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Monday, April 27, 2015

California Parent Thanks Leonie Haimson | Diane Ravitch's blog

California Parent Thanks Leonie Haimson | Diane Ravitch's blog:

California Parent Thanks Leonie Haimson






 Leonie Haimson is a national treasure. She founded a group called Class Size Matters, which advocates for reduced class size. She is an unpaid worker for kids in Néw York and across the nation. She is also an expert on data-mining and student privacy. Through her research and testimony, she informed parents in seven states about the $100 million committed by the Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation to create inBloom, a vast data mining plan. Once exposed, arents protested, state after state withdrew and inBloom collapsed.

Here is a public letter from a parent to Leonie Haimson:
The California parent wrote:
Leonie Haimson’s Opt Out Message Rang Out Loud and Clear on the West Coast
—What a small but mighty group can do—
—RestorePVEducation —
We had the privilege of hearing Leonie Haimson speak on April 12th in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
Leonie spoke to the privacy issues, data mining and high stakes testing.
Parents heard loud and clear.
Today it was confirmed that 200 students out of a class of 464 Opted Out at Palos Verdes High School’s 11th grade class. Only approximately 40% are taking the SBAC.
Palos Verdes High School has a 98% rate of students going on to college.
We are already ‘College Ready’.
If Smarter Balanced thinks that CA parents have already been dumbed-down, think again.
Parents and community are waking up to the Smarter Balanced profiteering scenario and they don’t like what they are finding out.
Parents here questioned “Where is the Smarter Balanced Privacy Policy?” only to find out from Leonie that there is none. Absolutely no Privacy Policy to be found. How reassuring
Parents are questioning why Smarter Balanced has ‘locked out’ the public, school boards, administrators, parents and community from any information regarding the Smarter Balanced Executive Committee, its’ elections, decisions, agendas, minutes, etc.
There is no way to access the SB website for any of this type of information since September 1, 2014.
Yet Smarter Balanced is dictating policy decisions, lessons and testing to 17 states who have paid them with public funds.
Any decisions made by Smarter Balanced are done in secret, while California Parent Thanks Leonie Haimson | Diane Ravitch's blog: