Luetkemeyer Letter Goes To Duncan With 34 Signatures

Congressman Luetkemeyer of Missouri District Three submitted his letter to US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan expressing concern over the U.S. Department of Education’s decision to circumvent Congress with major changes to education and student privacy policies. An excerpt reads: 

“Since the ESEA’s expiration, the Department of Education has moved forward with education policy reform without Congressional input.  Such action is, at best, in contravention with precedent... We believe that state-based education policies are vital to the successful education of a child.  As with most one-size-fits-all policies, Common Core standards fail to address the specific needs of our states.”  

Luetkemeyer also raised concerns in his letter about two changes in which the government collects and distributes student data. Luetkemeyer has requested a detailed description of each change to student privacy policy that has been made during Duncan’s tenure and the need and intended purpose for such changes. Of particular concern to Luetkemeyer were regulatory changes made without congressional review regarding parental access to student education records and limiting third party disclosure of that information.

The letter was co-signed by 33 other House Representatives. The final letter can be accessed Here.

Bishop (UT-01)	Blackburn (TN-07)
Bentivolia (MI-11)	Yoder (KS-03)
Bachmann (MN-06)	Benishek (MI-01)
Massie (KY-04)	Johnson (OH-06)
Stockman (TX-36)	Harrison (MD-01)
Crawford (AR-01)	Nugent (FL-11)
Chaffetz (UT-03)	Garrett (NJ-05)
Wagner (MO-02)	Kingston (GA-01)
Hartzler (MO-04)	Lamborn (CO-05)
Huelskamp (KS-01)	Radel (FL-19)
McKinley (WV-01)	Rigell (VA-02)
Graves (MO-06)	Yoho (FL-03)
Jordan (OH-04)	Wenstrup (OH-02)
Gosar (AZ-04)	Olson (TX-22)
Duncan (TN-02)	Flemming (LA-04)
Nuegebauer (TX-19)	Jenkins (KS-02)

 

Many thank yous to Congressman Luetkemeyer for carrying this torch and getting this letter written, signed and sent.

More Unnecessary Duplication and Expansion at DOEd

The proliferation of federal employees is like a rodent infestation problem.  You can attack one nest to eradicate them, but if you don't plug the holes where they are coming into your house, more are bound to appear and multiply.

The President embarked on a campaign to reduce waste in the federal government by eliminating duplication in federal agencies. Good news/bad news there. Less spending yes. Creation of a behemuth agency with no potential for redress also a possibility.  We've already seen how that works out over at EPA.

Education was an area found with many opportunities for cutting waste. For instance, the GAO found:

• Thirteen agencies fund 209 different science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education programs - and 173 of those programs overlap with at least one other program.
• At least 15 major financial literacy programs - including three new ones established by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. 

The Administration has tried to enact efficiencies.  Last year they, along with Congress, addressed four of the GAO's 81 problem areas, and worked on 60 more, but duplication still exists.

And while they are busy getting rid of these overlapping programs, Arne Duncan is over at the DOEd coming up with new ones.  This week he and Kathleen Sebelius met with the Healthy Schools Campaign, a nonprofit group based in Chicago, and Trust for America’s Health to consider "a few small changes they believe could improve students’ academic and physical well-being and work to close achievement gaps." (Ed Week)

Among those changes are:

• The Education Department should expand the work of the office of safe and healthy students and appoint a deputy assistant secretary to the office so it is better equipped to handle emergency situations, such as an outbreak of the H1N1 flu, and provide guidance to states, school districts, and universities.

• The department should appoint a school nurse consultant who can share information with state school nurse consultants and promote school health services and school nursing.

Duncan is looking to expand the DOEd into the area of health, completely ignoring the fact that we have a Center For Disease control who already has plans for infectious disease outbreaks that are implemented through the already existing public health service.  A clear case of unnecessary duplicative federal programs and an equally unnecessary expansion of the role of the department of education.

Funding a consultant at the federal level to promote school nursing and school health services is an ironic twist since many schools are having to cut their nurses or share them because there isn't the funding available for them. How is it our federal government has money for stuff like this in education when our local schools do not?

Further down the list of recommendations is this beauty:

• The department should identify best practices for training teachers about standards related to health and separate standards for integrating health into data tracking and school accountability. Health and wellness also should become part of the criteria for competitive-grant programs for teacher and principal training, parent-engagement strategies, and state longitudinal data systems.

Here is another pathway for getting your private health information into the SLDS. The fact that the government will already have access to your health information through the mandatory electronic medical record system implemented a couple years ago should make this bullet point unnecessary. Are they perhaps going after the health data that doesn't make it into that system because people aren't going to the doctor for it. The fact that it says the school will now be accountable for student health is extremely worrying. DOEd will hold out the carrot of competitive grants to get schools to stand in line to create this system. Will the teacher training include training to spot unreported health issues so they can be entered into the SLDS?  Doesn't that make your teacher also your health spy?

Additional recommendations include changing the rules to allow schools to receive Medicaid funding for all health services they provide (necessary for the expansion of the Community Schools Program).  HHS has already written, but not implemented, that rule. Then there's the National Prevention Council, led by members of President Obama’s Cabinet, who want to explore the potential roles that schools can play in supporting children’s health and wellness. Keep in mind it's just a short skip and a hop from "supporting" to "overseeing" which would make parents and their pediatrician secondary players in children's health.

The financial watchdogs need to be on capitol hill asking the question "Doesn't DOEd need to follow the administration's mission to avoid duplication of federal programs?  Where do they expect to get the money for these new positions and programs?  How do they justify an expansion of their role beyond education like this?"

All these recommendations seem to fly directly in the face of Mr. Obama's mission to reduce government duplication of effort. Someone needs to show the administration they have a hole over at the DOEd that needs to be plugged.  Perhaps Mr. Duncan and Ms. Sebelius didn't get the memo about not recreating existing programs.  Or maybe they did get the memo, just a different one.  Perhaps their memo said that they would be the foundation of the new behemuth agency for Human Development that will be responsible for all aspects of human growth, from birth to death. Somehow that doesn't make me feel any better.

Paper and Ink, Brick and Mortar - Make way for digital delivery

Last week CEOs from technology companies and text book publishers met with senior officials from the DOEd and FCC to talk about the digital revolution in education.  Also present at the table was the LEAD (Leading Education by Advancing Digital) commission, whose goal is to harness technology as a catalyst to education reform.  The four members of LEAD are:

• Columbia University President Lee Bollinger- A liberal bastion in higher education

• Co-Founder of TPG Capital James Coulter- Private equity funds management company because, as Tim McGraw head of McGraw-Hill Financial stated recently, "The growth outlook is really quite healthy for the education business and we expect that to continue." 

• Former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings-  Her consulting company leverages the many public private partnerships she has forged along with the insider experience of the many former capitol hill experts she employs to drive public policy nationwide. Seeing as how, as Secretary of Ed under George Bush, she was a leading proponent of No Child Left Behind, we must question whether her ability to affect national policy is really all that desirable.

• Common Sense Media Founder and CEO Jim Steyer- perhaps a reasonable member, but he may have drunk the kool aid too."The great news is that technology provides us with an opportunity to leapfrog decades of simply maintaining the status quo and to truly revolutionize education in this country quickly, which is exactly what’s needed to remain economically competitive in today’s global economy."

Key quotes from this meeting:

Duncan said "We need your expertise, your leadership, to figure out how every single child has access to content 24/7. I see amazing pockets, islands of success, but it's on the margins. The question is, can we get to scale as a country?" IMPLEMENTATION ON A MASSIVE SCALE THROUGH GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION

James Coulter, "Our goal with this commission is to help policy makers to more swiftly and effectively integrate digital learning into our national curriculum.”  SPEED WITHOUT CONSIDERATION

FCC Chairman Genachowski said, "I’m confident the LEAD Commission’s blueprint will chart a course to ensure that education technology will help prepare students to compete in the 21st century global economy.” GLOBAL FOCUS, SCHOOL TO WORK PROGRAMMING

One of the digital companies represented at the meeting was McGraw-Hill who plans to push for learning programs related to vocational training online and is working on making more learning material and textbooks available across various digital platforms. The company is looking to strike joint ventures with companies to impart skills learning in India and skills training in China. Having perfected such programs in these massive markets, it will be very easy to bring such digital training to America.  And with government's focus on providing 21st century global workers, and businesses like Margaret Spelling's working to push such policies nationally, McGraw-Hill will have a ready made entree to the American market.

That's what all of this is about.  The government helping private business create new markets by making their products mandatory.

LEAD's goal is to produce a blueprint by the end of the year, based on input from teachers, parents, local government and school officials, students, and ed-tech industry leaders, which will include:

• a fact base of current efforts, trends, cost implications, and other obstacles regarding technology adoption in schools; Note they are not evaluating its effectiveness or desirability
• an examination of how tech-driven transformation in other sectors could be carried over to education;  Education is not a business model and applications in other sectors do not necessarily translate to correct application to education.
• the types of policies and funding vehicles that may be needed to ensure that school systems can successfully incorporate technology. It is unclear who is funding the LEAD report or what deals have already been struck to ensure compliance with the policy and funding recommendations developed in the report.

If these people have their way, what will the future classroom look like? It may be much smaller as many students may choose to stay home and work on-line on their own. It will be staffed by less experienced teachers because the software will adapt and challenge each individual student in a way that a teacher never could. The interim, and most immediate step, will be what techsperts are calling "blended learning" where children spend part of their classroom time on computers doing endless worksheets.

From Schools Matter blog

Now Vander Ark is leveraging his connections from 7 years as check delivery boy for the Gates Foundation to shape the education agenda in ways that will pay a handsome return on Bill and Melinda's beneficence over the years.  It's called blended learning, and it represents a poisonous mixture of bad pedagogy and big business; it is gaining footholds in the poorest schools (or in KIPP schools that pretend to be poor) where resistance is the weakest and resources are in shortest supply.  And yes, it does involve computers and computer software and computerized assessments, with the added value of cutting the teaching staff by as much as half while potentially doubling class size.  More tech aides and fewer teachers.


The way it works is to have children taught in shifts, and while one shift has the attention of a flesh and blood teacher, the other shift of children is de-minded by an endless stream of digital worksheets handed out by an indefatigable bank of endlessly-cheerful computers.  In the example of the KIPP kindergarten (a scary prospect, indeed), children are plugged in for half their time in school.  Note, too, that the KIPP "school leader" claims a lack of funds as his rationale, even though KIPP, Inc. has a stash of corporate cash in the hundreds of millions an unlimited stream just for the asking.  The fact is that these most vulnerable children are guinea pigs in an unproven experiment intended to benefit corporate bottom lines, not children.  Note, too, that these children are particularly sensitive to the learned helplessness treatments that are applied during Kipp-notizing summer sessions to maintain total compliance, with or without supervision.

 Like so many things coming out of Washington these days, this seems to be rushing something through that sounds good, but has great potential for unintended consequences.  It attempts to push a business sector that should be able to market itself quite effectively without DC mandates. It shows the trap laid by establishing power bases (like DOEd) in Washington. They cannot resist the temptation to use their power and "make a difference."