Common Core Trap

Anita Hoge’s OPEN LETTER to PA Dept of Ed’s Dumaresq

Posted on November 29, 2014 Written by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, ABCsofdumbdown.blogspot.com

The fol­low­ing is the com­plete text of the for­mal let­ter that Anita Hoge addressed to Car­olyn C. Dumaresq, Act­ing Sec­re­tary of the Penn­syl­va­nia Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion on Nov. 21st. This let­ter gives the full details behind the PRESS RELEASE issued sev­eral days ago, which we pub­lished in its entirety on this blog (click HERE).

Par­ents and con­cerned cit­i­zens should read Anita’s let­ter to learn the truth about the Com­mon Core stan­dards. Once again, we repub­lish this in its entirety so that all can have access to this pub­lic letter.

Novem­ber 21, 2014

Car­olyn C. Dumaresq, Ed. D.
Act­ing Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion
Penn­syl­va­nia Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion
333 Mar­ket Street
Har­ris­burg, PA 17126

Dear Sec­re­tary Dumaresq,

I want to thank you for your let­ter dated Octo­ber 24, 2014. I have five major con­cerns that I will dis­cuss in this correspondence.

My first con­cern is in my let­ter dated Sep­tem­ber 12, 2014, where I stated the following,

“I have grave con­cerns about the direc­tion that the Com­mon Core stan­dards move­ment has taken, as well as, my con­cerns of the ethics of test­ing and teach­ing in the affec­tive domain. I must ques­tion the legal­ity of these meth­ods with­out proper safe­guards and ask that legal coun­sel respond to this direc­tion that Penn­syl­va­nia has taken.”

I do agree with you that a state has the free­dom under the Con­sti­tu­tion to not accept the Com­mon Core Stan­dards copy­right. But upon accep­tance of the Mem­o­ran­dum and Race to the Top (RTTT) Penn­syl­va­nia agreed to the guar­an­tee that 85% of the stan­dards can­not be changed. Unfor­tu­nately, when Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion, Ronald Toma­lis signed and agreed to the ESEA Flex­i­bil­ity Waiver, 2013, Penn­syl­va­nia accepted the waived con­di­tions of No Child Left Behind, which man­dates not only Com­mon Core, but also the Col­lege Career Cit­i­zen­ship Readi­ness Stan­dards, teacher train­ing for Com­mon Core, and exten­sion of the Com­mon Core of Lan­guage Arts and Math into the affec­tive domain in Prin­ci­ple 6. The pro­vi­sions also change Title I to blan­ket a school by elim­i­nat­ing poverty guide­lines to cover all chil­dren. Con­tracts that I have recently reviewed state specif­i­cally that Penn­syl­va­nia is pro­ceed­ing with the Com­mon Core Stan­dards. As you know, the affec­tive domain has always been a major part of Pennsylvania’s research on chil­dren since the EQA that I had filed a fed­eral com­plaint against.

Parental input will have NO impact on the Com­mon Core stan­dards or the direc­tion that edu­ca­tion is head­ing because of these signed grants and con­tracts. The Governor’s hear­ings for par­ents to have a seat at the table, and to have input con­cern­ing the stan­dards, are there­fore point­less and only relate to a very small per­cent­age of change. The national Com­mon Core agenda is in place in Pennsylvania.

Prin­ci­ple 6 states in the signed grant,

“Prin­ci­ple 6 – estab­lish a school envi­ron­ment that improves school safety and dis­ci­pline and addresses other non-academic fac­tors that impact stu­dent achieve­ment, such as stu­dents’ social, emo­tional and health needs.”

What is most inter­est­ing about your let­ter is that you state that the Col­lege Career Cit­i­zen­ship Readi­ness Stan­dards are not part of Pennsylvania’s Stan­dards. But yet, these stan­dards were being imple­mented into the class­room through the Stan­dards Aligned Sys­tem (SAS) por­tal under Safe Schools and the Inter­per­sonal Skills Stan­dards dated April 25, 2012. This does not pre-date Gov­er­nor Corbett’s elec­tion. These stan­dards were cleansed from the SAS por­tal after my pre­sen­ta­tion on Octo­ber 20, 2014 in Sen­a­tor Folmer’s office in Harrisburg.

The Chief State School Offi­cers had expanded the Com­mon Core Stan­dards copy­right to include dis­po­si­tions. In order for Penn­syl­va­nia to not be oblig­ated to imple­ment these stan­dards on the state level, our Gov­er­nor and Penn­syl­va­nia Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion would have to with­draw from the ESEA Flex­i­bil­ity Grant. I would also point out that the SAS por­tal also referred to these Stan­dards as “aca­d­e­mic,” in which par­ents are not truth­fully being informed of their rights. These Com­mon Core affec­tive domain stan­dards are not aca­d­e­mic, and the law should apply so that informed parental con­sent would truly mean informed.

I also ques­tioned the “present posi­tion that the State Board and the Penn­syl­va­nia Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion has on test­ing and teach­ing in the affec­tive domain by refer­ring to the fol­low­ing ‘aca­d­e­mic’ stan­dards and anchors, and if writ­ten parental per­mis­sion is used when engag­ing in these inter­per­sonal trait activities.”

In your response to my let­ter you refer to 22 PA Code 4.51 © that states: “Nei­ther State assess­ments nor aca­d­e­mic stan­dards under § 4.12 may require stu­dents to hold or express par­tic­u­lar atti­tudes, val­ues or beliefs.” [Emp. mine]

Although worded in a pecu­liar way, the reg­u­la­tion does not for­bid test­ing, eval­u­a­tions, inter­ven­tions, sur­veys, or col­lect­ing per­sonal infor­ma­tion about atti­tudes, val­ues, or beliefs. How­ever, the Pro­tec­tion of Pupil Rights Amend­ment (PPRA) and BEC 8–90 does pro­tect stu­dents from being required, as part of any pro­gram, to sub­mit, with­out writ­ten prior con­sent, to psy­chi­atric or psy­cho­log­i­cal exam­i­na­tion, test­ing, inter­ven­tions, or treat­ment in the 7 pro­tected areas to which (I allege) the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion is not adhering.Par­ents ques­tion why these affec­tive stan­dards are included on the SAS por­tal, with cur­ricu­lum and les­son plans that are totally aligned. Why is the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion cre­at­ing stan­dards that would test, score, teach, and reme­di­ate atti­tudes, val­ues, opin­ions and beliefs of Penn­syl­va­nia stu­dents? Affec­tive domain stan­dards were tested and scored in the past in the Penn­syl­va­nia EQA. The ques­tions that beg to be asked are 1) what exactly is being tested and 2) how will that stan­dard be scored for pro­fi­ciency in inter­per­sonal skills or per­son­al­ity traits? The Penn­syl­va­nia Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion was found in vio­la­tion of fed­eral law for test­ing and scor­ing atti­tudes, val­ues, opin­ions, and beliefs in the past. I am refer­ring to the pol­icy BEC 8–90 that was exten­sively nego­ti­ated to resolve my fed­eral com­plaint against the EQA. This debate con­tin­ued against the con­tro­ver­sial stu­dent learn­ing out­comes under the Out­come Based Edu­ca­tion bat­tle in 1992. At that time affec­tive out­comes and stan­dards were removed from Chap­ter 4 rule-making pack­age by the IRRC. It is an abuse of power and a con­spir­acy to try to imple­ment these affec­tive domain stan­dards with­out vet­ting, with­out parental input, with­out any reg­u­la­tory over­sight, and with­out informed writ­ten parental con­sent. Why is the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion so bold as to ignore the law?

I do not believe you answered my ques­tion: Is informed writ­ten parental per­mis­sion obtained when engag­ing in these activ­i­ties? I have listed below an exper­i­men­tal pro­gram called the Penn Resiliency Project from the Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia. The Inter­per­sonal Skills Stan­dards are listed and aligned to this project’s objectives.

Quot­ing from the PRP program:

“The Penn Resiliency Pro­gram (PRP), designed by our research team, is a group inter­ven­tion for late ele­men­tary and mid­dle school stu­dents. The cur­ricu­lum teaches cognitive-behavioral and social problem-solving skills and is based in part on cognitive-behavioral the­o­ries of depres­sion by Aaron Beck, Albert Ellis, and Mar­tin Selig­man (Abram­son, Selig­man, & Teas­dale, 1978; Beck, 1967, 1976; Ellis, 1962). Cen­tral to PRP is Ellis’ Adversity-Consequences-Beliefs (ABC) model, the notion that our beliefs about events medi­ate their impact on our emo­tions and behavior.”

I am request­ing a direct answer to these ques­tions: 1) Is informed writ­ten parental con­sent obtained for incor­po­rat­ing the Inter­per­sonal Skills Stan­dards into the cur­ricu­lum and assess­ments? and 2) Is parental per­mis­sion obtained for teach­ing this par­tic­u­lar cur­ricu­lum (PRP) which was on the SAS portal?

Another exper­i­men­tal pro­gram from the Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia is the Duck­worth lab­o­ra­tory called Char­ac­ter Lab that has done research and cre­ated scales to mea­sure grit and self con­trol. Duck­worth also has a list of schools where she has per­formed her research. Is informed writ­ten parental con­sent used in these exper­i­men­tal pro­grams? Do par­ents under­stand that their chil­dren will be used for research that aligns a psy­cho­me­t­ric record on their personalities?

Quot­ing from Angela Duckworth’s research that mea­sure soft skills and per­son­al­ity type questionnaires:

“Researchers and edu­ca­tors are wel­come to scales we have devel­oped in our lab for non-commercial pur­poses. On a cau­tion­ary note, we point out that these scales were orig­i­nally designed to assess indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences rather than sub­tle within-individual changes in behav­ior over time. Thus, we do not know whether they are valid indi­ca­tors of pre– to post-change as a con­se­quence of inter­ven­tions. We also dis­cour­age the use of the scales in high stakes set­tings where fak­ing is a con­cern (e.g., admis­sions or hir­ing decisions).”

My sec­ond con­cern is related to the expung­ing of the Inter­per­sonal Skills Stan­dards from the SAS por­tal. How will that relate to the way the Inter­per­sonal Skills Stan­dards have been embed­ded into the cur­ricu­lum, as well as, other Core Aca­d­e­mic Stan­dards listed on the SAS por­tal? I have found that these affec­tive domain stan­dards con­tinue to be found in the fol­low­ing “aca­d­e­mic stan­dards” areas:

• Career Edu­ca­tion and Work
• Fam­ily and Con­sumer Sciences
• Health Safety and Phys­i­cal Education
  In fact, when you search the SAS web­site por­tal and query Inter­per­sonal Skills, there are 2,383 activ­i­ties, les­son plans, pro­grams, cur­ricu­lum, etc., that are returned that still remain on the por­tal. The Safe Schools web­site por­tal also includes Inter­per­sonal Skills Stan­dards listed.
  These embed­ded Inter­per­sonal Skills Stan­dards, accord­ing to fed­eral law and state pol­icy, must have informed writ­ten parental per­mis­sion before any stu­dent is exposed to these les­son plans and cur­ricu­lum. I would like to have your posi­tion, as well as that of Gov­er­nor Cor­bett, legal coun­sel, the IRRC, and the State Board, in response to this seri­ous sit­u­a­tion. If the Inter­per­sonal Skills Stan­dards were NOT vet­ted or approved by the State Board, and then cleansed from the SAS por­tal after my meet­ing, then the cur­ricu­lum and the les­son plans were also not vet­ted or approved and must be cleansed from the SAS por­tal. I would ask that you respond con­cern­ing this egre­gious sit­u­a­tion, and let the par­ents of Penn­syl­va­nia know that you, the IRRC, the State Board, and the Gov­er­nor will cor­rect this sit­u­a­tion. It will be very impor­tant that all cur­ricu­lum and les­son plans be erad­i­cated, root and branch, from the por­tal and class­rooms, immediately.
  My third con­cern is the inter­ven­tions that are in the affec­tive domain that do not have a direct rela­tion­ship to aca­d­e­mic con­tent. It is my under­stand­ing that a behav­ioral sys­tem of sup­port, screen­ing, assess­ment, eval­u­a­tion, and inter­ven­tion is being per­formed in the reg­u­lar class­room and called Response to Instruc­tion and Inter­ven­tion or RTII. This multi-tiered sys­tem of sup­port (PA-MTSS) which is funded through the Indi­vid­u­als With Dis­abil­i­ties Edu­ca­tion Act (IDEA), with train­ing imple­mented through Penn­syl­va­nia Train­ing and Tech­ni­cal Assis­tance Pro­gram (PATTAN), does not obtain informed writ­ten parental con­sent for behav­ioral assess­ments that are being used to screen, assess, eval­u­ate, and imple­ment inter­ven­tions for stu­dents in order to attain aca­d­e­mic and behav­ioral stan­dards relat­ing to Pennsylvania’s Core stan­dards, includ­ing the repu­di­ated Inter­per­sonal Skills Stan­dards. The PATTAN web­site and train­ing mod­ules state:
  “PA-MTSS rep­re­sents a broad set of evidence-based prac­tices that may be imple­mented across a sys­tem to include Aca­d­e­mics AND Behav­ior within a recur­sive and sys­tem­atic problem-solving process. PA-MTSS is rel­a­tively syn­ony­mous with RtII and is intended to help ALL stu­dents meet with con­tin­ual aca­d­e­mic and behav­ioral suc­cess.” [Emp. mine]
  This screen­ing pre­cludes an IEP process using US Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion Spe­cial Edu­ca­tion funds. Par­ents of reg­u­lar class­room stu­dents have NOT been granted pro­tec­tion nor per­mit­ted input. The frame­work tabs in the RTII train­ing mod­ules also cor­re­late and use behav­ioral stan­dards aligned to the SAS por­tal. The three lev­els of inter­ven­tions have a con­tin­uum that increases to the third level with inten­sive inter­ven­tions before and with­out the pro­tec­tion and per­mis­sion of the par­ent that is usu­ally required in an IEP process for Spe­cial Edu­ca­tion chil­dren. This process is used on ALL chil­dren. The screen­ing, test­ing, eval­u­at­ing, and inter­ven­tion activ­ity is done in the reg­u­lar class­room for all stu­dents, with­out the knowl­edge or con­sent of par­ents, align­ing to the SAS por­tal and Penn­syl­va­nia standards.
  There have been sev­eral law­suits that sub­stan­ti­ate that, under IDEA pro­tec­tions, parental input and writ­ten per­mis­sion is demanded in the begin­ning and through­out the entire process, includ­ing RTII, par­tic­u­larly whether a stu­dent is or is not referred to Spe­cial Edu­ca­tion. I would ask legal coun­sel to respond to this ques­tion, is the RTII, MTSS, and PATTAN, regard­ing screen­ing and doing inter­ven­tions in the affec­tive domain, obtain­ing informed writ­ten parental con­sent for the Response to Instruc­tion and Inter­ven­tion process with all class­room stu­dents in the reg­u­lar classroom?
  This will be an issue based on the fact that the Inter­per­sonal Skills and Stan­dards (and other embed­ded cur­ricu­lum asso­ci­ated with those behav­ioral stan­dards) are being imple­mented in the reg­u­lar class­rooms under Com­mon Core, and the inter­ven­tions are using IDEA fund­ing. In other words, par­ents are NOT informed of this process, and writ­ten per­mis­sion is NOT obtained. I must add that one of Pennsylvania’s con­trac­tors, Pear­son, has also devel­oped a phone appli­ca­tion for behav­ioral and clin­i­cal assess­ment for chil­dren in the class­room called BOSS, Behav­ioral Obser­va­tion for Stu­dents in School, researched at Lehigh Uni­ver­sity, which must also have informed writ­ten parental con­sent to be used in the class­room. Is informed writ­ten parental con­sent obtained before these pro­grams are initiated?
  My fourth con­cern regards the data col­lec­tion and per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion that is in a stu­dent edu­ca­tion record. In Chap­ter 4.51 Assess­ment (e) and (g) in the reg­u­la­tions state:
  (e) To ensure that infor­ma­tion regard­ing stu­dent per­for­mance is avail­able to par­ents and teach­ers, State assess­ments devel­oped under this sec­tion must include stu­dent names.
  (g) The Depart­ment and other Com­mon­wealth enti­ties are pro­hib­ited from col­lect­ing indi­vid­ual stu­dent test scores and may col­lect only aggre­gate test scores by school and district.
  Upon review­ing cur­rent writ­ten agree­ments of the Depart­ment, indi­vid­ual test scores and per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion on stu­dents and teach­ers are being accessed and entered into the Penn­syl­va­nia Infor­ma­tion Man­age­ment Sys­tem (PIMS) data ware­house in which the Depart­ment, other Com­mon­wealth enti­ties, includ­ing out­side con­trac­tors, have access to per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion. This is in vio­la­tion of Chap­ter 4 reg­u­la­tions that I pre­vi­ously cited in 4.51 (e) and (f). Out­side con­trac­tors are defined as a “school offi­cial” in FERPA, (Author­ity: 20 U.S.C. 1232g (b)(1) and (b)(2)(A) § 99.31). Those con­trac­tors who apply for access to per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion are con­sid­ered a Com­mon­wealth autho­rized rep­re­sen­ta­tive when enter­ing into writ­ten agree­ments with the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion. There­fore, these ven­dors are legally only able to access aggre­gate data accord­ing to Chap­ter 4 Reg­u­la­tion. These con­trac­tors are in vio­la­tion of Chap­ter 4.
  Since a state unique per­sonal ID has been issued to all stu­dents in Penn­syl­va­nia, and names are being placed on the tests, it enables easy cross-referencing capa­bil­i­ties when used with direc­tory infor­ma­tion. The state PIMS lon­gi­tu­di­nal data­base is a data repos­i­tory in which data is main­tained on the indi­vid­ual. The data col­lected is entered by the local school dis­trict and/or inter­me­di­ate unit. The issue of direc­tory infor­ma­tion being released, to be used to pre-print labels or pre-identify the stu­dent, also becomes a big­ger issue when linked to or cross matched to other iden­ti­fy­ing fea­tures includ­ing: state unique ID, SSN, name, zip code, the school, the teacher, birth­date, address, mother’s maiden name, etc. The use of bio­met­ric data (fin­ger­prints, voice prints, iris scans, DNA sequences, etc.) is also an issue, par­tic­u­larly because bio­met­ric data is included in the def­i­n­i­tion of per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion in FERPA. This is the data allowed to be shared with out­side ven­dors. I am request­ing the Attor­ney Gen­eral and the Gov­er­nor to stop the release of this data.
  Per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion must be pro­tected. Objec­tive pri­vacy data and com­puter ana­lysts must be involved with safe­guard­ing Penn­syl­va­nia stu­dents, know­ing that this per­sonal infor­ma­tion is being released. Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­sity, with a grant through NSF, is col­lect­ing bio­met­ric data in their research with Learn Sphere. Is informed writ­ten parental con­sent obtained in these research projects? Do par­ents under­stand how the bio­met­ric data col­lected will be used in rela­tion­ship to their chil­dren meet­ing affec­tive domain Com­mon Core Standards?
  Stu­dent infor­ma­tion on the local level must be de-identified and stripped of all iden­ti­fy­ing cri­te­ria, NEVER allow­ing per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion to be linked to the state PIMS and/or sent to any state or fed­eral data­bases, includ­ing the National Cen­ter for Edu­ca­tion Sta­tis­tics, or any out­side con­trac­tor. This sys­tem has sev­eral seri­ous legal ques­tions that must be reviewed by legal coun­sel and com­puter experts.
  I am request­ing that the Attor­ney Gen­eral, Fed­eral and State Inspec­tor Gen­er­als and legal coun­sel review this sit­u­a­tion and report their find­ings, and rescind all con­tracts that allow per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion to be released to out­side providers in vio­la­tion of Chap­ter 4.
  I am also con­cerned that the Depart­ment of Labor, con­sid­ered a Com­mon­wealth entity, can obtain per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion, thus cre­at­ing a “womb to work­place” dossier on a stu­dent in coop­er­a­tion with the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion and the National Cen­ter for Edu­ca­tion Sta­tis­tics. Every per­son was given a unique ID accord­ing to the con­tract with eScholar in 2006, with 1.8 mil­lion stu­dents from birth to col­lege age who were iden­ti­fied. Deloitte com­pleted the eScholar Data Ware­house in 2007. In sum­mary, every per­son today, from age 26 and under has a com­plete dossier that was inte­grated into the Department’s appli­ca­tions. Every state has applied for this same lon­gi­tu­di­nal data base iden­ti­fy­ing every per­son in their respec­tive states using Penn­syl­va­nia as their model. Is this nation pre­pared to accept that in 20+ more years, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment shall have a com­plete demo­graphic and psy­cho­me­t­ric dossier on every per­son in the United States? Womb to work­place? This col­lec­tion of data goes far beyond the premise of national demo­graphic cen­sus data, or per­haps, is this the premise? Will this data col­lec­tion replace the cen­sus? How does the Depart­ment explain how this per­sonal data will be used in the future?
  After care­fully review­ing the con­tracts I have reached the con­clu­sion that the Depart­ment of Labor may legally only receive aggre­gate data, and not per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion. If this data­base is pre­sumed to extend from birth into the work­force, includ­ing wages, SSN’s should never be col­lected and entered into the PIMS data­base due to rea­son­able pri­vacy con­cerns, as well as cross ref­er­enc­ing capa­bil­i­ties that can be linked with a state stu­dent unique ID, direc­tory infor­ma­tion, and per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able information.
  Please explain how all encom­pass­ing data on an indi­vid­ual from birth is linked to human cap­i­tal or wages that will be added to the PIMS and Depart­ment of Labor dossier. I would advo­cate that the Attor­ney Gen­eral and Inspec­tor Gen­eral be advised to review the con­tracts with the Penn­syl­va­nia Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion and the Penn­syl­va­nia Depart­ment of Labor that have writ­ten agree­ments that enable them to access per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion using an individual’s unique national ID, incon­spic­u­ously ini­ti­ated as a state project for a state unique ID must also be reviewed.
  A local unique per­sonal ID must be used that de-identifies and strips per­sonal data that does not link to the PIMS data ware­house, the Depart­ment of Labor, or Com­mon­wealth enti­ties for the best pro­tec­tion of our stu­dents. This sys­tem has sev­eral seri­ous legal and pri­vacy ques­tions that must be reviewed by legal counsel.
  I am request­ing infor­ma­tion regard­ing who it is that over­sees the deci­sion, the pro­to­col used, and by what cri­te­ria these deci­sions are based, as well as who is qual­i­fied to receive per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion on our stu­dents? I am also request­ing infor­ma­tion regard­ing any profit that is made in the re-disclosure of per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion to any con­trac­tor, or from per­sonal data that may be acquired for free. Another ques­tion that must be dis­cussed is who owns the data? The par­ents? The state who secretly col­lects the data? The data researcher who accesses per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion? Or the data user who devel­ops cur­ricu­lum, soft­ware, tests, or app’s for phones? Who gets the data for free and sells their wares back to the schools? Who “owns” the children?
  My fifth and final con­cern is directly related to the col­lec­tion of data from the Inter­per­sonal Skills Stan­dards, includ­ing Response to Instruc­tion and Inter­ven­tions, or from any of the embed­ded affec­tive stan­dards in any of the other core areas such as Career Edu­ca­tion and Work, Fam­ily and Con­sumer Sci­ences, and/or Health Safety and Phys­i­cal Edu­ca­tion, and entered into the PIMS data ware­house. In ref­er­ence to per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion (that is accessed and/or re-disclosed by the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion, other Com­mon­wealth enti­ties, or any out­side con­trac­tors), are atti­tu­di­nal, behav­ioral assess­ments, per­son­al­ity traits, social or emo­tional learn­ing, or any pri­vate or sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion col­lected, entered into a local com­puter or phone appli­ca­tion and shared with the PIMS data ware­house? There are severe legal impli­ca­tions and vio­la­tions if per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion, includ­ing behav­ioral and per­son­al­ity traits, are pro­vided to out­side con­trac­tors that have writ­ten agree­ments with the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion. Bot­tom line, this data is com­bined in a psy­cho­me­t­ric record. It is not a mere tran­script of aca­d­e­mic con­tent on read­ing and math that is being released and re-disclosed. The Penn Resiliency Project and the Pear­son BOSS phone app referred to ear­lier in this cor­re­spon­dence comes to mind.
  Col­lec­tion and re-disclosure of this infor­ma­tion would be in direct vio­la­tion of the Pro­tec­tion of Pupil Rights Amend­ment (please refer to the def­i­n­i­tions in the PPRA for psy­cho­log­i­cal and psy­chi­atric test­ing and treat­ment) and state pol­icy, BEC 8–90. Psy­cho­log­i­cal, psy­chi­atric or behav­ioral data are pri­vate and are legally pro­tected and shall not be col­lected or shared with any­one with­out informed writ­ten parental consent.
  I request that the Attor­ney Gen­eral, the Inspec­tor Gen­eral and legal coun­sel review these writ­ten agree­ments that are admit­ting access to per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion. An inves­ti­ga­tion must be con­ducted into the impli­ca­tions of per­sonal vio­la­tions against Penn­syl­va­nia stu­dents that by law must have informed writ­ten parental con­sent to access the stu­dents, and into the use of data that is for­bid­den to be col­lected or re-disclosed. The entire PIMS data ware­house must be inves­ti­gated, as it may be in vio­la­tion of fed­eral law, state pol­icy, and 22 PA Code Chap­ter 4.
  I appre­ci­ate the Department’s quick response after my meet­ing on Octo­ber 20, 2014 in Sen­a­tor Folmer’s office with Andrew Paris from the Governor’s office attend­ing. At that time, I reviewed sev­eral con­tracts and helped iden­tify prob­lems with stan­dards that were in the affec­tive domain asso­ci­ated with an attached copy of the Inter­per­sonal Skills Stan­dards. The removal of the Inter­per­sonal Skills Stan­dards from the SAS por­tal, and send­ing out the PennLink to all 500 school dis­tricts to par­tially expunge the SAS por­tal of the affec­tive domain stan­dards, is an extremely impor­tant action, and an acknowl­edge­ment of wrong­do­ing to the chil­dren and par­ents of Penn­syl­va­nia. I believe par­ents have the right to know and under­stand exactly how their chil­dren and their records are being pro­tected in the class­room. Pri­vacy is a very huge issue.
  Improv­ing edu­ca­tion for the chil­dren of Penn­syl­va­nia is a goal we both share. Thank you for your prior response as we con­tinue to work together. I am sorry for the length of this request, how­ever, these issues must be resolved.
  I will look for­ward to your reply and the legal posi­tion of the Penn­syl­va­nia Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion in each of my five concerns.
  Sin­cerely,
  Anita B Hoge
  CC:
  Jen­nifer Branset­ter, Gov­er­nor Corbett’s Office
  Andrew Paris, Gov­er­nor Cornett’s Office
  Kath­leen Kane, Attor­ney Gen­eral
  Karen Molchanow, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Penn­syl­va­nia State Board
  John F. Mizner, Chair­man, IRRC
  Aaron R. Jor­dan, Act­ing Assis­tant Inspec­tor Gen­eral for Inves­ti­ga­tions
  Steven Ander­son, Spe­cial Agent Fed­eral Inspec­tor Gen­eral
  Michael Sprow, Penn­syl­va­nia Inspec­tor Gen­eral
  Kath­leen Styles, Chief Pri­vacy Officer
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  Filed Under: Education
  Source: http://agenda21news.com/
  Comments
  Just as Obamacare could end the government / healthcare complex, Common Core could end government schools. Our great grandparents did very well being homeschooled and hiring tutors as needed and they didn’t have the internet.
  It looks like states will have to repay the federal bribe attached to this monstrosity, but if we reclaim all federal land, states can sell it to our farmers, ranchers and private timber forests and pay off the feds.
  States need to begin to use the 10^th Amendment and nullification to protect our sovereignty.
  Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader