Now That Data Mining is on the Public's Radar....

...let's revisit a MEW column on student data mining first published on December 28, 2011 via Emmett McGroarty and Jane Robbins of American Principles Project.  From The Department of Education Just Won The Data Jackpot:

Emmett McGroarty, executive director of the Preserve Innocence Initiative of the American Principles Project and Jane Robbins, a senior fellow with the APP, wrote a great opinion piece that was featured in today's New York Post regarding the new access the Federal Dept of Education just granted itself to a wide range of data about your children. 

Would it bother you to know that the federal Centers for Disease Control had been shown your daughter’s health records to see how she responded to an STD/teen-pregnancy-prevention program? How about if the federal Department of Education and Department of Labor scrutinized your son’s academic performance to see if he should be “encouraged” to leave high school early to learn a trade? Would you think the government was intruding on your territory as a parent? 

The government will have the ability to look at
any data they want to regarding your child.

Under regulations the Obama Department of Education released this month, these scenarios could become reality. The department has taken a giant step toward creating a de facto national student database that will track students by their personal information from preschool through career. Although current federal law prohibits this, the department decided to ignore Congress and, in effect, rewrite the law. Student privacy and parental authority will suffer

How did it happen? Buried within the enormous 2009 stimulus bill were provisions encouraging states to develop data systems for collecting copious information on public-school kids. To qualify for stimulus money, states had to agree to build such systems according to federally dictated standards. So all 50 states either now maintain or are capable of maintaining extensive databases on public-school students. 

The administration wants this data to include much more than name, address and test scores. According to the National Data Collection Model, the government should collect information on health-care history, family income and family voting status. In its view, public schools offer a golden opportunity to mine reams of data from a captive audience. 

The department’s eagerness to get control of all this information is almost palpable. But current federal law prohibits a nationwide student database and strictly limits disclosure of a student’s personal information. So the department has determined that it can overcome the legal obstacles by simply bypassing Congress and essentially rewriting the federal privacy statute. 

Last April, the department proposed regulations that would allow it and other agencies to share a student’s personal information with practically any government agency or even private company, as long as the disclosure could be said to support an evaluation of an “education program,” broadly defined. That’s how the CDC might end up with your daughter’s health records or the Department of Labor with your son’s test scores. 

And you’d have no right to object — in fact, you’d probably never even know about the disclosure. 

Not surprisingly, these proposed regulations provoked a firestorm of criticism. But on Dec. 2, the Department of Education rejected almost all the criticisms and released the regulations. As of Jan. 3, 2012, interstate and intergovernmental access to your child’s personal information will be practically unlimited. The federal government will have a de facto nationwide database of supposedly confidential student information. 

Read more here at the original posting How the Feds are Tracking Your Kids.

One concerning aspect of the re-regulation of FERPA is the data sharing of individual information between federal agencies and private researchers.  Would the Federal Bureau of Investigation want your student data?  If it did, you wouldn't have any idea it was being shared.  It's not illegal anymore to data mine individual student information and share it.  Worried yet?

From The Classic Liberal and The Federal Gestapo:

John W. Whitehead, founder and president of The Rutherford Institute, and author of "A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State," examines the FBI's evolution from a mere law enforcement agency to the harbinger of the total surveillance state.

'

Privacy Freedom Fighters Honored at EPIC. Senators Rand Paul and Ron Wyden Included as Champions of Freedom.

Focusing public attention on emerging privacy and civil liberties issues

I was fortunate to attend the Electronic Privacy Information Center's (EPIC) dinner in Washington DC to honor individuals fighting for individual privacy rights.  From

Join Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) for the annual Champion of Freedom Awards Dinner

2013 Honorees: Sen. Paul Rand (R-KY), Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Martha Mendoza of the Associated Press, and Susan Grant of the Consumer Federation of American.

Lifetime Achievement Award to Hon. David Flaherty Author, Professor, Privacy Official, and Advocate.

I was able to meet Senator Paul and give him Missouri Education Watchdog's concerns on privacy issues.  Please contact Senators Paul and Wyden and thank them for their concern and work on privacy matters. 

**************************************

To: Senator Rand Paul

From: Gretchen Logue and Anne Gassel

            Missouri Education Watchdog and Missouri Coalition Against Common Core

Date: June 3, 2013

RE: Common Core issues and data gathering

***********************************************************************

Dear Senator Paul:

I was here in town to hear you speak and I want to pass on information regarding data gathering and privacy concerns in the public schools.  The US Department of Education provided funding for states to set up longitudinal data P20 systems to track individual students from Preschool through age 20 or into the workforce.   Subsequent to setting these data systems up, the USDOEd through the regulatory process changed FERPA which previously provided privacy protection for this data.  Those changes now        allow this data to be shared with various Federal agencies and private entities.   As you are aware, EPIC has filed a challenge to this regulatory action. 

As it stands, parents have no control to question the gathering of this data or its review on their minor children.  There is no process in place to ensure its accuracy.  Future policy based on this data becomes highly suspect.  In addition, security breaches to this sensitive data can compromise a child’s credit rating before they even have a chance to get a credit card.  Inaccurate data can also impact a student’s academic path.  Parents are gravely concerned about this situation given the manner personal data was used in the current IRS decisions for non-profit status to certain groups.   Data in the wrong hands can become a weapon.

Enclosed please find several articles about data gathering, educational data systems and the government’s blatant personal disregard for personal privacy:

• 04.15.13 MEW article on tracking infants from 24 hours old in Illinois via the Illinois Data Warehouse  System.
• 05.26.13 MEW article on teacher advising students of their Constitutional right not to answer questions about their alcohol and drug use which would be tracked individually and revealed to school personnel.  The teacher was disciplined for mentioning this refusal should be protected under the 5^th Amendment. 
• 05.21.13  MEW article on the dangers of gathering individual student data from a clinical psychologist.  It should be noted that a waiver from HIPAA was granted to the school districts with the changes in the FERPA law.
• The Georgetown Law Journal looked at privacy concerns related to government collection of student data.  At no point in its review did the Journal make the case that the government had a right to collect the data, only that government had the desire to collect the data. We believe the government has an obligation to demonstrate a right to collection of individual personal data that can impact a child from the day he/she is born.

We appreciate you signing Senator Grassley’s letter and we encourage you to work for legislation to re-establish the original intent of FERPA.   Thank you for your attention to this matter.  Please feel free to contact us with any questions.

Gretchen Logue

 Anne Gassel

************************************

Please consider a donation to EPIC for the work it does to protect individual privacy concerns.

Will Your Child's Iris Scans Head for the Clouds....Like the Army's?

What is the Learning Registry gathering and sharing?

Why is the Department of Defense partially funding the Learning Registry?

The practice of iris scans being taken on children for "bus information and safety" was confirmed by the Polk County Board of Education.  These scans were performed and parental consent was not asked for nor given before the scans took place.  The company has assured parents the information has been destroyed but how does a parent know if this is true?  If information is sent to the cloud or stored elsewhere electronically, is it ever eliminated completely?  Who/what has access to this student biometric information?  Is there a digital footprint (or eye scan) student dossier hovering somewhere?

Gathering of biometric information and storing it in the cloud is not confined to the education industry.  The Army is also utilizing iris scans for data.  From Army’s Fingerprint and Iris Databases Head for the Cloud:

The next time U.S. soldiers snap a picture of your eye or scan your face, they’re likely to store all that personal, physical data in the cloud. 

The Army’s Intelligence command recently awarded a sole-source contract to bring the classified Defense Cross-Domain Analytical Capability, a database storing various kinds of security-relevant information the Army collects, onto the proverbial “cloud” of distributed servers and networks. Among the focuses of the project: “integrating Biometrics into the cloud,” according to a description of the contract.

The effort “involves the Entity management and tracking system for Biometrics/Human Terrain Facial recognition capability (photos, video) and edge-to-Cloud Enterprise Messaging (Corps/Division Node to/from Handheld,” says the Army Intelligence and Security Command. “Human Terrain” refers to an Army program in Iraq and Afghanistan that sought to map unfamiliar tribal networks and other social structures. Integrating that into an intelligence database is a major shift, but more on that in a second. 

"Human Terrain" might be an apt name for tracking students as well.  Student iris scans and fingerprinting provides unique identifiers for students ostensibly for safety and speed of lunch lines.  But how else could biometric information be used in the future?  Could it be used for intelligence purposes or for other tracking purposes?  Could students be part of a "targeting cycle" in the future? 

...the military is into biometrics in a big way. It’s created and maintained biometrics databases containing literally millions of iris and fingerprint scans from Iraqis and Afghans. The Iraq database has outlasted the Iraq war: it resides permanently at U.S. Central Command in Tampa.

Evidently unsatisfied with the clunky ViewFinder-esque mobile tools for collecting biometric data in the field, in February the Pentagon inked a $3 million research deal with California’s AOptix to check out its smartphone-based biometric identifier, built on an iPhone and iOS. Then there’s all the Pentagon’s additional research into identifying people by the unique pungencies of their body odor and the ways they walk.

It’s worth noting that the architects of the Army’s star-crossed “human terrain” mapping, a much-criticized attempt at warzone anthropology, swore up and down that their interviews with tribal leaders had nothing to do with gathering intelligence. That distinction had much to do with the distaste many anthropologists had with working alongside the military, but architects Montgomery McFate and Steve Fondacaro said they weren’t spying because they weren’t part of the military’s “targeting cycle.”

“[G]iven the vast collection and reporting effort that supports lethal targeting, using HTS [the Human Terrain System] to fulfill this function would be redundant and duplicative,” they wrote in 2012. (.PDF) “Whereas [human intelligence] requires highly specific information about individuals in order to capture or kill, social science, as practiced in HTS, seeks broad contextual information for nonlethal purposes.”

The biometric information for the Army identifies adversaries but using this information for social science purposes requires broad contextual information to be valid.  Think about the combining of student iris scans/fingerprints/ healthcare information with educational/personal information data tracking.  Will the 400 plus points National Education Data Model data set be combined with student biometric information?  

Does this Army scanning and fingerprinting align itself with the educational practice of student tracking?  There is a relationship between the Learning Registry and the Department of Defense:

The Learning Registry is a joint effort of the Department of Education and the Department of Defense, with support of the White House and numerous federal agencies, non-profit organizations, international organizations and private companies.

Key members of the collaboration are:

• The Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative (ADL) from Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (OUSD P&R)
  
• The Office of Educational Technology at the US Department of Education

This effort, begun in 2010, is creating a set of technical protocols as a platform for innovation by content authors and aggregators. Applications built to harness the power of harvesting and analyzing the Learning Registry data will allow educators to quickly find content specific to their unique needs. The Learning Registry will store more than traditional descriptive data (metadata)--it will also allow sharing of ratings, comments, downloads, standards alignment, etc.
This effort has been driven by a call for increased openness, sharing and use of digital learning resources as described in both the National Education Technology Plan and National Broadband Plan. The specifications have been developed to support learning organizations from across all education sectors.

What is the Learning Registry?

The Learning Registry is a new approach to capturing, sharing, and analyzing learning resource data to broaden the usefulness of digital content to benefit educators and learners.

The Learning Registry is not a website or repository… it's not a search engine… and it's not a replacement for the excellent sources of online learning content that already exist…

The Learning Registry is an open source technical system designed to facilitate the exchange of data behind the scenes, and an open community of resource creators, publishers, curators, and consumers who are collaborating to broadly share resources, as well as information about how those resources are used by educators in diverse learning environments across the Web.

Is this why FERPA regulations needed to be changed by Arne Duncan?  If the Department of Defense is contributing to an educational system of data gathering, wouldn't the DOD want access to determine the effectiveness of the system?  Do you think it would also want access to the data?  Will your child's data eventually be stored at the US Central Command in Tampa?  Did parents ever give consent for any of this biometric information be taken from their children?


Please note: The information in this post is copyrighted. The proper citation is:
Logue, G (June 2013). "Will Your Child's Iris Scans Head for the Clouds...Like the Army's?".  Retrieved (date) from the Missouri Education Watchdog site: http://www.missourieducationwatchdog.com/

 

A Clinical Psychologist's Concerns With Student Data Gathering

Last week during the House Education Committee hearing on SB210 Representative Margo McNeil asked witness Gretchen Logue what she was so worried about with the data gathering. Specifically she asked, "What is your worst case scenario with the data gathering?" Perhaps this article, written by a clinical psychologist, can offer a perspective on the dangers of gathering individual student data that Rep. McNeil could not herself imagine.

From Utahnsagainstcommoncore.com March 19, 2013 Dr. Gary Thompson

By way of background, I’m an African American Doctor of Clinical Psychology (Psy.D.) currently serving as Director of Clinical Training & Community Advocacy at a private child psychology clinic in South Jordan, Utah.  I completed undergraduate education at both the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.  In addition to my personal experiences involving my four children in public schools, I have completed multiple thousands of hours in training/therapy/assessment/legal advocacy work with children in both the private and public school settings in multiple western states.   I am also the author of a award winning doctoral project/dissertation which tackled the ago old problem of why many African American school aged children underperform in public schools titled, “Cracking the Da Vince Code of Cognitive Assessment of African American School Aged Children:  A Guide for Parents, Clinicians & Educators” (Thompson, G. 2008).

Dr. Thompson goes on to clarify that he is not an education professional and recognizes both pros and cons of common core standards themselves. He limits his comments to his area of expertise, "psychological and educational assessment/testing, as well as privacy acts surrounding the use of these tests in both private and educational setting."

He writes, "According to the U.S. Department of Education, CCSS will authorize the use of testing instruments that will measure the “attributes, dispositions, social skills, attitude’s and intra personal resources” of public school students under CCSS (USDOE Feb, 2013 Report).  In a nutshell, CCSS simply states that it will develop highly effective assessments that measures….well….almost 'everything'.”

A careful, or even a casual review of a “comprehensive evaluation” would clearly show that the level of information provided about a particular child is both highly sensitive and extremely personal in nature. They are also extremely accurate.  In a private clinic such as ours, we follow strict privacy guidelines regarding patient privacy (HIPPA) and when dealing with educational institutions, we also make sure that we comply with the FERPA Act (Federal Education Reporting & Privacy Act). 

And here is where Dr. Thompson lays out the problem with the data being gathered by the federal government.

"The accuracy of psychological testing has grown in the past 10 years to astonishing levels.  The same tests used in our clinic for assessments, are used in part by federal law enforcement agencies, the military, local police departments, and the Central Intelligence Agency. (Interesting enough, these agencies are also interested in finding out about alleged terrorist’s, serial killers, or airline pilots “attributes, dispositions, social skills, attitudes and intra personal resources”).  When placed in the “right” hands of trained mental health professionals, psychological testing can save lives.   Placed in the “wrong” hands, psychological testing can ruin lives as well as cause psychological trauma to people if they have knowledge that their results were used for nefarious purposes."

Below are issues regarding CCSS “testing” policies that have not been addressed by the Common Core to State’s Governors’, State Superintendents, State School Boards, local school district superintendents, local school boards, to parents of children in public school education:

1. Common Core does not address what types of tests will be utilized on our children.
2. Common Core does not address, specifically, exactly who is developing these tests.
3. Common Core does not address the fact that these tests have not yet been developed, and are not available for public consumption or private review by clinical psychology  researchers and psychometric professionals.
4. Common Core does not address if the soon to be completed tests will be subjected to the same rigorous peer review process that ALL testing instruments are subjected to prior to being released to mental health professionals for their use in the private sector.
5. Common Core does not state which public school employees would be administering or interpreting these tests.   There is a reason that School Psychologists cannot “practice” outside of their scope in school districts.   As hard working and as wonderful as this group is, their training pales in comparison to the average local clinical psychologist.
6. Common Core does not address the well documented, peer-reviewed fact that both African American and Latino students, due to cultural issues, tend to have skewed testing results when cultural issues are not addressed prior to the initiation of such testing.  This should probably be addressed if these results are going to be following a student “from cradle to high school graduation.” 
7. Lastly, once these highly intimate, powerful, and most likely inaccurate testing results are completed, who EXACTLY will have access to all of this data?   Common Core DOES address this issue and it is the subject of the next section.

Records do not leave our clinic unless the guardians of the children instruct us, or unless a District Court judge orders the release of the records.   In some cases, we are even ethically obligated to fight court orders that request private mental health records.   

Common Core State Standards radically changes this game.  

Buried in all of the fine print of the CCSS is a provision that allows participating school districts to ignore HIPPA protections.   The newly revised FERPA laws grants school districts and states HIPAA privacy waivers.  Department of Health & Human Services Regulation Section 160.103 states, in part,: “Protected health information EXCLUDES individually identifiable health information in education records covered by the Family Education Rights & Privacy Act (FERPA), as amended 20 U.S.C. 1232 g”.

CCSS also states that this “information” may be distributed to “organizations conducting studies for, or on behalf of, educational agencies or institutions to develop, validate, or administer predictive testing.” (CCSS (6)(i). 

In summary CCSS allows the following by law:

1. Grants school districts a waiver from FERPA in terms of deleting identifying information on their records.
2. Allows school districts to then give these identifiable records basically to anyone who they deem to have an viable interest with these records.
3. These organization or individuals chosen by the government to use this data to develop highly accurate predictive tests with no stated ethical procedures, guidelines, or institutional controls.   (What are they exactly trying to “predict”?”
4. All without written parental consent.  

The data being gathered in the P-20 database model, the 400 data points, in some cases are circumstances of birth, but in most cases are really a record of personal choices and actions. They are evidence of lives lived (e.g. level of college completed by parents, religious affiliation), the same kind of evidence used in criminal investigations to determine motive or involvement. As evidence they should share the protections of the 4th amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures. The 5th amendment right not to incriminate oneself is stripped from children before they even know they have such a right. Their data set will be used to map out their life course. The ways in which the government proposes to use the data amount to a sentence for children that is limited only by their willingness to exert the effort necessary to break out of the path the system determines for them.

Perhaps of greater concern Representative McNeil is that the government's need, as laid out in regulatory language that defines what they want to know, will come to override our constitutionally protected rights like those described in the 4th and 5th amendments. These rights are supposed to be inalienable. They exist merely because we exist. The concern is that the government will be successful in convincing the people that its desire for something is greater than our rights, as the Georgetown Law Journal claimed. The concern is that through nothing more than mere regulation by a bureaucrat, our foundational document, the Bill of Rights, may be obliterated.

Illinois Tracking Students from 24 Hours Old to 3 Years Old. "Baby Talk" Data Set Revealed

We know that data sets have been compiled on students, but in Missouri, we are told by our state agency that it is "not its intent" to compile personal information data on students.

While it might not be DESE's stated intent to gather personal student data, it may inconsequential if mandates exist requiring state educational agencies or local school districts to track students and provide certain data.  Illinois will be gathering data on children from 24 hours old to 3 years old in its Student Information System (SIS).   It is not stated whether this is mandated by a federal requirement, but this information taken by the state on children less than 3 years old includes data beyond the usual information of name, address, courses taken and attendance.

The data mining set begins on page 52/92 from All Schools Meeting May 2011: Illinois State Board of  of School Year 2011 and Planning for School Year 2012:

Demographics and Early Childhood (Ages 3-5) File Format

Changes

Removing

 “Pre-K At Risk Classroom”

Replace with Placeholder 1

Student must be identified as one of the following when student is enrolled

Preschool for All (PFA)

Head Start

Pre-K Title I

Local or Other Funding

New SIS Data Collections for School Year 2012

Birth to 3 Data Collection

Students Ages 1 day old to less than three years of age identified with Grade Level

‘00’

If Student is Birth to 3, Full Time Equivalent (FTE) must be 1.0

When student is enrolled in Grade “00” a Birth to 3 record is created

All Mandatory Birth to 3 data must be entered before the student can be exited

Birth to 3

Data Elements

EI Number                                                                       Optional

Program Model                                                               Mandatory

Service location (modality) for prevention

initiative programs                                                          Mandatory

Screening for eligibility tool                                          Mandatory

Total number of home visits during the year             Mandatory

Total number of parent groups/sessions

attended during the year                                                Mandatory

Total number of hours of services for student

per week                                                                             Mandatory

Student born with a low birth weight                          Mandatory

Is student living in a foster home                                 Mandatory

Was parent married at time of student's birth           Optional

Biological mother's date of birth                                   Optional

Student's family is receiving child support                 Mandatory

Student's family is receiving TANF                              Mandatory

Student‘s family is receiving WIC                                 Mandatory

Student's family is receiving food stamps                   Mandatory

Student's family is receiving a Housing Subsidy       Mandatory

What is this program of tracking 1 day old babies to 3 years old called?  It's called "Baby Talk" (pg 65/92):

 Who has access to this data and why is this data gathered?  From The Illinois Longitudinal Data System Project:

The Illinois State Board of Education, along with our Education Partners, is now actively moving forward with the design and development of the state-wide Illinois Longitudinal Data System (ILDS).  The system, when fully deployed, will provide data to help to track the outcomes of Illinois students as they progress from Pre-K through Postsecondary education, and as they enter the workforce.  Longitudinal data supports an in-depth, comprehensive view of students’ progress and will ultimately help guide policymakers on where to invest time and energy to most effectively improve student achievement in our State.

The ILDS is defined by Public Act 96-0107 and enabled through federal funding, and instructs the State Board of Education to link student test scores, length of enrollment and graduation records over time.  The system also will connect students to career planning and resources, with the potential to facilitate the application process for financial aid and records transfer for students.
ILDS will serve a large stakeholder group, including:

• Illinois State Board of Education
• Local Education Authorities
• Regional offices of education and intermediate service centers
• Parents and other members of the general public
• State Legislatures
• News media
• Research organizations
• Postsecondary Institutions
• State workforce and higher education agencies
• Education Partners

The ILDS Project has five major components:

1. Establishment of a Data Advisory Committee
2. Development of an Enterprise-wide Data Architecture
3. Improved Data Quality through Data Stewardship
4. Development of an Education Enterprise Data Warehouse
5. Linking of the ISBE Unique Student Identifier with Postsecondary and Employment Data

The career/work tracking of students in Illinois now begins when a baby is at least 24 hours old.  Why would Missouri or any other state with common core standards and longitudinal adata systems be any different?    Like Illinois, a stated goal of the Missouri P20 longitudinal data system is to track human capital into the workforce:

These data also can be linked to external data sets on employment, labor needs across sectors, economic development, community assets, and so forth.

  

Why is it necessary for the government to track a mother's marital status, federal/state assistance received, low birth weight of the baby, etc?  If a baby is born with health problems into a one-parent home that depends on governmental assistance, does it put the child on a certain track?  Why do you think tracking begins at 24 hours old instead of a newborn?

Finite resources must be used appropriately on the human capital most likely to reap the advantages of those resources and this particular child is not starting off as a good investment based on its data.  Note that the baby is not the only person tracked.  Parent(s) are also tracked as to their behavior.