Pioneer “Cogs In The Machine” Report on Data Collection
Last month Pioneer Institute released a report titled, “Cogs In the Machine: Big Data, Common Core and National Testing.” It’s 57 pages every parent should read before sending their child back to school this fall.It all starts with the federal desire to track every citizen (child) and, using the excuse of wanting to minimize the State’s financial liability for remedial training, unemployment and crime, assure that they will find gainful employment and a place in civic life in this country. They call this the federal unit record system. According to federal law they cannot create their desired national data base, but they have been working through statute to create the infrastructure for a surrogate of such a system. The State Longitudinal Data Systems are that surrogate; created, populated and maintained by the individual states but with federal authority to access them. how great that our state and really our individual school districts get to do all the work and hold all the liability and accountability for the federal government’s benefit.
Talk about only following the letter of the law, but not the spirit!
The spirit of the federal prohibitions against such an individual file on every citizen stems directly to our belief in the freedom of the individual and the right to individual privacy. Your data is your property. Such rights, according to our Bill of Rights, are inherent to our very existence, not something granted by our government. Here, the government chooses to ignore the letter of the law as spelled out in things like the 4th amendment.
Cogs in the Machine says, “Even if government were to keep the information private, the very existence of a ‘dossier’ is immensely intimidating and inhibiting. This alters both civil society and the private realm, and not in the direction of greater freedom.” The IRS scandal, the VA scandal and the DOR scandal here locally are critical examples of why government cannot be trusted with the collection, protection or even proper reporting of data. Who has believed the Pioneer “Cogs In The Machine” Report on Data Collection | Missouri Education Watchdog: