Beware of Data Sharing Cheerleaders Offering Webinars
Perhaps the most sobering component of the privatization push is its unprecedented demand for data collection (data “mining”) on American students. Data mining is not just an American issue. However, on the American front, two education activists have been at the forefront of the fight against this mammoth student data collection: Louisiana’s Jason France (here’s a great example of his writing on the subject) and New York’s Leonie Haimson (her is her testimony on student data/privacy issues in a September 2013 New York city council meeting).
(For those unfamiliar with the data mining issue, see this concise yet thoroughsummary on the WhatIsCommonCore blog.)
US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan believes that there is “power” in data for “school reform”.
Indeed there is. The issue isn’t whether there is “power” in data collection and storage, and its potential sharing. There certainly is power. That is precisely why the public is wary of the federal push to develop statewide, longitudinal data systems.
The question is whether state and federal governments (and the privatizing interests nurtured by state and federal governments) should have control of over 400 data points per student.
As is true with any attempt to hand over the public to privatizing interests (i.e., the