I am all for the use of appropriate data to inform instruction… data that comes from the classroom and can be used immediately by the teacher to enhance learning.  However, this wave of data addiction has children taking so many tests… “desktops” are piled high with spreadsheets collecting “dust”.  We have begun to collect data just for the sake of collecting data.

How much is this data informing the instruction of teachers and improving student learning?

Who is examining this data and for what purpose?

Is the data: Reliable? Valid? Accurate? A true, authentic measure of what our children know and understand?

I have become more and more concerned with the amount of data being uploaded to Data Collection Systems on many aspects of our children’s responses to test questions and surveys.  In Washington State, CEDARS is the Data Collection System.   This system is linked directly to the Federal Data Bank.  The FERPA laws have continued to be loosened and our children’s data is being leaked to third party vendors for profit making.  See (here) how our children are being given National IDs with the plan to track our children from womb to work.

Alarmingly, several states and districts have agreed to turn over their student data. Last year, the U.S. Department of Education quietly changed the FERPA regulations so that the data could be released. According to this article, the data will be available to entrepreneurs to market products to children.

If interested start researching inBloom, a company that created a database meant to hold all student data in a “cloud” managed by Amazon.com.  Click (Here).  Learn more about inBloom’s connection to Amplify, the company producing the Interim Assessments and Checkpoints now being used throughout Spokane and Seattle Public schools.  Click (Here) and (Here) and (Here) and (Here).

Murdoch… Gates… Carnegie Corporation… Klein… inBloom… Amplify…

ALL CONNECTED.

Amplify isn’t hiding it’s connections….Check out their homepage (Here).