HOPE YOU ENJOY THIS HOTLINK TO A SIMILAR ARTICLE http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/02/government-knows-data-collection-undermines-learning/
Recreating Children in an Image Approved by the Government
Teachers will be held accountable, apparently, for recreating our children in an image approved by the government. If a teacher fails, there will be serious consequences for the school, the teacher, and the student.
Your child’s personality, attitude, and ability to learn will be diagnosed by educators through biometric sensors and layers of testing. Although federal studies prove that these invasive data collections may be damaging to learning and teaching, federal and state governments continue to waste almost a billion dollars to be complicit in harming the educational process.
Most understand that children are born with a natural desire to acquire knowledge and develop skills because both empower the child. Toddlers meet each challenge with greater determination to try again. Perseverance or grit is needed for success in life. Most kids have it, but educational policies and data collection apparently stomp it out of many.
According to the U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Technology, closing achievement gaps in schools requires technology to test and measure a child’s grit, tenacity, social skills, attitudes, and intellectual ability. Any missing characteristic will become an educational goal that the student must achieve. The same report admits that forcing a child to accomplish goals required by others can damage a student’s long-term retention, conceptual learning, and psychological well-being.
The feds create policies that strip tenacity from our students. They spend millions to research the role tenacity plays in academic success and then spend millions more to train teachers to restore a government approved level of tenacity into the very student whose personality they destroyed in the first place.
The Educational Technology report also reveals that the best interest of the student is NOT respected in accountability-driven climates that place extremely high expectations on students. The report admits that, under these circumstances, grit may not always be in the students’ best interest. So why hook up our children to facial expression cameras, posture analysis seats, and wireless skin conductance sensors? In fact, many companies will become wealthy by obtaining access to this data.
Effective data use depends on authorities who will support educators who use and interpret the data according to directions provided by the U. S. Department of Education. The government is expecting integrity in data interpretation from the person who may lose her job if the interpretation is negative.
The study called Using Student Achievement Data to Support Instructional Decision Making also reveals that there is little evidence that data collection improves instruction or student achievement.
Never the less, Race to the Top and Teacher preparation, developed by American Progress, explains that student data will be used to justify public humiliation of educators, educational systems, and the colleges that prepare new teachers. Because data collection alone will not inspire educational reform, American Progress has used dollars from Race to the Top to recommend reporting poor assessment results that will provide sufficient public shame and embarrassment to transform teacher and student performance.
American Progress recommends that the government’s approach to education reform should include publically shaming teachers, students, and educational institutions for failing to implement federal policies adequately. Unfortunately, federal policymakers will not consider holding failed federal policies accountable.
Our children deserve the best educational experience possible, but the federal government has a history of imposing policies that have been harmful. It is time to hold the federal government responsible for supporting failed programs developed by experts and theorists who have never taught in a typical public-school classroom. Accountability is needed in education, but the data-mining programs are not the form of assessment needed.
The federal government and the state departments of education know that these forms of data collection will cause more harm than good. Citizens need to pack school board meetings to present opt-out forms for these types of data collection. State capitols need to be flooded with citizens who demand state autonomy of education. Community stakeholders should be the ones who hold their schools accountable—not the federal government. If these programs are not stopped now, what will the future bring?
http://www.ed.gov/edblogs/technology/files/2013/02/OET-Draft-Grit-Report-2-17-13.pdf introduction, p 79
http://www.wnd.com/2014/03/obama-program-making-these-people-filthy-rich/
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/pdf/practice_guides/dddm_pg_092909.pdf p.3, 8
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/03/pdf/teacher_preparation.pdf p.1-1