House Passes Parental Consent Bill

student

On Tuesday, the Arizona House passed HB2088, a bill which requires schools to obtain informed consent from parents before their children are made to participate in intrusive surveys and assessments. The bill sponsored by Rep. Mark Finchem was requested by parents across the state.

“I am pleased to see that a majority of members of the House of Representatives agreed on two fundamental theories rooted in the very foundation of our system of government. Parental authority must be respected by government. HB 2088 acknowledges parental authority, which is not a permission granted by government. Parental authority is not an enumerated power given up to government by the people. The language in HB 2088 asserts the right that the Arizona Attorney General has claimed is trumped by federal law, which the federal courts have already said isn’t true in multiple decisions,” stated Finchem after the bill’s passage.

“Secondly, the concept of “informed consent” will be codified into law with regard to the gathering of non-test data in the form of surveys,” continued Finchem. “We must recognize that data harvested from our children belongs to them, not to a school district or a contractor that wants to know every little thing about their lives and the family unit that they live in. If we don’t respect the rights of the individual to be secure in their persons, papers and affects then we have truly lost our way as a people.”

“In addition, HB 2088 gives school districts time to change the cultural belief that they are entitled to information that is none of their business.” Finchem concluded, “This is a win for students and parents.”

The legislative overview reads:

HB 2088 prohibits public schools from administering specified assessments or surveys to students without notifying and obtaining written informed consent from parents and prescribes penalties for violations.

Provisions

Requires all schools, school districts and charter schools to provide written notice and obtain written informed consent from parents, or the student if the student is over 18, before administering any assessment or survey soliciting any pupil psychological data including:

An assessment of noncognitive skills or attributes, psychological resources, mindsets, learning strategies, effortful control, dispositions, social skills, attitudes, interpersonal or intrapersonal resources or other social, emotional or psychological parameters

Data collected through affective computing, facial expressions, brain wave patterns, skin conductance, galvanic skin response, heartrate variability, pulse, blood volume, posture or eye-tracking

Data collected through real-time analysis and adaptive tailoring of successive questions in the process of testing, including adaptive testing and pedagogical agents

Data collected through predictive modeling to be used to detect behaviors, beliefs or value systems or to forecast student outcomes

Requires all schools, school districts and charter schools to provide written notice and obtain written informed consent from parents before administering any survey that becomes part of the student’s permanent education record and that solicits personal information about the student, the student’s family or the student’s household including:

  • Critical appraisals of another person the student has a close relationship with.
  • Gun or ammunition ownership.
  • Illegal, antisocial, self-incriminating or demeaning behavior.
  • Income or other financial information.
  • Legally recognized privileged or analogous relationships.
  • Medical history or information.
  • Mental health history or information.
  • Political affiliations, opinions or beliefs.
  • Biometric information.
  • Quality of home interpersonal relationships.
  • Religious practices, affiliations or beliefs.
  • Self-sufficiency.
  • Sexual behavior or attitudes.
  • Voting history.
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