Friday, June 7, 2013

Missouri Education Watchdog: Now That Data Mining is on the Public's Radar....

Missouri Education Watchdog: Now That Data Mining is on the Public's Radar....:

Now That Data Mining is on the Public's Radar....

...let's revisit a MEW column on student data mining first published on December 28, 2011 via Emmett McGroarty and Jane Robbins of American Principles Project.  From The Department of Education Just Won The Data Jackpot:

Emmett McGroarty, executive director of the Preserve Innocence Initiative of the American Principles Project and Jane Robbins, a senior fellow with the APP, wrote a great opinion piece that was featured in today's New York Post regarding the new access the Federal Dept of Education just granted itself to a wide range of data about your children.  
Would it bother you to know that the federal Centers for Disease Control had been shown your daughter’s health records to see how she responded to an STD/teen-pregnancy-prevention program? How about if the federal Department of Education and Department of Labor scrutinized your son’s academic performance to see if he should be “encouraged” to leave high school early to learn a trade? Would you think the government was intruding on your territory as a parent? 
The government will have the ability to look at
any data they want to regarding your child.
Under regulations the Obama Department of Education released this month, these scenarios could become reality. The department has taken a giant step toward creating a de facto national student database that will track students by their personal information from preschool through career. Although current federal law prohibits this, the department decided to ignore Congress and, in effect, rewrite the law. Student privacy and parental authority will suffer
How did it happen? Buried within the enormous 2009