require the state Common Core tests. For details, see:

National Parent Coalition Letter with Questions for Betsy DeVos on Common Core and School Choice: http://edlibertywatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Letter-to-Senate-with-Questions-for-DeVos-online-version.pdf

 The Philanthropy Roundtable that she chaired put out a report strongly in favor of massive data mining of students

The Philanthropy Roundtable, which you chaired, published a report called Blended Learning: A Wise Giver’s Guide to Supporting Tech-assisted Teaching that lauds the Dream Box software that “records 50,000 data points per student per hour” (p.33 of pdf) and does not contain a single use of the words “privacy,” “transparency” [as in who receives that data and how it is used to make life-changing decision for children], or “consent.” Will you continue to promote the corporate data-mining efforts of enterprises such as Dream Box and Knewton, whose CEO bragged about collecting “5-10 million data points per user per day,” described in your organization’s report? [From  question letter to the Senate with questions for DeVos cited just above]

Despite being attacked by the LGBT movement, Betsy DeVos imposed transgender bathroom access to a biological male over the objections of her employees while chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, which brings into question whether she will try to continue to enforce the dangerous Obama Title IX guidance. If she did not protect the privacy and safety of her employees, what will happen to the privacy and safety, not to mention the free speech and religious rights of America’s school children? There is already a lawsuit in Minnesota brought by parents whose daughters were subject to sexually harassing behavior by a male to female transgender in a girl’s locker room allowed because of this guidance. Schools are denying parental rights due to this guidance:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/us/politics/betsy-devos-gay-transgender-rights.html?_r=1 

Ms. DeVos’s personal experience with the debate over gender identity and bathrooms dates back decades. As chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, she came to the aid of a transgender woman who wanted to use the women’s restroom at a call center, upsetting some of the other women there, according to two associates at the time — Mr. McNeilly, who was the party’s political director, and Eric Doster, the general counsel.

“We made the accommodation, and that was Betsy’s call,” said Mr. Doster, who did not recall the woman’s name but said this happened in an office near the Michigan State University campus in 1997 or 1998. “A lot of the co-workers weren’t happy with it. But that’s who Betsy is.” 

In addition, she worked against a marriage protection ballot initiative also while chairing the Michigan GOP:

Prominent gay Republican said DeVos stood up for him

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2016/12/03/prominent-gay-republican-said-devos-stood/94866284/

“At the time DeVos, who was Republican Party’s chairwoman and policy makers of the party, decided to oppose adding the marriage amendment to the ballot.”