I didn’t plan to say anything at all about Néw York Commissioner John King’s tasteless commentary on Martin Luther King Day. He twisted logic and common sense to claim that adopting Common Core was somehow a fulfillment of Dr. King’s noble vision of justice and equality. I thought it best to let it pass unremarked.
But Peter Greene, who has a keen sense of language, literacy, and simple decency decided not to let it pass. He was taken aback by our state commissioner’s ideogical posturing.
Read it and….well, do. Close reading.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The “opportunity gap” has real appeal to politicians and US business leaders.
And why wouldn’t they love it? It completely exonerates them from any responsibility for income inequality and dumps the whole problem on public schools. King is just preaching to the choir, here. In a development that shocks no one, after months of study, politicians and business leaders have determined “the problem”, and it’s not them.
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Yeah–It puts the emphasis on an assumed level playing field, and somehow, with the smoke and mirrors of reform language (even if well-intentioned), democratic principles are made to appear to obstruct the levelness. But the opposite is true.
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We could talk about the funding gap instead of the “opportunity gap” but we probably won’t. Doing that might make politicians and business leaders… uncomfortable.
Joy Resmovits @Joy_Resmovits 1h
NYSUT analysis: under Cuomo budget, “69% of the state’s 672 school districts wld begin the 14-15 school yr w less state aid than in 09-10”
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“I have a dream, that one day that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their scores on standardized math and ELA assessments.”
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“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of inadequate math and ELA standards, sweltering with the heat of bad teaching, will be transformed into an oasis of 3s and 4s.”
“
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I struggle with when to let things pass and when not to in regards to closing schools and forcing distasteful ideas. Glad to see this modeling.
The thing is, when you are the underdog (which anyone standing up for public ed is right now) you can afford to get angry! Because we don’t have to prove our ideas are right, we just have to show that the “reform” ideas are not. I think we actually have the better end of the stick.
So, get angry.
I know I am.
Because I am a mother, and I love my state.
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“I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its soft bigotry of low expectations — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join with little white boys and white girls, No.2 pencils in hand, and respond to standarized test questions with equal enthusiasm and accuracy.”
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Great analogy from the Senator Martins re: InBloom
Senator Jack M. Martins
To
Mr. Joseph P. Mugivan
To ensure delivery of emails to your inbox, please add martins@nysenate.gov to your email address book.
Senator Jack M. Martins
Dear Friends,
No doubt you’ve seen the full page ads that Target recently placed in major newspapers around the nation. The massive retailer was apologizing to the 110 million customers who likely had their credit information stolen in one of the largest security breaches in retail history. If you shopped at Target before Christmas (unnamed members of my family practically lived there) then you may have been affected. By Target’s own admission, the hackers may have stolen credit and debit information from 40 million shoppers and personal data from another 70 million. Under pressure from the U.S. Attorney General’s office, they’re even offering a year of free credit monitoring to all of their customers in the hopes of mitigating the situation. Yet none of that, however well-intentioned, will fix the damage now.
This incident makes it abundantly clear that everyone is vulnerable, even billion-dollar corporations that spend millions of dollars on cyber-security and assign droves of people to the task. Unfortunately, it’s the world we live in, but it should make all of us more vigilant about sharing sensitive data. That’s why I cringe when I think of New York Education Commissioner Dr. John King’s plan to share our children’s personal data.
By way of background, as part of the ever less-popular Common Core initiative, Dr. King signed an agreement with InBloom, a nonprofit corporation in Atlanta. Their job is to collect student information from school districts and store it in a data cloud, supposedly making educator access easier so that it might be more effectively used for the students’ benefit, while protecting it with hopefully hack-proof encryption. The problem is they can’t and won’t promise us that it’s safe. In fact, their contract specifically states that they cannot be held liable for any data breaches.
And what data it is! The number of fields tops a mind-boggling 400. There are obvious things like attendance, grades, courses, learning disabilities and the like. But the New York Times reports that it includes fields that are, in my opinion, absolutely intrusive like: family relationships (“foster parent” or “father’s significant other”) and enrollment changes (“withdrawn due to illness” or “leaving school as a victim of a serious violent incident”). There are even disciplinary fields like “perpetrator,” “victim” and “principal watch list.” Controversial labels to be sure. And while a parent may want educators to know these details, why would an unaccountable, third-party, commercial vendor who has no direct contact with their children have it?
You guessed it. Somewhere, somehow, someone is making a buck. InBloom’s plan is to sell access to this enormous stockpile of data to vendors who would then design and market customized education software, apps for smart phones, and even video games to those very same schools, parents and children. They claim that data-driven education will eventually be a help to our children – and that may be so – but at what cost? Is our children’s privacy worth it?
Parents everywhere, myself included, are up in arms. In fact, of the nine states that signed onto this plan, only three remain: Colorado, Illinois, and unfortunately, New York. Worse still, our state education department has already sent along the data for most of our 2.7 million students. Keep in mind that most local school districts have no privacy policy in place regarding this data sharing or even an opt-out for concerned parents. That’s because the federal law that previously required schools to obtain parents’ permission when sharing data was conveniently changed. They no longer have to alert parents if sharing it with a company with whom they have a contract. I can’t help but recall the words of our forefather James Madison to be wary of “the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power.”
To be sure, districts already share data for very specific tasks but in no way should that be interpreted as blanket authorization to turn such specific data over to a private vendor. It’s wrong. As I’ve told my daughters time and again – once something is posted online, it’s out there forever, period.
Unfortunately, nowhere in this process do we, as parents, have a voice. Commissioner King’s anemic response was to suspend implementation of the program until March. This does nothing to address our privacy concerns but is a disingenuous attempt to delay action with the hope that it will all blow over. It won’t.
We are charged with protecting the welfare of our children and we will. That’s why I’m co-sponsoring a bill in the Senate that will make it illegal for New York school districts to share this data without first obtaining parental consent. I encourage you to stay informed and engaged and together we’ll prevent our kids from becoming the next “Target”.
Sincerely,
JACK M. MARTINS
Senator
Albany Address:
946 Legislative Office Building
Albany, New York 12247
518-455-3265
District Address:
151 Herricks Road, Suite 202
Garden City Park, New York 11040
516-746-5924
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More American revisionist history about MLK. See the first room in Memphis at the Lorraine Motel which is taken over by corporations as if they were in support of his message. The privatization of the American Public Schools is an attack on our Democracy.
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Lincoln, King, and Coleman’s faces chiseled on a mountain somewhere. Love it.
(Wonder if Gates would be ok with it?)
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