Public Policy Brief #9: 

Data Mining on Nebraska Students 

Should Be Stopped In Its Tracks 

March 6, 2007 

  

            On March 5, the Legislature's Education Committee held a hearing on the expansion of the Nebraska student records system, LB 615, and a "shell" bill that is likely to wind up containing an expansion of the statewide assessment system, purporting to be able to protect the "confidentiality" of individual student records, LB 653. I'm highly recommending the committee kill both bills. 

  

            You can read the bill and see its estimated fiscal impact (between $1.8 million and $2.6 million, plus millions more when teachers are brought into the databank): 

            http://uniweb.legislature.ne.gov/Apps/BillFinder/finder.php?page=view_doc&DocumentID=820  

  

            You can see the data collection system we now have on: http://www.nde.state.ne.us/nssrs/  

  

            Instead of full speed ahead with this Big Brother, Brave New World-style, privacy-invading system, we really need to: 

  

            (1) challenge its constitutionality under the 4^th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution with the Nebraska Supreme Court and stop it in its tracks, 

  

            (2) demand to have a "privacy impact" study done BEFORE the infrastructure is put in place, including a fiscal impact statement and a statement covering difficult issues such as identity theft, hacking, and sharing of the data with insurance companies, criminal justice databases, and who knows who else, and 

  

            (3) quit collecting data on private schoolers and homeschoolers, STAT. Avoiding THIS kind of stuff - data collection on our kids behind our backs -- is among the reasons why those taxpayers have chosen to forego their expensive "free" public education for the kids in the FIRST place. It's outrageous to include them. And: 

  

            (4) quit participating in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, even if saying nope to NAEP costs us our federal education funding - and all the icky mandates that come with it - good riddance. Finally, 

  

            (5) even if we keep our statewide data system for the public-school majority for bona fide public policy purposes within Nebraska, at the very least we must demand it be put on an "opt-in" basis, so that any parents who WANT their kiddies' stats splattered all over kingdom come can "participate" in the data collection process . . . but not the rest of us, who still have brains. 

  

            Otherwise, we're stuck with this: 

  

  

  

  

            Of course we shouldn't be expanding this no-good, very-bad, privacy-invading, propaganda-promulgating system. We should be peeling it 'way, 'way back, if not getting rid of it altogether. Don't think it's for what it says it's for - to help low-income, minority, and non-English speaking kids do better in school. We already KNOW what they need to do better in school, and we're not doing any of it. This is just a cover story for the government to make electronic dossiers on each American. Why? Not for better education. For social control. They could help kids learn better with far better, faster, cheaper and more effective methods if they WANTED to, and they DON'T need to destroy our constitutional freedoms to do it. 

  

            Also, don't think because your child is in a private school, or is being homeschooled, that you are safe. You are not. Your kid is in this databank, and the feds are able to "harvest" that data without your ever knowing it. 

  

            It appears that this is what is up with the "Learning Community" proposed for metro Omaha under the guise of cooperating to help disadvantaged kids. Over and over in the documents about student data collection, the phrase "community learning information network" pops up. It's the system for meshing all forms of health, education and human services with data sharing, with a purpose of assessing and developing your worth in terms of being "human capital." 

  

            Ewwww! 

  

            Here's a good article, almost 10 years old, with the documentation: 

  

            http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/OtherPDFs/When%20Johnny%20Takes%20The%20Test_Fields_Leslie_Hoge__2005_10pg_Edu.pdf  

  

            So much for the Privacy Act of 1974 (5 USC 552a). 

  

            So much for the 1974 Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, 20 U.S.D.A. SS 1232g. 

  

            Bottom line: this massive government databank is a giant violation of the Fourth Amendment's promise of "(T)he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." It's unconstitutional on its face. That should be enough to stop it in its tracks. 

  

            "Unreasonable"? I'd say so, since it is unreasonable for state government to trick students into revealing their opinions and beliefs in "tests" that are pitched to them as important gatekeepers for their future success, and then share that data with other units of government and paying "partners" who can, and do, make big decisions about people based on the "data" they have on them, which may or may not even be correct, much less fair and appropriate. 

  

            Is it "reasonable," in this day and age of computerization, for parents and their children to hold high expectations of privacy for their personal information? Yes, of course it is reasonable to expect that. 

  

            Is it "reasonable" to expect government officials to tell us openly about what they're doing, and why, and who all will be able to get their hands on this information? Well, let's see what they've done so far. 

  

            State officials attempt to calm our fears by telling us, stoutly and with feet planted, that they are NOT turning over all this private information on the microrecord level, collected on each student, to the feds. Yeah, but guess what? They are allowing the federal government to come in and MINE that information, from the state databank, so the feds can get the info on your kid, anyway. 

  

            They assure us that our students' personal information and scores and so forth will remain "confidential." Did you catch that? Not "anonymous." But "confidential." So it's not an outright lie. But it's a deception. And it's wrong. 

  

            It directly violates, or fails to protect, most of the principles of preserving privacy rights: 

  

n       Principle of secondary use: data must not be used for reasons other than the stated purpose, yet these school records will be cross-linked with other databanks on everything from hiring to land use to voting and social structures. 

  

n       Principle of access: each individual must know about the policies and practices related to the handling of their personal information, and have reasonable means to learn about, obtain and review the data - plus, when necessary, and by all accounts it's often necessary, to correct that information. 

  

n       Principle of affirmative consent: the knowledge and consent of the individual are required for collection, use and disclosure, and that consent should be on a specific, well-informed, "opt-in" basis rather than by veiled, hard-to-understand, incomplete or assumed permission basis. 

  

n       Principle of relevance: the information should be kept only for as long as it takes to fulfill the stated purpose of the data collection. 

  

n       Principle of accuracy: have you ever tried to correct a booboo on an electronic file that has already been dispersed? Good luck with that. 

  

n       Principle of security: how do we know there won't be unauthorized access, collection, use, disclosure or disposal for other than strictly educational purposes? The rule of thumb is, the longer a piece of information is stored by the government or anyone else, the more likely it is to be misused. And boy, this data is going to be financially valuable. So for all of us who want to retain our privacy . . . good luck with THAT. 

  

n       Principle of accountability: what oversight, enforcement and punishment systems are in place? What elected officials are representing OUR interests vs. the bureaucracy? 

  

            See http://www.newswithviews.com/Cuddy/dennis37.htm for an article by a longtime education researcher on the federal government's National Center for Education Statistics Student Data Handbook for Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education. That's what this is all about.  

  

            See that handbook and search it yourself for codes for things like "emotional disturbance" and various religious affiliations: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2000343rev  

  

            See background on the Education Data Exchange Network and how information will flow into the state's databanks, from there be extracted by the federal government, and then from there, who knows where all it will flow? Most likely, to employers, insurers and other government agencies, including law enforcement:             http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Data_Exchange_Network  

  

            See how the Schools Interoperability Framework will make this all possible: 

            www.sifinfo.org/index.asp  

  

            See how Nebraska's been up to our eyeballs in data collection for many years. Note this 2000 report: 

  

  

  

            Nebraska and Oregon were the initial pilot states for the federal government's "Internet-based system for harvesting information from states about federal program activities at the school and district level." Note that it says, "(S)tates will collect and store the data in their own warehouses in such a way that the federal government can harvest them." It started out that the feds were just harvesting crops of district-wide info. That seemed OK. But now? Golllleeee! They're harvesting every spec of grain on an individual basis.  And no one seems to know or care. 

  

            Note the timing of this article on the ESP Solutions Group website. It's dated Dec. 1, 2004. Nebraska is said to have granted a multimillion dollar contract for its new student record system, and that system is going to be state-of-the-art in "psychometrics," or mental traits, abilities and processes - how kids think. Gee. That was more than two years ago. So what was the March 5 hearing all about? You mean . . . our elected representatives are only NOW giving the authorization and funding for a done deal?!? See how it works? See: 

            www.espsolutionsgroup.com/recentprojects.php  

  

            Here's the REAL bottom line: 

  

            It's only a matter of time before the government will have the perfect brainwashing system in place. If they're not stopped, they're soon going to have a matching data collection system for teachers. They will have data on your race, religion, income, language ability, health and results of drug tests. They'll know the condition of your GUMS, for heaven's sake. They'll know your family size, birth order, age of parents, price of home, smoking/nonsmoking, paper/plastic. . . . They will have expulsions, suspensions, teacher ratings of you on subjective traits such as "honesty" and "responsibility" and "self-esteem," and most of all, what you THINK about stuff, especially matters of morality and politics. 

  

            Then they can cross-link data on individual students and teachers to a fare-thee-well, since the nationwide and statewide assessments are already highly politicized and left-wing, and all about attitudes, and they're only going to get worse, not better, as we go along. Not only that, but the databanks will go global. And THEN, Katie bar the door. 

  

            Oh. Didn't you ever WONDER why nobody ever gets to see the QUESTIONS on the National Assessment of Educational Progress? It's because they're creepy, that's why, or going to get that way soon. If what happened with the NAEP's prototype, the first "statewide assessment" in Pennsylvania, the Educational Quality Assessment, or EQA, is any indication, we're really in for it. According to citizens who saw the EQA, only 30 questions were about math, and 30 about reading . . . and 300 other questions were about attitudes, values, beliefs and opinions. 

  

            Then, armed with this data, easily linked to each student's psychological profile, they can figure out what teachers still like to teach reading with phonics and math with old-fashioned drills, and weed them out, since it's not "up to specs" to have too many kids who can read and think really well. 

  

            And they can tweak the assessment questions to reveal which students are still relying on what their parents say, instead of their peer group, and quietly and secretly change the computer-delivered curriculum to shape that kid's attitudes into a different outcome. The questions on those "assessments" and "surveys" your child is always filling out have been designed to reveal your child's "locus of control" - degree of compliance - willingness to conform - adaptability to change - loyalty to the peer group vs. loyalty to family values - and other pretty darn creepy stuff. And all the while, we parents will never know how the curriculum and assessments are being manipulated, because the kid will never bring a book home from school so that they can see what he's "learning." Why? Because it'll all be computer-delivered. That's what's up with all these "free" laptops in schools. To keep the "prying eyes" of parents away! 

  

            Similarly, the educrats can track teachers who seem to crank out students who agree with the Second Amendment (gun freedom) or U.S. sovereignty, or whatever it is that they want to get rid of, and they can subtly threaten that teacher's job or assign her to the doghouse or whatever. Meanwhile, they'll mark the student's answer on questions like that as "wrong" if the kid displays a belief in the Second Amendment or U.S. sovereignty or whatever, but all the rest of us will see is a "low" score. We'll think the kid is dumb; actually, the kid is just not Politically Correct. And it will very likely limit that student's access to higher education and good schools and so forth. Yeah. So they'll all cave. That'll put a stop to all this right-wing Politically Incorrect nonsense! 

  

            Plus, the educrats and their political puppetmasters will be able to tell what attitudes are prevalent in what neighborhoods - indeed, what city BLOCKS. Special-interest groups, chiefly political ones, will love that, because they can shape THEIR message to whatever "works" with that particular subgroup. Not to give that subgroup what they want - just to get elected and to get freedom-stealing programs like THIS across. They'll be tweaking the voters the same way they'll be tweaking the kiddies in school. 

              

            See, the whole point is to massage the curriculum even more than it is now, to leave out inconvenient truths of history that don't square with the left-wing party line, and to paint a particular picture of life for the kids to "learn." Those who fall into step will get straight A's - heyyyyyyy! aren't our kids SMART? - but those who can still think for themselves and don't like all this social engineering will be downgraded, remediated, held back, bent, folded, spindled and mutilated . . . until they cave, or be relegated to a menial job because they wouldn't. 

  

            That's what's up with all these high-stakes assessments and graduation exit exams: with this data collection system in place, you are going to have to LIE and DECEIVE about what you really think, if your attitudes are different than the federal government WANTS them to be, or you will not experience "success" in the form of college admission or career advancement. 

  

            Welcome to the world of standardized schools. THAT'S why we never should have drafted all these standards for K-12 education, a decade ago. It spelled our doom. Or as the kids would write today, "dum." 

  

            You know, I sure wish I were just kidding. But I've been watching this unfold for years. I started reading about the SPEEDE/ExPRESS - the Standardization of Postsecondary Education Electronic Data Exchange and the Exchange of Permanent Records Electronically for Students and Schools, run jointly by the U.S. Department of Education and the Council of Chief State School Officers. (Nebraska education commissioner Doug Christiansen has been a vice president for the latter group, and we taxpayers pay a lot of money for him to belong to it. Sigh.) 

  

            I thought it was mighty odd that they built that whole enormous bobormous infrastructure for transferring student records, when only a handful of students, relatively speaking, transfer from one district to another during any given year. 

  

            But now I get it: they built the infrastructure first, and now they're filling it with the data they were after all along. 

  

            Years ago, when they were in late primary and early secondary grades, our daughters, now in their 20s, were given really creepy surveys in District 66 in Omaha. Only they were smart - the questions made them feel icky, so they brought them home to Mama and Papa, instead of filling them out and turning them in to school. 

  

            So we were among the few parents who really knew what kinds of questions were being asked of our kids - and filed in school files - and shared with "vendors." We went to school and squawked, and were met with "deer in the headlights" denial and blame-shifting. I did call one survey vendor, in another state, and asked why there was a seven-digit number imprinted on my daughter's survey form, if they WEREN'T collecting the data down to the individual student level. They were unable to explain it to me, and I was just triply glad that she had brought it home instead of filling it out. But it left SUCH a bad taste in my mouth that our privacy wasn't protected better - and believe me, some of these questions were so raw, it was abusive for that district to be giving those questions to other people's children behind their backs without notifying us - that, frankly, that disappointment was one of several reasons we left that district and never looked back. 

  

            Supposedly, the data is kept "anonymous" and "confidential," but they still know which kid said what. They do it with little sticky notes on the test documents. Technically, your child's name is not on the test paper. But it's a simple matter to match up the numbers and know who said what. 

  

            And believe me, you would NOT be happy if the government had YOUR kids' answers on some of these creepy tests. Heck - you wouldn't want YOUR answers known, for heaven's sake: 

  

            Have you had sex? How many times? 

  

            Do you take drugs? How many times? 

  

            Do your parents fight?  

  

            Are there any guns are in your home? 

  

            I mean . . . sure, our girls were sleeping with someone in fifth grade. THEIR TEDDY BEARS!!!!! And yeah, there were guns in our house - WATER PISTOLS!!!!! 

  

            Sheesh. 

  

            But it's serious business. The data will be mined from the "assessments" and "surveys" that innocent children take in schools, which are already chock full of questions that reveal the political, psychological, attitudinal and behavioral characteristics of the child and the child's family. There is certainly potentially damaging and life-changing data in school records that, in the hands of potential employers and potential insurers, can really throw a monkey wrench into an individual's hopes and dreams. 

  

            And that isn't even the worst thing. The WORST thing is that this is a giant step toward nationalizing our schools. When the data codes are identical coast to coast, for public, private and homeschools, you'd better believe there is a reason. It's to force the government's selected curriculum down everyone's throats, or else. 

  

            Is this a train we can't sidetrack? I don't know. I just hate it, and hope the senators wisely and courageously kill that system. 

  

            I wish I could have been at that hearing, to sing this song: 

  

            ELECTRONIC PORTFOLIO BLUES 

            (to the tune of Someone to Watch Over Me) 

  

            All my grades and all the spitballs I throw  

            Go into my electronic portfolio. 

            SOMETHING TO WATCH OVER ME! 

  

            My health history and my secret desires, 

            Strangers can see, whoever inquires, 

            'CUZ SCHOOL STANDS WATCH OVER ME! 

  

            Too bad it took a little while to realize my file 

            Would dog me throughout my life. 

  

            Guess I'll make just like the poor Red Chinese 

            And lie through my teeth in order to please 

            THE ONES WHO WATCH OVER ME!!!! 

  

  

--------------------------------------------------------------------- 

  

  

 

 

Public Policy Brief #8: 

Why Nebraska Schools Need 

The Spending Cap of Initiative 423 

Oct. 25, 2006 

  

            Nobody likes to start a diet. But when diets work . . . it's great. Everybody wants that feeling. It's the same thing with holding the line on taxation, whether it's sales, income or property taxes. A little discipline goes a long way. Government employees might be reluctant to put themselves on a diet, but the results are likely to be well worth it. 

  

            The question is, would it be a plus or a minus if voters approve Initiative 423 this Nov. 7, and put spending limits into our state constitution? Is that a reasonable response to the growth in state spending, up 228% over the past 20 years, and the fact that the Tax Foundation ranks Nebraska sixth in state and local tax burdens this year? 

  

            Or in these days of spiraling health-care costs, pressures on education at all levels, and federal mandates that state taxpayers are forced to cover, would a spending cap be much worse than a diet, and actually starve our public services, particularly public schools, to death? 

  

            Ironically, it could be argued that Nebraska schools actually NEED the "diet" imposed by the spending lid, which, of course, is merely a limit on the growth in spending, not a spending cut. School spending could increase at a rate matching the inflation rate and population growth. But if school spenders want to exceed that rate of growth, they'd have to ask the voters for approval. WHAT A CONCEPT! Further, there would be a built-in "rainy day" fund to safeguard against a crisis. 

  

            How can a spending limit actually HELP a government service as complex and expensive as public education? Let's look to Colorado, which put a Taxpayers' Bill of Rights, or TABOR, amendment, in place in 1992. In stark contrast to Nebraska's sixth-highest taxes, Colorado now ranks 38^th. In median family income growth, Colorado rose in recent years from 43^rd to seventh by 2005. 

  

            Most importantly, Colorado now educates children in its public schools for almost a thousand dollars a year per pupil less than Nebraska ($8,456 per pupil vs. $7,536 per pupil, 2005, National Assessment for Educational Progress, http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/). Note that when the data is adjusted for regional cost of living differences, the differential grows to $8,741 for Nebraska and $7,041 for Colorado, according to the Education Week Research Center, www.edweek.org  

  

            The NAEP data also shows that Colorado teachers were assigned 17 pupils each, on average, while Nebraska teachers got a lighter load at 13.6. Meanwhile, according to www.edweek.org, the average Colorado teacher was making $42,679 vs. $37,896 for a Nebraska teacher (2002 figures). 

  

            Colorado has a higher percentage of minority and non-English speaking schoolchildren than Nebraska has (26.2% Hispanic in the Rocky Mountain State, vs. 10.8% in the Cornhusker State, according to the NAEP), and slightly less poverty (31.5% on free or reduced-price lunch in school, vs. 34.8% in Nebraska).  

  

            But here's the bottom line: Colorado children overall have better test scores than Nebraska's. 

  

            The most-recent ACT scores show Colorado at an average score of 20.3 on a 36-point scale, vs. Nebraska's 21.9. But . . . and it's a big "but" . . . 100% of Colorado seniors took the test. It's state law. Meanwhile, only 76% of Nebraska's seniors took the test. 

  

            Those who didn't take it are those who self-identified as non-college bound, not likely to be in upper-level courses, and not likely to do as well on a big standardized test. The bottom 25% of a student population could really drag that average score down. Thus, Colorado's score, with 100% participation, is actually more impressive than Nebraska's, even though it's lower. 

  

            In addition, Colorado fourth-graders scored significantly higher than Nebraska's on the math and reading portions of the 2005 NAEP: 39% proficient or advanced in math for Colorado youngsters, vs. 36% in Nebraska, and 37% in reading for Colorado fourth-graders vs. 34% for Cornhusker youngsters. 

  

            That quality was achieved despite the "constraints" of the TABOR law. It's a sharp contrast with the doom-and-gloom being painted by the state teachers' union, school administrators and other state workers whose agenda, obviously, is self-serving. Far from being hurt by TABOR, Colorado also has been ranked as the state with the No. 1 best economy in the nation, as judged by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, www.aei.org  

  

            The data suggests that a modest spending lid paradoxically makes schools better, because they have to be disciplined about their spending. Though Colorado's education system isn't far and away better than Nebraska's - the overall high-school graduation rate is lower, 70% vs. 78% in Nebraska, for example, as reported by Education Week's Editorial Projects in Education Research Center (www.epe.org/rc) -- it looks as though the lid is liveable, and better public policies in Colorado are making education work better there, and more cost-effectively. 

  

            There's plenty of room for innovation within the lid, too. For example, 45,000 children in Colorado attend charter schools, according to the Center for Education Reform. How many do so in Nebraska? Zero. Nebraska is one of only 10 states with no charter schools allowed. When school choice comes in, quality follows. 

  

            There are other indicators: 

  

            -- Colorado Education Commissioner William J. Moloney has established the Colorado Reading Directorate, which is working with teacher educators to try to fix the way they teach teachers to teach reading in that state. The move has garnered national interest. 

  

            -- Advanced Placement success is far more widespread, aided by state payment of test fees for disadvantaged students: according to www.collegeboard.com, 16.9% of Colorado students scored a "3" or better on an AP exam in 2005, vs. 4.4% of Nebraskans. 

  

            -- Colorado also has been a leader in English language acquisition programs for non-English speaking children. These are faster and more cost-effective by far than the more traditional bilingual education programs such as have been in place until very recently in the lion's share of Nebraska public schools. 

  

            All these factors make it even more incredible to review what Jim Griess, executive director of the Nebraska State Education Association, wrote about Initiative 423 in the October issue of the NSEA Voice (www.nsea.org/voice/voiceOct.06.pdf, p. 21): 

  

"The struggle in which we are engaged is as vital to our future today as was the outcome of the Civil War to our nation in 1860. The goal of these locusts is to impose their will on state after state until they have completely demolished government as we know it. There is a time for every generation to rise to the call - when the very existence of our nation, our state, our values, our culture and our public schools are threatened with extinction." 

  

            It could be that Nebraska voters will give him a reality check on Nov. 7 - and he may be pleasantly surprised that the "civil war" over government spending is one that both taxpayers and bureaucrats can win, with a little common sense. 

  

            For more information: 

  

            www.SOSNebraska.com (FOR Initiative 423) 

  

            www.NotInNebraska.com (AGAINST Initiative 423)  

  

            www.NSEA.org (state teachers' union, also AGAINST, for obvious reasons) 

  

  

  

  

  

 

 

Public Policy Brief #7: 

Initiative 422 and the Class I Debate -- 

Point Vs. Counterpoint  

Oct. 10, 2006 

  

            The Nebraska Legislature's Legislative Bill 126 basically is forcing Nebraska's remaining Class I rural elementary-only schools to consolidate with larger K-12 districts in towns and cities against the will of the parents and teachers in small communities. 

            A petition drive by Class I supporters got the issue on the Nov. 7 ballot for voters to consider overruling the Legislature, and letting the Class I school boards resume operations. 

            The measure is Initiative 422. 

            Should it happen? Should the Class I country schools be revived? 

            Here are some pro's and con's: 

  

              

            Do Class I grade schools do as good a job academically as larger K-12 districts, as measured by standardized tests?