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Open Letter to the Argyle ISD School Board on Data Collection of Private Student Information

Dear Argyle ISD School Board,
After addressing you this evening during the open forum at the July 27th, school board Special Meeting, I thought I would follow – up with important information.  
As noted in this article just out…

Obama has you cornered with K-12 test data

“The effect of this final play in the testing game will be that every child’s student login will operate like a Social Security number on steroids — a student’s learning can be tracked and adjusted in real-time using “interoperable” learning and assessment programs. State’s Longitudinal Data Systems will ensure that a child’s learning record is tied to the child’s medical, family, workforce and criminal records (see the White House’s Learning Registry). And, just like the doctors under Obamacare, teachers are being controlled, manipulated and pushed out by the test data. Teachers can’t stop Common Core any more than doctors can stop Obamacare.”

As a Texas Mom who fought in the battle to eliminate CSCOPE from Texas, the information below is disheartening and frustrating to say the least. As our family tries to decided what we will do come Sept. when it is time for our children to go back to school at Argyle ISD, top on our list is to see if you will take action, and not approve funding the products provided by Region 11 Education Service Center.
As stated in the link to the Eduphoria contract, it is not binding until Sept. 1st, 2015, therefore there is time for you to step in and not approve this contract. 

What we know- CSCOPE was the precursor to these products.  

CSCOPE has been rebranded.
It was a 3 part curriculum management system. Thankfully Argyle ISD school board unfunded the original CSCOPE product by not approving the contract for CSCOPE with Region 11 Education Service Center.

On February 3, 2014 the White House held a Workshop on what it called “Hard-to-Measure 21st-Century Skills” where a “select group of researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and funders gathered in the White House Conference Center to discuss the assessment of academic mind-sets, collaboration, oral communication, learning to learn, and other hard-to-measure 21st-century competencies.” Obviously none of us were invited nor do we work for the Rand Corporation, which has now been hired to develop such Intrapersonal and Interpersonal assessments. Unfortunately, Rand was very clear I had to get their permission to even link to their report so we will have to settle for me telling you about it. Hilary Rhodes of the Wallace Foundation was there though, which explains why their Young Adult Success Framework (July 1, 2015 post) fits with what I call developing the right kind of mind, personality, and behaviors as if people were Ervin Laszlo’s cybernetic systems.

AIR (American Institute for Research) and ETS (Education Testing Services)[Who now has the contract with TEA (Texas Education Agency) to administer the STAAR state assessments] were there and Angela Duckworth of Grit and Perseverence fame along with Growth Mindset’s Carol Dweck and the OECD and UNESCO-sponsored Center for Curriculum Redesign’s Charles Fadel. David Conley was there–Mr Champion of the inclusion of Non-Cognitive Skills that did make it into the Every Child Achieves Act language and Creator of the misleading phrase College Ready for the Gates Foundation. They were there too as were the Spencer, Hewlett, and Ford Foundations.

I am afraid I do not know what anyone had for lunch or whether it was even provided, but everything else calling for “the development of student learning profiles and other methods that allow students to demonstrate proficiency in ways that are meaningful for them” was laid out in Appendix A of the Rand Report. Come to think of it that meaningful quote from the Appendix on the policy desired sounds like what Laszlo called the “subjective mode of comprehension” needed to turn people into engineered cybernetic systems suited for collectivism.

On July 30, 2015 in DC the National Academy of Science is having an open hearing on Assessing Intrapersonal (internalized in the brain and personality) and Interpersonal (how we get along with others and interact with our physical environment) Competencies. Discovering that is what led me to the Rand report and that White House workshop and the fact that on January 5, 2015 the National Science Foundation (#1460028) funded a study “to determine the best available methods to assess student skills in teamwork, communication, self-regulation of behavior, academic tenacity, and grit. These skills, also known as interpersonal and intrapersonal competencies…” Now if we go back in time to how the systems thinkers and cybernetic aspirants described their model of how education could be used to reengineer people from the inside-out, the phrase most commonly used in books from the 60s was “self-regulation of behavior.”

No wonder I see the cybernetic model thoroughly permeating how the Every Child Achieves Act will affect students. Now with the confessions from the language used in that NSF Behavioral Sciences grant and our knowledge of that White House Workshop, we can see the White House actively coordinating with everyone likely to fund or direct assessment in every state and school district to make sure everyone is on the same page in their vision. That’s NOT letting states and local schools decide. It’s forcing everyone to implement the same Reengineer the Mind and Personality to Control Future Behavior Model.

After doing the PIR (Public Information Request) and receiving the information linked to the graphic below, I have great concerns regarding not only the privacy of my children and their teacher’s private personal data based on the contract with Education Service Center 11 for the Eduphoria products, but also what type of assessments and data will be collected and administered daily during their class activities. 
Linked is a new Taxonomy by Robert Marzano schools and districts are being urged to use to turn students into Self-Systems, where their the “attitudes, beliefs and feelings that determine an individual’s motivation to complete a task” are being tracked and manipulated. ftp://download.intel.com/education/common/in/resources/dep/skills/marzano.pdf
Argyle ISD Contract with Eduphoria
Dr. Wright and Mr. Daniels, 
 
This request is made under the Texas Public Information Act, Chapter 552, Texas Government Code, which guarantees the public’s access to information in the custody of governmental agencies.  I respectfully request copies of the following information:
 
1. Information to include approved funding and e-mails on all professional development and conferences teachers, administrators, staff and school board members have or will be attending this summer in preparation of the 2015-2016 school year. 
2. Copies of any emails relating to (with redacted personal information) and contracts Argyle ISD has executed with third parties who have access to our children and their teacher’s private personal data that includes test scores, non-cognitive assessments, surveys, evaluations and data warehousing for the school district. 
Disclosure of this information is in the public interest because providing a copy of the information primarily benefits the general public.  Electronic response would be appreciated.  
I shall look forward to hearing from you promptly, as specified in the law. 
Thank you for your cooperation 
Sincerely,
Alice Linahan 
 I would like for you to be aware of the following attached documents from Region 11 Eduphoria’s Platform Teaching, Learning, Certification.  
1. The Forethought
The Forethought
2. Aware – Clearly in this document it shows Students will be monitored and an individual portfolio on a child is being produced and housed. 
Region 11 AWARE
3. Thrive –
Thrive - ESC 11
As a parent of a students in Argyle ISD I would like to inform you that I do not give consent for my child’s personal data to be collected and housed with Region 11’s Eduphoria products and I most definitely do not give parental consent for a individual portfolio on my children to be created by any teacher or team of teachers using Region 7’s DMAC solutions product.
In addition I do not want my children working with the STAAR One products provided by ESC11 which are clearly aligned with psychometric testing of Texas children.
 
 
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Data Analysis / STAAR One

  What resources are incorporated in the STAAR One™ item bank? Items from various assessment sources were considered, including the current EducAide database.
 
   
 
 
Rigor in Assessment Systemic Response
To assure that the STAAR One assessment item bank is of high quality and reflects the rigor required in STAAR, the development process takes into consideration instructional and assessment research from national level experts and organizations including: Dr. Norman L. Webb, University of Wisconsin–Depth of Knowledge, defining and identifying rigor and cognitive complexity in assessment; the psychometric properties of tests; test item development; item rigor refinement, and maximal accessibility. Research and application of effective instructional practices and cognitive and knowledge taxonomies were incorporated. Teams of master educators in STAAR assessed content areas/grade levels participating in the STAAR One item bank development project.

 

From the research I have done Dr. Norman L. Webb’s “Depth of Knowledge” is tied directly to PSYCHOSOCIAL PROFILING & MANIPULATION – Ralph Tyler (the “father” of behavioral objectives, a concept he frequently used in asserting learning to be a process through which a person attains new patterns of behavior. He was who originally created Learning Objectives, which his student and good friend turned into Outcomes Based Education. Which is now called Norman Webb’s Depth of Knowledge and has been incorporated into both the SBAC and PARCC Common Core assessments. Scheming ideas never go away. They simply get new masking names like Higher Order Thinking Skills.”

Thank you for your time and attention to these matters that effect all of our children.
Alice Linahan
Argyle Parent

 

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