Government Nannies at Your Door

“We’re from the Government and we’re here to help you.”

Do those words give you a warm, fuzzy feeling? The sponsors of the “Welcome to Washington Baby Act” think so. “A welcome hug from the State of Washington,” is how one Legislative Aide described the bill. The bill in the House of Representatives is HB 1771 and the companion bill in the Senate is SB 5683. It would establish a universal home visiting program for families of newborns. There are many disturbing aspects to this bill.
Read more.

Come to our presentation

Social Emotional Learning: Creating the “Perfect” 21st Century Child

Sponsored by Research Mom and Citizens United for Responsible Education

(Lavender Building on the corner of Jackson and N. Cincinnati)

• Government schools are re-programming your child’s social and emotional state from preschool through K-12.
• Time is already scarce for teaching basic academics and doing test prep, so why add social/emotional learning?
• This encroaches on parents’ rights to raise their own children.
• Data-collection on your child is essential to it all.

Learn about this and more.

For more information, contact:

Shannon Benn (509) 487-1219

Joyce Fiess (206) 715-7786

MEDUSA

Multi-fad Education Dooms USA

By Lucy Wells

THE LATEST FAD

Educational fads usually have names that sound like perfect solutions to our failing educational system. People are inclined to assume good intentions, so they give these fads a chance. Yet the fads, tragically, victimize generation after generation. [read more]

A Connecticut mom was left appalled and angry when a school district’s kindergarten application asked whether her child was delivered by C-section or not. The district was asking extremely intrusive questions, ostensibly to detect any potential health or emotional problems in enrolling youngsters. Read about the survey here.

School staff are increasingly becoming pseudo-psychologists and -psychiatrists. Meanwhile less and less academic information is being taught.

Remember you can refrain from answering questions in school forms (or other forms, for that matter)  that you find too intrusive.

It’s not about what Johnny can learn from his e-tablet; it’s about what the e-tablet can learn about Johnny.

Early in October (2014) the federal agency, the National Science Foundation (NSF),  awarded $4.8 million to a consortium of universities whose task it will be to develop an extensive data collection, storage, and sharing system. The purported goal? To collect massive amounts of data on students to improve instruction.

The data project is called LearnSphere–a typically ambiguous name.  What is being learned? It appears that faceless bureaucrats and researchers will learn information about the students that the students and parents have no idea is being collected–and without parents’ or  students’ permission. Data will be collected on teachers as well. Will they have the option of refusing? Most likely not.

A senior advisor at the NSF states, “”We’re now able to collect massive amounts of information on individual students we weren’t able to collect 10 years ago.”

Education Week writer Benjamin Herold  writes that the data “would likely include, for example, records of every mouse click a student makes when using a software program and information demonstrating a student’s thought process..”  and quotes the lead researcher as saying,  “we have shown some pretty interesting results in being able to detect different [emotional] states from keystroke data.”  (emphasis added)

This grant is only one of several NSF grants dedicated to data-collection.

Read the article.

Although data collection is not found within the Common Core Standards themselves, other federal initiatives mandate the extensive collection of personal student information, and the two Common Core Assessment Consortia must allow the federal government access to the data. In addition, there are many other data-collection initiatives, some of the begun many years ago before the Obama Administration. Jane Robbins of the American Principles Project explains data collection under the Common Core.

Here’s another good example of an expression that means different things to different people: School Choice.

Of course people want choices. Who wouldn’t? However, often various education choices are either deliberately or unintentionally mixed together. Private school, homeschooling, online schools, vouchers,  and charter schools are often mixed together as “choices,” but there are big differences.

Private school, homeschooling, online schools, vouchers,  and charter schools are often mixed together as “choices,” but there are big differences. Within these choices, private schools, homeschools, and non-government online schools are independent of government money. In homeschooling and independent online schooling the parents are free to choose a curriculum that fits the child and the parents’ goals for that child. In private schools, the directors of the school choose the curriculum, but must be responsive to the parents’ wishes. However with government online schools, vouchers, and charter schools, all funded by government money, there are strings attached. Various aspects of the education the child receives will be dictated by the state. For example, currently in Washington State, all charter schools must follow the Common Core Standards.

There is a more insidious difference with government-funded education options. They work to destroy representative government. With charter schools, the school board members may be chosen by the charter corporation, not elected by the parents or taxpaying citizens, and thus they are really not accountable to the parents or taxpayers. Some say parents can “vote with their feet” and withdraw their children, but what about taxpayers who don’t have children in that school? They still have to pay taxes for that school.  In New Orleans, all the schools are charter schools, so the people there are disenfranchised with respect to the schools.

I rarely defend the current public school system, but at least the structure is compatible with representative government. The people elect the school board, and the school board makes education decisions for the district. If the people are dissatisfied, they can elect different school board members. I admit, in reality different political interests tug in multiple directions and a sort of stalemate often occurs, but the structure still honors representative government. In the Charter school system the parents’ voting input is so indirect that they are effectively out of the governance structure.

Many people think charter schools are akin to a free-market option. If the government is funding the school and controlling the curriculum, how can it be a free market option?

Please read Anita Hoge’s commentary, “Common Core, Choice, and Charter Schools.” Please be aware that even though the Obama administration is directing the development of Charter Schools, as well as promoting the Common Core and data collection, these concepts have been promoted by people from both parties for decades.

Kindergarten used to be a place to paint pictures, play with clay, make friends, and learn a few social graces. Now it is a place to be assessed and started on the path to be molded into human capital.  What has happened to common sense?

Some teachers are beginning to speak out in defense of their students. Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post writes about a Florida teacher who refused to administer one of the Florida kindergarten assessments, the FAIR test. See the article.

Although she feared she would be fired, she just couldn’t bring herself to subject her students to the assessment. Her gutsy stand led to the principal’s decision to drop the assessment. Read the follow up story.

This trend of early assessments started before the appearance of the Common Core Standards and Assessments. Now that data collection through the Race to the Top and other mandates has become a priority, the assessment machine starts in kindergarten or earlier, giving rise to such non-governmental organizations as the Early Childhood Data Collaborative. The assessments drive the curriculum and facilitate the data collection.  It isn’t even clear whether the assessments reliably or validly measure what they’re supposed to be measuring, or whether constantly assessing students actually improves education. We appreciate people like this brave teacher who speak out against them.

Some students taking Utah’s SAGE assessment this spring experienced what they described as “weird” colors and sounds while taking the math assessment. SAGE is Utah’s new computer adaptive assessment. From interviews with students, it seems that not every student took the version of the assessment that subjected students to the weird colors and strange voices. Some students appeared to be taking a different version.

Washington State also has a computer adaptive assessment. Washington’s assessments are being developed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), one of the two assessment consortia for the Common Core. It is not known yet whether the Washington state assessment resembles the Utah SAGE assessment.

Parents, if your child took the Common Core Assessments this year, please ask him or her to tell you about it. If your child had a similar anxiety-producing experience, please contact the person who produced the video below, and also contact us. Our e-mail is cure@curewashington.org. A sample opt-out form can be found along the top bar of our website.

Please watch the entire video.

The Seattle School District has been uploading personal information to the data storage company ConnectEDU for the past three years. Now ConnectEDU is going bankrupt and the company is refusing to delete the personal data as stated in their contract with the Seattle School District. Read the article.

Increasing amounts of personal data are being collected on all public school students. The data collection is underway in government-funded preschools and even earlier. We encourage parents to be assertive about protecting the private information of their children. In this age of computers, this data can be stored indefinitely and can be hacked,  misused, shared, or sold. Please be vigilant.