NUT Report: Funding for pre-school testing announced

With the debt-ceiling debate raging and the urgency to cut spending, the rationale and priority for a new Race to the Top pre-school standardized assessment initiative go unexplained. States will compete for $500 million in funds to develop tests that are intended to measure "academic performance but also children’s social, emotional, physical and artistic readiness for kindergarten." This assessment is intended to assist Kindergarten teachers in preparing targeted learning opportunities and are not to be used for any rewards or punishments for students, teachers, or schools.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/race-to-the-top-standardized-testing-for-preschoolers/2011/07/05/gIQAU4Wi0H_blog.html">Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post noted that in 2003 when President Bush suggested giving all children in Head Start programs a standardized test, reaction seemed different:

Critics howled. Early childhood development experts said preschoolers are too young to be evaluated by standardized tests in part because they don’t have sufficient ability to comprehend assessment cues. The plan was shelved.

A recent article in http://www.thenation.com/blog/161828/risks-and-potential-rewards-pre-k-testing">The Nation notes concerns about this initiative.

The kindergarten-entry assessments are “probably the most radical part of the [Race to the Top early learning] program,” acknowledges Sara Mead, a pre-K expert and senior associate partner at Bellweather Education Partners, a nonprofit Washington, DC, consulting firm. “It would drive a big shift towards much more measurement of early learning program outcomes, which parts of the early-childhood education community have traditionally opposed.… But these are not intended to be assessments to determine whether or not an individual child is ‘ready’ for kindergarten, and they never have high stakes for kids, in terms of denying them entry into kindergarten.”

Laura Bornfreund, a policy analyst at the New America Foundation’s Early Learning Initiative, has written that pre-K assessment remains controversial:

Concerns over inappropriate assessments of young children are rampant, so it bears repeating that appropriate kindergarten readiness assessments are not “tests” in the way adults might think of them. They do not require children to sit down with a bubble sheet and number-two pencil. Often they are based on teachers’ observations of children’s drawings or playtime interactions. For many literacy assessments teachers conduct them by sitting down with students, one by one, to ask them questions about sounds and letters or to point to pictures. The idea is to create a low-pressure experience. But there are still many questions in the research community about how to ensure that assessments are administered in ways that are sensitive to a child’s age and stage of development.

Pop Quiz

1) What is the problem this new assessment will solve?
2) Will the data collected become part of the State Longitudinal Database Systems?
3) Will the data be made available to other agencies and researchers without parental consent in accordance with the proposed regulatory changes to Family Education Rights and Protection Act?

Answers:
1) No one knows, but it's expensive.
2) No one knows, change is hard.
3) No one knows, we have to do something.

I am not an educator, not a policy wonk, nor a pre-K expert, but I am taxpayer and a NUT - No Unnecessary Testing. Peanuts anyone?

Posted for Sandra and Grumpy

Student Data Collection: Purpose, Costs, Risks?

Grumpy Note:  Never Before in the history of the United States has the Federal Government felt it was entited to collect the kind of person information the Dept of Education says it must have to educate America's children.  The DoED seees no reason it shouldn't be allowed to share the information with other Governments Agencies..  You are not supposed to worry because department assures us the information will never be used improperly (Hitler & Stalin said that too) or compromised by unathorized personal.. (this from the folks that gave us Wiki Leaks)

********

 Posted for

Sandra in Brevard





Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to do something different. The current policies are different, but are they better, more effective, and more efficient?

According to the President's Blueprint, the state longitudinal data base initiative will provide the targeted accountability to raise achievement by ensuring students are making progress and by linking student achievement to teacher performance. The recent proposed FERPA regulations requires additional safeguards for the collection, release, an safeguarding of student data. The fiscal impact on State and local-levels is not mentioned.



Four reasons the public should have deep concerns about the development and proposed regulations and the collection of data from birth to college on every student in the nation:

April 20, 2011, SONY CEO apologizes for major security breach.
Sony Corp. Chief Executive Howard Stringer apologized for "inconvenience and concern" caused by the security breach that compromised personal data from more than 100 million online gaming accounts.

May 17, 2011, Data Breech Infects Massachusetts Unemployment Office.
An estimated 225,000 Massachusetts residents could become fraud victims as a result of a computer data breach in the state unemployment system.

May 27, 2011, Data Breech at Security Firm Linked to Attack on Lockheed.
Lockheed Martin, the nation’s largest military contractor, has battled disruptions in its computer networks this week that might be tied to a hacking attack on a vendor that supplies coded security tokens to millions of users, security officials said on Friday.

June 2, 2011, Google Mail Attack Blamed on China.
Suspected Chinese hackers tried to steal the passwords of hundreds of Google email account holders, including those of senior U.S. government officials, Chinese activists and journalists, the Internet company said.

June 3, 2011, Hackers Attack another Sony network.
Hackers broke into Sony Corp’s computer networks and accessed the information of more than 1 million customers to show the vulnerability of the electronic giant’s systems, the latest of several security breaches undermining confidence in the company.

We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files

Since January, when Sandra in Brevard first reported that Florida had accepted 9.8 Million dollars from the Federal Government to data mine public school students she's been finding more and more evidence that the government now considers everything about you their business.

According to the DOEd, the government needs to know if you are a blond haired, blue eyed Republican who attends Catholic Church irregularly but votes in every election so they can factor that into your child's education plan.  By the way, it's also imperative for them to have your blood type and the name of your family doctor...

Over the last few days we've learned that Secretary of Education believes it's necessary to start compiling a persons data at birth.. to determine when the child will be ready for kindergarten,,,, and as you'll see in a couple minutes, the Department of Labor Believes they need the information to determine how all this affects a persons career choices.

Don't worry though, the Department of Education will only share your information with another government agency, or non government organization if they ask for it, and a clerk at the DOE feels they have a valid need to know

As we speak the Department of Education is busy rewriting the regulations it follows in regard to the Privacy Act and the Fourth Amendment so they'll be in compliance with Government Rules and Regulations, if not the Constitution..

The Constitution's an outdated document that needs to be replaced anyway, if I recall what Barack Obama had to say before he took an oath to defend it.  As far as I know, the last government in the Free World to compile information like this about it's citizens for educational purposes, was Hitler's Nazi Germany..





I found more evidence of the government's intentions yesterday in a Daily Caller Article titled

______________________________________

.
Conservative group accuses Education Dept of invading students’ privacy with new FERPA rules

A conservative non-profit is raising privacy concerns over a Department of Education (DoED) rule change that will allow for “personally identifiable information” about students to be shared with other government departments. Personally identifiable information that could potentially be shared includes hair color, blood type, family health history and students’ grades and other academic records.

The DoED rule changes are part of a reinterpretation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA). The proposed changes have conservative group American Principles in Action (APIA) up in arms. APIA says they are a breach of students’ and families’ privacy rights.

The DoED’s changes, which it says are necessary because it needs to “judge the effectiveness of government investments in education,” would allow “personally identifiable information” about individual children collected in public schools to be shared with departments other than the DoED. For instance, the DoED could share information with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) or the Department of Labor (DOL).

The DoED dismissed the concerns APIA raised about student privacy by hiring a new “Chief Privacy Officer,” opening a new “Privacy Technical Assistance Center,” and issuing new technical briefs and reports on how DoED thinks student privacy rights can be best served. That still isn’t enough to alleviate the APIA’s concerns.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/05/30/conservative-group-accuses-education-dept-of-invading-students-privacy-with-new-ferpa-rules/#ixzz1NtR7rJCN

_____________________________

Please read the rest of the article, it goes into some probable additional government uses for the information

The guy who wants to steal your information in violation of the Fourth Amendment and The Privacy Act, wants to be sure it's done according to the rules he just wrote to allow him to violate the Constitution and Privacy Act.. That's reassuring.. 

After Wiki Leaks I'm sure the Government will safeguard the information properly, as well.  This is the government that has at different times, misplaced, lost or had stolen, millions of Social Security, Veterans and other private records, we have every reason to trust the Department of Education..

Personally I think it's time to send a reminder to the Government that we have a Constitution for a reason.  We need to tell Congress to get off their rear ends and stop this crap.  We need to tell the Administration that changing or reinterpreting the Constitution is way above the pay grade of a Presidentual Appointee.

We need to do it in a way no future President will ever forget.   

Arne Duncan is From the Government and He is Here to Help you

[Reprinted with permission from Missouri Education Watchdog.]

In its effort to clarify student data privacy rules for researchers and education officials alike, the U.S. Department of Education proposed several changes to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, on Thursday and named its first chief privacy officer.


"Data should only be shared with the right people for the right reasons," U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement on the proposals. "We need common-sense rules that strengthen privacy protections and allow for meaningful uses of data. The initiatives announced today will help us do just that."

There is a pesky problem standing in the way of sharing student data between states and Federal Agencies: present FERPA standards. If these standards are not altered, the data necessary to supply the workforce cannot be shared.


The DOE promises your student's data will be secure. Really? What's happened the last several weeks or years regarding cyber information?

•TJX, the parent company of T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and other retailers, has not acknowledged how data on more than 45 million credit and debit card users who had shopped at the company's retail locations was stolen and sold to fraudsters. (May 9, 2007)

•A data breach involving online marketer Epsilon, whose clients are a Who’s Who of major banks and retailers, was only the latest in a string of hacking attacks aimed at getting email records for more thefts. Companies that have said they were exposed since then include banks Citigroup Inc and Capital One Financial Corp, and retailers Walgreen Co and Best Buy Co. (April 5, 2011)

•According to U.S. investigators, China has stolen terabytes of sensitive data -- from usernames and passwords for State Department computers to designs for multi-billion dollar weapons systems. And Chinese hackers show no signs of letting up. "The attacks coming out of China are not only continuing, they are accelerating," says Alan Paller, director of research at information-security training group SANS Institute in Washington, DC.

Secret U.S. State Department cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to Reuters by a third party, trace systems breaches -- colorfully code-named "Byzantine Hades" by U.S. investigators -- to the Chinese military. An April 2009 cable even pinpoints the attacks to a specific unit of China's People's Liberation Army. (April 14, 2010).

The data sets from the National Data Education Model are set and ready to be used on your student. Don't worry if there is a cyber security attack on the Longitudinal Data Systems; information to be gleaned from an attack would only include some of the following:

•Base salary or wage
•Blood type
•Height and Weight

•Dwelling Arrangement
•Health Care History
•Health Care Plan
•Identification Results
•Immunization Status
•Insurance Coverage
•Overall Health Status
•Residence Block Number
•Social Security Number
•Voting Status

The United States Government cannot stop cyber attacks from China; why should taxpayers believe student privacy is secure because of a change in FERPA legislation?

If you believe this information is secure, you will also believe the following:

According to the No Child Left Behind Act, by 2014 every child is supposed to test on grade level in reading and math.

Not every child can test on grade level in reading and math. It's an admirable goal, but impossible to achieve. That's not going to happen. The goal for data systems is to beef up privacy protections. Like the NCLB goal, it sounds great, but if the government cannot stop foreign countries from hacking into military computers, do you believe the DOE can safeguard student data from hackers?

Read this sentence in the second paragraph again: We need common-sense rules that strengthen privacy protections and allow for meaningful uses of data. The problem with that sentence? Strengthening privacy protections don't safeguard the privacy and the "meaningful uses of data" should raise questions for anyone concerned about the constitutional right to individual privacy that your government is determined to document and share.