Eliminate Student Data Tracking

D.O.G.E. just cut $900 million from an agency, the Institute for Education Sciences (IES), which tracks American student data.

Did the cuts go deep enough to eliminate funding for the State Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) ? This system tracks student data from all fifty states, despite the fact that the federal government has no constitutional authority to collect this information. Education is a state issue.

To circumvent the US Constitution, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), one of four centers in IES, makes individual contracts with each state to create uniform databases in order to collect student data. This data can then be easily shared or sold for research without parental knowledge or consent. These data systems collect student dispositions and non-academic standards, including social emotional learning in the affective domain, which are attitudes, values, opinions, and beliefs, also referred to as resilience, character or grit.

The New Hampshire Department of Education has received over $15 million in federal grants (bribes) to create an SLDS to collect student data and circumvent the law.

NH RSA 189:65 VI. “Statewide longitudinal data system” (SLDS) means the department’s statewide longitudinal data system containing student information collected pursuant to RSA 193-E:5 and the state longitudinal database created to house data pursuant to RSA 193-E:5.

The NH Legislature granted the executive branch authority to ignore the state and federal constitution and contract with the federal government to track student data.

NH RSA 193-E:5 III. “Any contracts or agreements necessary to implement the provisions of this section shall be approved by the governor with the consent of the executive council.”

What is the purpose of the collected data at the Institute for Education Sciences?

IES shines a light on inequity and its work is “more than just numbers and statistics,” said the Education Trust, a nonprofit research and advocacy group. “Without it, we are left in the dark, unable to see where educational gaps exist or how to close them,” the group said in a statement.

Here we go again, collecting data to find “inequity” and close “educational gaps.” Trump signed an Executive Order to eliminate Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI), yet here’s good old “equity” again.

Competency-based grading is a federal “reform” designed to close those pesky achievement gaps. It’s a unfair grading system, favoring low achieving students and providing them multiple opportunities to re-test and score as high as high achieving students. Even though it’s never been defined in state law, NH state regulations requires public schools to implement competency grading. Does the state legislature understand what’s going on?

We do not need the federal government collecting private student data and using this information to determine how best to grade our students to ensure there are no “gaps” in student outcome. We do not need our privacy violated. The people just spoke out on protecting their right to privacy.

[Art.] 2-b. [Right of Privacy.] An individual’s right to live free from governmental intrusion in private or personal information is natural, essential, and inherent.
December 5, 2018

It’s time to stop taking federal funds and assuming that the federal government can solve our education problems. The state legislature has allowed the federal government to destroy public education with bribes and mandates. It’s time to restore local control.

The state has failed our public school children and parents have had enough. Why are legislators creating a $100 million “bail out” system of EFAs to get children out of public schools, if not to acknowledge that they have failed the children in our public schools? Please do not tell me that legislators, who are elected by the people, can no longer trust the people to run their own public schools.