January 20, 2014

The spying on Americans by the National Security Agency and the Internal Revenue Service’s attacks on conservative groups are “like a walk in the park” compared to government plans to track school children, says a prominent national education researcher, analyst and Johns Hopkins-trained pediatrician.

Dr. Karen Effrem, president of the national watchdog group, Education Liberty Watch, is sounding an alarm about Common Core, the federal education standards that almost all states are adopting by accepting federal “Race to the Top” funding.

Under Common Core, Effrem said, students’ personal information increasingly is being collected, measured and assessed while the standards shift the focus away from academics and toward psychological training and testing of personal attitudes and behaviors.

Jane Robbins, senior fellow with the American Principles Project and a Common Core expert, shares Effrem’s concerns.

She said an agreement between a group that develops the Common Core tests and the DOE requires the consortium to give the DOE “complete access to any and all data collected at the state level.”

Robbins said parents will not be notified if personal information about their children is released, nor will they be told who gets it.

Common Core, Effrem said, creates “a womb-to-tomb dossier on kids and families” that includes between 300 and 400 different data points, such as parents’ voting status, religious affiliation, medical data, newborn screening and genetic data.

That personal student information is to be stored and shared between states in what amounts to a national database clearinghouse of information that Effrem said will follow children and may help determine where they work or go to school.

“It’s lifelong,” Effrem said. “And, it’s not just phone records or tax returns or that kind of thing. It’s literally their entire lives and everything about them and their families.”

Robbins added it is illegal for the federal government to establish a student database, “but they get around that by having the states do it.”

Effrem cited concerns about what these kinds of personal data collections will ultimately do to freedom in America.

“It’s going to be like what happened in the Soviet Union or China,” Effrem said. “Only it’s going to be with super computers; it’s going to be at the click of a button instead of on paper.”

Teachers as psychologists

Effrem said many Common Core standards and assessments will be used to collect data that go beyond academics to focus on student’s psychological attitudes, values and beliefs.

She points to documents from the National School Boards Association, the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and the U.S. Department of Education that promote teaching children beyond academics to focus on “non-cognitive” “21st Century skills” that include the disposition, social skills and behavior of children.

“Various elements of SEL can be found in nearly every state’s K-12 standards framework and in the Common Core State Standards for the English Language Arts,” states the National Association of State Boards of Education in an October 2013 paper, “From Practice to Policy.”

SEL (social emotional learning) is also starting to be incorporated in federal policies and initiatives, such as the Race to the Top, according to a 2013 CASEL report, “The Missing Piece, How Social and Emotional Learning Can Empower Children and Transform Schools.”

That finding was echoed by Pamela Orme, Anchorage School District social studies curriculum coordinator.

Orme said the SEL aspect of the standards became evident as they “began to unpack standards we found a clear correlation between Common Core and social, emotional learning.”

The CASEL report adds that some states like Illinois and Kansas are also implementing social emotional standards on their own, a practice it found is supported by a majority of teachers it surveyed.

The report also called it “critical” to develop social and emotional assessment tools so teachers can “measure students’ social and emotional competence.”

The Orwellian lengths the government is willing to go to to measure those results is made clear in the U.S. Department of Education Technology’s February 2013 draft report, “Promoting Grit, Tenacity and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century.”

Dubbed “affective computing” the report explores the “growing movement” within schools about how traits like dispositions, social skills, attitudes and “interpersonal resources” can be measured in students.

It also indicates a move toward changing student behaviors to promote what government declares are keys to success beyond “cognitive.”

The report also states assessments “can serve a wide range of purposes well beyond accountability” to include research and “diagnostic indicators for vulnerable students.”

It lauds the use of “affective computing” to measure social-emotional competencies, such as a student’s level of grit, tenacity and perseverance.

Included are photos of equipment that measures student responses: a facial expression camera, wrist wires, pressure mouse and posture analysis seat.

http://www.wnd.com/2014/01/nsa-ops-walk-in-park-next-to-plans-to-tr...