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

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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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Education Liberty Watch Response to Senate Author of Florida Data Tracking Bill

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Last week, Florida Senator Bill Galvano sent the following email to a constituent who had called and visited his office with very legitimate concerns regarding Florida SB 878 (See detailed analysis ).  Dr. Karen Effrem offered a point-by-point response which hopefully will be instructive to other states as they fight the imposition of a very alarming set of Common Core Standard linked assessment and data collection system that will affect students, families, and teachers. (Dr. Effrem’s responses are in italics below each point from the senator).  Education Liberty Watch and the statewide coalition of Florida citizens thank Senator Galvano for being willing to consider these concerns as the bill moves forward.

********************************************************************************

From: GALVANO.BILL <GALVANO.BILL@flsenate.gov>

Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2013 17:46:10

Subject: SB 878 – Education Accountability

Ms. <Redacted>

I appreciate you taking the time today and sharing your views with my office regarding Senate Bill 878, Education Accountability, which requires performance accountability for public schools by strengthening the definition of co-located schools and establishing protocols for access to existing quality data. SB 878 strengthens, streamlines and establishes protocols for access to existing data maintained by the Florida Department of Education.

With all due respect, there is too much data collected and too much access to this data to entities that do not have the privacy or best interests of our children and families in mind.  The last thing we want is to strengthen or stream line that process.

The bill does not expand data that is collected.

 Yes the bill does expand data that is collected.  Lines 115-117 say, “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.” This NCES list contains hundreds of data points including very personal items, such as “religious affiliation”, “voting status”,” parental income”, and “Disease, Illness, or Health Condition” . (See http://nces.sifinfo.org/datamodel/eiebrowser/techview.aspx?instance=studentElementarySecondary)  If the FL DOE is already collecting this amount of data, then this bill should be seriously limiting what the state and federal governments collect on innocent children and if it is not, this current bill language will allow expansion to the full NCES model to happen.  In addition, according to the US DOE, the plan is to use the Common Core Assessments to measure for“21^st century skills” of grit, tenacity, and perseverance, and key psychological resources (mindsets, learning strategies, and effortful control) for a range of purposes that the Common Core standards are supposed to teach. (See US DOE report Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21^st Century)This is rank psychological manipulation.

The bill simply creates a web-based interface to serve as a single location for access to aggregated data from the K-20 warehouse.

There are actually two portals created by this bill: 1) The public portal does a decent job of making the data anonymous in lines 272-274.  2) However, the “Research Portal” contains no such restrictions in the bill or mentions any in current law or regulation.

The bill also formalizes procedures for accessing and reporting data pursuant to the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

FERPA student privacy protection has been significantly weakened via regulation by the Obama administration, so much so that the Electronic Privacy Information Center is suing the U.S. Department of Education.  One of the biggest concerns is the expansion of who may have access to individually identifiable student data without parental consent to “A contractor, consultant, volunteer, or other party to whom an agency or institution has outsourced institutional services or functions may be considered a school official under this paragraph…” Therefore, FERPA protections are not very comforting to parents that wish to protect their children’s and family’s sensitive data.  Parents, the PTA, and ACLU in nine states are loudly protesting this situation in combination with a new national database called inBloom developed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Rupert Murdoch’s Amplify Education Company. (See the Reuter’s story K-12 student database jazzes tech startups, spooks parents ).  SB 878 uses the term “authorized agent, ” which means this long list of outside entities that has data access ,  12 times in the text of the bill.  The bill also mentions the phrase “FERPA exception,” which means all the excuses that the government uses for allowing access to individual data, three times and the term “personally identifiable data” seven times. Again, there is no stipulation for anonymizing data accessible to researchers in this bill.

Before providing student data to researchers, DOE strips personally-identifiable information from student data and assigns a random, annonymized ID to each student record.   The bill does not change this.

There is no reference to statute or regulation stipulating that this is the procedure that is carried out.  That reference should be put in the bill or language requiring such procedures should be written into the bill at a minimum.  Anonymization is a help, but does not answer the basic question of why so much sensitive student and family data is kept by the state and is now or will be linked to the federal NCES databases.  The other issue is that the government still has the link to the anonymized ID numbers and there is no real way to assure parents and the public that this data is safe.

Additionally, there is a provision in the bill that prohibits the commercial sale of a child’s information.

This language prohibits the direct sale, but does not necessarily prohibit the use of this data for research for developing commercial products be they software, assessments or even pharmaceuticals based on all of the psychological data that will be measured, collected, and given to entities that have “a legitimate educational interest” in that data.  There is also nothing in the bill that limits any of the parameters in the “written agreement,” only that entities with access to our children’s data have to follow the agreement.

As a father of 3 children in the public school system, I am very concerned about protecting their private personal information.

We are glad to hear that you are concerned about your children’s privacy.  Hopefully the information in this email will spur you to continue to protect that privacy as well as that of all of your constituent’s children as you no doubt intended to do but may not have had enough information to fully accomplish with this legislation.

Notwithstanding the above, I will review the bill again with your concerns in mind.

Thank you for your willingness to do so.  We hope that this information will help you decide to withdraw or delay you bill until it contains language that rolls back the significant government surveillance of and access to the sensitive data of our children.

Bill Galvano

State Senator, District 26

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

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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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Major Problems with Common Core in Florida

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Karen R. Effrem, MD

The Common Core Standards and related assessments being implemented in Florida have many problems including lack of rigor and transparency; loss of state, local, family, and teacher autonomy, as well as loss of data privacy; and high costs that will be borne by the state and counties analogously to the proposed Medicaid expansion.  The citizens of Florida and their elected representatives on county school boards and in the legislature should consider carefully before spending hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars more  and irreversibly changing the state’s education system with enormous impact on our children’s future, freedom, the economic health of the state, parental and teacher autonomy and data privacy.

Lack of Academic Rigor

Although the Thomas Fordham Institute is a strong Common Core proponent, their grading scale found that Florida’s current standards were near or above the level of the Common Core.  Why should so much be spent to change them?

The standards define college readiness as being the same for 4-year, 2-year, and vocational colleges[i]

Despite claims by Commissioner Tony Bennett and proponents that the standards are “internationally benchmarked,”[ii] repeated data requests by members of the Common Core validation committees were ignored[iii]

English (Much more detail available on request)

High school level, “college ready” standards actually at 6^th to 8^th grade level[iv]
Chief architects, David Coleman (now head of College Board) and Susan Pimentel, have had no experience teaching English or reading at any grade level from K-12[v]According to experts the standards are described as empty skill sets;  significant reduction in literary study leading  “to fewer opportunities for students to acquire the general academic vocabulary needed for college work;” and the division of reading standards leading to completely incoherent literature curriculum in grades 6-12[vi]
Texts being taught without historical context – e.g. Animal Farm[vii] and the Gettysburg Address[viii]

Mathematics (Much more detail available on request)

Chief architects, Professors William McCallum and Jason Zimba, have never taught mathematics at any grade level from K-12[ix]

According to experts, Common Core removes the mathematical concepts that are critical for four year college readiness, STEM careers, international competitiveness, and are major delays and steps backwards from the most highly rated state standards and those of other countries.[x]

Florida Not Ready for Implementation – Florida, the state leader of PARCC, the 22 state testing consortium, admits that the state is not ready to implement Common Core. Education Commissioner Tony Bennett said within the next few months his staff will devise  a “Plan B” in case implementation cannot proceed as planned by 2015.[xi]

Testing and Costs

Because computer adapted testing will change the difficulty of questions for each student depending on the answer to the previous question, there will be no uniform testing standard so that there cannot be uniform comparison between students, much less between states.^[xii]

Florida   $1,024,163,000 (projected cost for testing, technology, textbooks, and professional development)[xiii] – $905,838,000 (grants received) = $118,325,000 (costs to FL taxpayers)

Given that Tony Bennett and the SBOE are asking for $400 million in one year[xiv] to implement assessments equivalent to what the Florida has already spent on the FCAT between 1996[xv] and 2008, that $118 million amount might well be low and will serve as a huge unfunded mandate to already strapped county districts.

South Carolina Senator Mike Fair cites data that testing cost will increase from $12/student to $100/student[xvi] in that state which is a member of the other testing consortium called SBAC.  Both PARCC & SBAC require multiple computerized assessments during one school year. Florida’s testing cost for the FCAT in 2008, the most recent year available, was $19.44 per student[xvii]

All states in each of the large testing consortia (PARCC, of which Florida is a part, and SBAC) must agree on cut scores and the test item banks despite wide disparities in education philosophy, attainment, and funding[xviii]

Without enough computer equipment and IT staff to allow every student to take multiple tests every year, students will have to rotate through computer labs creating less than uniform administration for students as well as major test security problems[xix]

Student Data Collection

The Electronic Information Privacy Center is suing the U.S. Department of Education over the weakening via regulation of FERPA (Family Education Rights and Privacy Act) passed by Congress to prevent the use of student level data without consent in the state longitudinal data systems required for Race to the Top.^[xx]

“A new database tracks learning disabilities, test scores, attendance, as well as student hobbies, career goals, attitudes toward school, even homework completion. Federal Department of Education officials say that the “database project complies with privacy laws. Schools do not need parental consent to share student records with any “school official” who has a “legitimate educational interest,” according to the Department of Education. The department defines “school official” to include private companies hired by the school, so long as they use the data only for the purposes spelled out in their contracts.”[xxi]

Information from the U. S. Department of Education leads one to conclude that our children will be used as psychological guinea pigs:[xxii]

Conclusion 10: There are important opportunities to leverage new and emerging advances in technology (e.g., educational data mining, affective computing, online resources, tools for teachers) to develop unprecedented approaches for a wide range of students.

Recommendation 10: Researchers should work closely with technology developers to continue to explore how to integrate best practices into new and emerging digital learning environments that are well positioned to promote grit, tenacity, and perseverance, and key psychological resources (mindsets, learning strategies, and effortful control) for a range of purposes. Continue reading »