Mother of 3

 Mother of 3


Testimony given January 7th, 2015 at NJ State Board of Education

I am a mother of three young children and if common core stays in our schools, my children will not. Every day I worry that this is step one in my children being enslaved in their own country. It sounds insane to say that, but the most horrific events in human history have begun by taking away our basic rights and controlling the education.

When everything that comes home with a 6 year old has fine print and disclaimers, there is a huge problem. Common Core is not just a set of standards as so fraudulently proclaimed. Standards would not require the personal information of my family to be disseminated to third party for-profit companies and the Federal Government. I should not have to meet with my child's principal and curriculum director and consult with my attorney, as I did yesterday, because I object to having my child put into the school database. This purportedly wonderful "online tool" has credit card info for lunch accounts, tax returns if on the reduced lunch program, call lists, disciplinary records, homework, test scores, medical records and more...

Who are these third party companies entrusted with this information? What background checks are done on their personnel? Who else is accessing this information? Who gave the school permission to share all of this information?

It is a blatant violation of my child and family's fourth amendment rights to privacy, it violates COPPA, (the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act 15 U.S.C. 6501, et seq.) and the sharing of my child's health history with anyone when no effort has been made to attain my explicit permission and consent to do so is a violation of HIPAA. I can't ask what if, I can only ask what will we do WHEN there is a data breach? Our own government is routinely being hacked. Am I supposed to believe Genesis, a small company in Jamesburg New Jersey, is going to protect the integrity of my child's information better? How about ConnectEDU that went bankrupt just this past year where 20 million student records were sold as part of the settlement?

FERPA has obliterated my rights as a parent to protect my child in regard to this and I need your help.
These companies are contracted on a yearly basis, which means our children have the potential of having their data stored in 13 different private companies before they've hit college. My daughter turned 7 on Monday and her information is already in two. Is the data destroyed when a contract is terminated? Common core is supposedly all about preparing children for the unknown and careers that don't exist yet but why are we not protecting them from the dangers that exist NOW in terms of identity theft? One careless or unscrupulous person can compromise the futures of all of these children. Sensitive identifiable data should not be traveling through so many channels just to determine whether or not instruction is effective.

Our kids are being stripped of their rights before they have even been taught what those rights are let alone reached an age where they are capable of governing them. I need to rely on you to listen to our concerns and do what is right for these children.

Our woes are not going to be washed away by "Bigger! Better!" standardized tests and technology, hastily written curriculum, demoralized teachers and downtrodden, violated, overworked children. Restore local control, refuse common core, give the classrooms back to our teachers and tell our Federal Government that they can NOT have our children. I am the parent and I am saying NO to common core, data collection & without a doubt NO to my children's rights and futures being compromised by poor decision making and money hungry ill-qualified businesspersons.

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