There’s Gold in Them Thar Schools

Some things about a poor education can be compensated for at home. If a school is weak in teaching reading or math, parents can work on those subjects at home with their children.  But sometimes there are things that cannot be fixed at home.

One of those things is the data mining and collection that will be taking place under Common Core. Regardless of how you try to protect your children if they are in the public school system they are going to be tracked.

In an article  by Joy Pullman in the OC Register,  Christel Swasey points out that,  “Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), used to protect highly personal psychological and biological information, including items mentioned above and, according to the DOE, “fingerprints; retina and iris patterns; voiceprints; DNA sequence; facial characteristics; and handwriting.”

The article goes on to say that,

     Under the DOE’s 2011 FERPA reinterpretation, however, any local, state or federal agency may designate any individual or organization as an “educational representative” who can access such data as long as the agency says this access is necessary to study or evaluate a program. These can include school volunteers and private companies. A lawsuit against the regulations is pending.

Meanwhile, several agreements the DOE has signed with two organizations writing national Common Core tests insist the information these tests collect must be “student-level” – meaning these would not be anonymous records but instead tied to specific children.

Previous FERPA interpretations required data collectors to identify students by random numbers. No one knows what personal data the Common Core tests will collect, because those tests have yet to be written and released. But this information mother-lode has to come from somewhere. Since the tests are being written by private organizations, although entirely funded so far by the federal government, no one can do a public records request to find out.

All of this is taking place without parental permission.

Take a look at Idaho’s Race to the Top Application and notice that we are indeed setting up a Statewide Longitudinal Data System.  This system will be used to house the data they collect on your student.

In an age where there is little guarantee that your online information won’t be hacked, isn’t it comforting to know that every little detail about your child could soon available also.

Go here to read the whole article:  Joy Pullmann: Data mining kids crosses line