Student Data Mining: U. S. Dept. of Education – Common Core

Proponents of Common Core, including Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal and the Arizona Department of Education repeatedly cite that the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were  "state led."  They cite:

"This state-led effort was coordinated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO)."

However, in a recent American Thinker article titled Republicans Get Played Again, it is revealed that:

"Four weeks ago the College Board president David Coleman admitted he snookered Republican governors into accepting Common Core. In his May 17 presentation to education data analysts in Boston, the author of Common Core State Standards said:  ‘When I was involved in convincing governors and others around this country to adopt these standards, it was not ‘Obama likes them’; do you think that would have gone well with a Republican crowd?’"

But there’s even more disturbing information revealed by David Coleman:

"However, Coleman made it abundantly clear he will concentrate on data mining our schoolchildren’s proclivities. So, how does intrusion into children’s privacy through more accumulation of data support Coleman’s stated goals of making students career and college ready?

"Now that many states have awakened to the deficiencies in Common Core and are even moving to defund them, Republican governors who bought Coleman’s spiel three years ago need to redeem themselves and investigate the nonprofit College Board’s campaign to delve further into the personal lives of our schoolchildren."  

Jennifer Reynolds, the creator of Arizonans Against Common Core, has been speaking all across Arizona on this subject.  Concerned citizens in many other states are discovering the truth about Common Core, including Wyoming.  

One of the most serious issues has to do with "data mining" of America’s school children.  Please see this document, published in February 2013 by the U.S. Department of Education titled Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance:  Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century .  It is devoted to the myriad methodologies that can be used to gather all the intimate details of your child’s emotional and psychological make-up.  The federal government will know far more about your child than you ever will.  

As Christel Swasey writes:

The Department of Education is increasingly creepy.

There’s no other word for it. It’s as bad as any Orwellian-styled fiction. I say this without being in the least speculative– proof is published openly in the actual source documents coming out of the current Department of Education.

I invite you to scan over the Department of Education’s document entitled “Promoting Grit, Tenacity and Perserverance.”

This 126-page report was published four months ago by the Office of Educational Technology and the U.S. Department of Education.

The whole document is about student data mining– but not just the type of data mining we’ve talked about before, where math and English and a student’s personal name and address are the issues.

Here, the issue is having schools/governments collect data about a student’s will, character, beliefs and attitudes using multiple measures that go beyond standardized testing to physical control and measurement of the child, by eye tracking and nerve sensory devices.

On page 44, see exhibit 11. It shows how affective sensors are used in some areas to measure student “engagement”. You’ll see facial expression cameras, posture analysis seats, a pressure mouse, and a wireless skin conductance sensor."