Michelle Malkin has an important article out on data mining and how it is being done on our littlest citizens. The article covers a group called TS Gold (Teaching Strategies Gold). North Carolina uses TS Gold.

Malkin writes that TS Gold is an assessment tool tracking our littlest learners and is expanding through Third grade, with the bonus of capturing behavioral data:

TS Gold’s creators describe the testing vehicle as “an early childhood assessment system” that purportedly measures the “whole child.” What that means is that the tests are not only for “literacy, mathematics, science and technology, social studies and the arts,” but also for “developmental domains including social emotional, physical, language and cognitive development.”

Aligned to the federal Common Core standards, which were designed and copyrighted by a small cadre of Beltway educrats, TS Gold received $30 million in federal Race to the Top subsidies in 2012. The assessors have 38 “objectives” arranged under nine topics of academic learning, psychomotor data and social-emotional development. Students are rated and recorded on their ability to do things like “respond to emotional cues,” “interact cooperatively” and “cooperate and share ideas and materials in socially acceptable ways.” (Read the document here.)

As I said earlier, North Carolina uses TS Gold.  This is a product that is being bought and used in North Carolina. Note Malkin mentions Race To The Top Funds. I will address this in regards to North Carolina in the latter half of this article.

Read the NC Pre-K Resource manual for administrators and principals engaged with teaching young children. Also read the NC Pre-K Program requirements manual and note on page 18 it states the use of “Creative Curriculum Developmental Continuum, Ages 3-5 and Teaching Strategies GOLD; “.

The Teaching Strategies site has a section for each state. Here is North Carolina’s Section.

Take note that the NC section includes “Creative Curriculum” for INFANTS, TODDLERS, and TWOS that is intended to promote “critical thinking” in these little kids and babies.

The last PDF in the list sounds innocuous until you open the associate PDF and see the title, “Teaching Strategies GOLD Objectives For Early Childhood Learning: Birth Through Kindergarten”

Think I’m kidding? Read the PDF documents yourself:

Early Learning Standards

The Creative Curriculum^® for Preschool

• UPDATED June 2014: North Carolina Foundations for Early Learning and Development (PDF)

The Creative Curriculum^® for Infants, Toddlers & Twos

• UPDATED June 2014: North Carolina Foundations for Early Learning and Development (PDF)

Teaching Strategies GOLD^®

• UPDATED June 2014: North Carolina Foundations for Early Learning and Development (PDF)

About TS GOLD, Race To The Top, And North Carolina

I’ve previously written about the KEA (Kindergarten Entry Assessment) that is being implemented in North Carolina this year.  Here is where TS Gold and Race To The Top figure into that.

In 2012, North Carolina applied for Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC).  There is a useful presentation from 2013 that outlines the use of TS Gold to achieve the assessment of Kindergarteners and Pre-K children with expansions through Third grade.

For more background on RTT-ELC and who won the grants and why, read the 2012 article, “The ‘Race to the Top Winners’: How States Plan to Assess Kindergarten Readiness“. If you scroll down halfway, there is a section outlining how North Carolina went in this direction, with the summary of the move being the use of data collected to generate instruction:

 “The state also plans to use a significant portion of the funds on professional development, teaching educators how to implement the new assessment tool and use the data it generates to guide instruction.”

 

Related Reading:  Your Kindergartener Has Become A Guinea Pig