PENNSYLVANIA CITIZENS CALL FOR MORATORIUM ON DATA COLLECTION
By
Anita Hoge
December 2, 2014
NewsWithViews.com
"I have grave concerns about the direction that the Common Core standards movement has taken, as well as, my concerns of the ethics of testing and teaching in the affective domain. I must question the legality of these methods without proper safeguards and ask that legal counsel respond to this direction that Pennsylvania has taken." ~Anita Hoge’s letter to PA Dept of Ed, 9/12/14
On Monday, November 24, 2014 Pennsylvanians Restoring Education and Pennsylvania Against Common Core issued a Press Release asking Governor Corbett to place a moratorium on the data collection in the Pennsylvania Information Management System and to rescind all contracts with outside contractors who can access personally identifiable information on children in violation of federal law, state policy, and Chapter 4 regulations.
To alert all Americans this press release was published in its entirety on Charlotte Iserbyt’s blog titled: “PA Citizens Ask Gov. Corbett for Data Collection Moratorium” The press release state, in part:
“We have discovered that Pennsylvania continues to be the model for the nation to develop a dossier on each citizen feeding into a national data base that collects this personally identifiable information with the collaboration of the schools. This systemic collusion between the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics created a national ID without the knowledge of the citizens. This system boasts that "all of the Commonwealth's children, adolescents, and adults" will have a dossier. (CFDA-# 84.384) We have also found that this data base in Pennsylvania is a model state for the nation to implement a "womb to workforce" data base, (NCES Contract: CFDS-#84.384, PR/Award #R372A090022; grants.gov Tracking #: Grant 10076087) that would start at birth and continue until retirement which connects the Department of Labor with wages in this dossier with the addition of the last 5 digits of the SSN or the connection to this Unique ID. (Correspondence between Secretary of Education Gerald Zahorchak and Secretary of Labor Sandy Vito). This creates a data base of human capital, your worth... or non-worth to the economy.
(Pennsylvania’s Workforce Data Quality Initiative Grant) (PA-WDQI)”
“The federal government in collaboration with Pennsylvania is developing psychological profiles on the families of this country through the personally identifiable information collected in the schools that will be used as a decision-making model for the future. The government wants to know HOW you think and WHAT you think and everything about YOU. This is a government intelligence operation using education to create a dossier on every family in this country. Attitudes and practices of each family are unwittingly revealed in the student's response in the classroom and on tests through the "Special Ed Student Snap and Student Snap" (Pennsylvania State University, PennData Grant: Project Number 062-14-0-042: Federal Award Number: HO27A130162)”
On November 28, 2014 I publicly released the complete text of “Anita Hoge's OPEN LETTER to PA Dept of Ed's Dumaresq,” again published on Charlotte Iserbyt’s blog. What follows is important background to what led up to this letter and our press release.
On January 3, 2012 the new FERPA regulations went into effect that allow outside contractors to access student personally identifiable information in a student record. An Executive Order by President Obama allowed personal data to flow "unlocking" this data. (Source: EO 12866) States must have a policy in place that would allow a signed written agreement between the Department of Education and an outside contractor to gain access to this personal data for research. FERPA regulations changed the definition of WHO could access the data and WHAT could be accessed. The definition of personally identifiable information not only included student name, address, zip code, birthdate, mother's maiden name, etc, it also included biometric data including fingerprints, voice prints, iris scans, DNA sequences, and facial recognition.
I had researched the templates for how an outside contractor could apply for this personal data. In May, I had a meeting in Harrisburg to explain these FERPA loopholes. I asked that a state representative request the names of the contractors who had access to Pennsylvania Personally Identifiable Information in student records. Pennsylvania Representative Lawrence received the documents last June, but then refused to give them to us. The next request was through the Chairman of the Senate Education Committee, Senator Mike Folmer, who requested the documents and forwarded them to us. The documents are explosive.
We arranged a meeting in Harrisburg on October 20, 2014, to explain the documents that we found. That meeting was attended by Senator Folmer's aide, Representative Denlinger, Jeremy Kiehl Esq, Andrew Paris, aide to Governor Corbett, Ryan Bannister, Pennsylvania Against Common Core, and myself, Anita Hoge. I prepared the documents for the meeting and one by one, presented documents to the entire group.
The implications of the impact of these documents for the entire nation are astounding. These documents explain that Pennsylvania is a model to collect personal information on the student and his/her family. The student is given a "national unique ID" in order to monitor whether students were meeting government affective domain standards referred to as Interpersonal Skills Standards and Anchors. By 2007, 1.8 million students were given this unique ID in Pennsylvania, also categorizing college age students, starting at birth to age 21. The documents refer to the system as a "womb to workforce" database eventually connecting wages for a person's worth or human capital" to the economy.
This is system of surveillance through contracts with the National Center of Education Statistics in a state longitudinal system for every state in the entire nation. It is being set up using the schools as a means to collect this data. This system connects to the demographic data collected by the census. In thirty years those students who had been given the "national unique ID" will be near retirement age, with absolutely no need for census gathering. This agenda replaces the census with details of psychological profiles, personally identifiable information, along with biometric data and demographic data of every person in the United States – a complete dossier!
After this historic meeting in Senator Folmer's office, two days later the Governor asked Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Dumaresq to cleanse the Pennsylvania Department of Education website portal called Standards Aligned System, SAS, of all affective domain standards called Interpersonal Skills Standards that deal with attitudes, values, opinions, and beliefs of students. This action proves wrongdoing.
The parents of Pennsylvania have the documents to prove that there is much more that needs to be cleansed – everything about Common Core, all related tests, curriculum, software, lesson plans – everything must go. All data collection must be stopped until the Attorney General investigates the invasion of privacy and violations of federal law, state policy, and state regulations.
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“Anita Hoge's OPEN LETTER to PA Dept of Ed's Dumaresq” issued to the Secretary of Education, forwarded to Governor Corbett, and the Attorney General requests a moratorium on the data collection and an investigation into the data collection activities of our state. This letter also explains in detail the alleged violations that the parents of Pennsylvania believe are being perpetrated on their children.
You can do this too! We have information and templates from other states that can help citizens and parents find the same sort of documents to expose how your own state is involved in the data collection. Read our press release. “PA Citizens Ask Gov. Corbett for Data Collection Moratorium”
Again, here are the links to the OPEN Press Release and the OPEN Letter. Read these for yourselves. This is public information that should be widely distributed across our nation.
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