By Anita Hoge, October 4, 2013, NewsWithViews.com
Demand an Investigation into FERPA and the Illegal Access to
Your Child's Personally Identifiable Information
"The assessment would look beyond academics to get a
complete picture of the whole student," stated Jon Erickson of ACT.
"There would be interest inventories for students, as well as assessment
of behavioral skills for students and teachers to evaluate.”
American citizens must immediately request a federal
investigation into the amended regulations of FERPA, Family Education Rights in
Privacy Act. Your immediate support AND action are required.
Education has been used to set up data trafficking of
personally identifiable information in the United States. Our rights are being
trampled on. Your children and grandchildren will be at an incredible risk in
the future as federal legislation is being prepared that changes how we teach
our children. These are the changes:
There will be no more grades like A,B,C,D or F;
Curriculum will not be based on academics;
Dispositions and values will be tested and remediated;
Competition will be eliminated;
Grade levels will be eliminated;
The school year will no longer be based on 180 days;
Your locally elected school board will become obsolete.
Your child must meet government standards which include
changing your child’s values toward socialistic values. Data is given to large
foundations and corporations for free so they can develop testing, curriculum,
and software to change your child’s values toward government approved attitudes
and values. This is a gross violation of your and your child’s individual
freedom.
Most people, including our legislators, do not know that
FERPA, Family Education Rights in Privacy Act, has changed. Your family privacy
is NO LONGER protected. Your children’s personally identifiable information is
being given out for FREE to large corporations to research how to "change
your children into global citizens."
Our plan is to open a privacy investigation and expose the
illegal release of this personal information to foundations, organizations,
non-profits, and businesses that will profit from your children's data. The
amended FERPA regulations were issued without Congressional oversight. Obama
has issued an Executive Order to change how the government and what the
government collects on families. A huge shakeup would take place in the U.S.
Department of Education IF hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Americans make requests
calling for an investigation into the expanded FERPA regulations that exceeded
their statutory authority and are contrary to law. We could STOP the illegal
rampant research on individual children’s values, attitudes, and dispositions
presently called for in the proposed reauthorization of federal legislation,
ESEA, Title I, and Special Education funds, IDEA, that will be used to fund
remediation of your child's attitudes, values, and dispositions. Your action
could place a huge monkey wrench in the cogs of the unruly and unconstitutional
U.S. Department of Education.
Please help. Your urgent action is needed.
THERE ARE TWO STEPS:
STEP 1 is a letter to your Congressman and Senator for a
federal investigation.
STEP 2 is a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request through your Congressman and Senator for contracts and agreements that will expose who has access to your child's personally identifiable information unknown to you or our legislators.
Questions added at the end of this article must be answered.
Please contact ALL of your legislators TODAY!
STEP 1
Dear Honorable _________
I am requesting a federal investigation into the Family
Education Rights in Privacy Act, (FERPA) amended regulations that went into
effect January, 2012. It is my understanding that there was no Congressional
authorization to expand the FERPA regulations. It is also my understanding that
there are certain sections of these FERPA regulations that ALLOW for re-disclosed
personally identifiable information to be released because of a new definition
of “school officials.” The new definition now includes and allows “outside
vendors, contractors, non-profits, corporations, and businesses” to access our
children's personally identifiable information without informed written parental
permission and they may also receive it without any monetary expenditure.
Re-disclosure is also allowed to organizations conducting
studies for, or on behalf of, educational agencies or institutions to develop,
validate, or administer predictive tests and/or to improve instruction.
The extraordinary circumstances of this re-disclosure of
private information with the "unlocking" of this data will ultimately
benefit these corporations and businesses when the information used to research
and develop assessments, curriculum, digital software, and teacher training is
sold back to our states and local districts. This is appalling. The invasion of
privacy of our children and our families is without recourse. This must be
stopped.
The trafficking of this information is an invasion of
privacy and is unknown to most parents and legislators. But more important,
this data is being proposed to be used to develop personalized software career
modules and assessments for measuring specific behavioral changes on individual
students proposed in the Common Core College and Career Ready Standards that
recently included the measurement of values and dispositions. This invasion of
privacy becomes an invasion of freedom. Collecting the information is one
breach of law. But, the development of techniques and software to change my
individual child's attitudes, values, and beliefs is a breach of monumental
concern in these United States and violates personal freedom.
I have attached a list of documents that must be requested
under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), so that you may validate who the
vendors, non-profits, and businesses are that currently have access to our
children's personally identifiable information in written agreements with the
U.S. Department of Education and states involved in testing consortiums.
I anxiously await your reaction/reply to these serious
concerns and request that a federal investigation into FERPA is done
immediately. Please take steps to ensure that our children are protected. All
data transfer must be stopped/ frozen until the investigation is closed.
Sincerely, Your Name Address Phone Number E-Mail address:
STEP 2(taxpayer/parent: please include your snailmail and
email address and tel. no.)
Request a Freedom of Information Act, (FOIA) from your US
Congressman and Senator for the names of all foundations, contractors,
organizations, non-profits, businesses, etc, who have access to and use
Personally Identifiable Information, PII. The FOIA list follows:
Freedom of Information Act Requests
RE: Re-disclosure of Personally Identifiable Information on
Students According to 99.31 of the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act,
FERPA (Unknown to Parents and Legislators)
Request the Cooperative Agreements, Memorandums of
Understanding, and/or any Written Agreements to be able to access PII,
personally identifiable information, between the US Department of Education,
National Center for Education Statistics, or Office of Science and Technology
and the following:
• Partnership for Assessment of Readiness of College and
Careers, PARCC, and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.• Florida acting as
the fiscal agent for each of the states in the PARCC consortium and Achieve,
Inc as project management partner
• Washington State acting as the negotiating partner for
each state in the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and WestEd, the
project management partner
• States using the American College Testing, ACT (Aspire,
Explore, or Plan,) and/or Pearson, Inc. to measure Common Core Standards.
• Contractors who have been given re-disclosed PII on
students to develop curriculum, computer adaptive digital software, and/or any
testing development. These "school officials" may be identified as
private sector contractors, consultants, volunteers, or other parties to whom
an agency or institution has outsourced services or functions, including,
non-profit organizations, corporations, or businesses to do experimental
research, develop curriculum and/ or computer adaptive resources for individual
students. These contractors may include Microsoft, Pearson, Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt, Educational Testing Service, ACT and The Center for Disease Control.
• Request the purchase agreement and amount for each written
agreement between any "school official" and the US Department of
Education, PARCC, and/or Smarter Balanced Assessment, for the purchase of
obtained re-disclosed data on personally identifiable information, PII, on
individual students to develop curricula or computer digital programming or
experimental testing materials.
• Request any Requests for Proposal, RFP, or Written
Agreements between any private sector working group, defined as a "school
official" in FERPA, 99.31, including PARCC, Smarter Balanced Assessment,
Wested, or Achieve, ACT or ETS, who are developing and expanding Common Core
Standards to new individualized criteria to " improve instruction",
called, CCCR, College Career Citizenship Readiness, in which Citizenship
measures dispositions and attitudes.
• Request any memorandums of understanding or cooperative
agreements to test and measure disposition test items that are " difficult
to measure" according to Race to the Top grants that may infringe on
personal privacy rights and violate federal law for re-disclosing psychological
information without informed written parental consent.
• Research using data on individuals as identifiers for
interventions for changing dispositions or "improving instruction,"
without the informed written consent of the parent, violating privacy laws,
personal liberty, and illegal access to mental health criteria.
• Request sample test items or test blueprints with scoring
criteria that will measure dispositions, values, and non-cognitive areas in the
new College Career Citizenship Ready Standards, CCCR, that are being introduced
to the Common Core Standards by the CCSSO, ETS, and the Gordon Commission.
Questions that your Senator and Congressman must find answers
to:
1. Do these contractors pay for the data on our children?
Are they using the data to make a profit?
2. Experts in tax law say that non-profit
organizations--like ACT, a testing contractor, Pearson, software publisher, as
well as their partnership with the Gates Foundation-- who are creating “a full
series of digital instruction resources," appear to be using their tax
exempt foundations to push their business interests. Is this a violation of the
federal tax code? How many other non-profit organizations are using this data
for profit?
"The program ACT is rolling out, in partnership with
leading global education company Pearson, also emphasizes improving the way
educators use data from assessments in teaching. Erickson says many teachers
now administer tests and evaluations without knowing how to interpret and use
the results to students’ benefits." [Source]
3. Is the datum on individuals, which will assuredly be used
for the personalized education modules in the new proposed ESEA (Title I)
regulations and new special education (IDEA) regulations being proposed, paid
for as Intellectual Property to that individual, since a profit will be made on
that individual’s information collected without their consent or the consent of
the parent? Is your child a commodity whose personal data is allowed to be sold
without his or your permission and without reasonable compensation ? These
proposed regulations will have federal dollars " follow the child".
4. Data trafficking between the Department of Education and
others.
Source: NewsWithViews.com,
by Anita Hoge, October 4, 2013,
Comments:
Is anyone, reading, listening or even care about what's
happening right under our collective noses? The answer lies somewhere between
the public being completely unaware of this issue, the soccer Moms that eat
this govt drivel for breakfast like good Stepford wives and love to promote
anything that looks like political correctness. Then there is the low income
folks that grasp for anything that looks like hope. – Victoria Baer
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