In Part 1 of my series on the Common Core State Standards being infused into 45 state public school systems, I revealed how the feds spent $350 million of taxpayer money, giving grants and waivers to muscle states and local school districts to accept the standards. And that was after 2009, when feds awarded, in the Department of Education's words, "governors approximately $48.6 billion ... in exchange for a commitment to advance essential education reforms ... including: college- and career-ready standards (aka CCSS)."
In Part 2, I showed how the feds are injecting their progressive agenda into curricula taught to U.S. kids in elementary, middle and high schools via their educative minions posted in academic arenas and among CCSS curricula creators.
Last week, I began to give you the third piece of evidence of the feds' collaborations and entanglements within CCSS -- namely that they are creating and expanding a national database to store and access your kids' private information obtained through a technological project within CCSS, an informational mega-overreach and push within their 2009 $48.6 billion bribe to governors.
PolitiFact, a so-called fact-discerning website, accused Angela Bean, an executive board member of the Fayette County (Ga.) Republican Party, of exaggeration when she said informational wings within CCSS were, in The Newnan Times-Herald's words, "designed to collect up to 400 data points on each child, which can include personally identifiable data. ... The data will be collected by a company called inBloom, created by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation."
PolitiFact further accused Bean of confusing the facts and separation between the longitudinal data systems and CCSS. And it also cited CCSS organization officials, who affirmed that "there are no data collection requirements with Common Core." (Can you imagine "no data collection" requirements in the most overreaching national academic system and standards to date? If it sounds too good to be true, you can bet it is. Read on.)
But then PolitiFact explained that many Georgia schools are in fact using inBloom and cited Robert Swiggum, chief information officer of the Georgia Department of Education, who confessed that his state's system "collects data points in about 10 categories," including "a student's name, grade, gender, ethnicity, birth date, attendance, enrollment history, test scores, courses taken and grade received, and any subgroup (example: English language learner, retained, economically disadvantaged)."
And each of those categories has sublevels of students' personal information, too. PolitiFact itself elaborated, "Each of the categories has dozens of data points that can vary depending on how many tests each student takes, those test scores, the number of courses taken and the length of time a student has been in school."
So let me get this straight: Beginning in 2009, the Obama administration began a massive overreach, push and expansion of an informational and technological student tracking system that stores a wide range of academic and personal information of every student in the U.S. from preschool through college and into the workforce.
At the same time, the administration begins a massive overreach, push and expansion of a new national academic standard system, called Common Core State Standards, which will cover every core classroom subject from kindergarten through high school and be the basis of 85 percent of curricula and progress assessments.
Yet we're supposed to believe naively that the standards, curricula, assessments for teachers and students, and plethora of personal student data will not intersect, intertwine or be combined with or use the technological communication system through which all student data and progress in public schools are recorded and transmitted?
The longitudinal data systems and CCSS were developed and enlarged side by side during the same time and same presidential administration, but the CCSS testing and performance will not be recorded and monitored via the LDS?
Is it merely coincidental that the feds spent billions expanding both systems simultaneously over the past few years yet there is no congruency or intended purpose between the ginormous national construction of CCSS and the expanding LDS informational pipeline?
Hogwash! Who's kidding whom?
To not recognize how LDS will clearly serve the information gathered under CCSS is to overlook any connection between a hot dog and a hot dog bun. In fact, if you believe LDS and CCSS are solo and separate academic coincidences in an ever-expanding federal government that has been funding and promoting both, I have a London bridge to sell you in Lake Havasu City, Ariz.!
CCSS and LDS are partners in crime. It will be impossible for one to operate without the other, based upon the very reason they were created, which was to complement each other. They are destined to be married and become one, just as they have been living together in secret in the minds of bureaucrats and educrats. LDS will serve under CCSS, plain and simple, inasmuch as teachers and curricula will conform to LDS mandates, too.
And the primary problem remains that both CCSS and LDS are two of the greatest overreaches by the federal government -- in cahoots with state educrats -- and encroachments on student privacy and parental rights, all under the banner of the new "Common Core" education.
And if you think I'm just connecting conspiratorial dots, then let me remove all doubt by citing a document anyone can read on the website for the National Center for Education Statistics, which is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the U.S. and other nations and is located within the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences.
The NCES produced four books on building longitudinal data systems. The first one is titled "Traveling Through Time: The Forum Guide to Longitudinal Data Systems," which also gives a glimpse into their informational future.
In Chapter 5 of that book -- titled "LDS Benefits: Why Should We Build These Systems?" -- the NCES clearly explains for all to read: "Longitudinal data system (LDS) is not just a compliance system that will feed the state and federal governments more data. An LDS has the potential to make high quality, timely data available to all stakeholders to help them ... leverage significant educational change."
Any questions?
Welcome to the future of fed ed and having your family's personal information float across the Internet for "key stakeholders," from your house and the local schoolhouse to statehouses and the White House.
It's time to ship fed ed to some remote deserted island! And we can start by stopping Common Core.
Next week, I will answer the question: "Is Common Core really good for children?"
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