Parents' Rights Now!

Parents' Rights Now!

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  • What Is The Value of Elections, Win or Lose?

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    Standing for parents rights in education should be clear, and non-controversial, unless you are a Marxist and think public school teachers and medical professionals should make decisions for, and shape your child's worldview. That’s why my topic today is so concerning. I’ll explain.

    Oregon PRIE opened a PAC this election cycle. Because I have run for state legislative office a couple of times, I completely understand the process, but more importantly the need to make the Parents’ Rights In Education Issues relevant, on a legislative level is mandatory. We have to change laws and in order to do that, we have to change lawmakers!

    In addition, where better to inform and debate the issue than on the political stage, during the election cycle. And who better to carry the torch than candidates, especially those who have children of their own?  

    We crafted a Questionnaire for candidates, and asking them to fill it. Our endorsement follows. Give me a few to share it with you. I am curious what you think. 

    OREGON CANDIDATE SURVEY

    “Do you support the following? Teachers, counselors, administrators, and school board members shall honor the constitutional and statutory rights of parents/guardians affirming the parent-child relationship?”

    “Do you oppose K-12 public schools Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) curriculum addressing sexual relations and related activities, designed to challenge or change traditional sexual and gender norms of society? If adopted, CSE shall be an elective.”

    “Do you support the following? OPT-IN Policies: School officials shall adopt “OPT-IN” policies to replace “OPT-OUT” policies with respect to student participation in medical, social, family questionnaires and surveys.”

    “Do you believe all students shall have the right to have their viewpoints respected, allowed and expressed on an equal basis with other student viewpoints in curriculum and curriculum-related matters.”

    “Do you believe the best way to assure the rights of parents/guardians to raise and educate their children according to their sincerely-held values and beliefs is to provide competitive statewide school choice alternatives?”

    Several candidates approached us to endorse them during the primary. And several since then. But there are many conservatives who have held back. Do they see this as a hot potato, one they cannot touch? Really? What is not to support?

    Oregon Right to Life just published their Voters’ Guide, and many candidates chose to align with that issue, even though Oregon is the only state in America with NO protective pro-life laws. Oregon also legalized abortion before the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling.

    Republican candidates seem to have no problem aligning with the Pro-Life stand and yet, do not believe in Parents’ Rights to direct the education of their children. 

    What is the value in elections, win or lose? It’s important to stay engaged in the process, even though we are not so popular. In 2012 I ran for the Oregon Senate against an incumbent Democrat. Voter registration was impossible to overcome. We engaged more volunteers in our campaign than most others. Our campaign was positive and gave hope to the voters who share our views. We raised money and moved the dial in our favor several points and volunteers placed signs everywhere. It was one of the most positive races, ever. And we informed voters!

    I am concerned with some candidates’ lack of integrity to stand for what they believe. Where is the integrity in avoiding an issue that will come up later, and require a vote? Next time around if elected, the legislator will be voted out, even if legislation did no pass. Addressing the issue head on, exposing the problem, and framing it is an offe

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    15 min
  • Washington State REF 90, PART 2: GOOD STRATEGIES PRODUCE GOOD OUTCOMES!

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    We are so impressed and proud with resilience and resourcefulness of our Chapter leaders in SW Washington State. They are getting the word out about Referendum 90, to Reject dangerous CSE legislation passed last spring, and signed by Governor Inslee in March the day of the China Virus lockdown.

    They in cooperation with Informed Parents of Washington, wrote an excellent summary of talking points, Do’s and Don’ts, and other Tips, which can be used by anyone in the country fighting the same issue. You can find this on our website. The link is here in our podcast notes.... Referendum 90 TIPS

    Undermines Parental Authority - Students are repeatedly told that they can receive birth control, abortions, and STD testing without parental knowledge and are encouraged to talk to teachers and other “trusted adults.”

    "And one last thought… if any other adult told your child external condoms are safe for anal sex, even though they’re not FDA approved, or lead you child to believe emergency contraception is still effective on day 5, or tells your child a doctor assigns a sex to them at birth, and they acted on the information and were harmed, you could sue them. You could sue any other adult including a health professional, who tells your child the pull-out method is free, always available, and works better than most people think, without disclosing the 22% failure rate.  And the same goes for a health professional who fails to give failure rates and risks of birth control, discusses anal and oral sex without including the associated risks, and discusses porn without including studies that show its harm. 

    Public Schools have become distribution centers for reading normal healthy children down risky paths leading to consequences that can ruin their lives. CSE should not only be removed from public education, it should be outlawed." Suzanne Gallagher

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    18 min
  • Link to Militant Protests & Riots, PART 4: BLM BULLIES LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS' KIDS

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    VOICES BEHIND THE BADGE
    NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

    Yesterday I interviewed the founders of a new non-profit, VOICES BEHIND the BADGE. It was established this fall in response to anti law enforcement teaching in K-12 public schools. The group is an outgrowth of events in Portland, Oregon where riots and violence have occurred consecutively for over 100 nights. These events have negatively impacted the local law enforcement families, including their children attending public schools.

    “Do you know what schools are teaching your children? Many teachers are on the frontlines with ANTIFA and the BLM movement. These same teachers are teaching your kids. There is an anti-police agenda to many conversations and lessons. 

    The book Something Happened in Our Town is widely used in elementary schools. 

    The anti-police agenda of many teachers sets up an emotionally unsafe learning environment for children of LEO’s and children who support LEO’s.

    VBB calls schools to keep teachers’ personal politics out of the classroom and prohibit the display of any BLM propaganda on school property, including inside the classrooms, as well as on any staff member’s clothing or on personal vehicles that may be visible to students during school hours. This is the same as prohibiting teachers from endorsing any other political ideologies, candidates for public office, or ballot measures during school hours. 

    When students feel misunderstood or targeted, they can feel anxious, angry, sad, and unsafe. This distracts them from learning. Often, they will experience social problems with peers that frequently lead to anxiety, sleeplessness, poor attendance, and therefore, greater impairment of their learning. 

    VBB asks schools to pay special attention to the behavior of other students and to stand by your policies to not tolerate bullying or social cruelty because of a student’s support for law enforcement or their lack of support for the BLM movement/organizations. If such violations occur, we expect that you have zero tolerance for such behavior from students. 

    VBB asks schools to establish protocols for this specific situation. Since political and other sensitive topics are commonly discussed during class sessions, we implore you to develop specific protocols for teachers and students on how to conduct unbiased, neutral, scientifically-supported, and fair discourse around controversial and provocative topics and that these protocols be shared with parents. 

    VBB asks schools to put extra supports in place before and after discussions that may lead to anti-law enforcement rhetoric, BLM, protesting/rioting, Black Indigenous People Of Color (BIPOC), and interactions with the police. 

    VBB asks that schools to provide your staff with training on the topics of virtue signaling, micro-aggressions, identifying personal biases, and how to keep these issues out of their classrooms. Everyone’s common goal is to create and maintain a safe learning environment for all students in both virtual and traditional classroom settings. Regardless of any teacher, principal, or superintendent’s personal political stance or affiliation, all students have the fundamental right to learn in an environment free from bias. 

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    14 min
  • Comprehensive Sexuality Education, PART 4: SEX ED FOR SOCIAL CHANGE-SIECUS & SEPAC

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    Parents' Rights In Education WEB PAGE
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    SIECUS
    “SEX ED FOR SOCIAL CHANGE”

    MISSION

    SIECUS asserts that sex education is a powerful vehicle for social change. We view sexuality as a fundamental part of being human, one worthy of dignity and respect. We advocate for the rights of all people to accurate information, comprehensive sexuality education, and the full spectrum of sexual and reproductive health services.

    VISION

    SIECUS envisions an equitable nation, where all people receive comprehensive sexuality education and quality sexual and reproductive health services affirming their identities, thereby allowing them to access and enjoy sexual and reproductive freedom, as they define it for themselves.

    VALUES

    • SIECUS recognizes that good sexual and reproductive health is a human right.
    • SIECUS advances comprehensive sexuality education as a means of building a foundation for a long-term culture shift that will positively impact all levels of society, particularly issues of gender and racial equity, sexuality, sexual and reproductive health, consent, personal safety, and autonomy.
    • SIECUS commits to working to dismantle the systems of power and oppression which perpetuate disparate sexual and reproductive health outcomes and incubate stigma and shame around sex and sexuality across the intersections of age, race, size, gender, gender identity and expression, class, sexual orientation, and ability.
    • SIECUS applies an intersectional lens to ensure people’s real lived experiences inform our policy, education, and strategic communications work.

    Planned Parenthood is closely aligned with SIECUS is implementing the education piece in public schools. There is money in for them to encourage young girls to experiment with sex.
    Led by SIECUS, the Sex Education Policy Action Council (SEPAC) is a coalition of organizations, statewide coalitions, state agencies, and school districts from 24 states that are working to advance sex education that is comprehensive.

    They believe advancing sexuality education public policy is more important now than ever, as reproductive health care and LGBTQ communities are under increasing attack.  

    “Sex education offers a comprehensive policy solution to teach young people about bodily autonomy, consent, reproductive decision-making, healthy relationships, and LGBTQ tolerance and inclusion.” 

    SEPAC is expected to grow to include members in all fifty states, the District of Columbia and eventually the US territories, providing SIECUS with an invaluable opportunity to monitor and affect state legislation.

    Program Goals 

    Members of SEPAC will help shape a common narrative to advance comprehensive sex education policy, engage with policymakers seeking to advance and pass sex education legislation, educate federal congressional members on the need for comprehensive sex education, and create a model for expanding comprehensive sex education policy across the country. 

    As you can see, public education is highly involved as “partners” with SIECUS in this national plan to promote sexual freedom and healthcare rights. In fact public education is the key government agency providing distribution for information and services without parents’ knowledge or consent.

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    23 min
  • Public Policy Matters, THE CHOICE IS YOURS!

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    PRESIDENT TRUMPS' TRANSCRIPT
    PARENTS' RIGHT IN EDUCATION PROCLAMATION

    REPORT CRT and BLM sitings to:
    [email protected]
    Tell them PRIE sent you!

    ...Issues with public education used to be very politically neutral. In the 1950’s  everyone pretty much agreed the role of the school is to teach reading, writing, mathematics, ...

    Welcome to 2020, when schools are teaching Comprehensive Sexuality Ed every year beginning in Kindergarten, Critical Race Theory, Transgender Options, and Anti-American Marxism. 

    Not only that, schools have become social service agencies, responsible for every child’s health care, nutrition and mental health counseling….all often, without parents’ permission or knowledge. These are the very reasons Parents’ Rights In Education exists, to restore parents’ rights!

    We hope you will become a part of the Parents’ Rights In Education national campaign.  We developed a Proclamation for endorsement by school boards, declaring NOVEMBER Parents Rights In Education Month. 

    We are asking all parents who care about their child’s education to contact their school board, and ask them to adopt our Proclamation, affirming the rights of parents to influence policy and curriculum decisions, the heart of every school.

    Parents, today care about curriculum. They care about  state and district policies infringing on their rights to make decisions about and with their minor children. The government has infringed upon those rights and it’s time to re-establish, to restore our rights!

    We are starting at the local level, with our school boards. These boards are the elected governing bodies who decide policy, and select curriculum, and yet they have drifted away from their responsibly to represent the community and the parents. 

    School Board Members legally have the power create and change school policies. And yet, Superintendents encourage members to comply with requests from state departments of education, and teacher’s unions.

    Our Proclamation is simple. We are asking school boards, who do you represent? The Proclamation establishes an understanding between school districts and their communities. It's a win win for everyone. 

    Visit our website, ParentsRightsInEd.org and click on the Parents’ Rights In Education Month, Image. There you will find all the information you need to implement this  campaign in school districts in your state. Texas  parents are running with this! How about you?

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    24 min
  • Social Emotional Learning, PART 9: LABELS YOUR CHILD!

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    This paper has highlighted the following problems with SEL: 

     1. No expert consensus on the definition of SEL; 

     2. Contradictory or poor-quality research underlying its efficacy; 

     3. Mixed or negative research about the supposed benefits with respect to academic achievement, reduced suicide, etc.; 

     4. Infusion of SEL into Common Core, resulting in psychologically manipulative standards rather than the promised clear, rigorous academic math and English standards; 

     5. Linking of SEL to violence and suicide prevention via mental-health screening, which can lead to improper diagnosis and over-treatment with potentially harmful medications; 

     6. Use of SEL and accompanying personality profiling in competency-based education/personalized learning to influence students’ post-secondary plans based on government- and business-determined needs, instead of the aspirations and desires of students and their families; 

     7. Erosion of student data privacy by collection of highly sensitive social-emotional information, in many cases without consent, and resulting in non-consensual exposure of such data to either authorized or unauthorized third parties; 

     8. Possibility of indoctrination and erosion of freedom of conscience via government-established SEL norms for the attitudes, values, and beliefs of freeborn American citizens. 

    Recommendations 

    First, cease expansion of SEL standards, programs, assessments, and data collection, via repeal of federal statutory language and taxpayer funding that encourage such activities (along with encouragement of states to do the same). Second, because no government, foundation, or corporate program can substitute for the love and nurture of families, SEL programs should be replaced with policies that encourage two-parent family formation. This would drastically reduce the tragically high rates of student behavior problems, gun use, delinquency, imprisonment, and poor academic performance among fatherless children... 

     Finally, because the government and its schools should exercise a degree of humility about what they can reasonably accomplish (not to mention whether their attempts at social engineering could actually exacerbate these problems by further usurping parental roles), schools should return to their roots: instilling traditional academic knowledge. Public schools can thus avoid teaching sterile aphorisms unmoored from any enduring moral or ethical foundations in an increasingly secular world brought about by delving into the vague term “values.” Teaching a student to accomplish something academically based on timeless books and disciplines will do wonders for his social-emotional welfare. 

    "There are special people in education who are marvelous at renaming old programs that didn’t work...Growth Mindset is Self-Esteem 2.0. We learned from that theory the biggest holders of positive self-esteem were gang members. 

    As someone who spent 19 of my 28 years in public education with “high risk” students, many of them gang wannabees...They actually discovered they could learn real math. That success was motivation to risk even more learning. THAT showed the foundation of emotional growth: doing honest, proficient work that transcends your circumstances and shows you’re not stupid or a dummy after all." Former teacher Niki Hayes 

    Focusing on academics rather than on pop psychology would be a good first step toward cultivating genuine social-emotional health and all the benefits that flow from it. 

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    31 min
  • Social Emotional Learning, PART 8: DATA HARMS YOUR CHILD!

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    New Age Nanny State White Paper
    Parents' Rights In Education Website
    Social Emotional Learning Issues Page
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    Students may suffer tangible harm from SEL assessments or evaluations, even if such reports are accurate. If they are inaccurate or misleading, the damage can be enhanced. 

    Key to understanding the threat is understanding the nature of modern statewide longitudinal data systems (SLDS). Since 2002, the federal government has incentivized the building of massive SLDS, so that pre-K through 12 student data can be collected and tracked. Most recently, USED’s Race to the Top program awarded over $4 billion to states that agreed to certain federally approved education innovations, including enhanced student-data systems.

    One justification offered for this data-grab and data-tracking is to enable teachers to look back throughout a student’s school career to see the results of all his interactions with the school system so far. If a student had a rough sixth-grade year, perhaps with a disciplinary suspension, that difficulty would be preserved in the SLDS for all subsequent teachers to learn about. The SLDS is the end of the “clean slate." ...

    Via the 2012 gutting of regulations under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), this data might also be disclosed to entities in other states or countries and to unlimited researchers who are interested in the emotional makeup of children and adolescents. And under the relaxed regulations, such disclosure of personally identifiable information could occur without parental consent, or even parental knowledge. This could also include sharing sensitive data without consent between the federal government and international agencies, and between government and private entities.

    The possibility—or probability—that this data will at some point be hacked is significant. As revealed in two hearings of the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee,250 USED has shown itself utterly incapable of protecting student information. The same can be said of multiple other federal agencies.

    It’s beyond the scope of this paper to examine all the (increasing) gaps in the privacy and security of student data. The bottom line is that any data, SEL or otherwise, included in an SLDS or in the custody of corporate vendors is likely to remain there potentially forever and might be disclosed to all manner of other entities with their own agendas and often without consent.

    The
    goal in such a system shifts from promoting the individual liberty of the student, to promoting the good of corporations and the managed economy. 

    Government data collection and sharing does not set well with most people. It has always been my observation schools and universities miss the mark, when it comes to guiding graduates toward lucrative career paths. 

    We are not opposed to more career and vocation assessments, by individual choice, however individual data collation for any purpose is dangerous. The idea that a minor’s personality deficits can be charted and stored in data which follows them to high school and career without knowledge or permission is wrong. We want to see this practice either drastically modified to reflect individual choice, or discontinued by government entities entirely.


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    22 min
  • Social Emotional Learning, PART 7: TEACHERS - NOT TRAINED PSYCHOLOGISTS!

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    New Age Nanny State White Paper
    Parents' Rights In Education Website
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    Even if the science supported SEL, a serious operational problem with implementing SEL is assessing its effect on students, their behavior and mindsets, and their achievement. In a poll conducted in late 2017 and early 2018, only one in ten teachers reported that their schools measure such non-academic characteristics very well. Even SEL enthusiasts admit that valid assessment is challenging. 

    An overarching problem is that, the personnel doing the assessing probably aren’t qualified. Mental-health professionals undergo years of training in evaluating patients, and it simply isn’t possible to train teachers to perform similar evaluations of their students. This is especially true when mental-health professionals recognize the ambiguities of assessing social-emotional traits among still-developing children and adolescents.

    Clinical psychologist Dr. Megan O’Bryan expresses dismay at this concept: “The idea that our government would sink millions (billions?) of dollars into training and supporting unlicensed, quasi-trained teachers/ interventionists in the hopes that they can improve the social and emotional development of masses of children frankly makes me sad.” O’Bryan warns that having poorly trained personnel apply one-size- fits-all interventions to groups of children will backfire, especially with respect to sensitive children. “As a practitioner who specializes in anxiety,” she writes, “[I know that] almost every anxious child misinterprets messages from well-meaning teachers. Sensitive children are hardest hit by these programs” because they “take [the teachers’] words, quite literally, and agonize over them.”

    But Duckworth and Yeager pointed out that observers of these experiments may draw subjective conclusions, and that children may behave differently in such contrived situations than they would in the real world. 

    Duckworth and Yeager concluded: “perfectly unbiased, un-fakeable, and error-free measures are an ideal, not a reality.” And while Duckworth argues that grit and other SEL attributes should be measured to provide feedback for personal improvement and for research purposes, she believes the measurement difficulties create “incentives for cheating,” and “displac[e] intrinsic motivation” and should therefore not be used to assess SEL traits like grit for accountability purposes. Because of this, Duckworth withdrew from the board of a California consortium of schools incorporating SEL into accountability measures. “I do not think we should be doing this. It is a bad idea.”

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    32 min
  • Social Emotional Learning, PART 6: NO SCIENTIFIC PROOF!

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    New Age Nanny State White Paper
    Parents' Rights In Education Website
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    The final Commission report wants to “forge closer connections between research and practice.” However, given the lack of consensus among researchers about how to define SEL, and the fragmented and contradictory state of SEL research as shown in these examples, the wisdom of this idea is in doubt... 

    Major education thought leaders are expressing similar skepticism. One is SEL proponent Peter DeWitt, who notes, “SEL is one area where some educators and leaders are saying enough is enough,” and asks, “Do I expect too much from schools? Do I expect a balance between SEL and academic learning that cannot possibly be accomplished?”

    ...the Commission in its final report recommended “[e]nsur[ing] educators develop expertise in child development and in the science of learning. This will require major changes in educator preparation and in ongoing professional support for the social and emotional learning of teachers and all other adults who work with young people.” Research about SEL in action—especially in preschool and the early grades—suggests that the concept is better in theory than in practice. Even though SEL standards have been part of the Head Start program since at least 2003, research about both Head Start and state preschool programs shows that children involved in them experience a decline in desired SEL status, even based on the subjective standards and assessments currently available. 

    For example, the large, well-controlled 2010 Head Start study found that for “teacher reports of children’s behavior:

    Children in the Head Start group demonstrated moderate evidence of more socially reticent behavior (i.e., shy and hesitant behavior) as reported by teachers, and there is suggestive evidence of more problematic student-teacher interactions.” The 2012 follow-up to this study found that “for children in the 4-year-old cohort, there were no observed [SEL] impacts through the end of kindergarten but favorable impacts reported by parents and unfavorable impacts reported by teachers emerged at the end of 1st and 3rd grades.” Additionally, as far back as 1991, research found that participants in SEL-saturated Head Start “had lower mean scores in communication, daily living skills, and social skills domains, and the total adaptive behavior score.” No study of Head Start has found sustained cognitive gains for participants through third grade, which contradicts the claim of SEL proponents that SEL, a key focus of Head Start programs, improves academic outcomes... 

    As this discussion shows, the certitude with which proponents, especially CASEL and the Commission, express their faith in the efficacy of SEL may be based less on science and rigorous research than on their own hopes about what “ought to” work (and perhaps their own financial interests in the outcome).

    After learning these findings, I am furious about the blatant mismanagement of resources and funding wasted on SEL beginning with the Clinton administration. This has to be stopped at the federal level where all the grant money is allocated every year to educators and curriculum engineers for the purpose of manipulating our children’s personalities. Our children are no less than psychological Guinea Pigs for these so-called researchers. We must call a halt to it in our local schools!

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    24 min
  • Social Emotional Learning, PART 5: UN PLANS TO SHAPE YOUR CHILD’S PERSONALITY!

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    New Age Nanny State White Paper
    Parents' Rights In Education Website
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    SEL is now a global phenomenon. For example, in 2017 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) launched its Study on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES). OECD has long administered the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test to measure academic knowledge, but now is branching out into methods of measuring and shaping students’ personalities. 

     The SSES will analyze two cohorts of students, at ages 10 and 15, to determine what social-emotional skills they have and should have, and to develop “international instruments” to measure such skills. The extraordinarily intrusive study will survey students, parents, teachers, and education administrators to gather data on “children’s [social-emotional] skills, . . family background, child’s performance, home learning environment, parent-child relationship, parental style, learning activities, and parents’ own attitudes and opinion.” SSES will also analyze information from students’ interaction with online instruments to surveil “what people do, think, or feel, when interacting with, and responding to, the item or task.”

     Regardless of its reliability, the mountains of data from the study will be crunched to produce assessments, perhaps to be linked to PISA and other OECD academic assessments. The goal is to measure students’ performance in the five broad domains (known to psychologists as the “Big Five model”) of “emotional regulation (emotional stability); engaging with others (extroversion); collaboration (agreeableness); task performance (conscientiousness); [and] open-mindedness (openness).”

    On the theory that such traits are malleable and can be taught, SSES aims to determine how to mold students into people most useful to the government and the economy. Analysis by the Middle East North African Financial Network (MENAFN) reported that OECD’s reason for developing “the test is that social and emotional skills are important predictors of educational progress and future workplace performance. Large-scale personality data is therefore presumed by the OECD to be predictive of a country’s potential social and economic progress.” 

    OECD is also working to implement a similar assessment for the preschool age group. Its International Early Learning Study (IELS), being piloted in partnership with the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics, seeks to focus: 

     … on young children and their cognitive and non-cognitive skills and competencies as they transition to primary school. The IELS is designed to examine: children’s early learning and development in a broad range of domains, including social emotional skills as well as cognitive skills; the relationship between children’s early learning and children’s participation in early childhood education and care (ECEC); the role of contextual factors, including children’s individual characteristics and their home backgrounds and experiences, in promoting young children’s growth and development; and how early learning varies across and within countries prior to beginning primary school...

    This description makes it clear that these assessments represent an expansion of student surveillance beyond the school and into the home and family life. 

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    23 min

About Parents' Rights Now!

From the publisher's feed

PARENTS’ RIGHTS IN EDUCATION
We represent millions of voices standing up for families, united for natural parents’ rights in the K-12 education system. 

 

Local control,…