When I worked in the U. S. Department of Education in the early 1990s, my agency would occasionally get letters demanding to know whether the federal government was keeping a file on the letter writer’s child. Some parents said they knew this was happening when students took the NAEP tests, which asks for background information about the family. They named a government warehouse in Maryland where these records were presumably kept. The letters were routed to me because the NAEP program was part of the agency I headed, the Office of Educational Research and Improvement.
I responded politely to every such letter that no personally identifiable information was retained. I didn’t take their fears seriously because they weren’t true.
That was then. This is now. All their worst fears have come true, and then some.
Leonie Haimson and Cheryl Kirsecker, advocates for student privacy, describe the Brave New World of government surveillance of millions of children and youth, carried out without their parents’ knowledge or consent.
The government is collecting copious amounts of data about every child. In the past, this data collection would have been illegal, but the Department of Education weakened the federal privacy law in 2012 to allow the collection of personally identifiable data. Every state has received funding for a longitudinal data base. The Gates Foundation has given out millions to encourage data collection.
Big Data is here. The question is why. For what purposes? Shouldn’t parents be asked for their approval? How could this happen without Congressional hearings and oversight?
It it is not too late. Congress should call hearings to inquire about systematic invasions of privacy, about covert loosening of FERPA regulations, and to find out why the law was weakened without seeking Congressional approval.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is the root of the problem. In 1992, Marc Tucker wrote an infamous “Letter to Hillary” suggesting her husband use the White House to create a national, cradle to grave database to train and place humans in jobs based on their genetic predispositions rather than educating and giving them freedom of choice. In 2008, Bill Gates was presented with the idea, and thought, Oooh, I could make sooo much money off that idea. Now, we live in an Orwellian world. What is the Matrix? Neo wants to know.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Bill Gates and his Cabal are watching our children closely.
My son works in this area and a data breach is “when” not “if”.
Just in the last year I have been notified that a government database that had my info was breached and my (private) health insurance data was breached.
They should just tell people the truth. The more they collect the bigger the risk when it’s breached. If a health insurance company can’t safeguard info with the strong regulatory protections that health records enjoy, I sincerely doubt these “public/private” edu-corps can pull it off. Let the buyer beware, and tell them the truth.
Even if one could somehow make the database perfectly secure from outside intruders, it will always be susceptible to release by someone on the inside who is sanctioned to have access to it.
So it’s not even strictly an IT problem.
The task of keeping it secure grows harder with each additional individual who has access to the information.
But if the Snowden ‘leaks’ demonstrate anything it is that all it takes is a single individual to undermine the security of the entire system, even with what is supposed to be a highly secure system.
It’s doubtful that federal and state DOE’s and private companies (like Pearson) that store sensitive information on children (test scores, etc) have anywhere near the database security of NSA.
The question is whether parents are willing to take the very real risk that the information about their child’s educational “performance” and even “behavior” will end up in hands for which it was never intended.
“When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal”
(Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon)
Whatever POTUS does
Is legal just because
A Dick once said it’s so
Who never lied, you know
It will take major lawsuits to start to address this. Elected representatives don’t care about their average, ordinary constituents’ interests any more.
EPIC did file a claim against the US Department of ED but it was dismissed because they stated that EPIC did not have standing to file: https://epic.org/apa/ferpa/. It will take parents of standing to challenge. Hopefully, after reading this, a group will be willing to set forward.
Every parent should submit a signed written request for their child’s educational records pursuant to FERPA and then file a FERPA complaint.
I fear that as a teacher, I too have lost my right to privacy. Maybe teachers should ask for a copy of their records?
This teacher feels a loss of privacy, too. This past year, all teachers in MA had to be fingerprinted in order to keep our licenses. All sorts of personal info, including SocSec # was included in the file. I felt awful about it, but did it under duress. No one else was fingerprinted- not priests, ministers, or even child counselors. Just teachers.
Mathman, in NJ teachers are fingerprinted. Public school Aides are fingerprinted. Been that way for years.
Many jobs (mine included) require a copy of your driver’s license, and your social security number in order to pay you, so the SSN is nothing new. Also, in order to teach in NJ or be an Aide, you need a physical, and a clear TB test. Not new. They also get your entire college transcript and certification test scores. Not new.
In NJ I’ve been fingerprinted for each PreK I set foot in (as a once-weekly provider of for-lang enrichment) for more than a decade. I think it’s part of the accreditation process.
The data gleaned from computerized testing and computerized personalized learning is reason alone for parents to refuse any such tests (and teaching methods). No parent should put a child at such risk. No data is secure these days, and as you point out, our federal laws allow sharing personally identifiable data with third parties for certain purposes without asking or even notifying parents. For an example of just how much data is gleaned, check out this video from Knewton, where the presenter is downright giddy over the quantity of data that can be captured. (Can’t post YouTube link but search “Knewton datapalooza” and it comes right up.)
Lisa, I posted the Knewton video a while back but it is well worth posting again
Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
Nobody is safe from the invasions of privacy and the massive personal data collection. Nobody. Not adults, not children.
I posted about these issues of privacy and “big data” about a year ago, and have just finished verifying a few things.
If you want to register a complaint about the loss of privacy due to holes punched in the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act (FERPA) you might go to the top privacy official at the US Department of Education, Kathleen Styles. She became USDE’s first Chief Privacy Officer in 2011—Email: kathleen.styles@ed.gov.
Or go to Michael Hawes, Email: michael.hawes@ed.gov who is her advisor and the person who oversees USDE’s Privacy Technical Assistance Center (PTAC). This “assistance” center has been managed by a for-profit company, Applied Engineering Management Corporation (AEM), since at least 2010. AEM is still at the center of a lot of data management and privacy work for USDE and its privacy assistance center.
AEM has a major contract for EdFacts State Education Information Support Services (SEIS) Their work for USDE includes management of data gathering required for “No Child Left Behind” including the180 data descriptions for EDFacts…the destination for AYP reports, disaggregated test scores, and so on
USDE has major contracts with student data at risk of disclosure. For example, last year when I reported on issues with privacy, AEM had a contract which now seems to have migrated, or been renewed to 3/22/18 with American Institutes of Educational Research in the Behavioral Sciences. This is what they will be doing for about $6.2 million until early 2018. SRI has an almost identical contract for about $6.2 million until early 2018. Here is the boilerplate for both contracts.
“The purpose of this contract is to obtain technical services and analytic support for the Department across a wide range of subject areas related to key Pre-Kindergarten through College (PK through 16) issues that may include but are not limited to:
(a) College- and career-ready standards and aligned assessments;
(b) State and local assessment and accountability systems, including measurement issues relating to assessing student and school performance; use of multiple measures, growth models, and value-added models; and inclusion of students with disabilities and English learners;
(c) Achievement gaps and progress for disadvantaged students and all students, including economically disadvantaged students, students with disabilities, English learners, minority students, and other student subgroups;
(d) Postsecondary educational attainment and employment outcomes for youth and adults, and
(e) Teacher quality, including issues relating to pre-service and in-service teacher preparation and professional development; teacher recruitment and retention; assignment and distribution of highly-qualified teachers; and teacher evaluation and compensation.”
That is a lot of data flowing to SRI and the American Institutes. Moreover that data has got to be tagged or coded so that it tracks student test scores and status indicators, is linked to their past and current teachers, is linked to student employment after high school, is linked to teacher educators and employers of teachers and so on,
This is the grand vision of seamless data gathering and surveillance envisioned by Bill Gates in 2005.
It is well beyond the necessity of census-like data already collected by the National Center for Education Statistics, and other sources.
Currently, USDE has at least fourteen other data analysis contracts, with eleven vendors, using data from umpteen sources.
But that movement of “big data” to multiple vendors is not the worst of what is going on at USDE.
In addition to these data-gathering operations (excluding college loans, NAEP testing, and so on) I found 15 contracts with 14 different vendors to remedy privacy and security issues at USDE. These privacy and security contracts are worth, $165,346,140.
The largest contract is for Dell to serve as USDE’s primary IT service provider, but other contracts leave the impression that USDE is leaking data galore.
Examples: Aurora Systems Consulting working with Symantec ID Protection service (about $2 million); Deloitte Consulting $17.3 million for “bug fixes, security upgrades, software patches; $4.7 million for cybersecurity from Kingfisher Systems, and so on.
You can download spreadsheets and do your own searches. You may be surprised to see how much data management is outsourced, NOT actively managed by USDE, including all of the data collected under the No Child Left Behind Act.
The patchwork of contracts for data gathering, data analysis, and security at USDE is not often recognized as a threat to the privacy of student information…or workers in education, or conclusions based on data that may be corrupted from passing to and from so many contractors.
https://www2.ed.gov/about/…/list/…/contracts/active_contracts_list.xls
Cross post at Ope ed
with this comment ,,, which has embedded link at the Oped post.
Children are not children for long! These future citizens have already had their civil rights abused.
And there are those of you who do not grasp how the future is what they do with the children citizens… did you know that 40% of our kids live in POVERTY… and the EIC –WHICH OWNS THE MEDIA– has produced a 30 year narrative blaming teachers — as they end the road to opportunity that made our public school system the envy of the world.
Kids with no future, soon citizens whose past is in the hands of the future government…imagine if a David Cruz or Scott Walker gets to be President. Imagine the Cheyneys of the future and the legislatures& courts in the hands of sociopaths with no moral code.
Did you know that 20% of black kids live in poverty?
What data do you think will accompany them into adulthood?
Have you heard Bernie address these figures and the real issue for all of YOU who care about the nation’s future?
See it to the end… it isn’t long.
As someone who works in the 0 to 5 world, I have become increasingly worried about data collected on children who are placed in child care. There is a company that has become quite popular with early childhood professionals because it offers an online assessment system designed to be used with children from birth through kindergarten. Brief notes on each child are typed into the system and then teachers score the child’s acheivement in several dozen areas.
Not only are the children assessed using their scale, but teachers are encouraged to photograph and film the children for online data collection. Data collected includes: free or reduced lunch eligibility, having an IEP or IFSP and other confidential types of information on the child, birthdates, nicknames, ancestry, and so forth. Parents may not be aware of all the information that has been collected by a private company.
I have heard almost no one discuss this issue which affects children before they ever set foot in an elementary school.
Maria, there are several of these companies, Pearson being one (Work Sampling). I have been arguing against using this assessment online for the past two years. Language, ethnicity, OSIS #, birthdate all have to be input. If you don’t have all, you cannot list the child. I am not putting parents’ emails (this is voluntary). But I certainly don’t feel comfortable inputting this data. Information is now out there about the children and they are now labeled at three and four. I don’t know why we can’t just keep a portfolio as we have always done to show the student’s progress which I do anyway. I am limiting what is entered and keeping most work samples in the portfolios for parents to see.
Pat, it is a sad state of affairs when we talk about “work samples” for pre-K children. And, why would children this age need a portfolio? K-12 will do an assessment of their skills before they begin kindergarten anyway.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation currently funds the collection of prenatal neural development data. I kid you not.