Commissioner King and NYSED have failed to implement the new state law on student privacy

See below letter NYSAPE and Class Size Matters wrote to Commissioner King and the Regents about King's failure to implement the new privacy law, passed at the end of March as part of the budget.  

Not only has he missed the deadline for appointing a permanent Chief Privacy Officer, qualified for the job, but also for adopting a Parents bill of Rights, created through public input from parents among other stakeholders.  Instead the "interim" Parents Bill of Rights posted on the NYSED website mistates existing law by omitting key provisions in state and federal law, and provides an email address for parents complaining of breaches that goes unanswered.

Since we wrote this letter we have found additional federal privacy provisions  that are missing from the NYSED Parents Bill of Rights, including the right of parents whose children are using online programs at school to find out what personal student data is being collected, have that data deleted, and opt out of the online program if they so choose.  See this recent FTC guidance on COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.

Emailed Aug. 25, 2014, sent via snail mail September 12, 2014 

Dear Commissioner King and members of the New York State Board of Regents:

On behalf of New York State Allies for Public Education. a coalition of more than fifty parent and advocacy groups, and Class Size Matters, a parent advocacy group located in NYC, we write to you to state our concerns about the New York State Education Department’s failure to comply with key provisions of the 2014 state law regarding student data privacy and protection.

As you are aware, the budget bill that passed this spring contained many important provisions relating to student data privacy and security, including a halt to the State’s plan to share highly sensitive personally identifiable student data with inBloom, Inc.[i]  In addition, the new law required Commissioner King to appoint a Chief Privacy Officer (CPO).  According to this new law, it is the CPO who is charged with creating a Parents’ Bill of Rights for student data privacy and protection, as well as other important responsibilities.  

On April 29, 2014, a group of parent leaders and advocacy groups, including New York State Allies for Public Education, sent a letter to Commissioner King and the Board of Regents.[ii]  Among other things, this letter urged Commissioner King to appoint a well-qualified CPO, from outside the Department, well-versed in the issue of data privacy and security.  In addition, the letter urged that the CPO hold hearings throughout the State to hear stakeholder views on what the Parents’ Bill of Rights should include. 

Under the terms of the new law, the CPO appointed by NYSED must be qualified, through experience and/or training, in state and federal education privacy laws and regulations, civil liberties, information technology, and information security.  The law further requires that the CPO is to solicit feedback from parents and other stakeholder groups before putting forward a proposed Parents’ Bill of Rights.  That proposed Bill of Rights was then to be open for public comment before being adopted in its final form – all of this to occur no later than July 29, 2014.  In addition, the law requires every district to post the final Parents' Bill of Rights on its website, and to include it with every contract into which it enters with a third party vendor that receives student data.  That July deadline, however, has now long passed.

Shortly after posting an incomplete and deficient Parents’ Bill of Rights (as discussed below) on July 30, 2014, Commissioner King appointed Tina Sciocchetti, Esq., a former Assistant U.S. Attorney, to serve as interim Chief Privacy Officer.[iii]  Ms. Sciocchetti was already employed by NYSED as Director of Test Security and Educator Integrity, and there is nothing in her career or background to suggest that she meets the CPO qualifications and criteria specified in the law.  Moreover, given that Ms. Sciocchetti was appointed interim CPO after the current Parents’ Bill of Rights was posted, and the document reflects no input from parents and/or other stakeholders whatsoever, its legal validity is questionable.

As mentioned above, we are very concerned that the Parents’ Bill of Rights, as currently drafted and posted for school districts to use, is incomplete and has several serious mistakes in it.[iv]  For example, it fails to state that NYSED is under a legal obligation, both pursuant to 34 C.F.R. § 99.10(b) of the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and pursuant to section 95 of the New York Personal Privacy Protection Law (PPPL), to afford parents the right to review all personally identifiable data that the State holds for their children, and to afford them the opportunity to correct such data, if necessary.

Moreover, the new law delineates specific minimum security protocols that must be followed by any third party contractor that receives student, teacher, or principal data from an educational agency.  The law specifically states that third party contractors must use “encryption technology to protect data while in motion or in its custody from unauthorized disclosure using a technology or methodology specified by the Secretary of the United States Department of Health And Human Services in guidance issued under Section 13402(H)(2) of Public Law 111-5,” and that such protocols (as well as a host of additional information) must be incorporated into the Parents’ Bill of Rights.  

Instead, the current Parents’ Bill of Rights provides the far less rigorous requirement that third party contractors must merely “use encryption technology to protect data while in motion or in its custody from unauthorized disclosure.”  Finally, the Bill of Rights states that parent complaints about possible breaches should be sent to cpo@mail.nysed.gov, yet emails to this address go unanswered.

We respectfully request that NYSED correct these errors and omissions immediately, direct school districts and educational agencies to post the full provisions of law on their websites, and that NYSED and all educational agencies fully comply with the minimum security protocol requirements.   A recent audit from the NY State Comptroller found that employees in six districts had inappropriate access to sensitive student data.[v]  A report from the Attorney General’s office pointed out that reported data breaches in New York have more than tripled between 2006 and 2013, with an astounding 22 million personal records exposed.  A large number of breaches were reported by education institutions.[vi]  We can no longer risk this fate for our vulnerable children.   

We further urge Commissioner King to act with speed to appoint a well-qualified CPO who meets the criteria set forth in the legislation.   As clearly required by law, once a qualified individual is appointed, he or she must then solicit the input of parents and other stakeholders to help develop “additional elements of the parents bill of rights” before it is released for public comment and put into final form.  In addition, the CPO, along with Commissioner King, is required to promulgate regulations that establish standards to govern educational agencies’ data security and privacy policies, and to develop one or more model policies for them to use.  

We request that the CPO, once appointed, hold hearings throughout the State for the purpose of gaining input from parents, district officials, educators, and other stakeholders vis-à-vis the Parents’ Bill of Rights.  After this occurs, the proposed Bill of Rights should be drafted and made publicly available during a 45-day period of public comment, pursuant to proper notice, during which time interested parties would be allowed to submit comments online, to be posted by NYSED and answered by the CPO.

No doubt school districts, in preparation for the 2014-15 school year, have already engaged third-party contractors who will receive – or who have already received -- a wealth of personally identifiable student data.  Nevertheless, New York State continues to lack sufficient student data privacy and security protections for its millions of public school students, and has failed to provide timely proper and sufficient guidance to school districts that endeavor to do so.  This must change. 

Finally, we urge you to ensure that the State Longitudinal Student Database is developed with the utmost attention to student data privacy and security, and that an advisory body of stakeholders be appointed to oversee it. 

We thank you in advance for your attention to these matters and look forward to your response.

Very truly yours, 

Deborah Abramson Brooks,  Lisa Rudley, Anna Shah, & Allison White on behalf of New York State Allies for Public Education and Leonie Haimson, Executive Director, Class Size Matters

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[i] The student privacy components of the legislation are at http://open.nysenate.gov/legislation/bill/A8556D-2013, beginning in Part AA, Subpart K Section 1, and thereafter throughout Subpart L. 

[ii] The letter is posted at  http://tinyurl.com/luq44mn

iii Gary Stern, “New York posts 'bill of rights' to protect student data,” Westchester County Jou­­­­­rnal News, July 30, 2014.

iv NYSED’s Parents’ Bill of Rights is posted at http://www.p12.nysed.gov/docs/parents-bill-of-rights.pdf

 

v Office of the New York State Comptroller, “Access Controls over Student Information Systems,” August, 2014.

vi Office of the New York State Attorney General, “Information Exposed: Historical Examination of Data Breaches in New York State,” July 14, 2014.

   

NYS Assessment blues and statement from NYSAPE on latest exam fiasco & call for John King & Tisch to resign

Thanks to Howie Ratem for the below video and song; and NY State Allies for Public Education for their statement below on the latest fiasco from NY State Education Department: an unknown number of  3rd graders received Pearson math exams yesterday, with pages and questions missing -- calling into question the validity or the results.  NYSAPE is demanding that the Commissioner and Chancellor Tisch resign.

For more on parent distress at the Common Core testing regime, see Rebecca Mead in the New Yorker, and comedian Louis CK's recent tweets.  As mentioned below, more than 48% of the students at Worcester Central School District opted out of the math exams; 81% of the students at PS 146/The Brooklyn New School did so as well.  If you have figures for your school or district, please email them to info@classsizematters.org  thanks!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 2, 2014

More Information Contact:
Eric Mihelbergel (716) 553-1123; nys.allies@gmail.com
Lisa Rudley (917) 414-9190; nys.allies@gmail.com
New York State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE) www.nysape.org

NYS 3rd Grade Test Invalid, Chancellor Merryl Tisch and

 Education Commissioner John King Must Resign

The leaders of the New York State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE), a coalition of more than 45 parent and educator groups from throughout the state, are calling for the NYS 3rd Grade math test to be deemed invalid, since many questions were missing today from one of the four forms. This week, once again, parents are reminded of the grossly inappropriate practice of subjecting 8 and 9 year olds to 6 to 12 hours of testing over the course of six days. In light of the high stakes attached to these tests for children, schools and teachers, an error of this magnitude calls NYSED’s leadership and relationship with Pearson into serious question. This is yet another major misstep by our Commissioner of Education and the Board of Regents who oversee NYSED.

Commissioner King and the Board of Regents have been criticized extensively for not listening to parents or educators on the need to revamp the Common Core standards, lessen the focus on testing, and to cease and desist from thrusting one-size-fits-all statewide curriculum on local schools. And despite repeated issues with its testing vendor, NYSED has failed to take meaningful action, ignoring criticism from all corners of the state.

After repeatedly witnessing NYSED and the Board of Regents leadership fail to act within their authority, New York State Allies for Public Education now calls for the termination of Commissioner John King and the resignation of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch. The concerns of parents and educators throughout New York State have been casually dismissed at the detriment of their children for far too long.

“This comedy of errors has gone on too long. From the overly long, obscure and confusing ELA exams, with commercial product placements, and now with missing questions from the math exam, it is clear that the educrats at NYSED who have flunked, not our children,” said Chris Cerrone, Springville parent, Western New York Educator and founding NYSAPE member.

“While NYSED is eager to impose high-stakes on our schools and our teachers, where’s the accountability for them?” asked Jeanette Deutermann, North Bellmore public school parent and founder of Long Island Opt Out, “We need to stop the excessive testing and test prep, with defective modules and exams, and get back to educating our children once again.”

“Even as Louis CK has brought attention to the inherently flawed nature of the Common Core test prep materials this week, parents throughout the state are opting out their children in even larger numbers. In our school district, more than 48% refused to take the math tests. But it is unfair to all children and teachers to be assessed and compared with others through an invalid exam with missing questions. Enough is enough! John King and Merryl Tisch, resign!” said Stacey Serdy, Worcester Central School District parent and founder of Worcester Community for Education.

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Sign our petition to Commissioner King and the Board of Regents on the need to protect student privacy!

UPDATE:  Parent leaders from throughout the state sent Commissioner King and the Board of Regents a letter April 29, 2014 with the same message;  the letter is posted here. 

Though NY State was finally forced to sever its contract with inBloom, and inBloom has announced it is closing its doors, there are still many threats to student privacy that the new state law did not address, as well as the huge number of vendors eager to get their hands on our children's  personal data.  The new law requires that the Commissioner appoint a privacy officer who will write a parent bill of rights.  We must ensure that this privacy officer creates a bill of rights that respects parents and provides them with the ability to protect their children's privacy and safety. Please read the petition to Commissioner King and the Regents posted below and sign it here.

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To Commissioner King and the Board of Regents:

For more than two years, since the state entered into a data-sharing agreement with inBloom, you have refused to notify the public, hold hearings, or even answer parents’ questions about your plans to disclose the personal information of their children to this corporation.  Your lack of respect for student privacy and parental concerns was also made clear by the fact New York was the last state among nine to sever its relationship to inBloom and the ONLY one in which a law had to be passed to do this.

Now that inBloom is closing its doors and the new state law contains a range of new privacy protections, including a privacy officer who will develop a parent bill of rights, we urge you to demonstrate a new transparency and accountability by taking the following steps:

1-    Minimize the state’s collection and sharing of personal student data and maximize the opportunities for parental notification and consent;

2-    Appoint an independent privacy advocate as your privacy officer, rather than someone from  inside the NYS Education Department or from the corporate world;

3-    Hold public hearings and elicit comments and suggestions from parents and other stakeholders as to the parent bill of rights and the regulations that will enact the new law, while also encouraging the public to submit their comments online and posting them;

4-    Appoint an advisory board of parents, advocates, educators, administrators and privacy experts to guide your work going forward and to provide independent oversight for the state’s P20 “cradle to the grave” student tracking system, that is designed to collect and link personal data on children from many state agencies;

5-  Immediately post any and all contracts in which the State is providing personal student data  to vendors and other third parties– including your agreement with the PARCC consortium that is developing the new tests that will replace the state exams.

These agreements should delineate exactly which data elements are being disclosed to third parties, what restrictions have been placed on their use,  whether the third parties are barred from redisclosing the data without parental consent, what security and encryption protections are being used, and when the data will be destroyed.

If you take the steps outlined above,  it will help demonstrate a new acknowledgement on your part that parents have a legitimate interest in the privacy and security of their children, which must be respected rather than ignored.

Sincerely yours,
Sign here

Parents respond to Speaker Silver and Assembly call to halt inBloom

Sheldon Silver, Speaker of the NYS Assembly, has called for an immediate delay in the State Education's plan to share personal student data with inBloom; the press release is here.

"It is our job to protect New York's children. In this case, that means protecting their personally identifiable information from falling into the wrong hands," said Silver. "Until we are confident that this information can remain protected, the plan to share student data with InBloom must be put on hold." 

Fifty Assemblymembers signed a letter to Commissioner King, expressing their continuing concern with the the state's plan: "We do not believe the State Education Department should share this information with inBloom, especially at this time."  Our press release about this latest development and the Assembly letter is below.

For immediate release: December 19, 2013

For information contact: Leonie Haimson: 917-435-9329, leonie@classssizematters.org 

Donald Nesbit: 646-373-0779

 

Parents and Community members thank Speaker Silver and the Assembly

calling for a halt to data-sharing with inBloom and hope that Commissioner King and the Regents will listen

Today, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Assembly Education chair Cathy Nolan, and forty nine other members of the Assembly expressed their deep concerns about student privacy and asked Commissioner King to immediately suspend his plan to share personal student data with inBloom Inc.  Their press release with a link to the letter is here: http://assembly.state.ny.us/Press/20131219/

Said Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, “We deeply thank the Speaker, Assembly Education chair Nolan and the other legislators who signed onto this letter, and all others who have spoken out against this devastating plan.  They have listened to the protests of parents, and the overwhelming consensus that the sharing of children’s personal data with inBloom is an unprecedented violation of student privacy and basic parental rights.  I hope the Commissioner and the Regents listen to the Speaker and our other elected officials, and pull out of inBloom immediately, as they have so far refused to do.”

InBloom is a non-profit corporation, funded with $100 million from the Gates and Carnegie Foundations, with an operating system built by Wireless Generation, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.  The data is being uploaded on a cloud run by Amazon.com, despite the fact that most technology professionals do not trust data clouds for their sensitive data.   Last month, NYC parents sued to block the uploading of this data, with arguments to be heard in state court on January 10.  Two bills passed the Assembly last session unanimously that would halt the state from sharing data with inBloom without consent or give parents the right to opt out. 

Last week, Senator John Flanagan, chair of the Senate Education Committee, called for an immediate moratorium for any data-sharing on the part of the State Education Department.  Yet as of yesterday, State Education Department officials said they would not hold off uploading a student names and other personal data past January 22.  

According to Tricia Joyce, chair of the Youth and Education Committee of Community Board 1 in Lower Manhattan, “We all have much for to be grateful to Assembly Speaker Silver. He listens to his constituency and consistently advocates for them, visibly bettering the lives of all of our New York City and State families. InBloom posed an immediate and significant threat to our New York State student’s privacy, and also served as a dangerous precedent in how we handle data of this kind in the internet age.”

Over the course of the last year, eight out of the nine states originally identified as inBloom’s “partners” have severed all ties with the company or put their data-sharing plans on indefinite hold,.  In a recent survey, 75% of elected school board members in New York opposed this plan, and 78% say parents should be allowed to opt out.  More than forty Superintendents have returned federal Race to the Top funds in hope of protecting student privacy, but the Commissioner says he will ignore their wishes and upload their student data to the inBloom cloud anyway. 

Karen Sprowal, a parent with a child in a NYC public school and a plaintiff in the lawsuit to block inBloom, said: “Elected officials from both parties, school board members, parents and educators throughout the state have been appalled at the Commissioner’s plan to share intimate and confidential student data without parental notification or consent with inBloom and for-profit vendors.  This data would include my child’s name, address, phone number, test scores, grades, economic and racial status, any disability or health problem he might have, as well as highly sensitive disciplinary records.  I have been outraged as has every parent I have spoken to about this.  In fact, there is no parent in the world who wants their child’s confidential information uploaded on a data cloud vulnerable to breaches, or disclosed to vendors.  The fact that Commissioner King has continued to ignore the objections of parents and elected officials is an abomination and must end.”

Paul Hovitz, a retired teacher and co-chair of the Community Board 1 Youth and Education Committee commented, “On behalf of our children, parents, and community, I wish to commend Speaker Silver and Assembly Democrats for recognizing the hazards caused by releasing students’ personal statistics into an internet cloud. Their action today in calling for an immediate suspension of this plan is in the best tradition of our elected officials.” 

Donald Nesbit, a parent plaintiff in the lawsuit and Local 372-AFSCME Executive Board Member, concluded: “We pray that the Speaker’s statement will finally pierce the bubble that Commissioner King and the Regents have been inhabiting over more than a year, since the news first broke about their plan to share our student’s personal data with inBloom.  It would be the best holiday present that any parent with a child in the public schools could receive, to learn that the state finally halted this reckless and outrageous plan.  Even though New York would still be the last state to withdraw, better late than never I always say.”

Mona Davids, a parent plaintiff in the lawsuit and President, New York City Parents Union said:  "We are relieved that our legislators are putting our children first and taking action to protect student data. We hope our legislators move quickly and pass legislation requiring parents be respected and given the ability to opt out of any data sharing." 

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Assembly Letter to King about inBloom

John King’s Flying Circus Lands in Lower Manhattan by Patrick Walsh

Reprinted from  Raginghorseblog by Patrick Walsh.

Teacher Peter Lamphere speaking before a deeply engaged John King and Meryl Tisch

Unlike the authentic and enraged voices of parents and teachers that Commissioner John King encountered in every corner of the state he dared show up in to peddle his wares on our dime, many of the voices King heard on the past two nights in Brooklyn and Manhattan respectively have been melodious indeed, if also largely synthetic and out right obsequious. For this King can give thanks to the machinations of billionaire funded corporate education fronts groups Students First NY and Educators4Excellence.

Even if they were thwarted from hogging almost every one of the 45 two minute speaking slots, as they had in Brooklyn on Tuesday, the confederacy of corporate shills and paid operatives ( many of whom spoke at both “forums”) did successfully put on a show of obeisance to the Common Core State Standards that was sure to please their masters even as it bore no relationship whatsoever to 99.9 % of working career teachers who loathe the thing and all that comes with it.

Unwittingly, the corporate advocates also provided not a little bit of entertainment, albeit in the form of black humor. Take for example the E4E guy who proclaimed to all and sundry that he was “a good teacher” before the implementation of Common Core but now, due to the miraculous intercession of Common Core he had become “a great teacher.”

Poof! Just like that!

This, mind you, was not presented as wicked, guerilla satire.

Then there was the teacher from John Adams High School who strode down to the mic with seven students in tow only to ask that all eight of them be allowed to speak, as somehow they constituted one entity. For some reason, this was allowed. And it was the defense of this break from protocol that merited the only words that Meryl Tisch spoke all night.

Hey! Nice work if you can get it!

The teacher then went on to tell the crowd that he taught a class in “critical thinking.”

By way of explanation he actually said, “We get together and critically think.” The insinuation was that “critical thinking “ did not exist or was wholly unknown in the public school system ( and perhaps to homosapiens in general) before the advent of the Common Core. This insulting and absurd sentiment, to one degree or the other, was echoed by the E4E contingent all evening, a bizarre position, indeed, for an organization that obliges new members to sign a what amounts to a pledge of allegiance to its corporate dictums.

At any rate, if the man’s students are any indication, the sorry guy does not even know what the words “critical thinking ” mean. One student after another strode to the mic only to recite words that sounded to all the world like nothing more than Common Core press releases.

Poor kids.

A crisis in education, indeed!

One wonders how such people ever got to be teachers. Or why.

In fact, listening to these folks, a stranger would be forgiven if you concluded that standards themselves were non-existent before the coming of the Common Core. As if, that is, before the Common Core and corporate fronts like E4E and StudentsfirstNY, teachers and students did little more in school than kind of hang around, looking out windows or watching game shows on TV.

But, for the moment at any rate, at least these speakers were, in fact, active working teachers. Not so the three twenty something know-it-all “ ex- teachers”, whose love for the Common Core Standards is exceeded only by their love for their former students — even as they forsook the teaching profession after two or three years to save schools from bad teachers and raise expectations as paid operatives of StudentsFirstNY. (One understands their affinity with King as, like them, it only took King three years of teaching to know everything there is to know about it.) Indeed, it seems the further removed one is from actually working under Common Core the more rhapsodic one grows about it. Consider “ex – teacher “ Miranda Cohen who rose to declare the she was behind CCSS not merely 100 % but “150%. ”

And who is this “ex teacher?” Nothing other than a staffer for Students First NY working tirelessly and selflessly to raise expectations, ferret out “bad teachers,” and instruct those remaining on how to do their job.
Herein her story from the StudentsfirstNY website: “As a 9th grade teacher at a failing school, Miranda was driven to provide her students with the same excellent instruction and guidance that she herself received in Massachusetts.

After teaching for two years, Miranda moved back to New York to begin a Community Organizing Fellowship with StudentsFirstNY, as she sought an opportunity to have a meaningful impact outside of the classroom. Miranda is deeply committed to raising the level of expectations that communities have for both their teachers and schools.”

“Meaningful” indeed! Well, it beats working!

There was even a speech by a young lady who presented herself as a member of E4E at the same time she was a chapter leader for the United Federation of Teachers (UFT.)

This is a vomitous and incoherent combo if there ever was one but also one that has to be some kind of wet dream for E4E sugar daddies Whitney Tillson and Bill Gates!

Then, for good measure (and a bit of diversity) we heard from a lawyer couple from the Upper West Side — we know they were a lawyer couple from the Upper West Side because they made sure we knew they were a lawyer couple from the Upper West Side — who spoke separately to insure that their four year old and two year old children would be educated under the Common Core Standards.

I swear I’m not making this up.

One thing that was noticeably and gratefully absent, despite the fundamentalist fervor of the shills, was the obscene and horrific (if politically manipulative) notion that reportedly dominated Tuesday night’s forum in Brooklyn: the idea that, somehow, the implementation of Common Core was nothing less than a matter of civil rights and all who opposed it did so because they are racists who sadistically wish to condemn children of color to the ignorant underclass for perpetuity.

In between and after this exercise in self-righteousness and farce were many statements from parents and teachers that moved from the wise to the poignant to the heartbreaking.

One mother spoke of her child experiencing suicidal ideation that she attributed directly to the demands and stress of the Common Core.

An hour or so later, a similar statement was made by yet another mother.

King and Meryl Tisch answered both statements with silence.

Several experienced teachers spoke of dividing the Common Core, in which they found merit, from the high stakes testing, from which they found none.

This too was answered with silence.

Leonie (“ The Lioness”) Haimson of Class Size Matters challenged King directly to explain the legality and purpose of the data mining of InBloom, data mining which has already been rejected by many states due to parent pressure but not in New York.

King danced the watusi, the twist, and the bossa nova but never came anywhere near answering Haimson’s query.

Leonie was not surprised.

One mother offered the insight that the problem is that the “ state begins with the premise that kids don’t want to learn and teachers don’t want to teach.”

More silence.

Testing expert Fred Smith called for a moratorium on testing due to the shabbiness of their production offering example after example of the shoddiness of the work.

Silence.

Parent activist Noah Gotbaum spoke passionately and personally about an entire array of DOE policy failings, including the fact that the Common Core barely even acknowledges the existence of never mind the realties of special needs children.

Not a word in reply.

Members of the MORE Caucus of the UFT, myself included, made their presence felt and heard through the long, weird night.

Perhaps the most challenging question of the evening was asked by a middle aged African American teacher who spoke poignantly of his upbringing in the South where he was raised by his grandmother and was an excellent high school student, only to discover that he was far behind his peers when he reached college. He declared himself a Common Core agnostic but asked a crucial question: if not common core, what?
It is a question that opponents of the Common Core must answer. Indeed, we ignore it at our peril.

For King who is somehow “completely convinced of the power the Common Core has for our students ” the Common Core is the solution not the problem.

For King and his subjects in StudentsFirstNY and E4E, we are the problem, not the Common Core.
The Common Core said King, offering no evidence whosoever, will “ create a “ citizenry ready for the 21st century.”

It was declarations such as this that led to my own question, the second to last of the night.

I told King and Tisch and all present that I am in awe of the Common Core, not as an educational tool, but as a political phenomenon. How a thing that was funded by Bill Gates and created by creepy entrepreneurs like David Coleman and Pearson Inc in a secrecy akin to that of the Manhattan Project could become signature educational policy of a Democratic president, applauded by both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, is mind boggling and without precedent in American history.

Furthermore, as the effusive praise and cult like mantras of the untested experiment gave evidence, I am equally in awe of Common Core as an exercise in mass perception management and public relations. But I wanted to know this: as the proponents of the Common Core were so unconscionably reckless as to impose the thing on a nation (spare me the “adopted in 45 states” line), where was the evidence to back up all these magical expectations? Or put another way: why was my child, as was every child in the nation, being used as a guinea pig in their experiment?

My question, like all questions of substance, was ignored. Very tactfully. Answering questions, after all, was not at all what the “forum” was about.