cartoon credit: cagle.com
Ohio may yet pass legislation to get rid of
Common Core “standards” in our schools. And now Columnist/blogger Michelle Malkin reported on serious privacy issues - in addition to the quality-of-education problem:
. . . Parents, teachers
and administrators who object to the government education “standards” racket —
which usurps local control, impedes academic achievement and undermines family
privacy — have politicians on the defensive. . . .
Common Core jerkitude is a bipartisan disease. Lair’s ridicule
of grave parental concerns about Common Core data mining follows in the
footsteps of Democratic U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan (who derided
opponents as “white suburban moms”) and GOP former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (who
derided opponents’ motives as “purely political”). It’s all a snitty, snotty
smokescreen that will backfire as more families from all parts of the political
spectrum discover the truth about Common Core’s invasive nature.
Assessing Common Core is inextricably tied to the big business
of data collection and data mining. States that took the Race to the Top bribes
in exchange for adopting Common Core must now comply with the edutech
requirements of two private testing conglomerates, the Partnership for the
Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers or the Smarter Balanced
Assessment Consortium. Common Core states also agreed to expand existing
statewide longitudinal database systems that contain sensitive student data
from pre-kindergarten through postsecondary education.
Will Estrada and Katie Tipton of the Homeschool Legal Defense
Association conclude that “it will become increasingly difficult to protect the
personal information of homeschool and private school students as these
databases grow.” In addition to stimulus and Race to the Top enticements, both
the Education and Labor Departments have funded several other initiatives to
build and make various interoperable student and teacher databases.
“Before our eyes,” Estrada and Tipton warn, “a ‘national
database’ is being created in which every public school student’s personal
information and academic history will be stored.” It’s no laughing matter.
Just this week, SafeGov.org, a computer privacy watchdog group,
reported that Google has admitted in recent court filings that “it data mines
student emails for ad-targeting purposes outside of school, even when ad
serving in school is turned off.” The newly exposed documents explicitly
“confirm in a sworn public court declaration that even when ad serving is
turned off in Google Apps for Education (GAFE), the contents of users’ emails
are still being scanned by Google in order to target ads at those same users
when they use the web outside of Google Apps (for example, when watching a
YouTube video, conducting a Google search, or viewing a web page that contains
a Google+ or DoubleClick cookie).” Last month, I reported on how Google is
building brand loyalty through a questionable GAFE certification program that
essentially turns teachers into tax-subsidized lobbyists for the company.
. . .
Read the rest here.
