Laura Chapman shares her research with us:
The Gates Foundation has also announced that the creation of a centralized federal database to track students from preK through college, the workforce and beyond is one of their top advocacy priorities for 2017.”
This not a trivial matter.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has set its sights on data continuity from cradle to the workplace. In an unusual move, it has announced its data-priorities for postsecondary education. This initiative is for a national and substantially privatized postsecondary data gathering system, one that even calls for a Congressional modification of the Higher Education Act.
This Gates initiative is designed to allow non-profit and for-profit tracking of data on individual students as they move from high school into postsecondary programs (higher education and vocational certificate training) and then into the workforce for one year following the student’s exit from a post-secondary program, then again at the five year mark from that exit, and again at the ten year mark. All of that data-mongering would be aided by data from US Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (earnings, region and industry of employment, migration patterns and career pathways).
The biggest obstacle to this grandiose vision is the Higher Education Act (1974) which prohibits the government from creating a “student unit record system” with unique identifiers for individual students (e.g., SS numbers). Gates has been mustering support for a total by-pass of this federal privacy law. if this initiative succeeds, I believe it will also place in jeopardy current privacy laws bearing on elementary and secondary education records. Here is some background.
In August 2015, the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP)—created and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—first convened a working group of national postsecondary data experts “to discuss ways to move forward a set of emerging options for improving the quality of the data infrastructure in order to inform state and federal policy conversations.” The Gates Foundation is famous for setting up surrogate organizations like IHEP and soft selling the real agenda as if it is only a “conversation.”
The Gates Foundation is using IHEP as if it is a think tank. The Foundation commissioned IHEP to produce almost a dozen papers to pump up the “necessity” for a national postsecondary data system. Almost all of these papers offer reasons for changing the Higher Education Act which firmly prohibits the creation of “student unit record system.” Most of the papers are framed to suggest that the law needs to be changed in order to know how much a college degree is worth and how to achieve equity and greater efficiency in postsecondary education. All of the papers are here http://www.ihep.org/postsecdata/mapping-data-landscape/national-postsecondary-data-infrastructure)
The paper in the link below shows the intent to build a national “post-secondary” data ecosystem that would “include information held by the US Department of Health and Human Services’ National Directory of New Hires , the Social Security Administration’s wage and earnings data, the Internal Revenue Service’s tuition and required fees and financial aid data, the US Department of Defense’s military recruiting data, and data from the US Department of Veterans Affairs “(p. 1). http://www.ihep.org/sites/default/files/uploads/postsecdata/docs/resources/linking_federal_data_systems-executive_summary.pdf
The paper in the link below specifically tries to make the “case” for changing federal law to allow for nationalized “student unit record system.” http://www.ihep.org/sites/default/files/uploads/postsecdata/docs/resources/building_a_student-level_data_system-executive_summary.pdf
The paper in the link below shows the intent to connect the proposed national post-secondary data system with state longitudinal data systems (present in all but three states), including high school transcripts for individual students. The proposed connection would require enhancing the “interoperability” of National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) data system with state longitudinal data systems. The NSC has records for over 252 million students—Transcripts, Reverse Transfers, Financial Aid, Credential Verifications–and research based on that information. The state longitudinal data systems have been funded by Gates (Data Quality Campaign) and USDE since 2005.
This is a major claim: “There is currently no facility to provide self-service access to aggregate NSC data beyond the established reports that are published and distributed free of charge by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (these include annual high school benchmarks for post-secondary access and progression, current term enrollments, annual retention, persistence and completion rates, as well as regular reports on student mobility and degrees awarded). There are also opportunities to further enhance the interoperability of NSC with state longitudinal data systems. These systems are currently able to link their high school graduates with subsequent postsecondary enrollments and progress, but they would realize far more powerful results and benefits by leveraging NSC’s ability to integrate more comprehensive data directly from school transcripts (Executive Summary, p. 2-3). http://www.ihep.org/sites/default/files/uploads/postsecdata/docs/resources/national_student_clearinghouse-executive_summary.pdf
I found no mention of the commercial ventures tied to the National Student Clearinghouse or the paper-thin privacy policy it has. That is a big deal when you look at the list of its “Partners” with “other industry and technology leaders.” Here are three of these, each harboring many others.
“Ellucian is the world’s leading provider of software, services and insight to higher education. Ellucian helps 2,400 institutions in 40 countries with various services. Ellician’s website also invites potential “strategic partners” to contact them the company if they can “complement and extend our core offerings.” “Alliance partners” of Ellucian are offered tiers of services and co-branding opportunities as outlined here http://www.ellucian.com/Collateral/Ellucian-Partner-Success-Program-Guide/
Hobsons helps more than 12 million students around the globe identify their strengths, explore careers, create academic plans, and find the right college match. Hobsons partners with more than 10,000 schools, colleges, and universities to better prepare students for success.
Hobsons, like Ellucian has many “strategic partnerships.” Here are a few: ACT Engages BenchPrep for an Enhanced Personalized ACT Online Prep Program; Gallup; Human Esources; RoadTrip Nation.com; Blackboard; Career Key®; ComEVO,LLC (Communication Evolved); The Common Application; Dell Boomi; EdMin; Experian® Data Quality; Front Rush; GeoLabs (based in UK, a call and marketing service for 65 higher ed institutions, including some in USA); iData Management for Higher Education; IntelliResponse; x2VOLpowered by intelliVOL; Kira Talent (a video admissions platform); mongoose (responds to inquiries with personalized “mass texts” — from a phone, tablet or computer); parchment (career and college planning resources with 13 “partners” able to tap K-12 data); PEARSON; Ruffalo Noel Levitz (software, and management services for higher education enrollment and fundraising); Sallie Mae® (publicly traded consumer bank with newly named loan management, servicing and asset recovery business, Navient Corporation); Teen Life® (Catholic ministry for high schools).
Oracle —multinational computer technology corporation allows hardware and software to work together — in the cloud and in the data center. Oracle enables its IT customers — 400,000 of them in more than 145 countries around the world to design and integrate databases. For example, Oracle Integration Cloud Service offers more than fifty pre-built adapters for apps including Ariba, Concur, LinkedIn, Salesforce, Slack, Twilio, Twitter and more. https://www.oracle.com/corporate/pressrelease/paas-cloud-momentum-091916.html
If this initiative from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation succeeds, it will also enable links to information in the Gates-funded “Data Quality Campaign” and USDE-funded Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) for pre-K to 12 education—data from all but three states. Anyone who thinks that student test scores and the student identifications attached to them are “secure” is probably mistaken.
Politico has publicized that the Gates Foundation, New America, the US Chamber of Commerce and the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association – have called on the federal government to track students as they move through and beyond college.
Because the Higher Education Act prohibits the government from doing so through a “student unit record” system,” Gates has launched a pilot program at the University of Texas as if to say, this is possible and here is the proof. The details are not clear, but US Census data will be included in the pilot–earnings, region and industry of employment, migration patterns and career pathways for UT graduates from 2003 to the present.
Unbelievable, especially if you are familiar with the Gates-funded Data Quality Campaign that begins with health records of infants.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Quotes from the fictional novel, The Circle, by David Eggers, about a powerful internet company and our society’s obsessions with sharing and social media.
“The crew has been working to coordinate all student measurements-to make sure all homework, reading, attendance and test scores are all kept in one unified database. They’re almost there. We’re inches away from the moment when, by the time a student is ready for college, we have a complete knowledge of everything a student has learned. Every word they read, every word they looked up, every sentence they highlighted, every equation they wrote. Every answer and correction. The guesswork of knowing where all students stand and what they know will be over.”
We Have Met Big Brother and His Name Is Bill
It may well be Billinda; Gates’s wife’s ideas about how bad teacher are — that schools would be just fine if we could just rid ourselves of those forevermore bad, bad teachers — continue to run policy.
Quote from the fictional novel, The Circle, by David Eggers, about a powerful internet company and our society’s obsessions with sharing and social media
“Already 90% of the world’s searches go through the Circle. Without competitors, this will increase soon to 100%…if you can control the flow of information, you can control everything.”
Reblogged this on Exceptional Delaware.
Yeah this can’t be allowed.
The Gates will have more information on students than parents will. FERPA prevents parents from access to student information while they are attending college – often resulting in grave consequences that parents might have helped prevent had they known the circumstance. The Gates Foundation has ofcourse other intentions in mind and nothing to do with the well-being of the students.
Winners of the Presidential Medal of Frack Your Freedom
Priority one: stop Bill Gates. Stop Big Data.
Thank you, Laura and Diane.
I agree that it’s ALL very evil. I try very hard to keep my children’s data very private. I have a Facebook account, but no pictures or identifiable data is on there. I use a different birthdate. Photos/videos sent to relatives are password protected. We (as parents) do what we can for privacy in this computer aged world. I need to know why all this information is important for this one man (Bill Gates)? What are his intentions? What does he hope to gain from having all of this information? Can someone give me an answer that is very simple. I know that GREED is a motivating factor by selling more “stuff”, but what will the information gleaned from all of this data collection offer him?
My school handed out information about the Raise Me program where students can earn micro scholarships for school for A’s and extracurricular so. It looks to me like a data gathering site more than anything else. Does anyone know anything about this program?
ALice. Did you read this?
Effective date: April 18, 2016
Welcome to Raise.me, an online service owned and operated by Raise Labs Inc., a Delaware corporation (“Raise.me,” “we,” and/or “us”). Please read on to learn the rules and restrictions that govern your use of our websites, products, services, and applications (the “Services”). ….
These Terms of Use (the “Terms”) are a binding contract between you and Raise.me. You must agree to and accept all of the Terms, or you don’t have the right to use the Services. By using the Services in any way (whether as a visitor or a registered member), it means that you agree to all of these Terms, and these Terms will remain in effect while you use the Services. These Terms include the provisions in this document, as well as those in the Privacy Policy and Copyright Dispute Policy
Over 320,000 students – representing 1 out of 2 high schools in America – have signed up to earn ‘micro-scholarships’ from a diverse set of over 180 colleges and universities
Here is an example of the high schools and one university using the Raise Me platform https://twin-cities.umn.edu/news-events/university-minnesota-announces-scholarship-program-raiseme
Here is part of the privacy policy at Raise Me. We receive and store any information you knowingly provide to us. For example, through the registration process and/or through your account settings, we may collect Personal Information (such as your name, email address, phone number), account information (such as a password or other information that helps us confirm that it is you accessing your account), demographic or other information (such as your school, gender, age or birthday, and other information about your interests and preferences), and third-party account credentials (for example, your log-in credentials for Google Plus or other third party sites). Any other information combined with your Personal Information will be treated together as Personal Information. You may have the opportunity to create a profile, which may include Personal Information, photographs, information about your academic and work history, your interests and activities, your use of Raise.me’s Services and other information.
When you earn a Micro-Scholarship, you may be required to provide additional information, such as proof of identity (which may include a driver’s license, passport, voting card or similar government issued identification), proof of academic and work history (which may include high school transcripts, standardized test scores, or references from teachers or counselors), or proof of financial need (which may include completing a FAFSA or CSS profile, and providing other family income documentation), in order to claim the award. Colleges which have awarded you Micro-Scholarships may share your application, enrollment and graduation information with us. If you provide your third-party account credentials to us or otherwise sign in to Raise.me’s Services through a third party site or service, you understand some content and/or information in those accounts (“Third Party Account Information”) may be transmitted into your account with us, and that Third Party Account Information transmitted to our Services is covered by this Privacy Policy; for example, if you log into our Services through Google Plus, your Google Plus profile information will be populated into your profile on Raise.me’s Services.
All information entered by you is voluntary and at your own discretion, though certain information may be required in order to register with us or to take advantage of some of our features. If you provide such information, you consent to the use of that information in accordance with the policies and practices described in this Privacy Policy. Raise.me may, on occasion, send you notifications, information, materials, or other offers through e-mail, text, or other type of notification. Also, we may receive a confirmation when you open an email from us. This confirmation helps us make our communications with you more interesting and improve our Services. If you do not want to receive communications from us, please indicate your preference in the “Account Settings” page of the website. https://www.raise.me/privacy_policy
Information Collected Automatically: This is too long for the post. See also the Terms of Use policy.
Suggest you also look up Raise Labs Inc. Delaware.
I did read the privacy policy and it seemed to me that as soon as a student accepts a scholarship, the university gets their data. And it seems that data may be more than just the standard application data because students are encouraged to create a Profile. Also, a student will get third party offers and then their data will be shared with third party vendors.
After reading Weapons of Math Destruction, I admit I am getting very concerned with the cavalier way we are encouraging our students to make their data available. Maybe I am just paranoid….
320,000 students sign up….and HOW many read the terms of agreement?
It’s not paranoia. If the yielding of all that personal information is handed over to “synergistic” companies, those kids might get micro scholarships and then trouble landing their dream jobs down the line because they went through a phase and made mistakes when they were nine years old. In other words, having data follow you for the rest of your life is a nightmare, and concern about signing contracts that facilitate that nightmare is not paranoid. Far from it.
People are data, and data is for sale. Young people’s data is particularly valuable, since capturing their spending habits is the Holy Grail of marketers
As for the validity of much-hyped Big Data, how did its predictions work out in the election last week?
Big Data would tell you that predictions are only as good as the data they’re based on, and that the problem with this past election was that there was a lot of data out there that wasn’t being captured. Solution: More Biggerer Data. They’re on it.
Is this Bill Gates working, a step at a time, to fulfill his father’s Eugenics agenda? With this data base, it would be so easy to create an arbitrary line and anyone below the line would be slated for sterilization or worse.
“Software billionaire Bill Gates, who previously has advocated the reduction of the human population through the use of vaccines, and his wife Melinda marked the 100th year since the First International Eugenics Congress in London with a “family planning” summit with abortionists and the United Nations.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2012/08/bill-gates-world-needs-fewer-people/#sIb5XxiFfB4TT3Fx.99
With this data base, Gates, or an autocrat like Trump, would have the tool to decide who lives and who doesn’t.
The potential for abuse is so great the prospect is frightening. This is beyond data mining. Here’s an irony. Bill and Melinda Gates are receiving the Medal of Freedom from Obama!
Not ironic at all given Obama’s expansion of data collection activities. What could be more useful to the government that a detailed dossier on each and every one of its citizens that it could turn to if any of them start to get out of line? I’m sure the Gates vision is totally consistent with the NSA’s vision of “freedom.” It’s rather like the Stasi but without the bother of having to hire agents or rely on the neighbors to gather the data.
I feel bad for kids. They’re not permitted a single moment where they aren’t tracked in school. The “social emotional” is the worst. You would think all these really smart people would have some sense of restraint, but they don’t. They just charge on ahead.
I see my son plugging away at these computer training programs and it’s just so grim. It’s so funny how they keep promoting it as 21st century because he looks like a 19th century clerk.
Maybe they’ll kind of bust out in other ways, right? They’re really pretty clever at evading adult tracking systems. Adults were never supposed to PROVIDE creativity or inventiveness, right? That’s really the opposite of the general theme. Maybe they’ll dutifully provide The Data while going their own way on their own time.
Just head’s up for our out of touch “elites”. The Ohio Department of Ed has (admirably) dropped the ed reform lobbyists and started meeting with the public.
They surveyed parents. Parents are upset with the ed reform obsession with testing and charter schools. Numbers One and Two on their list of concerns.
Since ed reform consists exclusively of opening charter schools and testing public school students, this seems like a problem.
Out newspaper described last Tuesday’s rally of school superintendents in Columbus, as unprecedented.
Alice in PA. See also this criticism of some not so obvious dimentions of the Raise.Me programs, especially the “moniyizing” of college choices, and prospect that the micro scholarships might modiffy the appplicant’s overall application for financial aid. Also, the monitary value of completing a requirement, say Algebra 2 with a grade of B or better, is not the same for all colleges…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/raiseme—too-good-to-be_b_9301572.html
Thanks!
“Elizabeth Warren floated the idea that higher ed. would share in the cost of student loan default”. When colleges are made to absorb the financial risk for student failure, they will cherry pick students and direct them into majors that to lead to better paying jobs.
Market values in education-everywhere you turn.
What’s going on here! Is this a “Brave New World”? How can the oligarchy be stopped! What is going on when a few seemingly very entitled people feel that the have the right to follow citizens from the cradle to the grave. How dare they create an economic system that will not allow unions, better wages, and freedom of choice. All the while they can become richer and richer, by using our private information against us.
The better you know your customer, the better you can sell to them. Gates, Pearson and Mark Z-berg are investors in the largest seller of schools-in-a-box.
Z-berg’s Facebook played a substantial role in electing Trump. More people clicked on the bogus Facebook “news” posts than listened to credible news.
Do we need stronger influence peddling legislation preventing politicians from selling, and the rich, ALEC or anyone else from buying, public policies, laws and regulations?
What is with folks and their bizarre thinking that the wealthy are altruistic people who can be trusted to do what is right for society and who do not need to be regulated? What’s with the misguided beliefs that advantaged people truly care about helping the disadvantaged? Doesn’t anyone learn from the long and repetitive history of royals, aristocracy, titans of industry, Wall Street, etc., and their political enablers, doing whatever they can to increase their own lots in life, regardless of the social and economic costs, while distancing themselves from the less advantaged masses, who they basically see as not good enough and less deserving than themselves?
Does no one understand that it was people like Rockefeller and Carnegie who financed the Eugenetics movement, in America, long before that became policy in Nazi Germany and the countries they conquered? That didn’t happen because diversity was valued or because the rich thought that those less fortunate could benefit from getting a leg up, but because the advantaged saw themselves as being better and wanted to increase their own numbers while decreasing the populations of others. See: “The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics”
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796
There ought to be laws that say whenever people want to buy from politicians public policies, laws and regulations, especially those that apply to other people and/or other people’s children, the buyers and sellers must first pilot the policies on their own loved ones and demonstrate those policies are beneficial and do no harm.