JUST SAY NO!

Yesterday, Glenn Beck and his team at The Blaze TV aired a terrific program with teachers and activists exposing some of the basic myths and failures of the Common Core racket (click on the link and be sure to sign up. Glenn’s network is doing invaluable, forward-thinking work). It was heartening to see the trailblazers receive the time and attention tthey deserve. And it’s just the tip of the educational iceberg.

My column today delves further into the creepy Fed Ed data-mining racket. Don’t just sit there. Get involved. As always, see the links and resources at the end of the column for ways to learn more and join those on the frontlines of reclaiming parental and local control of our children’s classrooms. And minds.

***

Time To Opt Out of Creepy Fed Ed Data-Mining Racket

by Michelle Malkin

Creators Syndicate

Copyright 2013

Last week, I reported on the federal government’s massive new student-tracking database, which was created as part of the nationalized Common Core standards scheme. The bad news: GOP “leadership” continues to ignore or, worse, enable this Nanny State racket (hello, Jeb Bush).

The good news: An independent grassroots revolt outside the Beltway bubble is swelling. Families are taking their children’s academic and privacy matters out of the snoopercrats’ grip and into their own hands. You can now download a Common Core opt-out/disclosure form to submit to your school district, courtesy of the Truth In American Education group: CLICK HERE.

Parents caught off guard by the stealthy tracking racket are now mobilizing across the country. Echoing families across the city, Big Apple public advocate Bill de Blasio blasted the tracking database in a letter to government officials: “I don’t want my kids’ privacy bought and sold like this.” On Wednesday, prompted by parental objections, Oklahoma state representatives unanimously passed House Bill 1989 — the Student Data Accessibility, Transparency and Accountability Act — to prohibit the release of confidential student data without the written consent of a student’s parent or guardian.

As I noted in last week’s column, the national Common Core student database was funded with Obama stimulus money. Grants also came from the liberal Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (which largely underwrote and promoted the top-down Common Core curricular scheme). A division of conservative Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. built the database infrastructure. A nonprofit startup, “inBloom, Inc.,” evolved out of the strange-bedfellows partnership to operate the invasive database, which is compiling everything from health-care histories, income information and religious affiliations to voting status, blood types and homework completion.

But it gets worse. Research fellow Joy Pullmann at The Heartland Institute points to a February Department of Education report on its data-mining plans that contemplates the use of creepy student monitoring techniques such as “functional magnetic resonance imaging” and “using cameras to judge facial expressions, an electronic seat that judges posture, a pressure-sensitive computer mouse and a biometric wrap on kids’ wrists.”

The DOE report exposes the big lie that Common Core is about raising academic standards by revealing its progressive designs to measure and track children’s “competencies” in “recognizing bias in sources,” “flexibility,” “cultural awareness and competence,” “appreciation for diversity,” “empathy,” “perspective taking, trust (and) service orientation.”

That’s right. School districts and state governments are pimping out highly personal data on children’s feelings, beliefs, “biases” and “flexibility” instead of doing their own jobs imparting knowledge – or minding their own business. And yes, Republicans such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush continue to falsely defend the centralized Common Core regime as locally driven and non-coercive, while ignoring the database system’s circumvention of federal student privacy laws.

Why? Edu-tech nosy-bodies are using the Common Core assessment boondoggle as a Trojan horse to collect and crunch massive amounts of personal student data for their own social justice or moneymaking ends. Reminder: Nine states have entered into contracts with inBloom: Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Louisiana and New York. Countless other vendors are salivating at the business possibilities in exploiting public school students.

Google, for example, is peddling its Gmail platform to schools in a way that will allow it to harvest and access families’ information and preferences — which can then be sold in advertising profiles to marketers. The same changes to federal student privacy law (known as FERPA) that paved the way for the Common Core tracking scheme also opened up private student information to Google. As FERPA expert Sheila Kaplan explains it, “Students are paying the cost to use Google’s ‘free’ servers by providing access to their sensitive data and communications.”

It’s a Big Brother gold rush and an educational Faustian bargain. Fortunately, there is a way out. It starts with parents reasserting their rights, protecting their children and adopting that old motto from the Reagan years: JUST SAY NO.

***

READ: From Heather Patenaude – Open letter to parents on publc schooled children regarding Common Core

Attention, homeschoolers: Keep on top of which homeschool curricula are rejecting Common Core.

Parents, know your rights: From Christel Swasey – On FERPA and Common Core in Utah: How to Protect Our State’s Freedoms?

More FERPA background/resources.

***

My Rotten to the Core series:

Rotten to the Core, Part 4: The Feds’ Invasive Student Tracking Database

Rotten to the Core, Part 3: Lessons from Texas and the Growing Grassroots Revolt

Rotten to the Core, Part 2: Readin’, writin’ and deconstructionism

Rotten to the Core, Part 1: Obama’s War on Academic Standards

Rotten to the Core: Reader feedback from the frontlines

My child’s Common Core-aligned Algebra book is crap

***

On a related note, via The Blaze: ‘LET GO OF THE SYSTEM’: HOW CAN PARENTS & TEACHERS STOP CSCOPE?

***

Previous:

Fuzzy math: A nationwide epidemic

Everyday Math = junk

Obama’s Sputter-nik moment: Cash for Education Clunkers

January 2005: NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND, ACT II

February 2005: THE REVOLT AGAINST NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

Stupid education fad of the day: “Mayan Math”

***

More resources/background/links:

Barry Garelick: A New Kind of Problem: The Common Core Math Standards

EmpoweredGA.org – Georgia activists: Here, here, here and here.

Pennsylvania revolt against TERC Investigations math.

http://truthinamericaneducation.com/

http://www.utahnsagainstcommoncore.com/

Indiana: hoosiersagainstcommoncore.com

http://stopcommoncore.com/

***

And more:

“Related Websites” from Truth in American Education has links to all of the following:

Alabamians United for Excellence in Education

Arizonans Against Common Core

Californians United Against Common Core

Closing the Door on Innovation Why One National Curriculum Is Bad for America

Common Core: Education Without Representation

Common Core Facts

Hoosiers Against Common Core

Keep Education Local

Missouri Coalition Against Common Core

Pioneer Institute Public Policy Research: Academic Standards

Stop Common Core: Reclaiming Local Control in Education

Tennessee Against Common Core

United States Coalition for World Class Math: Common Core Standards

Utahns Against Common Core

Utah’s Republic: Common Core Standards

Where’s the Math? Common Core State Standards

Where’s the Math? Standard Algorithms in the Common Core State Standards