On March 23, 2015 the director of the largest correspondence program in Alaska, and quite possibly the United States, issued an FAQ based on the concerns of parents. While the letter was intended to alleviate concerns, it really proved the point that this blog has been making all along--the Superintendents and Program Directors don't really understand what is going on at all. They have been treated like mushrooms, fed dung and kept in the closet. Thus, they have been unable to grasp what is going on and transmit to families accurate information.
Tim Cline is not alone in this. Another blog recently showed that Deena Paramo through the state had returned the P-20W grant money! She didn't even realize that the data that Answers analyzed came from her own OASIS database.
Then there is the confusion on regulations. An education official--one that I have been acquainted with for many years in social settings for many years told one of their parents yesterday:
"As I remember, regulation implements statute and statute allows him, Commissioner Hanley and requires him to test . I looked it up today."
Of course, this is incorrect. Regulations come from STATUTE, not the reverse. That is why they probably force people to do that silly literacy test. It isn't in statute. Any regulation not grounded in statute has no force of law. Deputy Les Morse covered this in hearings before the House Finance Committee.
To highlight the point that the Superintendents and Program directors are not being adequately informed by the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, let's dissect the FAQ and show where the lack of information/understanding emerges. Specifically, what is it that the superintendents don't understand. Before we do, let's take a quick trip down memory lane at the Safe Haven, because this highlights the issue.
Memory Lane: Idea A Safe Haven
Before delving into tonight's memo, it is useful to take a trip down memory lane. On February 9, 2015, Mr. Cline issued a missive titled, IDEA: A Safe Haven. The document covers a variety of issues that deserved a response, but there is one issue that is relevant for discussion here. The information was most likely given in good faith--but later House Testimony revealed that this information was not accurate.
It is interesting that the letter is dated February 9, 2014, the same day as the ACPE hearings.
In IDEA's February 9th Safe Haven memo, Cline expounded on the noble and worthy effort of data collection. He characterized the tracking of students in aggregate data. He had a favorable opinion of data collecting.
The reason the memo is noteworthy is that on February 9, 2015, the Alaska Council on Postsecondary Education (ACPE) made their first appearance before the House Education Committee. During that testimony, they denied tracking individual data. When they were confronted with the grant contracts on February 20th, 2015, they had difficulty denying the facts. The data is at the personal identifiable level, or "unit" level as it is referred to by researchers. They do retain the personally identifiable data to match subsequent years.
As the video shows below, the data is NOT aggregated. The data is individual data, or "unit" level. That is in the grant, and no amount of memos can change that. Watch the whole video to see what they said on February 9, 2015, and then compare the answer to the February 20, 2015 testimony.
IDEA's AMP Testing FAQ
On the night of March 23, 2015, an IDEA FAQ was sent to many parents. The FAQ has a few errors. This is an effort to correct them with the documents and evidence.
The first question of that FAQ raises two issues: the nature of the data and the location of the data or the routing. If you are taking a paper version of the test, certainly his routing of the test documents is almost correct. But the Alaska Department of Education has already sent everyone's data to Questar, in Minnesota, irrespective of the type of test used. How do I know? First, it is in the AAI contract as it was revised after they expedited testing in the summer of 2014. That contract shows a timeline, and on page 10 of the pdf version of the document, the timeline shows that the data went to Questar in November of 2014. This probably occurred since the FNSB district had a trial run. This was discussed by 147 Degrees West back in February 2015.
Here is how the IDEA FAQ Shows the data routing
Data Routing from IDEA FAQ
Here is how the AAI Contract shows the data routing.
Contract between AAI and the State of Alaska
The other reason that I know is that Les Morse discussed the data routing issue in the House Finance Subcommittee for the Alaska Department of Education. So, that part of the FAQ is not correct. Even so, the AMP
If your child takes the computerized version of the test and hits enter, the data goes to Questar, either via Kansas or directly. However, it doesn't matter if the data goes to Timbuktu from a legal perspective--once it crosses state lines it is out of the jurisdiction of the legislature. It is in the purview of the federal government and out of the care, custody, and control of the state of Alaska and the primary privacy officers. That is in the AMP book, and that is how it is for the computerized version.
Does Tim Cline realize the shift in privacy liability here for most of the Superintendents who have the computerized version and for his students who will be taking the computerized version? Did he read that statement in the AMP book?
That is why there should be concern here for every superintendent. They don't understand the issues, but they have had the liability placed on them.
The IDEA FAQ also states that the data is "de-identified." That isn't entirely correct. The grant is very specific that the data is identifiable. I covered this in a prior blog entry. Further the entire P-20W/Unity/Answers team is funded by the federal government and was set up by WICHE, so that whole notion of the federal government not getting the data is rather absurd. Second, ACPE is the Alaska Student Loan Corporation, and they are an independent agency from the state. Don't believe me? Look it up for yourself--they are ACPE when they are operating inside DEED on federal funds and they are an independent agency when they are not. It is the same people.
But even so, the Answers project retains identifiable data. They admitted in their February 9, 2015 testimony that they do keep the identifiable data. This is so they can "track unit records," those records being your child. In other instances, it is district personnel. This directly conflicts with the IDEA FAQ--not because Tim Cline is evil, but he just hasn't read the decision documents and he is late to the game and doesn't really grasp what is going on here.
Furthermore, the data can go across state lines in the P-20W. There is no legislation in place at this point to preclude the partners from sharing the data, now or in the future. So, even if today, DEED does everything correctly, some future government official may not. The door is left open for future data sharing by future officials.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR6fDLGJGpo
So, that obliterates the first part of the FAQ. Most parents won't even have the patience to go further. However, the State School Board President, Esther Cox said parents have the right to opt out. Commissioner Hanley stated that parents have the right to opt out. The Constitution upholds the rights of the parents.
If you think Tim Cline is looking out for parents, read carefully his Safe Haven letter again from February. He is looking out for the contact teachers, not the parents!
The second question in the FAQ has to do with regulation. Statutes and case law always trump regulation. Tim Cline discusses 4 AAC 32.421 which is regulation. Parent rights have been upheld in the U.S. Supreme Court repeatedly, and that always trumps state regulation.
The question in the FAQ document on code 9999 is simply silly. That is the federal code. If Alaska is using Common Education Data (CEDs) then that is the code. That isn't a district issue, that is an issue between DEED and the federal government. Please notice below that Alaska's K-12 data is in CEDs.
The next FAQ question has to do with career tracking. Clearly, the whole point of correlating K-12 data with workforce data is to steer people into the "right" career. That is the whole point of Common Core-- a managed economy where people are put to work where the elite need them. This is clearly why the data is being correlated with the Department of Labor database--it is either that or they are tracking families for some other agenda that is far more nefarious.
IDEA's FAQ also gets the adaptive testing wrong. AAI is part of Dynamic Learning Maps, the consortia for the Alternative Assessment. The AAI test that KU Board authorized was an adaptive test. KU hired one of the top psychometricians from ACT/College Board to facilitate the development of an adaptive test. DEED's own words say the test is computer adaptive.
Tim Cline knows full well that the time line was moved up. Joint Administrative Regulatory Review in August 2014, Rep. Reinbold took the Alaska Department of Education to task over moving the timeline of the testing one year forward. Cline was at the Joint Administrative Regulatory Review Committee meeting in October 2014 when this was discussed again. Any parent can find those meeting minutes for themselves
The reader should carefully note that IDEA was crickets on the underlying KITE technology being "agile." That is what Kathleen Sebelius used in the Obamacare website construction. They were "crickets" on a great many other issues raised, like the Uniform Electronic Numbers in the Alaska Standards, the AMP, and the Common Core.
Notice that Tim Cline never mentions the Indistar Shepherd and the other consultants who clearly have access to the data. They are not DEED employees--they are consultants. Why isn't their access to data being questioned? Why? Do the IDEA parents know this? Do parents in brick and mortar schools know this?
Tim Cline's FAQ proves my point. The Superintendents and Program Administrators do not understand everything that is going on in this test.
This is going to make tons of money for the lawyers.
Intrusions of the Mind--The ultimate invasion of privacy is the way the common core standards allow for an invasion to the mind.
One of the unique features of the Common Core standards is something called the Uniform Electronic Numbers (UENs). This is not a tin foil hat issue; it is on the Common Core Standards website. That is why when one looks at a Common Core book, the UENs on each concept are listed on the page.
Alaska's standards have UENs that are correlated to the Common Core standards. That is how activists on both sides of the argument know that the Alaska Standards and the Common Core are identical. The interested reader can download the PDF of this correlation--it begins on page 7. Please note that all of the Alaska Standards have a Common Core UEN assigned to them. A partial list is below. There is also a curriculum integrator verb list that is correlated to various domains that appear to be related to the AMP test and these UENs, or domain clusters.
In the event someone thinks this is fabricated, please download the whole document and turn to the notes at the end.
So, what is the deal with these UENs? According to the Common Core website,
"Unique identifiers are needed for humans and technology to refer to individual standards in a consistent manner. Three sets of canonical identifiers, as detailed below and now readily available here on www.corestandards.org, will maintain fidelity to the published and adopted documents, while acknowledging the wide variety of use cases, users, and systems needing to reference the standards..."
To conceptually understand these numbers, think of your child's knowledge as a supermarket of ideas and concepts. Think about each idea in the Common Core as a product on a supermarket shelf that has a scan code. Think about your child's knowledge deficits as a product that is missing from the knowledge inventory. With assignments and tests tied to the UENs, the theory is that any deficits in the stock of knowledge can be detected and remediated.
The UENs come in one of three forms. One form is the "dot" notation, and that is the one that most teachers see in the teacher guides and one sees referenced most frequently in the policy arena. The example given on the Common Core website is Math.6.EE.1, which would be readily referenced in the way the standards are presented. The second UEN form is called a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). This is used primarily for internet presentations of information. The third identifier is a Globally Unique Identifier (GUIDs). This latter number is an alpha numeric sequence that is useful for computer programmers.
Again, Alaska's Standards are correlated to the Common Core UEN and GUIDs. While the letter to Patrick Rooney is sufficient, the computer coding on the UENs through the GUIDs give it away. All the vendors know this, and when Commissioner Hanley makes his absurd statements that Alaska "didn't buy into the standards" it simply diminishes his credibility.
The ramifications of these UENs is huge for your child's privacy due to the way this information has been extended by researchers in the private sector. Pearson and a group of other companies have taken this research a step further. Just as a store might have a store map of product location based on the product code, Common Core developers have correlated this knowledge with areas of the brain through MRI imaging. This was presented at a White House sponsored summit in 2012 known as Datapalooza. The idea behind this brain mapping is the development of a unique brain identifier.
Below is a 3 minute synopsis of a two day event sponsored at the White House called Datapalooza 2012. It seems that the Common Core Standards are being used to correlate all these concepts and image them to the brain and correlate them to behavior modification. So, teachers may unknowingly be participating in contributing to these researchers through the use of products such as Powerschool. Further, since some districts ask teachers to back-up their Powerschool entries on OASIS and the Enterprise system.
In theory, these attributes could be accessed by the Alaska Department of Education, ACPE, and various vendors like Scholastic who have contracts and portals on that system. A friend of mine suggested that AK DEED isn't smart enough to know what to do with the data. They don't need to be smart enough, they only need to be smart enough to hire people who know how to use it.
The real policy question is this: Did any parents consent to this? Did Common Core supporters know this was behind the standards? Am I the only person out there who sees the inherent danger in all of this and the erosion of liberty? This information could be used to do good; but it could also be used to do incredible evil. I have no doubt that current policy makers have the best of intentions... it is the future ones that are of major concern. Governments can go rogue, data can be hacked, and wars happen. What are the ramifications of this information being stored for your child's future?
The Alaska Measures of Progress is an adaptive test. There is a "flat" non-adaptive version that will be offered in limited area and groups this year. In subsequent years, it is suppose to be adaptive. Adaptive tests are not quite the same thing as "dynamic tests." In dynamic tests, the questions are similar with side-loop tutorials for students who miss the question. Students who demonstrate mastery by-pass the side-loops. Students in a class will have the same material, but the pace of the material is different.
This test is not a dynamic test. This test is adaptive. There is a difference in the technology. Before discussing the technology, it is important to note that the Alaska Department of Education claims that no psychometric data is on the test. However, there is a concurrent project worth nothing.
Related Projects
If your school is offering the computer version of the test, it will be adaptive. The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development claims that the test focuses on academics. Perhaps this is so. However, there is a project that seems to overlap the test that should give parents pause.
"Project Aware" is a $9.1 million project that seems to overlap the AMP test. Somehow, it survived the legislature's surgical knife. It is a project in the south central region of the state known aimed at mental health awareness issues. It is unknown precisely what this covers. This project appears to involve the American Institute of Research. The project will capture over 60% of Alaska's testing population. It may be in subsequent years this project will be expanded to the rest of the state and will overlap the the AMP. The data could be readily correlated.
Perhaps it is a bit of paranoia to speculate on the implementation of a mental health survey concurrent with adaptive testing. Given the American Institute of Research's longstanding involvement with military and CIA contracts on psychological issues, it is probably rather innocent. Since the AK DEED won't release the AMP scores until October 2015, one wonders why a computerized scoring service is receiving the student data. It may be they plan to correlate testing data with some of these mental health indicators.
Adaptive Testing Technology
Adaptive testing is nothing "new." What is "new" is the use of technology. The problem with adaptive tests is that it open to manipulation, and there is no way to determine how the test was manipulated or what questions your child was asked. However, paper tests can be adaptive, and past efforts at adaptive testing were with pencil and paper. It is cumbersome and time consuming to do adaptive tests with paper and pencil, but there was an effort to do so in Pennsylvania years in the 1980s. When they were finally able to get the test released, activists discovered that these tests were not covering material that the average parent would have expected them to cover.
Adaptive testing is a test where subsequent questions change based on the response to the previous question. Questions vary in difficulty as well, and the student's ability to perform on one type of question is considered. Jon Cohen, Vice President of the American Institutes for Research and developer of the adaptive technology used in the SBAC and PARCC tests describes adaptive testing in the video below.
One of the reasons adaptive testing fell "out of fashion" with the education establishment was the known bias against lower socioeconomic groups. The litigation risk due to bias became clear in Allen et al. v. The Alabama State Board of Education (1999), among other cases. Has anyone in the state considered the litigation risk of giving a biased test?
Jon Cohen explains in the video below how adaptive testing is biased against test takers in lower socioeconomic groups. Andrew Halcro, a member of the Education Sustainable Task Force noted on the final day of the task force (December 29, 2014) that in Anchorage, those of lower socioeconomic groups tend to be more racially diverse. The implication then, is that these tests will be biased against racially diverse populations.
One might wonder why the Alaska DEED would give such a test when there are race-based targets set in the accountability measures. There are plenty of reasons for speculation, but nothing is particularly certain. It does seem as if certain areas of the state might be set up to fail the test. The Alaska Department of Education established target test scores for students in their Annual Measurable Outcomes, or AMO, by student race. It selected a technology that is known to hurt students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. One can't help but think this is a set up of sorts.
The other question many have pondered is why the Native community isn't upset about these tests and the AMO targets. One can only speculate on what Elizabeth Peratrovich would say today.
The reason, of course has to do with the purpose of the test. The test isn't designed to measure student achievement. The test is designed to measure if the material has been covered that the state wants covered and to evaluate the teacher. Whether that teacher is in a brick and mortar school or in a homeschool, that is what the state is trying to measure.
That is why they can get around the bias issue in testing. They claim they are not measuring your child, but measuring the teacher.
If they are measuring the teacher and not the student, why does the information go into the P-20W data system under the student's name?
So, even if a parent is fine with the data security issues, the scores on the test won't be comparable to other students in the class. They are to check to see if the school is covering the Common Core materials.
Programming Issues
It is bad enough that Alaskan students have had to suffer indignities of the Terra Nova and the programming errors associated with that test. For those unaware, the Terra Nova had serious problems in scoring. The scoring of the test was invalidated on several occasions. Of course, parents in Alaska never heard about it, but how many teachers, students, and parents were affected by false low reading scores on this test?
"Over time, McGraw Hill determined that a programming error caused the percentile
rankings on the TerraNova to be too low at the lower end of the scale and too high at the
upper end. As a result, approximately a quarter of a million students in six states were given
the wrong national percentile scores." (Errors inStandardized Tests:A Systemic Problem, National Board on EducationalTesting and Public Policy, Boston College, p. 11-12).
Alaska could have had their scores examined. However, the Alaska Department of Education at that time chose to ignore what was happening in the lower 48.
Then there were the math errors on the exit exams in Minnesota that were the subject of lawsuits. It took parents months to get a copy of the test, and when they did they found several errors from a miscoding of the answer key in the programing (Boston College, p. 15). Indeed, after reading Errors in Standardized Tests:A Systemic Problem, National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy, Boston College, one might be hesitant about the use of computers at all. Those problems were found because there was a paper version of the test, and the test was the same for each student.
In computerized, adaptive testing, there is no paper copy, and there is no way to determine what question a child had to determine if there was a problem with the computer programing or the student. One can believe that the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development will be all to happy to tell a school that the student or the teacher needs remediation rather than check the validity of the test.
A Final Word on Adaptive Testing
Adaptive testing was used in an earlier era and its use prompted a slew of legislation afterwards restricted the use of these tests. The most notorious of these tests was the Pennsylvania EQA. One of the more voracious fighters against the EQA was a lady named Anita Hogue. Her video is long is over an hour long and worth every minute. She is the lady referenced by Peg Luksik in the video above. Watch it when you have time to really focus. These tests are backed by people who have an agenda.
The "take away" from this discussion is this: Your STUDENTS data may be used in way that the average person did not anticipate. This is not like the prior Standards Based Assessments, or SBAs that the state has used in the past. In the computerized version, the student sends the data out of state, not DEED. That means ANY state laws regarding privacy are irrelevant. You have consented to the data being sent about by taking the test.
This has NOTHING to do with whether you like the standards or not. This is not about Common Core and the standards. This is about your child's future data privacy. It does eventually go back to the standards, but there is more time to discuss that at a later date. For the purposes of the impending test, parents have a reason to be concerned and to carefully evaluate whether or not their student should participate in this test.
The data from the Alaska Measures of Progress (AMP) is part of the P-20W database. It is individual data.
First on the refusal.... reference information that parents need to REFUSE the Test and the instructions to the district on how to report the information. Go to http://tiny.cc/AMPBook The information comes for the Alaska Department of Education's own publication on page 112.
School Board President Esther Cox recently told the Senate Education Committee that parents have the right to refuse. Therefore, no one should feel bullied into taking this test.
The code for refusal is 999 in the event it is needed by your school IT. It is the code for both PARCC and SBAC. Since Alaska is a Common Education Data (CEDs) state, it should work. If Alaska uses some other code, they will just have to convert it to 9999 when they report the data to the Institute for Educational Sciences. You might as well save them the conversion time. But the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development (AK DEED) is really operating under the peter principle here and has subjected the children of this state to some serious risk with respect to their privacy. There is little the legislature can do at this point.
When a parent gave their information on their family and their child to the school, there is NO WAY they consented to all of this. NO WAY. They gave the information in good faith that the information stayed in the school district in Alaska and perhaps some of it went to the state. The P-20W data base which receives the scores without parent permission. No parent in Alaska gave their permission for the data to be used in this way, by their own admission. They also seem to be under the impression that they don't need parent permission to use the data and that parent consent is implied by enrollment in school.
So, there are several problems here that need to be considered. First is the potential problem of the KITE application. This is more technical than the scope of this blog, but is covered briefly. The second is the involvement of the AMP test scores in the P-20W.
Potential Kite Application Problems
Keep in mind that Kathleen Sebelius, former Governor of Kansas and Secretary of Health Education and Welfare used agile technology in the development of the ObamaCare website. This is the underlying architecture of the KITE ap. Do you seriously want to trust anything based on the track record of that technology?
Now, the first issue on student data privacy that needs to be address has to do with the KITE application itself. The student uses this KITE ap to take the test. Without delving into details on programing, if any student takes this test, make sure the cache is cleared on the computer BEFORE they commence the test. I can't stress the importance of this enough. Generally, in public systems such as the library, there is a reset in between users that is set on a timer that will do this automatically. Some of the larger schools may have this set up--some schools may not. There is no harm to double clearing, but if you want your student's data sent as your student's data, then clear the cache before the login.
When the student completes the test, the data goes to Questar in Minnesota directly. The programming is an open script.. This means the code is "out there" for ambitious programmers to re purpose for other endeavors. That risk can exist for years, as the recent data breach at Anthem/Blue Cross Blue Shield demonstrates.
The Data Routing Shifts Data Responsibility
Why is this a problem? According to the AAI contract, the data goes from KITE to Questar. In past times, students would take the test and hand the test over to an in-state official. Then AK DEED would collect the tests and send the tests to Questar in Minnesota... or assume responsibility for data security after test completion in the case of a state operated school.
This test changes that an makes it a district problem and most of the superintendents may not understand the ramifications of the shift in that burden. It is most likely that most borough mayors don't understand the ramifications of this shift in liability and may not have adjusted their borough and district insurance policies appropriately.
Many principals and superintendents don't even understand that it is their own data being used in the Answer project--they never really considered where the data came from or how it was acquired. So, how much less likely that have they considered the shift in liability of data risk. If businesses like Target and Blue Cross and Blue Shield have had difficulty with data security, how much more might a borough? Have any of the superintendents and borough mayors considered the ramifications of this shift in data security and risk from the state to the districts? Do they have the relevant insurance to cover this? Have the borough boards even examined how district liability is impacted by this state mandated test?
Second, for DEED get the scores back, Questar sends the data to DEED (from Minnesota). They will likely have the data back before the end of May... probably much sooner than that. DEED states they won't release the test scores until October. Why? What do they plan to do with the data? The cut score percentages have already been decided the U.S. DOE, so this deserves some investigation.
Even so, if the AK DEED imports data from a student from out of state, is the data covered by Alaska privacy laws? Would a parent have any way to keep their child's data out of the P-20W?
The KEY here is that Your STUDENT sends the data out of state, not DEED. That means the privacy protections in the Alaska Constitution are no longer applicable. The parent has consented to the test and the student's data being sent about by taking the test. This has NOTHING to do with whether you like the standards or not. This has to do with DEED's opinion that you have consented to anything they decide to do because you enrolled your child in public school.
P-20W/Unity and DataMarts
But the long term IMMEDIATE problem for student privacy is relative is the P-20W. The condition for the grant is inclusion of the ESEA tests, college and career tests, and the information on non-testers. The reader will find the inclusion of ESEA student test scores in the Technical specifications of the RFP for the grant on page 2. This is a technical specification of the grant, and they must comply with it. In addition to the AMP test scores, the reader will note College and Career ready test scores (ACT, SAT, Workkeys) is included.
You will also see this in the grant loop of the graphic from the grant, the test scores are clearly listed.
As noted in other blogs, the data student data and test scores goes from DEED to the Department of Labor are matched to Permanent Fund Dividend Records for cross matching and a P-20W ID is assigned based on that.
The data is then integrated with the Postsecondary data (IPEDs), and ACPE's data.
The data flows are in the graphics above--there is a reference to OASIS. That is the Online Alaska Student Information System. That includes some of the data that your child's teacher backs up from their gradebook (Powerschool is the bigger vendor) on the school servers and the data parents give central office when they enroll the child.
If the reader examines the power point for the RFP, they will see that there are four essential documents for a P-20W--one is the actual grant application (in the prior paragraph), the Grant application, the SFSF, and the Race To the Top- (Or the I-3) grant application. While researchers have recovered copies of the 20W grant and SFSF (links below) the grant application under the main I-3 (we know there were 8 made to Alaska) has not been recovered. It appears to have been made to the University of Alaska system to allow the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development deniable plausibility.
The P-20W grant application is fairly large. Quite a bit of the information can be found in this blog entry, but there are quite a few topics not covered in that blog. Among them are the issues with their selection of drives and their clearly absurd testimony on Extract Tools (ETLs). Their use of SATA and SASE drives is almost laughable to anyone in IT.
The enterprise system reference in the grants are the state servers, which is not designed for the level of data and traffic they will be using, but that is beyond the scope of my concern for students. This places the state as a hacker target. I have included a screenshot of the DMZ that they reference in their grant pictures... so when you look at their schematics, the DMZ is where they interface and will likely have a public access portal in the future.
Data Sharing Outside Alaska
The subphase report provides additional insight on what they plan to do, and it includes the future plans. Around page 70 is when some red flags should show up--they even plan on using postal data. Notice page 90ish there is this project called Data Mart where they plan to sell the data. This is echoed in the grant.
The people at ACPE have already admitted that they meet with the Feds monthly in House Education Committee testimony on February 20, 2015. They probably meet more often than that if what is going on in other states is instructive. There is no doubt there is an intent to share, no matter what Diane Barrand at ACPE says because it was a condition of the grant. The grant RFP ensures the dataset is compatible with EduFacts, the US Department of Education Database. IES-DOE can easily intercept the data anyway, and could potentially obtain it from Questar before the state gets it back.
It doesn't matter what is in THEIR narrative of the grant. They are bound to the grant for which they applied. That WILL require giving the information to them... It is on page 2-3 of the RFP. ACPE has already said they retain PII (personally identifiable data) and plan to link data in subsequent years, they do have it, and the Social Security numbers are attached from the PFD data base, and they plan to track students.
ACPE/DEED also were also less than straightforward about data sharing. Participation in the "Grand" P-20W will be made by the "4 partner agencies," and may be made at some future point in time. You as a parent, will have no say in the matter. WICHE helped Alaska setup the data set, and there is no way that AKDEED can say NO. WICHE has formulated and implemented a 5 state one already.... The states of Idaho, Washington, Hawaii, and Oregon are already involved, and their goal is to get all 15 states involved.
The point here is this... these folks are using the data from your child's school in a way that no one envisioned when they enrolled their child in school.
Parents simply need to verify the information for themselves and decide on what is right for their children.
