U.S. House Passes Student Success Act with Strong Anti-Common Core Language

Common Core Battle Rages Across the Nation – A Report from the Front

The battle against the Common Core standards is raging across the country. Here is some of the more recent news.

HERE IS THE GOOD NEWS FIRST:
Florida – In a great combined effort between a statewide coalition of activists under Floridians Against Common Core Education and Education Liberty Watch, Florida’s invasive data mining/tracking bill, SB 878 was stopped. This bill connected Florida’s data collection system to the National Center of Education Statistics data elements that contain 300-400 pieces of very personal and private data as well as gathering data on students through their work lives.  For a bill that had passed both chambers of the legislature unanimously with the difference of a small amendment to be stopped is unprecedented, even miraculous.  It speaks to the intense concern about and passion of parents to protect the privacy of their children’s and families data from government bureaucrats and corporate profiteers, as well as the inspired research and lobbying team that fought for parental rights in Tallahassee. Details are here.  Legislative leaders, the chairman of the state Republican party and the governor are no longer using the phrase “Common Core” in press releases. This combined with some language that will hopefully slow the pace of Common Core implementation in Florida will allow the battle to continue next year.

Indiana –  Governor Mike Pence heard the voice of the people of Indiana whose elected representatives passed by wide margins a bill to take a pause on the Common Core by allowing public hearings and a fiscal analysis before further implementation.  Passage of this bill makes Indiana the first state in the nation to pause or withdraw from Common Core after having adopted it.  Heather Crossin and Erin Tuttle along with their statewide coalition Hoosiers Against Common Core deserve great credit for their perseverance and passion despite attacks by the always big government promoting Chamber of Commerce and the other corporate and foundation interests.  Details are available here.

Michigan – The Michigan House passed an amendment to defund the Common Core.  There is a rally to continue that effort in Lansing on May 14th.

U.S. House of Representatives – Congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO) has written a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan with concerns about the lack of congressional oversight into Common Core and the irregular process by which the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) was changed to weaken student privacy without Congress via regulation.  Education Liberty Watch is thankful to Rep. Leutkemeyer and all of the 33 cosigners including Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN 6), Rep. Trey Radel (R-FL 19), and Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL 5) for this effort that will hopefully lead to legislation restoring the privacy protections of FERPA.

U.S. Senate – Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) and eight other senators [Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), Senator James Inhofe (R-OK),  Senator Deb Fischer (R-NE), Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS), Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX)]  sent a letter to Senate Appropriations Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) requesting the defunding of the Common Core standards and tests in compliance with federal law.  We can only hope that this effort is successful, but it will be difficult given the partisan divide of the Senate.

The Republican National Committee – The RNC unanimously passed a resolution at their Spring meeting condemning the Common Core and it associated data collection system.  It is available here.  This sets up a needed debate between the freedom minded, limited government and the corporate and foundation backed establishment elite.

NOW FOR THE BAD NEWS:

Minnesota – Despite many valid legal, legislative, and content concerns, an administrative law judge approved the Common Core linked Minnesota Social Studies standards.  The judge’s decision may be viewed here and a cogent analysis by attorney Marjorie Holsten may be viewed here.  Legal options are still being considered.

In addition, Minnesota’s education finance bills seem to be performing a stealth implementation of the Common Core math standards that they had so wisely and on a bipartisan basis rejected.  That implementation is being accomplished by using the ACT or SAT as the graduation exam.  Because these tests are aligned to the Common Core standards, Minnesota students will in essence have to learn the Common Core math standards in order to pass this exam.  This is despite the fact that experts like James Milgram, professor emeritus at Stanford, and who refused to sign off on the final version of the math standards while serving on the validation committee, sees the standards as being behind international norms by at least two years at the end of eighth grade.

Florida – The education finance bill is still going ahead with an implementation plan for the Common Core assessments.

Georgia – This state’s Common Core withdrawal bill was tabled in the state senate.

Alabama  – Alabama’s bill to withdraw from Common Core was killed by the Senate President Pro Tempore.

There are starting to be cracks in the dam of the once inevitable Common Core system, but as one can see there is much work still to be done.  Education Liberty Watch appreciates your support.  Please stay engaged with both your activism and your finances.

RNC Adopts Anti-Common Core Resolution & Florida Goes in Wrong Direction

Karen R. Effrem, MD  – President

Despite the fact that the Republican National Committee has listened to the grassroots and moved towards freedom in education and student privacy by unanimously adopting an anti-Common Core resolution, the Florida Legislature has moved in the completely opposite direction.   The education appropriations bill, SB 1076 that implements the Common Core standards and aligned assessments passed the full legislature and is being sent to Governor Scott and SB 878, the horrific data tracking bill passed the full Florida Senate. (See our reports about SB 878 here and here).

Although there were some good efforts to protect some sensitive student data and Florida activists used their best efforts to warn senators about the truly invasive data collection in SB 878, Jeb Bush and corporate interests whispered in the ears of leadership and other senators and won the day.  The bill passed on April 10^th unanimously, because the senators had been deceived into believing that student data had been protected.  Although Senator Galvano did put some stronger language in to shield some of the more sensitive data and make it anonymous from outside researchers and corporations, for which he deserves thanks, the fact remains that far too much personal data is still being collected by the State of Florida on innocent children and their families and given to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).  Thanks to the weakening of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) that data can be shared with other federal agencies.  The attitude is that all of this data on our children belongs to the government and if we, their benighted parents scream and beg, maybe they will protect it or say they are going to do so.  The questions never get asked, “Why are you collecting so much data on our children without consent?” and “By what authority do you do so?”

Although he may not have intended it to come off that way, when author of SB 878, Senator Galvano, was interviewed for the Bradenton Herald after Chrissy Blevio and other members of Liberty in Action who live in his district protested the still alarming amount of data collection in the passed bill, his remarks seemed very patronizing.  He said these parents “are well-intended but they misunderstand” and the paper portrayed his views of his constituents as laboring under a cloud of “confusion” and “a case of misinformation.”  For the edification of Senator Galvano and the rest of the legislature, these parents are not confused or misinformed, they are justifiably angry as the rest of the parents in the state will be when they find out what has happened to their children’s privacy.  Here are the facts:

1)      Although the bill limits some of the sensitive data given to corporations and outside researchers, all of that sensitive data that we showed from the National Center for Education Statistics National Data Model is and will still be collected by the state and given to the federal government whether parents like it or not. This data still includes:  Bus Route, Bus Stop, Arrival Time, At Risk Status, Amount of Non-school Activity Involvement, Distance From Home to School and hundreds of other data points.  Because the bill requires the Governing Board to “promote adoption of a common set of data elements identified by the National Center for Education Statistics to support the effective exchange of data within and across states,” one can be sure that those data points will still be included.

2)      The data that is not covered by Senator Galvano’s good amendment (“student’s or a student’s family’s juvenile delinquency records, criminal records, medical records, biometric information, religious affiliations, beliefs, political affiliations or beliefs, and sexual or attitudes, or behavior”) will still be given or sold to outside corporations and researchers.

3)      Hopefully the data will be aggregated, anonymized and de-identified as stated in the amendment.  However, because of the wording used in the amendment,” the Florida Department of Education is not required to, but “may assign an anonymized random identification number to each record before providing access to data.”

4)      Conspicuously absent from the list, despite our multiple pleas, are mental health records and psychological data such as the  “psychological resources, mindsets, learning strategies, effortful control, attributes, dispositions, social skills, attitudes, and intrapersonal resources” that the U.S. Department of Education plans to measure in the Common Core aligned assessments (p. 17 and 49 of pdf) via all of their fancy affective computing equipment, such as wireless skin conductance bracelets, facial expression cameras, etc. (See p. 62 of the pdf from the same report).

In addition to all of the data privacy issues in SB 878, SB 1076, the education appropriations bill about to be signed by Governor Scott is moving full steam ahead to force Common Core standards and their aligned, psychologically manipulative assessments on every public school, student, and teacher in the state of Florida.  Here are some of the many issues with this bill:

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Issues with Florida SB 878 – Common Core Linked Data Warehouse Bill

Issues with Florida SB 878 – Common Core Linked Data Warehouse Bill

Karen R. Effrem, MD – President, Education Liberty Watch

Executive Summary – SB 878 is a huge danger to the data privacy of Florida’s children and their families for the following reasons:

1)      It is being written to comply with the longitudinal data system requirements of the Stimulus bill in general, the Race to the Top grant program, and the No Child Left Behind waivers so that the state can receive funds, not on behalf of the students of Florida and their families.

2)      According to the US. Department of Education, the Common Core related assessments will be assessing students on various psychological parameters, not just on academic issues, so that the assessment in Florida’s K-20 Warehouse will definitely include psychological assessment data.

3)      According to numerous sources, health and psychological data in education records covered by the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) are not subject to the Health Insurance Privacy and Portability Act (HIPPA) privacy protections.

4)      The bill aligns Florida’s data system with the National Center for Education Statistics National Data Model which contains hundreds of data items on each and every child in the state that include both academic and non-academic data, such as religious and political affiliations, mental health data, medical data, bus stop and bus route description, and even DNA sequence.  The federal and state governments have no legal or constitutional right to this amount and detail of information on innocent American citizens, especially since it is being stored without parental consent.

5)      Although the bill language strives to make it appear that privacy is protected by the various provisions that rely on the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) passed by Congress to protect student privacy, the Obama administration’s weakening of the law via regulation have created broad exceptions to the requirement to obtain parental consent before releasing individual data that many entities including a “contractor, consultant, volunteer, or other party…”  Therefore, this very sensitive, private data will go to outside parties and many government entities without parental consent.

6)      The bill combines the K-20 Data Warehouse with the Department of Economic Opportunity’s Wage Record Interchange System so that all of your child’s personal and private data will follow them not only throughout their academic careers, but throughout their work lives as well.

7)      The U.S. Department of Education is being sued by the Electronic Privacy Information Center because it has so weakened the FERPA. [1] And parents, the PTA and the ACLU in states that are part of the inBloom database that already holds data on millions of children from nine different states[2], are protesting to education officials and seem poised to bring lawsuits in those states.  Florida will be open to this kind of legal action if this bill becomes law.

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