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Georgia: Governor Deal Vetoes Legislation to Allow Opt Out from Testing

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2017 //
29

Rightwing corporate reformers like to go on and on about parental choice. Choice. Choice. Choice. The one choice they will not tolerate is parents who want their children to refuse the state tests. No choice! Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia vetoed a bill that would make it easier to parents to opt their children out of state standardized tests. He also blocked the possibility of students taking the tests using paper and pencil, instead of a computer. Deal was immediately hailed by Jeb Bush, who pushes computerization and digitization whenever possible. Jeb is a big support of school choice if it means vouchers and charters. He opposes parents’ right to opt out of testing. He is also a major supporter of computer-based instruction and computer-based assessment. His “Foundation for Educational Excellence” is largely funded by the software corporations that profit from standardized testing and data mining online. It has long been a goal of the corporate reform industry to use tests to “prove” that public schools are failing, that there is an “achievement gap,” and that parents should pull their children out of public schools and send them to charter schools or demand vouchers. Once that happens, the test scores don’t count anymore, because neither charters nor vouchers raise test scores or close achievement gaps. It is all a massive hoax to promote privatization.

This article appeared in Politico Pro. I am not a s

By Aubree Eliza Weaver
05/09/2017 01:52 PM EDT

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal today vetoed a bill that would have made it easier for students to opt out of taking standardized tests.

House Bill 425 included provisions discouraging disciplinary action against those students who do not participate in federal, state or locally mandated standardized assessments. Additionally, it would have allowed students to complete the exams using paper and pencil, instead of a computer.

“First, as I stated in my veto of SB 133 last year, local school districts currently have the flexibility to determine opt-out procedures for students who cannot, or choose not to, take these statewide assessments and I see no need to impose an addition layer of state-level procedures for these students,” Deal said in a statement.

He also said that reverting to paper-and-pencil exams would make it harder for the state to return test data to districts quickly and goes against the state’s priority of reducing opportunities for students to cheat.

Deal’s decision was lauded by the Foundation for Excellence in Education, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

“The proposal would have harmed students and teachers by denying access to measurements that track progress on standardized assessments,” the advocacy group, founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, said in a statement. “Maintaining a transparent and accountable measurement systems is critical to ensuring students are on track to succeed in college and beyond — and indicates how successful schools are in preparing students for the future.”

To view online:
https://www.politicopro.com/education/whiteboard/2017/05/georgia-governor-vetoes-opt-out-measure-087474

This article appeared in Politico Pro. I am not a subscriber because it costs $3,500 a year, the last time I checked. Too rich for my taste.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, Georgia, Hoax, Opt Out, Parents, Privatization, Standardized Testing, Technology, Testing

URGENT MESSAGE TO PARENTS IN CONNECTICUT: Your Child’s Privacy at Risk!

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2017 //
6

Parents in Connecticut, pay attention and take action!

The Parent Coalition for Student Privacy has sent out an urgent message to parents in Connecticut.

The legislature is holding hearings on Monday (tomorrow) on a bill that would strip privacy protections from your children.

In January, a legislator proposed to remove all privacy protections from student data. Because of outrage expressed by parents, he withdrew his bill.

But now another bill has emerged. The hearings were hurriedly scheduled. Are they trying to put something over before parents know about it?

This past week a new bill, 7207 to “revise” the student data privacy law, was introduced, and will be heard by the CT Joint Education Committee this Monday, March 6. This kind of a rush job could imply that they are hoping to pass this bill without giving parents time to react. This new bill, 7207, wants to repeal the data privacy law and delay further implementation until July 1, 2018. This would remove existing protection of school children for over a year. WHY?

The Student Data Privacy Law has been in effect since Oct. 1, 2016; it only applies to NEW contracts, only asks for transparency, the CT Edtech Commission has already done the work to implement it. WHY, would Connecticut want to now repeal protection and transparency?

Please email your comment or testimony in Word or PDF format to EDtestimony@cga.ct.gov . Testimony should clearly state your name and the bill you are commenting on: Bill 7207- AN ACT MAKING REVISIONS TO THE STUDENT DATA PRIVACY ACT OF 2016.

Connecticut citizens please contact your legislators directly. If you are not sure who they are or how to contact them you can look that up here: https://www.cga.ct.gov/asp/menu/cgafindleg.asp

Is it asking too much that when a company contracts with a school and collects and uses and shares children’s data, that the data be kept safe and parents be able to see how that data is used, breached, and not sold?

By repealing or delaying this law, who are they protecting?

Categories Connecticut, Data and Data Mining, Parents, Privacy, Resistance, Students

Connecticut: Legislator Proposes Bill to Eliminate Student Privacy Protections

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2017 //
23

Jonathan Pelto reports that Steven Harding, a Republican legislator, has proposed legislation to roll back Connecticut’s Student Privacy Act.

 

When it comes the Connecticut General Assembly and education policy, one of the most important developments was the passage, last year, of a new Connecticut Student Data Privacy Act that requires school districts to institute reasonable safeguards when selling, sharing or providing outside entities access to student information, student records, or student-generated content.

 

Without this law, many school districts had failed to adopted appropriate policies associated with contracts between school districts and corporations that are interested in collecting, buying, selling or using what should obviously be confidential student data.

 

Now, in an astonishing, baffling and extremely disturbing move, State Representative Stephen Harding (R-107th District) has introduced legislation (HB 5233) to repeal this important law (Public Act 16-189)

 

Why would he do this? Did he get a contribution from Bill Gates or Booz Allen Hamilton or some other corporate group that wants to data mine children?

Categories Connecticut, Data and Data Mining, Privacy and Privacy Rights

STOP: Our Government Wants to Create a National Database about Everyone, Including YOUR Children

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2017 //
17

The Missouri Education Watchdog blog has collected some frightening news: There is a bipartisan push, funded by the Gates Foundation, to create a national database for every citizen, violating the privacy of every one of us. Until now, this has been illegal. Gates and his allies want to lift the ban.

 

For anyone who has ever filled out a college application, or scholarship or grant application, you know the incredible amount of personal information these forms require. What if there was a massive database that combined and shared not only all of that personal information, but also answers from surveys you took over the years, social media posts you made, information normally kept protected and isolated in agencies like the Social Security Administration, Health and Human Services, HUD, IRS, and the US Census Bureau. This kind of database, linking (and sharing) data across agencies, with a profile on each individual citizen is something that countries like China has, but it is not legal in the US, currently.

 

This database is about to happen, not for you parents, but for your kids, starting with students in college.

 

Who wants it? Bill Gates; Booz Allen and Hamilton; Congressman Paul Ryan; Senator Patti Murray. And the many other corporations who want to pry into the lives of Americans.

 

There has been a push to create this type of database to track and link student data across agencies for years, and has always been rejected due to privacy or cost concerns. However, this year, a special commission, (created by the passage of this law, HR1381–jointly sponsored by Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), and signed by President Barack Obama on March 30, 2016), has convened for the purpose of lifting the ban on this national database, that they refer to as the student unit record. For background on the push for a national student database/unit record, see this 2013 HigherEd publication where they hoped to lift this ban and link the data, with a previous bill:

 

“The previous version of the bill called for stitching together state longitudinal databases in order to better track students — a project that some observers said would be technically difficult, perhaps unworkable and take years to accomplish, but which would also avoid confronting a federal ban on a national unit record system.
A unit record database has long been the holy grail for many policy makers, who argue that collecting data at the federal level is the only way to get an accurate view of postsecondary education. But privacy advocates, private colleges and Congressional Republicans, all of whom oppose the creation of such a database, teamed up in opposition the last time the idea was proposed, by the Bush administration in 2005. Then, the opponents succeeded; the 2008 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act included a provision specifically forbidding the creation of a federal unit record data system…

 

An increasing number of groups, including some federal panels, have called for a federal unit record system since 2006: the Education Department’s advisory panel on accreditation, last year; the Committee on Measures of Student Success, in 2011; and nearly every advocacy group and think tank that wrote white papers earlier this year for a project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on rethinking financial aid.

 

A federal system, those groups agree, is the only way to accurately measure student success. It would allow the Education Department to account for part-time students, transfers and others not currently captured in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, the clearinghouse of data colleges report to the federal government. And, through linkage with Social Security or other databases, it could track graduates’ wages more accurately than is currently possible.

 

The Obama administration — unable to create a federal unit record database — has offered states money to construct longitudinal databases of their own, including funding in the 2009 stimulus bill. Nearly all states now have, or are developing, some version of a [ K12, SLDS] database to track students throughout their educational careers.”

 

Do you value your privacy? Do you want to stop the government and corporations from knowing everything about our lives, from cradle to grave? Read the post in its entirety and then contact Leonie Haimson of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy.

Categories Data and Data Mining, Democracy, Privacy and Privacy Rights

The Chinese Obedience Game

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2017 //
12

Leonie Haimson, leader of Class Size Matters and Student Privacy Matters, gathered the following links to an important story: China has developed a credit score game that rates its citizens by their behavior.

 

She writes:

 

“Check out this video and news articles about Sesame Credit, the big data social credit score and game being used in China to encourage obedience to the government — to be mandatory for all citizens by 2020. Very scary stuff!”

 

http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/12/a-terrifying-look-at-future.html

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-34592186

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-has-made-obedience-to-the-state-a-game-a6783841.html

Categories Data and Data Mining, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Technology

Sue Halpern: What You Need to Know about Big Data: It Knows You

By dianeravitch
December 13, 2016 //
11

Sue Halpern, a writer and scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College in Vermont, wrote recently in the New York Review of Books about the extraordinary reach of data mining. Her article is ostensibly a review of two books, but is actually her summary of the reach of various internet sites into our so-called private lives. You would be astonished at what the Internet knows about you. Every click on Facebook, Google, or Amazon is added to your profile.

She writes:

“A few months ago The Washington Post reported that Facebook collects ninety-eight data points on each of its nearly two billion users. Among this ninety-eight are ethnicity, income, net worth, home value, if you are a mom, if you are a soccer mom, if you are married, the number of lines of credit you have, if you are interested in Ramadan, when you bought your car, and on and on and on.

“How and where does Facebook acquire these bits and pieces of one’s personal life and identity? First, from information users volunteer, like relationship status, age, and university affiliation. They also come from Facebook posts of vacation pictures and baby pictures and graduation pictures. These do not have to be photos one posts oneself: Facebook’s facial recognition software can pick you out of a crowd. Facebook also follows users across the Internet, disregarding their “do not track” settings as it stalks them. It knows every time a user visits a website that has a Facebook “like” button, for example, which most websites do.

“The company also buys personal information from some of the five thousand data brokers worldwide, who collect information from store loyalty cards, warranties, pharmacy records, pay stubs, and some of the ten million public data sets available for harvest. Municipalities also sell data—voter registrations and motor vehicle information, for example, and death notices, foreclosure declarations, and business registrations, to name a few. In theory, all these data points are being collected by Facebook in order to tailor ads to sell us stuff we want, but in fact they are being sold by Facebook to advertisers for the simple reason that the company can make a lot of money doing so….

“In fact, the datafication of everything is reductive. For a start, it leaves behind whatever can’t be quantified. And as Cathy O’Neil points out in her insightful and disturbing book Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, datafication often relies on proxies—stand-ins that can be enumerated—that bear little or no relation to the things they are supposed to represent: credit scores as a proxy for the likelihood of being a good employee, for example, or “big five” personality tests like the ones used by the Cambridge Psychometrics Centre, even though, as O’Neil reports, “research suggests that personality tests are poor predictors of job performance.”

“There is a tendency to assume that data is neutral, that it does not reflect inherent biases. Most people, for instance, believe that Facebook does not mediate what appears in one’s “news feed,” even though Facebook’s proprietary algorithm does just that. Someone—a person or a group of people—decides what information should be included in an algorithm, and how it should be weighted, just as a person or group of people decides what to include in a data set, or what data sets to include in an analysis. That person or group of people come to their task with all the biases and cultural encumbrances that make us who we are. Someone at the Cambridge Psychometrics Centre decided that people who read The New York Review of Books are feminine and people who read tech blogs are masculine. This is not science, it is presumption. And it is baked right into the algorithm.

“We need to recognize that the fallibility of human beings is written into the algorithms that humans write. While this may be obvious when we’re looking at something like the Cambridge Psychometrics analysis, it is less obvious when we’re dealing with algorithms that “predict” who will commit a crime in the future, for example—which in some jurisdictions is now factored into sentencing and parole decisions—or the algorithms that deem a prospective employee too inquisitive and thus less likely to be a loyal employee, or the algorithms that determine credit ratings, which, as we’ve seen, are used for much more than determining creditworthiness. (Facebook is developing its own credit-rating algorithm based on whom one associates with on Facebook. This might benefit poor people whose friends work in finance yet penalize those whose friends are struggling artists—or just struggling.)…”

“If it is true, as Mark Zuckerberg has said, that privacy is no longer a social norm, at what point does it also cease to be a political norm? At what point does the primacy of the individual over the state, or civil liberties, or limited government also slip away? Because it would be naive to think that governments are not interested in our buying habits, or where we were at 4 PM yesterday, or who our friends are. Intelligence agencies and the police buy data from brokers, too. They do it to bypass laws that restrict their own ability to collect personal data; they do it because it is cheap; and they do it because commercial databases are multifaceted, powerful, and robust.

“Moreover, the enormous data trail that we leave when we use Gmail, post pictures to the Internet, store our work on Google Drive, and employ Uber is available to be subpoenaed by law enforcement. Sometimes, though, private information is simply handed over by tech companies, no questions asked, as we learned not long ago when we found out that Yahoo was monitoring all incoming e-mail on behalf of the United States government. And then there is an app called Geofeedia, which has enabled the police, among others, to triangulate the openly shared personal information from about a dozen social media sites in order to spy on activists and shut down protests in real time.

“Or there is the secretive Silicon Valley data analysis firm Palantir, funded by the Central Intelligence Agency and used by the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, numerous police forces, American Express, and hundreds of other corporations, intelligence agencies, and financial institutions. Its algorithms allow for rapid analysis of enormous amounts of data from a vast array of sources like traffic cameras, online purchases, social media posts, friendships, and e-mail exchanges—the everyday activities of innocent people—to enable police officers, for example, to assess whether someone they have pulled over for a broken headlight is possibly a criminal. Or someday may be a criminal.

“It would be naive to think that there is a firewall between commercial surveillance and government surveillance. There is not.

“Many of us have been concerned about digital overreach by our governments, especially after the Snowden revelations. But the consumerist impulse that feeds the promiscuous divulgence of personal information similarly threatens our rights as individuals and our collective welfare. Indeed, it may be more threatening, as we mindlessly trade ninety-eight degrees of freedom for a bunch of stuff we have been mesmerized into thinking costs us nothing.”

 

 

 

Categories Data and Data Mining, Privacy and Privacy Rights

What Is Raise.Me?

By dianeravitch
November 27, 2016 //
11

You may have heard about a shiny new service that promises to reward high school students with money that can be applied to future college tuition if they reach certain targets. It is called Raise.me.

I confess I had not heard about it until our dear friend Laura Chapman wrote one of her deeply researched comments about it. She googled and came across a scathing article by Steve Nelson, the headmaster of the Calhoun School in New York City. I browsed the website of Raise.me and read the glowing articles written about it in the press.

You should learn about it too. It seems to be yet another way to gather personally identifiable information about students. It is part of the insidious data mining regime that certain philanthropies, corporations, and the federal government have been crafting to create both Big Data and cradle-to-grave data about individuals, usually without their knowledge.

First, Steve Nelson. He reminds us of the old adage that if something is too good to be true, it probably isn’t. He writes:

“In a matter of days I’ve gone from knowing nothing about Raise.me to being inundated with information. Raise.me is an organization that purports to provide wonderful scholarship opportunities to high school students, particularly those who are less privileged and less likely to have sophisticated guidance in choosing a college and financing their education.

“First awareness came via an uncritical New York Times piece describing Raise.me. After visiting their website I’ve received emails hoping my school might guide students to the program. Apparently many colleges and universities have signed on. If nothing else, this venture has good PR and marketing capabilities. I use the word “venture” intentionally, as will shortly be clear.

“Interested readers can visit the site to find details on the mechanics of the programs, but here is a short overview: Beginning in 9th grade, students register for the program and earn “dollars” for various things, including grades, grade point averages, AP courses, extra-curricular activities and others. Individual colleges assign their own values, so college X may offer $300 for an “A” and university Y offers only $100. The students then accumulate “dollars” that will be granted in scholarships by the college when and if the college admits the student.

“Too good to be true? Probably. Misleading? Perhaps.

“First, I must register an objection to monetizing student choices. Extrinsic motivators are fleeting and often counterproductive. There are already enough incentives that drive America’s students to see learning as an exercise in credential accumulation rather than seeking enlightenment, joy, creation or curiosity. This program is a more sophisticated version of the programs instituted in some urban schools, where small children are treated like laboratory animals, earning small rewards for compliant behavior or good grades.

“Raise.me takes the already stressful process of college application and presses it needlessly into years when students should be exploring, taking risks, having fun and not be encumbered by the pressure of getting in to college. (This is also the case with the new college application process, Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success, supported by all the Ivy League schools and 80 or so other highly selective colleges. Like Raise.me, the Coalition intrudes needlessly on adolescence by pressing kids into the college game earlier and earlier.)”

Nelson did some research and discovered that the enterprise was funded by venture capital. What’s in it for the investors? He is not sure.

“Of greater concern is that there is no evidence the accumulated “dollars” actually add to what a student might have received in a total aid package from any university. In business terms, dollars are fungible, and any credit given for Raise.me earnings can be (and seems to be) deducted from other sources the college might have applied. A few reports on College Confidential indicate that my skepticism is warranted. In other words, the program drives students to a college, but probably has no impact on the financial aid package that would otherwise have been awarded. And of course that’s almost certainly true! No college would allow its discretionary aid awards to be dictated by a program like Raise.me.”

Our esteemed friend Laura Chapman came across Raise.me, and this is what she reported after she perused the website of Raise.me:

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.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, Higher Education, Privacy and Privacy Rights

A Day in the Life of Your Quantified Child

By dianeravitch
November 22, 2016 //
8

This is a very interesting and important graphic about “The Quantified Student.”

If you are concerned about data mining of your child or yourself, you are right to be concerned.

Our government and the corporate sector wants to know everything about us. They want to quantify our lives and use what they know to create Big Data.

Big Data can be useful in tracking public health trends and needs, but it can be destructive in defining solely as our data.

We are humans. We are not robots. Take a look at the graphic.

We must protect our privacy, our individuality, our voice, our uniqueness as human beings.

Categories Data and Data Mining, Education Reform, Privacy and Privacy Rights

Laura Chapman: What Does the Gates Foundation Want to Know About Your Child? Everything.

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2016 //
29

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.

Categories Data and Data Mining, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privacy and Privacy Rights

Big Data and the New Police State

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2016 //
55

Many of us have wondered about the practice of measuring, rating and ranking every student, every teacher, every school. We know that Big Data is insatiable.

China is perfecting Big Data.


“Imagine a world where an authoritarian government monitors everything you do, amasses huge amounts of data on almost every interaction you make, and awards you a single score that measures how “trustworthy” you are. 


“In this world, anything from defaulting on a loan to criticizing the ruling party, from running a red light to failing to care for your parents properly, could cause you to lose points. 
And in this world, your score becomes the ultimate truth of who you are — determining whether you can borrow money, get your children into the best schools or travel abroad; whether you get a room in a fancy hotel, a seat in a top restaurant — or even just get a date.


“This is not the dystopian superstate of Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report,” in which all-knowing police stop crime before it happens. But it could be China by 2020.
It is the scenario contained in China’s ambitious plans to develop a far-reaching social credit system, a plan that the Communist Party hopes will build a culture of “sincerity” and a “harmonious socialist society” where “keeping trust is glorious.”

Big Data has valuable uses for macro-trends in society. Big Data is dangerous when it scoops up personally identifiable data.

Categories Accountability, Data and Data Mining, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Technology
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