Ani­ta Hoge’s Call for Stu­dent Data Moratorium
Receives Nation­al Attention

The read­ers of abc­sof­dumb­down blog will want to know that the Press Release sent out last week by Penn­syl­va­nia par­ents and cit­i­zens gen­er­at­ed media atten­tion. Here is what we pub­lished on the blog:

• The Press Release was post­ed on this blog on Novem­ber 24, 2014: “PA Cit­i­zens Ask Gov. Cor­bett for Data Col­lec­tion Mora­to­ri­um”
• This was fol­lowed up by the com­plete text of the let­ter addressed to Penn­syl­va­nia offi­cials on Fri­day, Novem­ber 28th: “Ani­ta Hoge’s OPEN LETTER to PA Dept of Ed’s Dumaresq”
• Ani­ta sub­se­quent­ly wrote a brief back­ground of the his­to­ry that led up to the call for a Mora­to­ri­um on stu­dent data col­lec­tion on Sun­day, Novem­ber 30th: “Penn­syl­va­nia Cit­i­zens Call for Mora­to­ri­um on Data Col­lec­tion: The Sto­ry Behind the Penn­syl­va­nia Press Release and Open Letter”

Here are some of the oth­er arti­cles that have appeared in the press:

• Fox News car­ried the sto­ry “Crit­ics say Com­mon Core includes col­lect­ing psych data on kids,” by Per­ry Chiara­monte, Decem­ber 3, 2014, FoxNews.com.
• NewsWith­Views ran Ani­ta’s arti­cle, “PENNSYLVANIA CITIZENS CALL FOR MORATORIUM ON DATA COLLECTION,” on Decem­ber 2, 2014.
  

World­Net­Dai­ly ran an arti­cle “ ‘Womb-to-work­force’ data-min­ing scheme sparks revolt” on Novem­ber 30th by Leo Hohmann.

Note this arti­cle from the Delaware Coun­ty News Net­work by Lois Puglione­si, dat­ed March 24, 2014. In one Penn­syl­va­nia school dis­trict offi­cials admit­ted the exces­sive amount of data col­lec­tion. “Stu­dent data over­load wor­ries Haver­ford school offi­cials”:

School offi­cials at a recent meet­ing expressed con­cerns about increas­ing amounts of data the dis­trict is required to sub­mit to Penn­syl­va­nia Depart­ment of Education’s Infor­ma­tion Man­age­ment Sys­tem (PIMS).

The lon­gi­tu­di­nal data sys­tem con­tin­u­ous­ly col­lects infor­ma­tion for approx­i­mate­ly 1.8 mil­lion stu­dents, pre‑K through col­lege, used to sup­port test­ing and account­abil­i­ty systems.…

PIMS data includes demo­graph­ic records, cours­es, assess­ments, dis­ci­pline, pro­grams, ser­vices and more.

…Haver­ford annu­al­ly sub­mits a whop­ping 15,023,713 fields of infor­ma­tion to PIMS.

Stu­dent tem­plates total 7,841,600 fields, with 52 fields sub­mit­ted 26 times through­out the year due to cor­rec­tions and changes.

“On a reg­u­lar basis, we are updat­ing and chas­ing down data,” Keil­baugh said.

“It increas­es every year,” said Direc­tor of Tech­nol­o­gy Jane Green­spun, “The demands, fields, pieces of infor­ma­tion request­ed from us by the state…It’s sub­stan­tial and takes a great deal of time from our staff.”

“This is what I call a qui­et, unfund­ed man­date,” Gray said. “All of a sud­den you real­ize you’re spend­ing a small for­tune to col­lect data but you’re not sure why.”