I'd like a response from my own board member, or several of you, please.
First, I hope someone can inform me about who exactly is responsible for Utah extending its SLDS system. Here is the new link. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/slds/grant_information.asp
Who takes responsibility for this grant and where is the full grant available for public perusal?
Secondly, I wonder, since Superintendent Smith said, correctly, that Utah parents hold authority over their own children, then why is there no opt-out for the SLDS system in Utah, a system which essentially stalks students from cradle to grave without parental consent or knowledge? There needs to be an opt out at least, but there ought to have been a written opt-in from the start. Let me know who I should contact further about this vital issue.
Third, I'd like to know if there is a single soul on the board who actually believes in the rights that Utah holds under the U.S. Constitution and is willing to valiantly defend those rights. What have any of you done during the past three years to protect our local control rights, our privacy rights, our teachers' professional judgment autonomy, as we have descended into the Common Core and Common Data federal floodwaters? I really want to know.
I hope I am mistaken in my feeling that the board does not defend my constitutional rights in any way, on any level, and implements Secretary Duncan's will rather than the will of those Utahns who elected them. Please give me a ray of hope on this one.
Lastly, I would like to know if there is any one who stands with me, with Diane Ravitch, with Stanley Kurtz, with Gary Thompson, with Heritage Foundation, with Pioneer Institute, with American Principles Project, with Paul Horton, with Anthony Esolen and a host of additional scholars and doctors from both extremes of the political aisle, each of whom are calling for a Congressional Hearing on the Department of Education.
We still have a U.S. Constitution and we need to hold those accountable who are shredding it. No one is shredding it faster that the U.S. Department of Education.
How weighty does the list of grievances need to be for Congress to convene a hearing on the Department of Education? And when will the Utah State School Board ask for such a hearing?
It seems like any one of the grievances that I'll list next, would deserve action. Taken together, these assaults on Constitutional rights of individuals is almost unbelievable.
"... a new set of standards—rigorous, high-quality learning standards, developed and led by a group of governors and state education chiefs—are under attack as a federal takeover of the schools. And your role in sorting out truth from nonsense is really important." - 2013 speech by Sec. Duncan.
3. STALKING CITIZEN DATA - The Department of Education --stunningly-- succeeded in bribing states to build what is essentially each state's own stalking system, 50 federal/state database systems, called SLDS, that were built to federal specs, with federal interoperability, and with federally aligned data tags, essentially putting 50 state databases on a federal grid, without a vote and without asking for parental or taxpayer consent to collect personal, behavioral, and academic data about citizens, longitudinally, for life, using schools as a government stalking mechanism.
4. DELETING PRIVACY LAWS - The Department of Education altered previously protective federal FERPA laws, altering policy that changed the definition of what IS personally identifiable information (PII). PII can now include biological and behavioral data (biometric data) about children or about any citizen who once was in a publically funded school. The Department also reduced to just a "best practice" --a.k.a. "optional"-- the previously protective FERPA rule that parental consent had to be received prior to any sharing of student PII. The Department was sued by the Electronic Privacy Information Center for doing this. Read details at that site.
5. STANDARDIZING THE P-20 DATA MINE - The Department of Education partnered with a private, closed-door group called CCSSO (the co-creators, by the way, of Common Core) to co-produce common data standards, called CEDS, which further standardizes the data mining ability of the federal government over American citizens from early childhood through the workforce, in an initiative known as P-20 (or P-20W).
6. TEACHING AND IMPLEMENTING SOCIALISM, ALMOST AS A NATIONAL RELIGION - The Department of Education's official blog, as well as Secretary Duncan's speeches themselves, have unilaterally redefined education-- as the teaching of socialism, aka social justice. Who passed a law that social justice would be the foundation for student learning? Who was authorized to take the entire population of U.S. school children down that path? In "Education is Social Justice" and other official articles and speeches, we learn that no longer will our education dollars teach our children to cherish Constitutional ideals like individual rights, property rights, separation of powers, or religious; instead schools will teach social justice, which is, unfortunately, not justice. It is theft. It allows the Department of Education (or others) to steal teachers, money, or data from one group to redistribute to another, without consent. Duncan can't seem to give a single speech without spreading "social justice" and his Equity and Education Commission's publications reveal that the Department is promoting not just the teaching, but the implementation of socialism and forced redistribution, nationally. Shouldn't there at least have been a vote?
7. SUBMITTING TO GATES - The Department of Education worked closely with, and accepted money from, the worlds' second richest man and implemented nationwide policies based not on voter intent but on Gates' intent. As Diane Ravitch wrote: "The idea that the richest man in America can purchase and — working closely with the U.S. Department of Education — impose new and untested academic standards on the nation’s public schools is a national scandal. A congressional investigation is warranted."
Stanley Kurtz got it right when he said:
"When the story of the Common Core is finally told, it’s going to be ugly. It’s going to show how the sponsors of the Common Core made a mockery of the Constitution and the democratic process. It’s going to show how the Obama administration pressed a completely untested reform on the states, evading public debate at both the federal and state levels. It’s going to show how a deliberative process that ought to have taken years was compressed into a matter of months. It’s going to show how legitimate philanthropic funding for an experimental education reform morphed into a gross abuse of democracy. It’s going to show how the Obama Education Department intentionally obscured the full extent of its pressure on the states, even as it effectively federalized the nation’s education system. It’s going to show how Common Core is turning the choice of private — especially Catholic — education into no choice at all."
Please, Utah Board, show your constituents that you do take a valiant stand for our Constitutional rights. Please give us a ray of hope. We are tired of seeing our rights flushed away, tired of the endless federal initiatives that strip our children of privacy, and strip teachers of professional respect, unopposed by those we elected in Utah.
Christel Swasey
Utah Teacher and Parent
Pleasant Grove
