Florida School Board Confirms They Have Ok'd Iris Scan Without Parental Permission

What would you do if you found out your school scanned your child's iris for the all critical purpose of enabling your child not to have to "carry an identification card?"  Parents in Florida are answering that question today.

A mother in Florida posted last week on Facebook that she thought her third grader had been scanned at school, but she could get no confirmation of that, that is until today when she received this letter from the school board.

In case you couldn't read it, it reads in part,

"The program is called Eye Swipe-nano. It is a safe non-invasive iris reader. It simply takes a picture of the iris, which is unique to every individual. The Eye Swipe-nano is an ideal replacement for the card based system since your child will not have to be responsible for carrying an identification card. With this program, we will be able to identify when and where a student gets on the bus, when they arrive at their school location, when and what bus the student boards and disembarks in the afternoon. This is an effort to further enhance the safety of our students."

Oh, well as long as its non-invasive on the collection part I guess I won't worry that you now have a way to track my child's every location without chipping them. All you need is one of those fancy iris readers that apparently can be installed anywhere. And of course, you have now given my child's uniquely identifiable feature to a private company without my permission. Those companies are never subject to federal requests to turn over data, like say Google or AT&T were.

And who decided this high tech privacy invading solution was needed?  That's right, the transportation department.  Given yesterday's story of a 6 year old boy who was suspended for having a plastic gun the size of a quarter on the bus, I wonder how long parents will continue to allow their children to ride the bus.

Schools regularly operate on the principle of "It is easier to ask forgiveness later than to ask permission beforehand." (Parkway wrist monitors) This culture must be stopped and it's up to parents to stop it. Do not take any government agent's assurance that they will never abuse the privilege of having access to this data. Say it with me, "No data collection on my child without my permission."

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.

Why You Should Read The FERPA Form This Year

Many parents are busy filling out dozens of school forms right now.  Mixed in that paperwork is the FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) form that indicates your approval for the school to share your child's data. In years past most people paid little attention to this form as it seemed to apply mostly to sharing transcripts with colleges, military recruiters and school ring companies. They were most critical to families with messy domestic situations, people in witness protection or extreme privacy fanatics.

But given the regulatory changes that were approved recently by the DoEd, more parents should be paying closer attention to what they put in those forms. The new FERPA rules to allow all data collected by the school to be shared with the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Corrections, private researchers and other vendors approved by DoEd. They received no legislative approval for this change.

Here are links to just some of the letters that were sent by organizations (incuding EPIC) that expressed concerns over the change to FERPA.

1) American Assoc. of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers
http://www.nacua.org/documents/FERPA_AACRAOLetterMay2011.pdf
2) ACLU
http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/ACLU_Comments_on_Changes_to_the_Family_Educational_Rights_and_Privacy_Act_FERPA.pdf
3) Electronic Privacy Information Center
http://epic.org/privacy/student/EPIC_FERPA_Comments.pdf
4) National School Boards Association
http://www.nsba.org/SchoolLaw/Issues/FERPA-Comments.pdf
5) American Council on Education
http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=LettersGovt&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=41324
6) National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities
http://www.nacua.org/documents/FERPA_NAICULetterMay2011.pdf

You may want to consider sending in a replacement Opt Out form like this one instead which states specifically what information they may share, rather than a blanket approval for information which you may not even be aware they are collecting.

To learn more about what is happening with your child's private data, go to Sheila Kaplan's site Education New York and Information Policy Watch. Also check out Diane Ravitch's blog Who Cares About Privacy Rights.  Be sure to read the comments on her page as they are made by the people who have been following this issue most closely and really know their stuff.

DOEd - The Master of Loopholes?

The DOEd has just released their draft regulation for the latest round of the Race To The Top grant competition. Many have noted extensively how they no longer seem to care that they are forbidden by law from developing national standards. Duncan and his representatives have repeatedly stated that they are not doing that. Rather, it is state consortia (which DOEd incentivized the creation of through the first RTTT) who are developing standards (which they require states to adopt to receive second round awards in RTTT).  But it is this latest round of RTTT that is by far the biggest power grab by a federal department who was originally only designed to be a clearing house for education information. In it, DOEd seems to have perfected the technique of loophole optimization by taking on things that are so far afield from public education that no one could say they are in opposition to their original mandate to focus on education delivery.

Applicants for this RTTT award will be Local Educational Agencies (LEAs).  DOEd has drilled down below the states directly into your school board through this version of RTTT. Here are some of the requirements for receiving this latest award.

At least forty percent of participating students across all participating schools (as defined in this document) must be students from low-income families, based on eligibility for free or reduced-price lunch subsidies under the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act, or other poverty measures that LEAs use to make awards under section 1113(a) of the ESEA. 

Clearly this round is meant for a very specific type of school district. Only those districts who are in urban areas or extreme rural communities will meet this qualification. However, high poverty, high needs schools must follow very prescriptive rules based upon federal and state guidelines which limits their ability to innovate. This would seem to fly in the face of the grant competition's goal of inspiring innovation. It does exploit a loophole that then allows the feds to funnel money to urban areas which, coincidentally I guess, tend to vote one way.

The next requirement is where the DOEd seeks direct control of your school board and superintendent.

• Applicants must demonstrate a track record of commitment to the core education assurance areas (as defined in this document), including, for each LEA included in an application, an assurance signed by the LEA's authorized legal representative that--

The LEA has, at a minimum, designed and committed to implement no later than the 2014-15 school year--

1. a teacher evaluation system (as defined in this document);
2. a principal evaluation system (as defined in this document);
3. a LEA superintendent evaluation (as defined in this document); and
4. a LEA school board evaluation (as defined in this document).

An assessment of the LEA school board that both evaluates performance and encourages professional growth. This evaluation system rating should reflect both (1) the feedback of many stakeholders, including but not limited to educators and parents; and (2) student outcomes performance in order to provide a detailed and accurate picture of the board's performance. 

See, now your school board members will be rated and their performance will be tied to student performance. One does not set out to create a rating without the intent to use it as a means to take action. If your district's students continue to perform poorly on the standardized assessments, something may need to be done about your school board members. Your vote for them will be greatly diminished if not negated.

And nothing can come out of DOEd without the requisite requirement to provide DATA.

The LEA has a robust data system that has, at a minimum,--

1. An individual teacher identifier with a teacher-student match; and
2. The ability to match student level P-12 and higher education data.

def. Student Performance Data - information about the academic progress of a single student, such as formative and summative assessment data, coursework, instructor observations, information about student engagement and time on task, and similar information.  

Individual districts, not the state, will now supply this information directly to DOEd. If it has the ability to match teachers to students and track students beyond P-12, it is not sanitized for your protection. While the regulation states that such data have, "regulatory protections in place that ensure Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) compliant privacy and information protection," it still maintains that such data be made accessible and usable by stakeholders. The more broadly this data is disseminated to stakeholders (who are very broadly defined by DOEd) the less control they have over it and the less secure your private information is.

Asking individual school districts to be sophisticated enough to develop the necessary software encryption to protect such information is unrealistic. Most likely they will have to go to a private vendor to purchase an existing software package. Who could be waiting in the wings to provide that little piece of business?

One of the last sections is titled "Competitive Preference Priority--Cradle-to-Career Results, Resource Alignment, and Integrated Services." The federal government has stated openly that their goal (by giving preference priority to applicants who agree to this) is to be involved in your children's lives from cradle to career (HHS takes over the grave part.) At this point does this even look like school anymore?

In this section of the draft regulation, they state they will be looking for:

Whether the applicant has formed a coherent and sustainable partnership with public and private organizations, such as public health, after-school, and social service providers; businesses, philanthropies, civic groups, and other community-based organizations; early learning programs; and post-secondary institutions to support the plan described in Absolute Priority 1. The partnership must identify not more than 10 population-level desired results for students in the LEA or consortium of LEAs, which may span from cradle to career, that align with the applicant's proposal and reform strategy.

Here is your community school.  In addition to providing a basic education for children, your school district will now be evaluated on:

family and community results (e.g., students demonstrate social-emotional competencies, students are healthy, students feel safe at school and in their communities, students demonstrate career readiness skills through internship and summer job opportunities)

This is a gargantuan power grab by the federal government that, sadly, some individual school districts will actually ask them to do. It seems unfathomable that school board members, superintendents and tax payers would want the federal government this involved in the running of their schools, just for the benefit of a few dollars.  Nowhere in the grant application are districts required to show fiscal feasibility of maintaining any program started with RTTT funding. If DOEd isn't going to ask for this, maybe the taxpayers should, because they will be the ones on the hook for increased "school" (and I now use that word loosely) funding.

"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.

The Trouble With Data

Several weeks ago, I listened to our high school principal extol the virtues of data that they will use to "guide" every one of their decisions on how to run the school. They were already collecting buckets (my word) of data that would help them tailor the curriculum and teach to the needs of students. Decisions would not be based on anecdotal evidence, nor clouded by penchants to emotional responses. From the facts, the proper course would be clear. The data would keep the school on a course for continual improvement.

My ocular muscles got quite a work out that evening. I won't even cover the fact that his school has no ability to alter the curriculum. Neither does the district school board or, I'm beginning to believe, even DESE.

Touting the virtues of data seemed just a little too Madison Avenue for promoting the longitudinal database that is working its way into the educational landscape.

This data is something we want. It's something we need. It will make us better. Cooler. Whenever they ask for it, we should be only too happy to supply it to them. WE LOVE DATA!

I wonder what the principal would do with the data I have on my son. He struggled all last year in science, barely passing the course by the skin of his teeth. In fact, by the numerous test scores (data) he accumulated, it seemed clear that he was either not putting in the effort, or was just not able to grab the basic science concepts. This was so obvious, according to the data, that he was bumped off the advanced science track for the following year.

Imagine our surprise then when we received his MAP scores for science last week and found that his scale score put him 12 points above the minimum to be categorized as being in the top Advanced achievement level. According to the MAP folks this means he has a "thorough understanding of the content at this grade level." His Terra Nova score put him better than 80% of the students nation wide.

The MAP test is designed to assess each student's comprehension of the Show Me Standards and has been the benchmark against which teacher performance is measured in this state so we must assume that it is accurate, or at least close.

So here are two sets of well documented, publicly recognized data that are in complete contrast to one another. Decisions with long range implications were made based on at least one set of these data; that my son would no longer be on the honors track in science. The other set of data not only says he could hack honors science, but he might actually have a knack for it. Unfortunately, the decision about which high school science course he would take was made way back in February when scheduling requests were due and the MAP data was not available until 10 weeks into the new school year.

What conclusions can be drawn from the data? We could probably conclude that the difference is not due to test taking anxiety, otherwise both scores would be low. We could conclude that my son chose not to work in this teacher's class, but decided it was worth the effort to do well on the MAP test. I love my son, but I don't give him enough credit to think up that effort scenario.

We could guess that the teacher was not teaching to the test which, to some, may be a plus. My son could have performed poorly on the unique information she was teaching, but gleaned enough to pass the MAP test. This would mean, however, that she was trying to teach almost twice as much material as the other grade level science teacher. I'm all for pushing kids and striving for more educational exposure, but my son's grades (and those of many other parents of advanced students who had this teacher) would indicate that this teacher is not very good at covering so much material. Given that academic performance in this particular year pegs a child's long term high school course placement, this approach to teaching the subject should have been rejected.

It would be difficult, if not impossible, to get at the truth of this data at this point. No one is doing the type of data comparison or analysis that would be needed. Once a child leaves one school for another, nobody bothers to look at the data. The old school will choose to accept the MAP score because that data has actual cash value. The parents , unless they have another child rising through the ranks, will not push for an inquiry and simply be glad to shake the dust from that school off their shoes.

Contrary to what the high school principal claimed, the data used to determine course placement did not tell the whole story so proper conclusions were not reached. Nor will anyone ever get that teacher to adjust her lesson plans because no one is looking at the comparison of her kids' classroom scores versus MAP scores. Those kids are gone. The damage is done.

The more I read about the education machine in this country, the less I worry about these kinds of decisions. I quizzed my son prior to the science final and was satisfied that he knew the information. The MAP scores confirm that. The loss is only a year until he can get his confidence back. Then I am sure he could take on the honors track again if he chooses. The kids whose parents aren't paying attention, however, may be permanently lost to science.

So the principal will have to excuse me for yawing and rolling my eyes when he touted hiss school's reliance on data for their decisions. That is an addiction that will prove as useless or destructive as any other addiction.