What Happens if the System Knows Everything About Your Child

At a hearing this spring on Common Core, Representative Margo McNeil (D-MO69) asked what opponents of data gathering were so worried about with the schools collecting and sharing data. Her question demonstrates the left's lack of imagination, and frankly lack of historical knowledge, about what could go wrong with data collected and held by the government.

The Freedom Outpost recently exposed a little known provision (and there are so many more yet to be discovered) of the Affordable Care Act that would allow government agencies to carry out home inspections.

Constitutional attorney and author Kent Masterson Brown states:

“This is not a “voluntary” program. The eligible entity receiving the grant for performing the home visits is to identify the individuals to be visited and intervene so as to meet the improvement benchmarks. A homeschooling family, for instance, may be subject to “intervention” in “school readiness” and “social-emotional developmental indicators.” A farm family may be subject to “intervention” in order to “prevent child injuries.” The sky is the limit.

Looking into the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV - pronounced  me-eccccccchv) Competitive Grant program we find all the reasons a home visit may be deemed necessary by the state.

"Priority for Serving High-Risk Populations and Programmatic Areas of Emphasis As directed in the legislation , successful applicants will give priority to providing services to the following populations: 

a) Eligible families who reside in communities in need of such services, as identified in the statewide needs assessment required under subsection (b)(1)(A). (Living in the wrong zip code. I thought we didn't want to condemn people because of their zip code.)

b) Low-income eligible families. (Anyone receiving EBT, WIC, Medicaid, etc.  If you accept government hand-outs they have a right to come into your home.)

c) Eligible families who are pregnant women who have not attained age 21. (Gotta love that families here is described as A pregnant woman, and one who has reached the age of majority. Once you can drink, they can't touch you.)

d) Eligible families that have a history of child abuse or neglect or have had interactions with child welfare services. (Child protective services decides you need a visit. They have such a stellar track record of honest reporting. We should all sleep so much better now.)

e) Eligible families that have a history of substance abuse or need substance abuse treatment. 

f) Eligible families that have users of tobacco products in the home. (They will know who you are because of your medical record.)

g) Eligible families that are or have children with low student achievement. (Here Representative McNeil is what we are concerned about. The state now has your students academic record. They allow other departments to have access to that data and that may now trigger a home inspection by: CPS, HHS, or other social service agencies.


 h) Eligible families with children with developmental delays or disabilities. (Simply because you give birth to a child with special needs, the state now has a right to come into your home.)

i) Eligible families who, or that include individuals who, are serving or formerly served in the Armed Forces, including such families that have members of the Armed Forces who have had multiple deployments outside of the United States." 

These are the programs which will receive emphasis for funding by the grant:

• Improvements in maternal, child, and family health 
• Effective implementation and expansion of evidence-based home visiting programs or systems with fidelity to the evidence-based model selected 
• Development of statewide or multi-State home visiting programs 
• Development of comprehensive early childhood systems that span the prenatal-through-age-eight continuum 
• Outreach to high-risk and hard-to-engage populations
• Development of a family-centered approach to home visiting 
• Outreach to families in rural or frontier areas (You moved out of the city to get away from all the governmental intrusion and now they are targeting you for more intrusion.)
• The development of fiscal leveraging strategies to enhance program sustainability (Here they acknowledge that once again the Federal government is only providing seed money and states accepting it will be on the hook for finding their own funds to continue to operate these programs.)

Now take a look at the videos Pearson (the largest education industry supplier) released displaying their vision of the future of education. Danette Clark wrote a great piece on this:

"Although the technology shown by Pearson is impressive, these videos confirm the fears of many teachers about what will be expected of them and many parents regarding intrusive data mining of their children’s personal information.

In these videos, educators’ teaching styles are monitored by real-time cameras in every classroom and evaluated on the use of specific points of instruction. It goes without saying that dictating specific teaching strategies makes for big problems, especially if those strategies are used for indoctrination purposes. Just look to Texas for testimony of teachers that say they were reprimanded and threatened with dismissal if they failed to teach in the exact manner directed by CSCOPE.

This vision of the future also entails teachers and school administrators having instant access to an individualized schedule on each student – not just an in-school/class schedule, but a schedule of the student’s activities and whereabouts outside of school.

In the video, Victoria’s Story: School of Thought–A Vision for the Future of Learning, Pearson demonstrates ease of access to students’ personal lives by showing a teacher instantaneously pulling Victoria’s schedule and sharing with another teacher that Victoria has soccer practice after school that time of year."  (read the full post here)

My own school collected drivers license numbers in order for students to be issued a parking pass. I have heard from other parents around the state that their schools requested insurance information as well.  I was expected to be mollified by the fact that my child's school didn't enter these numbers electronically. The school official, however, was not able to give me a valid reason for collecting this data (yes, I was given a few reasons, none of which stood up to logical scrutiny.) There were several alternative ways in the scenarios the official described in which such data might be needed that the data could be obtained which would not require the school to collect it at all.

Schools in general have no sensitivity to the data they are requesting and refuse to consider the potential abuse of such data. Parents need to push back to stem the growing sense of entitlement to student data. If a school cannot demonstrate a serious need for data, like driver's licenses, then they should not collect it. When it comes to data, abstinence is the best policy. Even if they can supply a need, they still do not have a right to all your child's personal information much less information about your family and such collection should receive serious public scrutiny and input.

Head Start and Hurricane Sandy: Expensive Disasters?

Disasters:  Some are man-made and some are natural. 

Who would have thought federal funding for Hurricane Sandy victims would include money for Head Start? Why was more money for Head Start included in this package when it has been admitted by Health and Human Services (HHS) the programs has been a failure in creating long term educational results for children?

According to Jay P. Greene in Head Start Revealed:

Despite the obvious effort to delay and conceal the disappointing results from the official and high quality evaluation of Head Start, the Wall Street Journal shines the light on the issue in today’s editorial.  DC’s manipulating scumbags might want to take note that efforts to hide negative research might just draw more attention.  It’s comforting to see that the world may sometimes look more like Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment than Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors.

The Journal reveals that Head Start supporters have not only ignored the latest study, but they are trying to sneak an extra $100 million for Head Start into the relief package for victims of Hurricane Sandy.  They also note that the most recent disappointing Head Start result is just the latest in a string of studies failing to find benefits from the program despite a cumulative expenditure of more than $180 billion.

Heritage Foundation reports on the study:

The timing of the release raises questions about whether HHS was trying to bury the findings in the report, which shows, among other outcomes, that by third grade, the $8 billion Head Start program had little to no impact on cognitive, social-emotional, health, or parenting practices of participants. On a few measures, access to Head Start had harmful effects on children.

Now that the report has finally been published, the findings of the scientifically rigorous evaluation that tracked 5,000 three- and four-year-old children through third grade should inform federal policymakers who allocate billions of dollars annually to Head Start. Moreover, Congress will soon vote on a supplemental aid package to Hurricane Sandy victims that includes $100 million in additional Head Start funding. The Senate Appropriations Committee notes that 265 Head Start centers will receive the funding, which equates to more than $377,000 per center.

...President Obama has pledged to use only one test when determining which education programs to fund: “It’s not whether an idea is liberal or conservative,” Obama stated, “but whether it works.”   HHS’s third-grade follow-up evaluation makes it unequivocally clear that Head Start fails that test.

HHS has released definitive evidence that the federal government’s 48-year experiment with Head Start has failed children and left taxpayers a tab of more than $180 billion. In the interest of children and taxpayers, it’s time for this nearly half-century experiment to come to an end. If the federal government continues to fund Head Start, policymakers should allow states to make their Head Start dollars portable, following children to a private preschool provider of choice.

So why is the Federal Government funding a program (slipping it into a hurricane relief package) that does not deliver the desired results?  In Texas, the clamor in the legislature for more federal funding for education gives you an idea of this type of government thinking and doling out money.  From texastribune.com:

The 83^rd Legislature started with good news from the state comptroller: Susan Combs told lawmakers they’d have more than $101 billion to spend in the next session. Education advocates are already asking for more dough to head to Texas classrooms, including preschools.

Kara Johnson, with Texans Care for Children, a child advocacy group, quotes a 2006 study from the Bush school at Texas A&M University that shows it’s smart budgeting to support early childhood education.

“What the study found was that when you invest in high-quality care — the key is high quality — you get a 350 percent return on your investment," Johnson said. "Every dollar invested $3.50 back for local communities. And that’s at a minimum.”

Education is a good return on investment....to whom and for whom?  Local communities receive a 350% in what manner?  More bureaucratic jobs?  What does the child receive?  A "head start" in schooling that disappears by third grade?

The study Ms. Johnson references is not linked so it is difficult to determine exactly how many children were tested, if they had learning disabilities, were ESL students, low income, etc...and how these results were reached.  It is also impossible to determine if these children were followed after preschool and if so, how long the children were tracked.  There is also no definition of what is "high quality" and who/what agency determines the measurements.

Is an additional $100 Million Head Start investment and the increased call for universal  preschool for all children a good investment in education for the students or is it a good investment for the providers of mandated/federally funded initiatives?  As the WSJ article states in Greene's article:

Like so many programs directed at the poor, Head Start is well-intentioned, and that’s enough for self-congratulatory progressives to keep throwing money at it despite the outcomes. But misleading low-income parents about the efficacy of a program is cruel and wastes taxpayer dollars at a time when the country is running trillion-dollar deficits.

A government that cared about results would change or end Head Start, but instead Congress will use the political cover of disaster relief to throw more good money after proven bad policy.

That  proven "bad policy" of enrolling children in preschool seems to be overlooked by Kirkwood (MO) School District as well.  From The Kirkwood Webster Times:

Kirkwood Early Childhood Center Principal Melissa Sandbothe presented the board with an update on the center.

Sandbothe has her sights set on the future with the goal of developing a pilot design for universal preschool in Kirkwood. The purpose of the initiative is to give parents meaningful choice and assistance in choosing the child care and education arrangements that are right for their family when preparing their child for kindergarten. (MEW note on bolded sentence: Is Sandbothe stating preschool is ultimately a child care arrangement since the educational gains do not last much past 3rd grade?) The primary goal is to provide a community-wide system of quality early childhood options that allow every age-eligible Kirkwood resident student to access one year of high quality pre-kindergarten education. The estimated budget for implementing such a pilot program is $825,000.

Sandbothe, who stressed that the initiative is still just a vision, said she wants to implement the program so all children have an opportunity to attend preschool.

"The goal is to provide access to children who wouldn't otherwise have it - that's my long-term goal and vision for the community," she said. "I know there are a lot of questions and I don't have all of the answers, but I want to start the conversation."

Greene's article had one comment that may answer "why" Congress, school districts and states are throwing more good money after proven bad policy.  They might want to ponder the reason "why" before more time and money are spent on programs that have been proven not to attain their goals:

I find that the history of Head Start made far more sense once I knew Professor Mastery Learner that became Outcomes Based Education, Benjamin Bloom, was also the father of Head Start.

I also found it interesting that Head Start officially added a social and emotional learning component last year just like the real Common Core implementation where it is coming in as PBIS under RTI and the federal disabilities law, a Positive School Climate executive order, and many of those NCLB waivers to the states.

That SEL provision to Head Start also dovetails to the timing of AdvancED, the accreditation holding company, beginning to accredit early learning programs. Since the K-12 Quality Standards are all about the physical, emotional, and social needs of students with no mention of intellectual, we can expect something comparable for the little tykes. That’s a lot of years of affective manipulation as part of the student Growth and achievement being measured.

Am I the only one who tracks back to the definitions of the terms being used? It puts the Common Core in a completely different but accurate light than the hype.

The reader may have a valid point.  Reformers are trying to corral 3 year old children under Common Core like standards to gather student data for a managed workforce and/or to supply "free" daycare.  Outcome based education and state run daycare may finally be realized.  Maybe this is what Texans Care for Children, school districts and legislators have in mind for the ROI on money spent on preschoolers. 

"Um...no...data isn't all that important." - Bill Gates

Don't worry.  Every decision will be data driven.

We've heard that a million times lately.  It is meant to reassure us.  But we are finding more and more of this data, that somebody just HAD to collect,  that is not seeing the light of day and that should concern us.

Forbes just reported that Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been delaying the release of the final results of the Congressionally-mandated evaluation of the federal Head Start program, which impacts millions of American children. The study of 5,000 preschoolers was completed in 2008, but the final results have been delayed for four years. Why so long HHS?  Could it be the "data" showed this?

"The study found that, compared to their control group peers, Head Start failed to boost students’ cognitive abilities across 41 measures. Moreover, first grade teachers reported that former Head Start students were actually less prepared in math than the non-Head Start students."

 $180 billion over the life of the program and the data are beginning to show that it doesn't do very much good.  The part of the report we are still waiting on is whether the program had effects on third graders which is due out this year (maybe).  Strangely, ed reformers like Michelle Rhee and Howard Dean are out pushing their 0-6 agenda, trying to get children into government run formal education as early as possible. The data should have every parent asking, "Why?"

More data that is not seeing the light of day comes from the popular Value Added program for teacher performance evaluation. Using the actual value-added scores of thousands of New York City elementary school teachers from the school years that ended in 2006 and in 2007, one researcher found absolutely no correlation between student performance and value added scores.

From the author himself,

In any introductory statistics course, you learn that a graph like the one above is a textbook case of “no correlation”. I had Excel draw a line of best fit anyway, and calculate an r-squared correlation coefficient. Its value? 0.057 — once again, just about as close to zero correlation as you are ever going to find in the real world.

In plain English, what that means is that there is essentially no such thing as a teacher who is consistently wonderful (or awful) on this extremely complicated measurement scheme. How teacher X does one year in “value-added” in no way allows anybody to predict how teacher X will do the next year. They could do much worse, they could do much better, they could do about the same.   -  Gary Rubenstein

If the people at the administrative top are going to keep pushing to collect more data, like the longitudinal data system, then we need to start demanding that they follow the data. When something they're trying out through the free laboratory of our school system doesn't work, they must follow the data and eliminate it.

Why Should You Stand Up Now?

The catalog of dystopian literature that is required reading for middle and high school is quite large; from 1984, to Brave New World, to The Giver. So you would think that with all of us reading these novels, and seeing the wretched outcome which began with the best intentions, we would be on our guard against having any of that happen in our real world. Unfortunately, these books tend to plop you down in the middle of the new "utopian" society and rarely take you through the path that society traveled to get there. Recognizing that path is critical to preventing society from ending up in the dystopia. Andy Andrews has written a book that brings that path into focus as he tries to answer the question, "How Do You Kill 11 Million People?"

The book is a short read but it effectively lays out the position that we at MEW have been trying to make for almost  a year now. Andrews chooses to examine, from among many possible examples, the way the Nazi government was able to eradicate 11 million people with the minimal use of force and personnel. Through a policy of lies and incremental changes, they were able to ultimately herd people, who sometimes outnumbered the Nazi guards 100:1, to the concentration camps. The general public was not willing to envision where the incremental changes being imposed might be going.  By the time they were confronted with that reality, their fellow citizens were passing through their towns in cattle cars toward the death camps.  Even then many were not willing to face their own failure to stop the small changes that were made earlier.

One particularly chilling passage from Pastor Erwin Lutzer's book When a Nation Forgets God, illustrates how human tendencies can lead to such horrific outcomes.  A German eyewitness recalls what people thought in the last 30's. (emphasis mine),

We heard stories of what was happening to the Jews, but we tried to distance ourselves from it, because we felt, what could anyone do to stop it?

Each Sunday morning we would hear the train whistle blowing in the distance, when the wheels coming over the tracks.  We became disturbed when we heard cries coming from the train as it passed by. We realized that it was carrying Jews like cattle in the cars!

Week after week the whistle would blow.  We dreaded to hear the sounds of those wheels because we knew that we would hear the cries of the Jews en route to a death camp. Their screams tormented us.

We knew the time the train was coming and when we heard the whistle blow we began singing hymns. By the time the train came past our church, we were singing at the top of our voices.  If we heard the screams, we sang the more loudly and soon we heard them no more.

Years have passed and no one talks about it now, but I still hear that train whistle in my sleep.

The German people were not uneducated or ill informed.  They had a great Prussian education system and lots of news sources. But their leaders delivered the ultimate plan to them in stages and lied to them during the implementation phases to keep the people from rising up when they surely had the numbers (and clean conscience) to put a stop to it.  This is why groups like Missouri Education Watchdog, Homeschooling United, and Truth in American Education are trying to expose the grand plan for education and get parents to speak up when the incremental changes are being imposed.

So yes, Parkway PE teachers may have just wanted a fun tool to get kids to think about exercising more.  But the P20 database is already set up which can track individual student data. So, as long as it's been collected, what's to stop someone from adding the PolarGoFit data in there. (Maybe under: Amount of Non-school Activity Involvement , Health Condition Progress Report,  Overall Health Status)  From this point on, whatever the local school administration intended for that data is irrelevant. The data is out of their hands and the grand plan moves forward.

The plans already exist to share data from the LDS with various government agencies like Health and Human Services. This is where the data gets tied in to Obamacare.  The government already plans to pay for everyone's health care which means they really do care about what you are doing now to maintain good health. They have convinced people that all health care policy will be reasonable and responsible.  How do we know that?  Because they have promised it will all be based on data. Where will HHS get this data?  Why, from the P20 LDS of course. So you can pretty much count on that data about how sedentary you or your child was to be used to make decisions about the type and amount of health care services you or your child receive in the future.  This is not wild conjecture.  This is fact and it is pretty logical. What started as a simple accommodation on your part to wear some sort of tracking device will likely become the means by which you will be denied certain care in the future.

To all the parents who do end up going to their school board to fight against things like the PolarGoFit bracelets or the banning of home-packed lunches, while you may feel a little like someone who brings a tank to a knife fight, keep in mind that you may in fact be dismantling the train tracks before the boxcars can be loaded with human beings.