Emily Talmage warns that data mining is happening 24/7, whenever children (or adults) go online, at school or at home.
On Monday, the FBI published a public service announcement alerting parents that “smart toys” and entertainment devices for kids may be collecting vast amounts of data about their children.
“The collection of a child’s personal information combined with a toy’s ability to connect to the internet or other devices raises concerns for privacy and physical safety,” the notice warns.
Major news outlets across the country are now sounding the alarm, encouraging parents to research privacy agreements and to find out who has access to their children’s data.
Despite the sudden and urgent concern for children’s privacy, however, the reports have thus far ignored the biggest elephant in the room…
the fact that massive data collection is happening in our schools every single day.
As school districts across the country implement one-to-one digital device initiatives, school testing policies shift to include ongoing “formative” assessments, and data collection expands beyond academics to include highly sensitive psycho-social information, data collection in schools is at an all time high.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Another reason not to use THE SCREEN as a SITTER. Those SCREENS are most dangerous in so many ways. SCREENS in the classroom is NOT okay with me. The classroom teacher knows best, not those programmed SCREENS. Think of how much $$$$$ those SCREENS in the classroom cost, plus the people who need to be hired, and the update of equipment. KA-CHING for the few and huge costs for the rest of us.
I vote for PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS who are CERTIFIED. They are FAR BETTER than anything else.
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It is obvious that this data mining from cradle to grave is part of ALEC’s plan to become the 21st centuries white supremacist, global police state once the Koch brothers and their allies get rid of or rewrite the U.S. Constitution changing the republic into a pure autocratic, neo-libertarian billionaire state.
“The fake libertarian position of the Koch brothers slowly began to reveal itself as an opportunity for political advancement rather than an endeavor to create an institute of theory and advancement of the positions of liberty.”
http://reformedlibertarian.com/articles/philosophy/the-neo-libertarianism-of-the-cato-institute/
The Kochs, like Norquist, define libertarianism primarily in economic terms. And they define economic libertarianism as support for supply-side economics and skepticism about climate science. That’s not the most natural interpretation of classic liberal thought, but it is the one most congenial to the Koch Brothers’ bottom line.
https://newrepublic.com/article/84266/should-liberals-be-more-grateful-grover-norquist
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Wall Street and Silicon Valley have truly taken us down the rabbit hole! The manipulation of people… the secrecy… the inhumanity… Imagine having your credit rating permanently reduced because of a drawing you virtual-crayoned in 3rd grade, or because you used a cultural patois when learning about subjects and predicates. Don’t just read the Emily Talmage post linked; read all the other articles linked within her post. Makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck.
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Wall Street and Silicon Valley have truly taken us down the rabbit hole! The manipulation of people… the secrecy… the inhumanity… Imagine having your credit rating permanently reduced because of a drawing you virtual-crayoned in 3rd grade, or because you used a cultural patois when learning about subjects and predicates. Don’t just read the Emily Talmage post linked; read all the other articles linked within her post. Makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck.
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Hey now, I don’t need my credit rating any lower (like I give a rat’s ass about it anyway). It’s already lowered because. . .
. . . yep, you might have guessed it. Because I don’t have any credit cards and no outstanding loan balances.
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Yep, looked up some symptoms with my leg and sure enough a couple of days later I started getting advertising directed at those symptoms.
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The privacy policies that I have looked at start with a big hoopla about protecting privacy then launch into legalisms that make you responsible for breeches of privacy.
The marketers of depersonalized learning and the glories of mobile apps for curriculum and homework love “data-driven instruction,” “real-time test results displayed on data dashboards,” and outsourcing educational decisions to the unseen, unknown, creators of these products.
Big money is driving this craze. The PSA from the FBI is, in many respects, a pitiful response. If Bill Gates and his friends have their way with the “Data Quality Campaign,” there will be a national database linking student and educator records from infancy through post-secondary education and into the workplace. The initial purposes of the Data Quality Campaign (2011) were to:
1. Determine which teachers help students become college-ready and successful,
2. Determine characteristics of effective educators,
3. Identify programs that prepare highly qualified and effective teachers,
4. Assess the value of non-traditional teacher preparation programs,
5. Evaluate professional development programs,
6. Determine variables that help or hinder student learning,
7. Plan effective assistance for teachers early in their career, and
8. Inform policy makers of best value practices, including compensation
There is far more pontificating about student data security than anyone should take seriously, especially if the hype is coming from a school or district that has a policy wherein digital vendors are invited in as “partners” and students are available for marketing research (in the name of improving student learning). Here is a map showing where those schools and districts are. http://digitalpromise.org/initiative/league-of-innovative-schools/districts/.
Also in the works is the College Transparency Act of 2017, a bipartisan effort that would allow students and parents access to a “best-value customer service” website. It will show the user which postsecondary schools and programs, including majors, are likely to have the best price and return on investment at several time intervals after completing the program.
The new website will have information about a half-dozen federal loan programs and debt repayment plans. The proposed legislation is supposed to streamline the application process for student loan benefit programs available to a borrower and…. Integrate data available from different Federal data systems.
The bill fails to mention what these “different data systems are, but they can be discerned if you look at the current Application for Federal Student Aid form,(FAFSA®) . This form asks students/parents to have the following information ready to put into the online application.
1. Your Social Security number,
2. Your parents’ Social Security numbers if you are a dependent student,
3.Your Alien Registration number if you are not a U.S. citizen, 4. Your driver’s license number if you have one,
5. Federal tax information* or tax returns including IRS W-2 information, for you (and your spouse, if you are married), and for your parents if you are a dependent student (IRS 1040, 1040A, 1040EZ),
6. Foreign tax return and/or Tax return for Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, or Palau,
7. Records of your untaxed income, such as child support received, interest income, and veterans noneducation benefits, for you,
8. As in 7, for your parents, if you are a dependent student, 9. Information on cash; savings and checking account balances; investments, including stocks and bonds and real estate but not including the home in which you live; and business and farm assets for you, and
10. As in 9 for your parents, if you are a dependent student. https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa/filling-out
Unlike several attempts at a “college return on investment scorecard,” the proposed legislation would include students who do not have federal loans, estimated to be about 40% of postsecondary students and it would include private postsecondary programs.
I am certain that Bill Gates is jumping for joy because the proposed legislation allows for the creation of a “student unit record system” with personal identifiers (e.g., student social security numbers) linked to postsecondary education data now collected by the National Center for Education Statistics and by the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). Those data-gathering operations actually reach down into high school records.
The extent of the national data-gathering operation in “education” is evident if you spend some time looking at this website : https://ceds.ed.gov/dataModel.aspx and the domains of information, recently upgraded to include special education.
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This is very concerning. Not only does it appear to be an invasion of privacy, the data and the access to it could result in pigeon holing many young people. The educational data may wind up narrowing curricula in colleges and universities reducing access to liberal arts. Like VAM this makes assumptions about college coursework and instructors. I can foresee lots of colleges and students potentially being harmed from the collection and distribution of data along with false conclusions connected to the data. It reminds me of “The Minority Report.”
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this is our regional champion outside of Boston he led the Merrimack Valley efforts for No on #2 in several districts and has established the Greater Lawrence Education Justice Alliance. …http://www.andoverpoliticalreview.com/201657corporatization-of-education-interview-with-thomas-meyers/
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