Editor’s note: This is
the sixth article in an eight-part series exploring Common Core
In my last column I looked at New York’s mass data-mining experiment related to Common Core in which the Empire State is collecting individual academic histories of every student to be shared across school districts, in the state’s educational bureaucracy, and with commercial third parties.
Such data collection is not without controversy
because it’s a disturbing assault on families’ right to privacy.
Realize, though, that what the state is doing now
is the tip of the iceberg.
When the federal government created a grant program
for the development and institution of so-called Statewide Longitudinal Data
Systems (which is what New York’s Common Core data collection machine is most
accurately called), the National Center for Education Statistics – an arm of
the US Department of Education – issued a document detailing the goals of the
program and what is expected from participating states.
The NCES’s brief details secondary identifiers and
characteristics which can be used to track students and segregate their
strengths and weaknesses based on the effects of those items. Here is the expanded list of items that the
NCES notes could be contained within a student’s records:
·
Political affiliations or beliefs of
the student or parent
·
Mental and psychological problems of
the student or the student’s family
·
Sex behavior or attitudes
·
Illegal, anti-social,
self-incriminating, and demeaning behavior
·
Critical appraisals of other
individuals with whom respondents have close family relationships
·
Legally recognized privileged or
analogous relationships, such as those of lawyers, physicians, and ministers
·
Religious practices, affiliations, or
beliefs of the student or the student’s parent
·
Income (other than that required by law
to determine eligibility for participation in a program or for receiving
financial assistance under such program)
It so happens that New York won one of
the aforementioned federal grants and is the only state of the 24 that did that
is following through on total implementation of the Statewide Longitudinal Data
System. That said, this year, and in the coming years, will New York’s children
be subjected to surveys asking for some or all of this highly-specific and
highly-private information?
If they are, will our kids be tagged as
“troubled” students for matters entirely unrelated to public education? Will
those factors once identified and categorized be used as cues to encourage home
visitation and/or intervention by Child Protective Services and other
government agencies? And will those same identifiers dog them our kids for the
rest of their lives?
Based upon the above list, one can
easily see students and their families targeted for any of the following: non-standard
political beliefs (such as libertarianism); a parent who is coping with mental
illness (even something as common and treatable as depression); disagreements
with the concept of same-sex relationships; exhibiting once-normal behavioral
traits now deemed to be anti-social (such as playful kidding now classified as
vicious bullying); maintaining friendly relationships with reformed individuals
who paid their dues to society; regular utilization of the services of medical
doctors; regularly attending church services; and family income (“too low” or
“too high”).
The possibilities for abuse of this
data are endless. It could be done in the classroom (by a maverick teacher with
a personal agenda), at the district level (by one trying to improve its
statistical outcomes by sequestering alleged troubled youth), and well into the
future --- these corrupted records would follow the youth into the SUNY/CUNY
system (impacting their eligibility and/or studies) and could likely be made
readily available in their pursuit of gainful employment.
What you see before you is the slippery
slope: The data collection being done now is intrusive enough, but it’s nothing
compared to what will happen once districts and unknowing parents have warmed
up to the practice and accept data-mining as a normal part of public education.
There’s a Big Brother in the classroom…and
it’s not anyone’s sibling.
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