As a parental rights advocate in New Hampshire, I hear from parents around the state concerned about the state of public education. I also have teachers who contact me, exposing some of what is happening in their local school.
Many teachers go into the profession to educate children and want their schools to be the best. Parents and teachers should know that they can reach out to me at any time with this kind of information, and I will keep their identity confidential.
This 9th Grade English/Language Arts teacher came to me with information about a program she uses in summer school with her high school students. She is concerned about the vendor, Edmentunm, that she has been required to use.
I will post our brief discussion below, but I do think it’s important also to point out that Edmentunm sells schools “Social and Emotional Learning.” Ed-tech is a BIG profit-making machine now, so it’s important to understand how their profits are the driving force for these vendors and not your child’s privacy rights.
As you can see from this screenshot, Edmentum offers “social-emotional learning curriculum rooted in MENTAL HEALTH and wellness principles.”
Many of the Superintendents will deny or ignore the mental health aspect of Social and Emotional Learning. That means that they are also ignoring federal law (ESSA) that requires parental consent when assessing or treating your child’s mental health. It is up to parents to remind administrators and teachers that they need to follow the law. If they fail, I would suggest filing a formal complaint with the New Hampshire Department of Education. Not following the law can result in those individuals losing their credentials to teach.
There is essentially nothing to protect your child’s privacy, and you can see that in their own statement on student privacy.
In a private mental health practice, your child’s privacy would be protected, and your consent would be required before they started any of these kinds of mental health assessments. That’s an ethical way to treat a child’s mental health. Those who do not uphold the ethical treatment of your child should probably not be allowed near children.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, the teacher who contacted me exposed more problems with Edmentum. You can read the discussion below.
So there you have it, folks. This is part of the disaster known as REMOTE LEARNING. Kids didn’t learn much, so now they go to summer school. Then at Summer School, they don’t learn much either. Watch out if they ever prescribe CREDIT RECOVERY. AS you can see, there’s not much learning going on.
I reminded this teacher that the end goal is to remove her from the classroom and have children learning from the computers in this way. You can find all of that explained on page 10 of this document, EDUCATION REIMAGINED. Check out what it says about adults in the classroom. The end goal is to replace the teacher with a facilitator. Then scroll to the last page, where the heads of the teachers union signed off on the document. Proving again that these national unions do not care about the teachers they are supposed to represent.
Thank you to this teacher who wants to provide a quality education for her students! Exposing the EdTech scam will help parents scrutinize what is going on in their school. The only winner in this situation is BIG TECH.
