Press Release and Open Letter
By Anita Hoge, 3D Research Group
"I have grave concerns about the direction that the Common Core standards movement has taken, as well as, my concerns of the ethics of testing and teaching in the affective domain. I must question the legality of these methods without proper safeguards and ask that legal counsel respond to this direction that Pennsylvania has taken."
~Anita
Hoge’s letter to PA Dept of Ed, 9/12/14
On Monday, November 24,
2014 Pennsylvanians Restoring Education and Pennsylvania Against Common Core
issued a Press Release asking
Governor Corbett to place a moratorium on the data collection in the
Pennsylvania Information Management System and to rescind all contracts with
outside contractors who can access personally identifiable information on
children in violation of federal law, state policy, and Chapter 4 regulations.
To alert all Americans this press release was published in
its entirety on Charlotte Iserbyt’s blog titled: “PA Citizens Ask Gov. Corbett for DataCollection Moratorium” (http://abcsofdumbdown.blogspot.com/2014/11/pa-citizens-ask-gov-corbett-for-data.html). The press release state, in
part:
“We have discovered
that Pennsylvania continues to be the model for the nation to develop a dossier
on each citizen feeding into a national data base that collects this personally
identifiable information with the collaboration of the schools. This systemic
collusion between the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the National
Center for Education Statistics created a national ID without the knowledge of
the citizens. This system boasts that "all of the Commonwealth's children,
adolescents, and adults" will have a dossier. (CFDA-# 84.384) We have also
found that this data base in Pennsylvania is a model state for the nation to
implement a "womb to workforce" data base, (NCES Contract:
CFDS-#84.384, PR/Award #R372A090022; grants.gov Tracking #: Grant 10076087) that would start at
birth and continue until retirement which connects the Department of Labor with
wages in this dossier with the addition of the last 5 digits of the SSN or the
connection to this Unique ID. (Correspondence between Secretary of Education
Gerald Zahorchak and Secretary of Labor Sandy Vito). This creates a data base
of human capital, your worth... or non-worth to the economy. (Pennsylvania’s Workforce Data Quality Initiative Grant) (PA-WDQI)”
“The federal
government in collaboration with Pennsylvania is developing psychological
profiles on the families of this country through the personally identifiable
information collected in the schools that will be used as a decision-making
model for the future. The government wants to know HOW you think and WHAT you
think and everything about YOU. This is a government intelligence operation
using education to create a dossier on every family in this country. Attitudes
and practices of each family are unwittingly revealed in the student's response
in the classroom and on tests through the "Special Ed Student Snap and
Student Snap" (Pennsylvania State University, PennData Grant: Project
Number 062-14-0-042: Federal Award Number: HO27A130162)”
On November 28, 2014 I publicly released
the complete text of “Anita Hoge's OPENLETTER to PA Dept of Ed's Dumaresq,” again published on Charlotte Iserbyt’s
blog (http://abcsofdumbdown.blogspot.com/2014/11/anita-hoges-open-letter-to-pa-dept-of.html) What follows is important background to what
led up to this letter and our press release.
On January 3, 2012 the new FERPA
regulations went into effect that allow outside contractors to access student
personally identifiable information in a student record. An Executive Order by
President Obama allowed personal data to flow "unlocking" this data.
(Source: EO 12866) States must have a policy in place that would allow a signed
written agreement between the Department of Education and an outside contractor
to gain access to this personal data for research. FERPA regulations changed
the definition of WHO could access the data and WHAT could be accessed. The
definition of personally identifiable
information not only included student name, address, zip code, birthdate,
mother's maiden name, etc, it also included biometric data including
fingerprints, voice prints, iris scans, DNA sequences, and facial recognition.
I had researched the templates for how
an outside contractor could apply for this personal data. In May, I had a
meeting in Harrisburg to explain these FERPA loopholes. I asked that a state
representative request the names of the contractors who had access to
Pennsylvania Personally Identifiable Information in student records.
Pennsylvania Representative Lawrence received the documents last June, but then
refused to give them to us. The next request was through the Chairman of the
Senate Education Committee, Senator
Mike Folmer, who requested the documents and forwarded them to us. The
documents are explosive.
We arranged a meeting in Harrisburg on
October 20, 2014, to explain the documents that we found. That meeting was
attended by Senator Folmer's aide, Representative Denlinger, Jeremy Kiehl Esq,
Andrew Paris, aide to Governor Corbett, Ryan Bannister, Pennsylvania Against
Common Core, and myself, Anita Hoge. I prepared the documents for the meeting
and one by one, presented documents to the entire group.
The implications of the impact of these
documents for the entire nation are astounding. These documents explain that
Pennsylvania is a model to collect personal information on the student and
his/her family. The student is given a "national unique ID" in order
to monitor whether students were meeting government affective domain standards
referred to as Interpersonal Skills Standards and Anchors. By 2007, 1.8 million
students were given this unique ID in Pennsylvania, also categorizing college
age students, starting at birth to age 21. The documents refer to the system as
a "womb to workforce" database eventually connecting wages for a
person's worth or human capital" to the economy.
This is system of surveillance through
contracts with the National Center of Education Statistics in a state
longitudinal system for every state in the entire nation. It is being
set up using the schools as a means to collect this data. This system connects
to the demographic data collected by the census. In thirty years those students
who had been given the "national unique ID" will be near retirement
age, with absolutely no need for census gathering. This agenda replaces the
census with details of psychological profiles, personally identifiable
information, along with biometric data and demographic data of every person in
the United States – a complete dossier!
After this historic meeting in Senator
Folmer's office, two days later the Governor asked Pennsylvania Secretary of
Education Dumaresq to cleanse the Pennsylvania Department of Education website
portal called Standards Aligned System, SAS, of all affective domain standards
called Interpersonal Skills Standards that deal with attitudes, values,
opinions, and beliefs of students. This action proves wrongdoing.
The parents of Pennsylvania have the
documents to prove that there is much more that needs to be cleansed –
everything about Common Core, all related tests, curriculum, software, lesson
plans –
everything must go. All data collection must be stopped until the Attorney
General investigates the invasion of privacy and violations of federal law,
state policy, and state regulations.
“Anita Hoge's OPENLETTER to PA Dept of Ed's Dumaresq” issued to the Secretary of Education,
forwarded to Governor Corbett, and the Attorney General requests a moratorium
on the data collection and an investigation into the data collection activities
of our state. This letter also explains in detail the alleged violations that
the parents of Pennsylvania believe are being perpetrated on their children.
You can do this too! We have information
and templates from other states that can help citizens and parents find the
same sort of documents to expose how your own state is involved in the data
collection. Read our press release. “PA Citizens
Ask Gov. Corbett for Data Collection Moratorium”
Again, here are the links to the OPEN Press Release and the
OPEN Letter. Read these for yourselves. This is public information that should
be widely distributed across our nation.
http://abcsofdumbdown.blogspot.com/2014/11/anita-hoges-open-letter-to-pa-dept-of.html
[Ed Note: In case there arises any doubt as to the veracity of the information published on this developing Pennsylvania situation, they are to be directed to Anita Hoge's excellent legal team.]
