By Dale Brethower, Ph.D.
Representative Mark Finchem, AZ Legislative District 11, is onto something important. He talked about it recently at a meeting of the Oro Valley Republican Women. Mark believes that it is helpful to follow the money if we what to understand any government action. No surprise there, but he has an interesting question about Common Core: Why do deep pockets folks support Common Core? Follow the money!
Common Core provides a way to keep lots of money flowing into deep pockets. Makers of tests love Common Core. Publishers of textbooks and such that are used in public education love it. Who else loves it? Arnie Duncan who was, until recently, the leader of the Department of Education loved it. Marketers probably love it. Why? Because Common Core data collection could provide them with millions of dollars worth of information about millions of school children—and their families.
Finchem explained: Common Core testing has two components. One component tests cognitive information. (Have children learned what is taught in school?) The other component is “behavioral science” information that comes from questionnaires that parents are asked/pressured to fill out. Parents are asked for all sorts of personal information: how many parents are in the home, how many children, any mental health issues, any guns in the home, how much income is there, do you own your home; I don’t know exactly what is asked but they ask for lots of personal information.
Finchem explained that the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) might be a key to understanding the Common Core push. Personally Identifiable Information is a type of information that enables anyone with access to it to know a whole lot about you. One example is sort of innocuous but illustrative. Google loves my GMail account and my internet browser searches because they can get PII from my useage. If I do internet shopping looking for sunscreen or dental floss or winter clothing or whatever or if I go to Cheaperthandirt.com where there is a huge variety of guns and ammunition for sale, they can detect that and send advertisements, tailored to products like those I showed interested in.
It is convenient for me, in case I want to shop. It is also really nice for vendors because they can tailor advertisements to me. It is great for Google because they make a ton of money selling advertising–that’s why they love to have me use Gmail for free. Which it isn’t, it is just that I’m not the one paying huge sums for access to the Personally Identifiable Information of Gmail users. TANSTAAFL (There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch)
Side note: one reason some of us worry about mandatory gun registration is that the Feds would then know just who owns how many of what kind of guns; that is Personally Identifiable Information. Then, if the Feds decide maybe I’m a mental case, they can check to see if I own a gun. If I do, I just might be dangerous so they should come to my house and take my guns and keep everyone safe. As it is now, the Feds can just ask Google if, Dale, the probable nut job, is also a probable gun owner. Google then releases my connections with gun and ammo vendors and the NRA and Gun Owners of America and the Republican party and the Feds can say “Wow! Probable nut job gun owner, we’d best show up at his house at 2 AM and get those guns and shoot him if he resists.”
Am I being paranoid about personally identifiable information collected as part of Common Core? Maybe. If the information is stored in statistical categories only so that it is not personally identifiable. (How do all homeowners respond?) Maybe not if it is stored in personally identified ways. (How did Susie’s parents respond?)
I didn’t know that Common Core collects personally identifiable information. What educational purpose is served by knowing all that? Why don’t proponents of Common Core talk about it? Is collecting that information even legal?
There is relevant Federal law: the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/parents.html
“FERPA requires that a consent for disclosure of education records … oral consent for disclosure of information from education records would not meet FERPA’s consent requirements.”
Looks like good protection of student and parent privacy. Unless you read the “fine print” on the site, which I did: The ed.gov web site lists several exceptions that allow sharing, such as sharing with the music teacher, the assistant principal, the Information Tech people, other schools, and the like. Private school records are not very private but maybe that is OK. But there is nothing in FERPA to suggest that any of the educational records containing personally identifiable can be shared with textbook publishers, test makers, lobbyists, or anyone else.
Were I a school principal, I’d worry about that because schools collect PII. What if it is not legal? But not to worry; Obama has taken care of all that with an Executive Order. He says it is OK to collect PII. And use it. Use it for what? Presumably to make Common Core work better. For whom? That is murky. A great deal of information is collected that is neither necessary nor useful in improving the tests and the textbooks. The personally identifiable information would not be required.
But the personally identifiable information is worth big bucks to the “education establishment” such as test makers, curriculum providers, and teachers unions and such. Really big bucks would be involved if the collectors of the info decide to sell it to marketers. Can they do that? Maybe. Not according FERPA but maybe Obama’s Executive Order has already cleared the way. Or maybe it would take another executive order to make it possible to “share” the personally identifiable information far and wide.
Personally Identifiable Information worries folks like me who believe that we have a right to privacy. (Yikes! Maybe you should worry about people like me. What are we doing that we do not want people to know about? Lots of things, actually.) It’s nobody’s business who sends me emails and who is in my email address book or what charities and political campaigns I send money to–unless someone on some Federal watch list cleverly sends out a ton of emails to tons of innocent people, thus putting me on lists of suspected terrorists or something.
There is much to worry about in Common Core. What’s that stuff they call math? Why isn’t there more emphasis on US history, civics, and such? Why have teachers been fired for peeking at the tests while students were taking them? Those are reasons I had been concerned about Common Core. But, thanks to Mark Finchem, I now know there is much more to worry about. Personally Identifiable Information just might be at the core of Common Core.
Finchem provided two web sites to help us all get better informed:
I strongly urge parents and grandparents everywhere to check out both sites. Especially itsmypii.com. It is the web site for Finchem and a group of parents who are seeking to mount a court challenge to the core of Common Core. Obama’s Executive Order is the reed supporting Common Core data collection. But there is no legal or constitutional foundation for a president to amend laws by executive order as he has done for Common Core. Its My PII plans to challenge the Executive Order in court. The web site has further information, including an interview with Mark Finchem, information on FERPA, and an opportunity to donate to Its My Pii.