Using Data to Change the World – Federal Take Over of Education

The question- Is FedLedEd in Texas?

Wait we said NO to Common Core, Right?

“Not only is the Common Core State Standards initiative about “dumbing down” children under the guise of bringing them up, it is also about power, control and especially money!”Common Core/CSCOPE Data mining children and their teacher’s personal information could be one of the biggest stories in the upcoming primary across the country and a story that could blow up the Establishment and Crony Capitalism on both sides of the political aisle if exposed. People are beginning to ask questions- Now the question is what will be done about it? Will parents and grandparents speak out and stop it?

The Common Core Federal take over of Education is a marriage between “Big Government” and “Big Brother”, and it will take the moms and dads of America to stop it.

On the right side of the political aisle the “Big Government” types are making big money off of Common Core/CSCOPE. On the left side of the aisle the “Big Brother” types are pushing a progressive agenda that is Anti-American, Anti-Christian and has huge national security implications. Through political correctness we’re allowing for a desensitizing of our children from the real threats our nation faces from fundamental Islam. This is not a Republican vs Democrat issues. This is Washington Establishment against the people issue.

As reported from SXSW (South by Southwest) Education conference in Austin, Texas
Big data and schools: Education nirvana or privacy nightmare?

“InBloom, a nonprofit start-up founded with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Carnegie Corporation, is taking center stage and spreading around some significant funds as an official sponsor of the South by Southwest Education conference in Austin, Texas this week. It hosted the official opening night party on Tuesday, is sponsoring a “networking lounge” with free coffee and snacks at the Hilton next to the convention center, and is debuting the first live demonstrations of its technology with representatives from pilot districts and states.”

It is Crony Capitalism at it’s worst; they are using our children for profit……

But the very moves that make this idea a huge opportunity from the point of view of edtech entrepreneurs—the ability to find a large market for learning games and systems all in one place, to pull student data automatically, and to coordinate effortlessly with other apps—makes parents “horrified,” in the words of school activist Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters.

“There are no limitations on the time-frame, or the kind of data. There’s no provision for parental consent or opt-out. The point is to give our kids’ data away for free, and share it as widely as possible with for-profit ventures to help them market and develop their learning products,” she says. ”For-profit vendors are slavering right now at the prospect of being able to get their hands on this info. and market billions of dollars of worth of so-called solutions to our schools.”

As Merrill Hope says… “Common Core is in TX under an army of names and programs, CSCOPE is just one of them. It is FedLedEd and it shares all the same components: curricula, testing, data mining. It is no longer an “option” to say “not allow into TX.”

As the great song from the Sound of Music Goes…..

Let’s start at the very beginning…..

When Texas took Stimulus funds back in 2009 from the ARRA “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” they were required to completely redo the database that had been previously used in Texas. The TEA had to by law send data collected to D. C. in a certain, prescribed format data collected on students and teachers. This, of course, was the Common Core Standards Initiative laying the foundation for the future national database.

The next step was to make it legal to capture all this data on students and their teachers. A recent amendment to the federal Family Education Rights and Privacy Act allows third parties to gain access to student data without parental consent. This coincides with the fact that those states who took federal stimulus funds are subject to this amendment.

And then next Texas HB 2103 was passed and signed into law in the 83rd legislative session. We were warning about this law for months and those in Austin would not listen.

ABOUT TX HB 2103 from Donna Garner

HB 2103 (passed by the 83^rd Legislative Session) is that the personal data to be shared can go back 20 years.

HB 2103 requires that data from the Texas Higher Education Board (college data), Texas Workforce Commission (workforce data), and the Texas Education Agency (student, teacher, family data) – going back 20 years – can be shared with third parties in and outside Texas.

HB 2103 is called a “P-20” initiative which tracks personal data from K-16 and then continues to collect personal data right straight into the workforce years.

HB 2103 was authored by Rep. Mike Villarreal (D-San Antonio) and Rep. Dan Branch (R – Dallas) and was sponsored by Sen. Kel Seliger (R – Amarillo).

On 5.15.13, HB 2103 passed the Senate on voice vote – 31 to 0: http://www.journals.senate.state.tx.us/sjrnl/83r/pdf/83RSJ05-15-F1.PDF#page=6

On 4.24.13, RV #316 (Third Reading), HB 2103 passed in the House – 130 Yeas, 1 Nays, 1 Present Not Voting.

Rep. David Simpson appears to be the only Legislator to vote against HB 2103: http://www.journals.house.state.tx.us/hjrnl/83r/pdf/83RDAY58FINAL.PDF#page=21

MY CONCLUSION ABOUT HB 2103

It is my opinion that we need to hold our Texas Legislators and also Gov. Perry accountable for passing HB 2103 which will put our personal data (going back as much as 20 years) into the hands of third-parties in Texas, in other states, and in Washington, D. C.

PEIMS – DATA COLLECTION SYSTEM IN TEXAS

PEIMS is not new; the Texas Education Agency has required school districts to submit their data probably since the mid-80’s when demographic and testing data became popular. However, the data was kept at the TEA; and from what I have been told by a previous TEA Commissioner, that data was not transmitted to third parties, certainly not outside our state.

Now the PEIMS data by law under HB 2103 is subject to scrutiny from outside sources. Here is the link to the TEA website that helps to train schools’ PEIMS data entry personnel. By studying this website, the public can find out what type of data is being collected by PEIMS: http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index4.aspx?id=3866

We are in a dangerous and transformational time- Knowledge is Power for Parents in Texas and across the country.

Texas is the last stand. If they get Texas it is a done deal.

Here is a helpful Texas Education acronym key.

NEDM – National Education Data Model (NEDM). The National Education Data Model is a P-20 data resource.
P-20 Stands for Data collected from Pre-school through Masters degree.
TEA – The Texas Education Agency (TEA) is a branch of the state government of Texas responsible for public education.
ESC – Education Service Centers (ESC) are a state-wide system of 20 regional education service centers created by the 59th Texas Legislature to assist school districts across the state. Originally slated to work with school districts as a media center, the role of the education service center has expanded to work alongside school districts to carry out the three main objectives as stipulated in the TEC §8.002: to assist school districts in improving student performance in each region of the system; enable school districts to operate more efficiently and economically; and implement initiatives assigned by the legislature of commissioner.
PEIMS – The submission of Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS) data is required of all school districts. The Data Standards provide instructions on the submission of PEIMS data by school districts to the Texas Education Agency.
TPEIR – The Texas Public Education Information Resource (TPEIR) provides stakeholders in public education – including but not limited to administrators, educators, state leadership, researchers, and professional organizations – with ready access to public primary, secondary, and higher education information for purposes of research, planning, policy development, and decision-making.

Watch this short video of David Coleman, president of the College Board and creator of the Common Core State Standards talking about who they have hired to build field mobilization and data collection. They are wanting to train American children on advocacy and policy. THEIR Advocacy and Policy.

As East Texas Mom Terri Hill stated… “Earlier this month Tx SBOE (State Board of Education) member Thomas Ratliff who happens to also be a paid lobbyist for Microsoft and Sen. Dan Patrick were asked if any student data was being “mined” from Texas Students. They both said “NOT TO MY KNOWLEDGE.” ACTUALLY, ACCORDING TO TEA, IT’S PRETTY CLEAR THAT THEY ARE NOT ONLY COLLECTING STUDENT DATA, BUT THEY ARE COLLECTING A LOT OF IT.”

Here is a link to a video of just that portion of the Debate.

Below is information done by a working group of Texas Moms, Dads, Grandparents and Tax Payers.

TO START Student INFORMATION COLLECTED FOR THE PEIMS DATA STANDARDS WHICH IS DATA REQUIRED OF ALL SCHOOL DISTRICTS.

Student Data Identification – the information necessary to identify the person. This information is Social Security number or state-approved alternative student ID, Unique ID, student name, and a health or weather related crisis indicator.

Demographic – the characteristics of a person. This information is the campus, last date of enrollment, sex, ethnicity, race, date of birth, refugee/asylee, career and technical education, attribution, as of status, grade level, migrant, bilingual/ESL summer school, and economic status data.

Enrollment – the specific enrollment attributes of the student. This information includes the campus, grade, eligibility, LEP status, special program participation, and at-risk status for each student.

Special Program – the information specific to each of the special programs (ESEA, Title I, Part A; Special Education; Career and Technical Education; Bilingual/ESL, and Extended School Year services).

Attendance – the basic information pertaining to the attendance of a student. This information is the days absent and present, eligible special education attendance, eligible career and technical attendance, eligible bilingual/ESL attendance, pregnancy related services, and gifted/talented services.

Course Completion – the courses that are attempted and completed by students in grades 1-12. The courses and the course outcomes are reported.

Leaver – the information about prior year students who are not current year students.

Disciplinary Action – the information on student disciplinary removal actions and truancy actions.

Restraint – the information on student restraint events. This information reflects special education student restraints performed by school district employees/volunteers and all student restraints performed by school district police officers and SROs.

Flexible Attendance – the basic information pertaining to the flexible attendance program of a student. This information is the minutes present, special education days eligible, eligible career and technical minutes present, bilingual/ESL days eligible, pregnancy related services days eligible and gifted/talented services for students participating in the Optional Flexible School Day and the High School Equivalency Program.”

From 2013-2014 PEIMS Data Standards APPENDIX A

http://www.tea.state.tx.us/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=25769806208

I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING… YOU SEE THAT INFORMATION IS COLLECTED FOR THE PEIMS DATA STANDARDS, SO YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THESE PEIMS, SUCH AS, WHERE ARE THEY STORING THIS INFORMATION?

“TPEIR The statewide data solution loads data from the certified PEIMS data store to the state’s P-20 data warehouse, TPEIR. In addition to eighteen years of P-12 data and seventeen years of higher education data from Texas colleges and universities, and information on teacher certification and teacher preparation programs, the warehouse will be expanded to link critical missing pre-K, college readiness, and workforce (wage, industry, and employment) data. When complete, TPEIR will enable P-20 monitoring of an individual student, from enrollment into the public education system through matriculation and graduation from Texas colleges and into the labor market. As such, Texas will have the ability to evaluate the effectiveness of pre-K to 12 programs based on how well they prepare students to contribute to the twenty-first century workforce.”

http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index2.aspx?id=7643&menu_id=938

NOW, YOU’RE ASKING YOURSELF – HOW DO THEY DO THIS? SO YOU KNOW THAT COOL PORTAL THE (ECS) EDUCATION SERVICE CENTER’S SOLD THE DISTRICT? THE ONE CALLED EDUPHORIA! WELL, EDUPHORIA! IS A TRADEMARK NAME FOR SCHOOLOBJECTS:AWARE, A COMPANY OWNED AND CREATED BY DELL. (REMEMBER THAT COMPANY – YOU SHALL MEET AGAIN)

YOUR NEXT QUESTION IS PROBABLY, WHY DO THEY NEED THIS INFORMATION?

From TEA:

Federal Reporting. PEIMS provides the agency with the information to meet current state and federal reporting requirements, including EDFacts, accountability reporting, and dropout reporting. These reporting requirements are fulfilled through the PEIMS operational data store at this point in time.

DO YOU REMEMBER THE BIG FEDERAL GRANT TEXAS EDUCATION AGENCY RECEIVED?

From page 15 of the Texas Longitudinal Data System Grant, which Texas was awarded over $18,000,000 from July 2010

4.5. Meeting Technical Requirements

Federal Reporting. The current PEIMS data collection system meets TEA’s federal reporting requirements including EDFacts and Accountability Reporting. However, much of the data are combined with other data sources after it is collected from the school districts.

SO, YOU READ THIS AND WONDER, WHAT EXACTLY ARE EDFACTS?

The EDFacts Data Collection: States submit K through 12 education data on approximately 100 data groups at the state, district and school levels to the U.S. Department of Education. Critical directory data is submitted, as well as data on schools, services, staffing, students, and educational outcomes. From ED.GOV, (specifically:

http://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/edfacts/overview.html)

NOW THAT WE HAVE THE BASICS DOWN, LET’S GET TO THE SPECIFICS AND TALK ABOUT WHO’S BEHIND ALL OF THIS DATA MINING.

THE LONGITUDINAL DATA SYSTEM GRANTS TO THE STATES (INCLUDING TEXAS) WERE MADE POSSIBLE IN PART FROM MILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF DONATIONS FROM THE GATES FOUNDATION. MICROSOFT SOLELY CREATED THE EDFACTS DATA COLLECTION.

LAST YEAR, MICROSOFT ALSO DONATED THEIR OFFICE 365 SOFTWARE TO THE TEXAS EDUCATION AGENCY AND OFFERED TO HANDLE ALL VIRUS SCANNING AND I.T. SERVICES. HOW CONVENIENT TO OVERSEE AND MANAGE ALL THOSE COMPUTERS IN AUSTIN WITH ALL THAT PEIMS DATA STORED ON THEM.http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/BL-CIOB-292

BY ACCEPTING FEDERAL GRANTS WITH NOT JUST STRINGS ATTACHED, BUT MORE ACCURATELY – HUGE ROPES, TEA HAS SOLD THEIR SCHOOL DISTRICTS, ADMINISTRATORS, TEACHERS AND STUDENTS TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER WHERE THEY WILL ALL BE FOLLOWED, TRACKED AND ANALYZED FOR LITERALLY DECADES.

HOW DID THEY MANAGE TO DO THIS, YOU MIGHT ASK. THE FOLLOWING LINK IS TO “TEACHING POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS” WITH TIPS FOR REGIONAL FORUM PRESENTERS, ON HOW TO DISTRACT TEACHERS AND ADMINISTRATORS FROM ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT DATA MINING.

DON’T MISS THIS GEM ON PAGE 3: Click Photo to the Right

“Within its presentation, the TEA addressed head-on growing questions and inaccurate rumors (dubbed “myths”) that the TSDS (Texas Student Data System), among other things, would increase data collection requirements for districts, mandate use of planned state- sponsored systems by districts and enable the TEA to “extract” uncertified student data from districts at will. TEA used “mythbuster” messaging to ensure that these concerns did not divert attention from the true focus of the forums: getting constructive feedback from educators.”

AT THE VERY LEAST, THIS SHOWS TEA’S INTENT TO MISLEAD SCHOOL DISTRICTS REGARDING THEIR TRUE INTENTIONS.

A FEW EXTRA NOTABLE ITEMS:

Another new product being offered soon for Texas students is the StudentGPS. This is made possible by a grant from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. Student data can be uploaded INSTANTLY to data storage, eliminating the teacher and school district from the current data uploading process.
Also from the Dells, they gave a $10,000,000 research grant to develop common core math books… at The Dana Center at the University of Texas in Austin.
After Dell funded the research to develop common core textbooks, right here in Texas, they needed to find an independent, like-minded publisher. Enter Bill Gates to fund the new publishing company, Agile Mind. Funding, writing and assembling of common core textbooks is happening today in Texas.

WHY WOULD THE DELL FOUNDATION, GATES FOUNDATION AND MICROSOFT HAVE SUCH A VESTED INTEREST IN GIVING TEXAS EDUCATION AGENCY MILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO IMPLEMENT THEIR PROGRAMS? THEY WANT OUR CHILDREN’S INFORMATION.

“That data privacy is a secondary concern is confirmed by this quote from the Data Quality Campaign (DQC) website that says, “While state policymakers bear the responsibility for protecting student privacy, they need not do so at the sake of restricting the use of quality, longitudinal education data in support of their ultimate goal: improving student achievement.” It is important to note that the DQC is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Alliance for Early Success,, AT&T, and Target, all entities that will profit heavily by having lots of data collected on our children. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also funding a very alarming student database project called inBloom that already holds data that includes “name, address and sometimes social security number…learning disabilities…test scores, attendance…student hobbies, career goals, attitudes toward school – even homework completion.”

THEY HAVE ALREADY VERY SUCCESSFULLY IMPLEMENTED DATA MINING ON OUR STUDENTS AT THE STATE AND NATIONAL LEVEL WITHOUT US KNOWING. IS IT REALLY SO FAR FETCHED TO GUESS WHAT THEIR NEXT OBJECTIVE WILL BE FOR TEXAS?

THEY ARE DETERMINED TO BRING COMMON CORE INTO TEXAS, EVEN IF THEY HAVE TO BUY THEIR WAY IN THROUGH THE BACK DOOR. HERE’S A VIDEO ABOUT WHO’S ACTUALLY FUNDING COMMON CORE AND WHO’S MAKING THE DECISIONS ABOUT IT, MADE IN JULY 2013. YOU WILL RECOGNIZE A LOT OF NAMES, COMPANIES AND SEE HOW PATHS CROSS AND HOW PEOPLE INTERSECT BETWEEN CORPORATIONS AND GOVERNMENT AGENCIES. http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/07/28/the-intricate-plot-that-is-common-core/

On, AUGUST 29, 2013, THE HUFFINGTON POST HAD A REPORT OF AN AUDIT ON BILL GATES’ COMMON CORE SPENDING. FROM THE ARTICLE:

A Brief Audit of Bill Gates’ Common Core Spending

“Bill Gates likes Common Core. So, he is purchasing it. In doing so, Gates demonstrates (sadly so) that when one has enough money, one can purchase fundamentally democratic institutions.” http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3837421

NOW, I MUST ASK, DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM I HAVE WITH TRUSTING ANYTHING A PAID MICROSOFT LOBBYIST TELLS OUR TEACHERS, ADMINISTRATORS AND SCHOOL DISTRICTS? AND THINK ABOUT THIS WHILE YOU ARE PONDERING THAT QUESTION – AS A MEMBER OF THE STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION, RATLIFF DOESN’T COLLECT A DIME. AS A MICROSOFT LOBBYIST, HE MAKES OVER $100,000 A YEAR TO FURTHER THEIR INTERESTS AND AGENDA. WHO DO YOU THINK HE’S REALLY LOOKING OUT FOR IN TEXAS?