The Alphabet of Destruction

This will be a disjointed rambling post full of information, dead ends, and right here right now commentary. I hope to clean it up someday but for now I just have to get it out there.

Ok haven't explored this rabbit hole much but I'm excited to uncover the evil.... the Alliance of States runs America COMPLETE. AoS is a college for everyone federal allaiance. America Complete is part of a Race To The Top requirement for the Common Core Standards longitudinal data- tracking our kids cradle to grave. http://www.completecollege.org/alliance_of_states/

See this is why it is hard to be "with it" n regards to the Big Brother control of education....A leads to B, to C, then D....you must see the common thread of ideas, financial backers etc of this alphabet of destruction in order to "get' what is going on right in front of us. Tracking. No privacy. Federal control of education against the GEPA act and law. Cradle to grave. Children seen as human capital for the job marker, just little dollar signs with pigtails.

Ok AoS/ Alliance of States isn't quite federal as some states have yet to join ie California, North Dakota, New Hampshire and others. But it will likely get there.

Here's where the data comes in, from their website I quote "Use consistent data and progression measures to create a culture that values completion.  This includes:

• Using common metrics for measuring and reporting progress.
• Publicly reporting year one benchmark data and annual progress on college completion, progression, transfer, job placement and earnings, and cost and affordability measures.
• Disaggregating data by level and type of degree/credential, age, race, and income."

And some more from their website "

About Us

It’s really about states...we're just here to help."

Like how Reagan said, fear, "I'm the government, I'm here to help".
 And then we must move with urgency to reinvent American higher education to meet the needs of the new majority of students on our campuses, delicately balancing the jobs they need with the education they desire.

Reinvent.....how? Why? And the jobs they NEED. Not what they want, but what they NEED. Are we going to, say, through data and testing, decide a child's career, their future? Sorry, since you are black you will become a laborer? We did this before in the early 1900s.  And the education they want? I hardly think so unless we just brainwash them into thinking they want it, or knowing no better, never questioning things.

Complete College America is grateful for the guidance and support of our funders:
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Ford Foundation
Lumina Foundation for Education
W.K. Kellogg Foundation
USA Funds

Yeah cause these folks have a great track record....backing major corporations and government officials, and even backing eugenics in the early 1900s (well for the organizations that existed then).

Cheryl Orr Dixon
Senior Vice President

As chief of staff, Cheryl provides strategic leadership, direction and oversight for Complete College America. As a former senior associate commissioner for higher education and the staff liaison for a bi-partisan state P-16 education roundtable,

Here t is, p-16 aka p-20. A cradle to grave governmental control....controlling education and thought from preschool through college. Add in longitudinal data to back it up, via Common Core Standards and....is this what you want? The government can't get K-12 education right so let's give them 2,4,6 more years of control? So right here is proof AoS is the p-20 pipeline of control.

Complete College America relies upon the knowledge, experience, and guidance of many national experts in the areas of higher education data systems and measurement, developmental education, student persistence and attainment, equity of opportunity, finance and governance, and cost and affordability.

Policy and Research Partners:
Achieve, Inc.
Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count
Center on Education and the Workforce, Georgetown University
Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University
The Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity, and Accountability
The Education Trust
FutureWorks
Jobs for the Future (JFF)
Midwestern Higher Education Compact (MHEC)
The National Association of System Heads (NASH)

• Access to Success

National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS)

• Higher Ed Info

The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education
New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE)
Southern Regional Education Board (SREB)
State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO)
Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE)

Achieve inc creates many of the standardzed tests so loved by NCLB, RTTT,CCS. Workforce organizations support the worker drone education program of Aos.

AOS/complete college also has on their website, documents from their meetings, links to resources and the like. So there"s this http://www.workingpoorfamilies.org/pdfs/WPFPpolicybrief-fall09.pdf
aww working poor how nice of them to care and help (my suspicious filter is engaged) their 2009 policy brief was titled "

BUILDING AND STRENGTHENING STATE DATA SYSTEMS TO

MEASURE COMMUNITY COLLEGE ANDWORKFORCE OUTCOMES"
 yep. using longitudinal data to track students from high school through to college, so the 9-16 or 9-20 piece of the p-16/p-20 pie. And you know. tracking them into the workplace too. making sure those poor kids "make it" in this world, but as you have recently learned from me, they get the job they need. not want.

Some morsels from this pdf (but please read it yourself)...

An effective state data system combines

information from K-12, workforce development,

and postsecondary education programs (primarily

from public institutions), including adult basic

education and skills development programs

systems, and tracks employment outcomes. The

Florida Department of Education has been

successful at combining this data and has created a

Business Intelligence Portal that tracks students

over time and across delivery systems
This is a CCS Big Brother wet dream here...do you see it? Plain as day (as long as you went from organization A to org B to source C and link D.....) K12, WORKFORCE, POST-SECONDARY....data and employment outcomes will be TRACKED. This will go down on your permanent record kids. Really, it will, no more bluffing.  here's a snapshot of a graphic from the PDF that..gives me nightmares!

 Yep. Cradle to grave, baby,

WHY DOESN’T EVERYONE HAVE AN

INTEGRATED STATE WORKFORCEPOSTSECONDARY

DATA SYSTEM?

THE COMMON CHALLENGES

The Washington story makes developing and using

a data system sound almost effortless but it isn’t. If

creating a state workforce and community college

data system were easy, every state would have one.

Unfortunately, multiple barriers stand in the way.

The primary challenges can be characterized in

four major categories: 

Leadership and Management (megacoordination

across multiple institutions);

 

Privacy Laws and Data Sharing

Agreements;

 

Missing Data on Crucial Populations and

Linkages to Wage Record Data

  A Culture of Continuous Improvement

PRIVACY LAWS AND DATA SHARING AGREEMENTS

Having strong leadership and management is

essential to tackling the next hurdle to connecting

workforce and community college data systems:

privacy and data sharing. Balancing privacy with

the need for accountability and performance can be

tricky. Student privacy issues are a legitimate

concern when thinking about collecting, storing,

sharing and analyzing information from individual

Student Unit Records (SURs). In the post-

Watergate years, public suspicion about domestic

surveillance was at the forefront of people’s minds.

The 1974 Family Educational Rights and Privacy

Act (FERPA) was intended to prevent educational

institutions from abusing student privacy. It

applies to all educational institutions that receive

federal funds – both K-12 and postsecondary

institutions.
There are three main FERPA exceptions

and most state data systems endeavor to qualify

under “studies to improve instruction.” Most

experts agree that FERPA is more of an obstacle

than a prohibition.

“In order to avoid

problems with FERPA, states and community

college systems must make a clear case that the

information that will result from any match will be

useful for improving instruction and policies

related to instruction. States should also establish

clear, written ground rules that govern who can

have access to SUR data and for what purposes
So in 2011 (I think? After this report, I am certain) FERPA laws were changed, loosened, privacy lessened. perfect! I have a link to the new FERPA in my post http://3rseduc.blogspot.com/2013/03/ever-see-rather-bi-partrisan-interview.html

It was established

in the Office of Financial Management and

collaborates with the Legislative Evaluation and

Accountability Program (LEAP) committee. The

ERDC conducts collaborative analyses of early

learning, K-12, and higher education programs

across the P-20 sectors; identifies data to be

compiled and analyzed; tracks enrollment and

outcomes; and provides research that focuses on

student transitions in early learning, K-12, and

postsecondary education. 
just another tidbit to explore, reminds me already of my post at http://3rseduc.blogspot.com/2011/10/big-bro-knows-everything-thank-you.html

The original No Child Left Behind federal

legislation requires states to develop K-12 State

Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) that track

students’ (and teachers’) performance over time.

Three rounds of federal funding have been awarded

to states to create these systems (some WPFP

states have received no funds, including AL, NJ

and NM). The American Recovery and

Reinvestment Act of 2009 provides $250 million in

additional Department of Education resources  How NCLB has to do with the data collection....its hardly a new idea. And notice a continual reference to p16/p20? Yeah. An old idea as well.

link to wage record data to measure

employment and earnings outcomes for all

secondary and postsecondary students and

all participants in adult basic education and

skills development programs (e.g., Adult

Basic Education (ABE), Workforce

Investment Act (WIA), Temporary

Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), etc.),

and

b) link secondary, postsecondary and workforce

(e.g., ABE, WIA, TANF, etc.) participant

data systems to each other in order to

measure education and training flows and

progress within and among all systems,

such as the transitions for adult basic

education and skills development programs

into postsecondary institutions.

How government and the workforce unite to track students and their no longer private data into adulthood.


And so ends my rant for today....more to come I am sure. 

BUT WAIT THERE's MORE! A day later and I find..
from http://www.espsolutionsgroup.com/espweb/aboutus.html -  I discovered ESP via http://www.missourieducationwatchdog.com/ (thank you!) ESP's website says....

"Our team's extraordinary insight comes from experience inside P20W as teachers in public schools, as senior-level employees of state and local education agencies, and as preferred contractors of the U.S. Department of Education and state inter-agency teams working on P20W longitudinal data systems."

Yeah. P-20 again. But wait it gets better, deeper entwined, to where when someone steals your child's identity or jeopardizes their privacy via school data collection, you are unable to point fingers...if A,B,C,D..... all there organizations in this blog post (and likely more) have their hands on the data, who can you blame? if there is no one to blame or the perpetrator is a mystery (wasn't me, it was B. Nope, not me, B, but C.. Nope...it was....) then the problem continues.

ESP's management team includes the leading experts in understanding the data and technology implications of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, Education Data Exchange Network (EDEN/EDFacts), the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF), Race to the Top (RTT), America COMPETES Act, and the Longitudinal Data Systems under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009.

Here's the link, the relation to all my post so far...see, NCLB, RTT, Amerca Competes, ARRA, and the longitudinal data systems (in bed with common core standards) plus a few new organizations of evil for me to control, are working with ESP to control your children....manage them from pre-school through college and beyond.

Be afraid.