#SB534: Study Student Online Data Privacy

On March 26th, Senator Chad Barefoot filed SB 535 (Study Student Online Data Privacy).

The bill would form a study committee to inspect and investigate issues around the protection of multiple aspects of student data being collected in North Carolina, including what third parties have access, disclosure and protection process and Cloud based data.

In 2014, Senator Barefoot authored a student data privacy bill (SB 815) which was signed into law. Given the invasive nature and data collection inherent in HB 13 and the data collection machine in use by NC DPI currently, this study of student data is very timely.

The filed text is brief:

A BILL TO BE ENTITLED

AN ACT TO REQUIRE THE JOINT LEGISLATIVE EDUCATION OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE TO STUDY AND MAKE RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY ON ISSUES RELATED TO ENSURING PRIVACY OF ONLINE STUDENT DATA.

The General Assembly of North Carolina enacts:

SECTION 1.  The Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee shall study issues related to protecting elementary and secondary student data and personal information online, in cloud‑based services, and in other electronic applications which collect student data. The study shall include, but is not limited to, the use of elementary and secondary student data and personal information by third parties, sale of elementary and secondary student data and personal information, and transparency in disclosure of privacy policies in online, cloud‑based, or electronic application services targeted at students in elementary and secondary schools.

The Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee shall report on its findings, including any recommended legislation, to the 2016 Session of the 2015 General Assembly.

SECTION 2.  This act is effective when it becomes law.

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), EDUCATION, NCGA | Comments Off on #SB534: Study Student Online Data Privacy

#DM7 Article: What does your higher education dollar buy these days?

This is a reposting of my weekly Da Tech Guy Column: What does your higher education dollar buy these days?


By A.P. Dillon

“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
Voltaire


What does your higher education dollar buy these days?  Let’s take a campus tour.

At Columbia in New York, you can take classes on Occupy.

At Berkeley in California, students want a building to be named after one of the FBI’s 10 most wanted.

At Cornell in New York you can potentially form an ISIS club and have a ‘freedom fighter’ come ‘train’ you.

Also at Cornell, you can be accused of rape, be expelled and then try to sue the school.

At Appalachain State in North Carolina, ‘privileged’ students are treated to public shaming.

At UVA in Virginia, you can be subjected to a Rolling Stone expose, be accused of rape and then have it turn out to be a “complete crock”.

At the University of Irvine in California, professors can demand the US Flag not be displayed because it symbolizes ‘racism’.  Students took matters into their own hands and removed the flag.

At the University of Austin-Texas in Texas, students were outraged that the school wouldn’t punish students for wearing politically incorrect clothing… OFF CAMPUS.

At the University of Wisconsin in Wisconsin, the Chancellor spends their time lobbying alumni against Governor Scott Walker — all done on the tax payer dime.

At Vanderbuilt University in Tennessee, a Jewish fraternity was painted with Swastikas.

At the University of Oklahoma in Oklahoma, the First Amendment was expelled along with some fraternity members that used ‘racially insensitive language’.

Reaching back to 2012, my own alma mater, Syracuse University, was cited for expelling a student over comments they made… on Facebook.  I was sad and ashamed to see the long list of cases involving Syracuse. Not a dime will they ever see from me.

What an ‘education’.  We’re in the very best of hands.

Parents, I recommend visiting Instapundit’s Higher Education Bubble posts and Campus Reform’s website regularly to see just what your tuition is paying for.  It wouldn’t hurt to pay attention to the reports at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) either — in particular, the cases dealing with Free Speech.

DM7 small LL1885A.P. Dillon resides in the Triangle area of North Carolina and is the founder ofLadyLiberty1885.com.
Her current and past writing can also be found at IJ Review, StopCommonCoreNC.org, Watchdog Wire NC

 

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), EDUCATION | Tagged | 1 Comment

#NCGA Bill Would Change Legislator Terms, Elections

A bill filed on March 11th would alter the length of a term for legislators and includes language to change upcoming elections.

The bill appears to change terms from 2 to 4 years. SB 271 also appears to implement a term limit for legislators of no more than 4 consecutive terms.

The bill sponsors are: Ronald J. Rabin,  Jeff Tarte,  Warren Daniel (Primary) and
Norman W. Sanderson.

SB 271 (Four-Year Term for GA/Limit Consecutive Terms) opening language reads:

AN ACT AMENDING THE NORTH CAROLINA CONSTITUTION TO PROVIDE FOUR‑YEAR TERMS FOR MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND STAGGER THOSE TERMS SUCH THAT, IN 2016, TWENTY-FIVE MEMBERS IN THE SENATE AND SIXTY MEMBERS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES REMAIN IN OFFICE FOR ADDITIONAL TWO‑YEAR TERMS AND THE REMAINING TWENTY-FIVE MEMBERS IN THE SENATE AND SIXTY MEMBERS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ARE CHOSEN BY BALLOT TO SERVE FOUR‑YEAR TERMS, AND LIMITING MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY TO FOUR CONSECUTIVE TERMS IN A LEGISLATIVE CHAMBER.

As of March 12, this bill has been referred to the Operations and Rules committee in the Senate. Let’s hope it dies there.

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), NCGA | Comments Off on #NCGA Bill Would Change Legislator Terms, Elections

The Common Core Weekend Reads – 3-29-15

Office Space NGOThese are the Common Core Weekend Reads for March 29, 2015.

This is a review of the past week of news on Common Core nationwide and in North Carolina.

Articles are organized by category.

Prior Edition of Weekend Reads: 3-22-15

 

Note:  Common Core Weekend Reads will not be posted on Easter Sunday and will return the following weekend.

NC Academic Standards Review Commission (ASRC) Updates:

NC ASRC Site 
Next ASRC meeting: April 20, 2015. 

NC UPDATES:

QUOTES OF THE WEEK:
What’s Wrong With Common Core? Let Teachers Tell You

Nancy Atwell, Maine:
Public-school teachers are so constrained right now by the Common Core standards, and the tests that are developed to monitor what teachers are doing with them. It’s a movement that’s turned teachers into technicians, not reflective practitioners.

Stacie Starr, Ohio:
Starr said the new testing culture is killing education.

‘I can’t do it anymore, not in this ‘drill ‘em and kill ‘em’ atmosphere,’ she said. ‘I don’t think anyone understands that in this environment if your child cannot quickly grasp material, study like a robot and pass all of these tests, they will not survive.’…

‘Each and every day, I have to look in my students’ eyes and tell them I can’t help them because the state has decided they have to prove what they know…It’s just hard because, as teachers, we are playing a game where the rules keep changing,’ she said.

Chasidy White, Alabama:
The very freedoms we celebrate and hold dear are in question when I think of what Common Core means for the United States. 

One of my favorite writings about education from Dr. King is a paper entitled ‘The Purpose of Education.’ In it, he wrote ‘To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.’

Why are we only given information from sources paid to say Common Core is a good thing? Isn’t that the exact same type of propaganda Dr. King discussed in his writings about education?

LEGISLATIVE/LEGAL:

POLITICAL/PROTESTS:

HIGHLIGHTED ARTICLES:

THE WEEKEND READS:

TESTING UPDATES:

VIDEO OF THE WEEK:

TWEETS OF THE WEEK:

Posted in Common Core | Tagged | 1 Comment

GUEST POST: Phoolish Pharma Phunded Phaux Health Crisis Leads to Phascism

GUEST POST ICONFrom the LL1885 Mailbag…

A reader wished to submit the following column regarding Sen. Tarte’s controversial vaccination bill (SB346) as a guest post and as an open letter to North Carolina parents.

 


Phoolish Pharma Phunded Phaux Health Crisis Leads to Phascism

Fascism is a religious conception….Whoever has seen in the religious politics of the Fascist regime nothing but mere opportunism has not understood that Fascism besides being a system of government is also, and above all, a system of thought.”
— former Italian dictator 
Benito Mussolini, (1932)

There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.”
— The Bible, 
Proverbs 6:1

Dear NC Parents:

In March three NC state senators introduced Senate Bill 346 (SB 346) to significantly increase the number of vaccinations mandated by the state for school children and to remove the parental religious exemption from state immunization law.

Current state law requires children to get 23 doses of 8 vaccines before entering school. It appears that SB 346’s proposed adoption of the CDC immunization schedule increases this to 49 doses of 14 vaccines during the first six years, and 66 doses of 15 vaccines by age 18.

Senator Tarte introduced their bill by comparing parents who do not vaccinate either according to the CDC schedule, or those who exercise the state’s current religious exemption, to the murderous Taliban

Tarte also stated “There’s never been a case that’s failed to uphold the ability to mandatorily vaccinate kids, especially when it endangers the public health.”

So, is there a legitimate crisis that justifies a change to state law that violates the NC Constitution?

No.

 In fact, a very brief look at readily available facts demonstrates hypocrisy of these senators’ bill — SB 346 — and their ignorance of the state’s Constitution and laws.

 SB 346 Authors’ Hypocrisy and Ignoring the Facts

 First, this proposal to remove parental religious exemptions from immunizations is the exact opposite position taken by the NC Senate when it voted on Feb 25, 2015 to uphold the right of elected magistrates to refuse to marry same sex couples. So according to the NC Senate majority, elected magistrates have religious freedom, but parents do not. Put another way, religious freedoms are for sale by the NC Senate as long as large corporations (like Pharmas) are willing to pay for their elimination. (Perhaps understanding the hypocrisy involved in his SB 346 vaccine bill, Sen Tarte was the only Republican to vote against the SB 2 magistrate bill.)

 Second, the authors have admitted to intentionally vague language in the bill about which K-12 school children are covered, leaving open the question of whether homeschooled children would be required to comply with the new law. While the authors have suggested that it was not their intent to cover homeschooled children, in private they have told fellow senators the opposite. When confronted on camera with this apparent lie, Sen. Jeff Tarte refused to answer.

 Third, Sen. Tarte asserted  the purpose of the bill was to insure “needless deaths did not occur” (video) and that the authors wanted to avoid “cases of disease we thought we had eradicated.”

However, easily available facts disprove any increased risk of disease caused by failure to follow the CDC’s vaccination recommendations or NC’s existing religious exemption:

 NC already has a very high immunization compliance rate compared to other states. According the CDC, in 2014, for entering Kindergarten students rate for MMR vaccine was 98.8%, the rate for DTaP vaccine was 98.7%, and the rate for varicella vaccine was 99.7%.

The NC bill is part of a nationwide Pharma-backed push to mandate more vaccines and to eliminate religious exemptions after a measles outbreak started at Disneyland (California) in December 2014. What the mainstream media hysteria does not report, because it relies on Pharma advertising money, is that CDC data indicates that only 25% of the 125 Disneyland measles cases occurred in vaccine refusers.

The bill ignores that the last measles death (1) in the United States was in 2003. CDC will not put this statistic on its website, but CDC has emailed it to a physician in Maine. The CDC stated in 2012 that since 1995, an average of 1 measles-related death per year has been reported.

The bill ignores that NC DHHS reports that the number of measles cases in NC is down over the last three years: zero (0) cases in 2015, one (1) case in 2014, and 22 cases in 2013 (that originated in India). None of these cases resulted in death.

The bill ignores that the last Whooping cough (pertussis) death in NC reported by DHHS was in 2013, in an infant too young to receive DTaP vaccine according to the CDC schedule.

The bill mandates the Hepatitis B vaccine for newborn babies the day they are born even though it is a disease caused only by unprotected sex, prostitution, and intravenous drug use. In a medical journal article, Hepatitis B vaccine has been positively linked to autism.

The bill mandates the influenza (flu) vaccine even though CDC has admitted that it was only 18% effective in 2014-2015. The BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal) has reported that flu vaccination campaigns are simply public relations by public health agencies like CDC and profit-motivated pharmaceutical companies. 

The bill mandates influenza (flu) vaccine even though a 50% reduction of flu vaccine supply in 2004-2005 (due to manufacturer violations of FDA regulations) resulted in a lower incidence of influenza than normal.

The bill mandates following the CDC’s vaccine schedule for MMR vaccines despite CDC refusing to tell members of Congress why it will not study adverse health outcomes (including autism) in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated children. Perhaps this is because the CDC has known since 2005 that unvaccinated Amish children, other than those vaccinated before adoption, do not get autism. CDC has refused to conduct this research since 2006 when a bill mandating that the agency conduct such a study was introduced in Congress.

The bill mandates following the CDC’s vaccination schedule for MMR vaccine despite a CDC scientist, Dr. William Thompson, admitting that since 2004 he and his colleagues had covered up data showing an increased risk of autism in black male children. Dr. William Thompson has been subsequently granted federal whistleblower protection in 2015, a fact that the Pharma-dependent mainstream media has ignored.

The bill ignores the fact that the federal government’s HHS vaccine injury court has awarded almost $3 billion to about 4,000 families due to deaths and serious, crippling diseases caused by vaccines. This is because since 1986 Congress has prohibited families of vaccinated-injured/killed children from suing any vaccine manufacturer.

The bill relies on CDC to make decisions for the state and for parents despite the agency’s long history of gross incompetence and willingness to compromise public health in favor of Pharma profits. Instances of CDC incompetence include the agency’s responses to 1976 Swine Flu non-epidemic, the 2006 Avian (Bird) Flu non-epidemic, the 2009 Swine Flu, and the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. CDC has a long history of reckless handling of pathogens, including anthrax, avian flu and Ebola, resulting in its employees and other citizens being exposed to these agents.

The bill ignores the lessons of CDC’s incompetence  in handling the 1976 Swine Flu non-pandemic that can be drawn from a 1978 report requested by former HHS Secretary Joseph Califano.

The bill relies on the ethically compromised CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) despite the US Congress’ House Committee on Government Reform having reported in 2000 six broad areas of conflict or interest between half the committee members and the vaccine manufacturers. The 15 current sitting ACIP members are “advised” by 8 ex-officio and 30 non-voting members, some of whom have long histories of conflict of interest. The result is ACIP decisions that serve only Pharma interests and the government bureaucrats who are supposed to regulate them.

The Phoolish Senators’ Legal Catch-22

Apparently, the pharmaceutical company lobbyists who drafted SB 346 didn’t research NC state law or its Constitution very well. Or the three authors of the bill are just not very smart or simply don’t care about the law or the state Constitution. Either way, SB 346 conflicts with both the NC Constitution and other state law.

Lets examine how:

 The NC ConstitutionSec 13, Religious liberty states:

All persons have a natural and inalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences, and no human authority shall, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience.” (emphasis added)

 When confronted on camera with the inherent conflict between his bill, which explicitly controls and interferes with the rights of conscience, and the state Constitution, Sen. Tarte refused to answer constituent questions. In fact, this so-called public servant just walked out of his state Senate office when asked some simple polite questions.

Sen. Tarte has told the Raleigh News & Observer that “the God I know doesn’t want children to die unnecessarily.” So, Senator Tarte and his two co-authors believe that their God should be the arbiter of religious beliefs — and medical science — in North Carolina, and not citizens’ “dictates of their own conscience” as stated in the state Constitution. Further, Sen Tarte’s God apparently cares only about children harmed by disease, but not about the 15,000 vaccine-related deaths and injuries families have taken to the federal vaccine court

Somehow I do not recall the Bible saying: “God loves all his children, except those that threaten Pharma profits.” Perhaps Sen. Tarte can point that passage out to the people of North Carolina.

The NC Constitution, Section 15, “Education” states:

The people have a right to the privilege of education, and it is the duty of the State to guard and maintain that right.”

 and NC General Statute § 115C-378, “Children required to attend”, reads:

(a) Every parent, guardian or custodian in this State having charge or control of a child between the ages of seven and 16 years shall cause the child to attend school continuously.”

 Therefore, according to the NC constitution and state law: citizens have a “right” to a free education, the state must “guard and maintain that right”, and parents must “cause” their child “to attend school continuously.”

 

Sen Tarte’s bill, SB 346, asserts:

It is not the intent of the General Assembly to require any child in this State to be immunized, as it is the parent, guardian, or custodian of a child who makes the final determination as to whether or not to immunize the child. However, in order to attend school in this State (K-12), each student shall be immunized in accordance with this section. “

 So, to summarize the Catch-22 situation in which Sen. Tarte and his co-authors intend to trap North Carolina parents:

SB 346 authors assert that they do not “intend” to require any child to be immunized against their parents or guardians religious beliefs.

But according to Sen. Tarte children must be vaccinated exactly according to the CDC schedule or they cannot attend school (any school due to the intentionally ambiguous language of the bill).

And if parents do not comply with the requirements of SB 346, their children will be denied the privilege of a free education guaranteed under the state Constitution — a “right” that Sen. Tarte and his co-authors are required to “guard and maintain” as elected officials of the NC government.

And what if parents do not immunize their children according to the CDC schedule, and their children are consequently refused the “right” to attend school?

Then the parents can be fined or jailed for failing to comply with state school attendance law (NCGS § 115C-378).

In short, parents and guardian must comply with Sen. Tarte’s de facto mandatory immunization law or face prosecution and imprisonment (or fines) for not complying with school attendance regulations — even if the they desire to have their unvaccinated or partially vaccinated child attend school.

 

Conclusion

  Having read Sen. Tarte’s public statements on SB 346, and watched him in three videos linked in this post, it is clear Sen. Tarte believes he is above the law and unaccountable to the people of North Carolina.

  Worse, he invokes God – his selective Pharma-loving personal interpretation of God – to deprive North Carolina citizens of their Constitutional religious rights in the absence of any compelling public health emergency.

  Therefore, SB 346 is a threat to the liberty of every North Carolina citizen, because if the NC General Assembly willfully ignores the state’s Constitution — and attempts to play God by voiding the explicit rights therein —  this will only be the first of many rights being trampled by ethically corrupt politicians doing the bidding of their corporate campaign donors.


For more information on what you can do to stop SB 346 see:

National Vaccine Information Center:
Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Government, GUEST POSTS, NCGA | 5 Comments

How Does Rep. Craig Horn Define Proficiency and Rigor?

Inigo Common CoreHow does Rep. Craig Horn define ‘proficiency and rigor’?

According to Horn’s press release yesterday, the definition is tied to how well our state scored on a flawed system (NAEP) that is not benchmarked to international standards and to a manipulated grading system which is being manipulated even further with two separate NCGA bills.

I’ve posted the opening paragraph from Horn’s statement below, but read the whole 1 page press release.

Opening Paragraph:

North Carolina has significantly raised its academic proficiency standards in K-1over the last two years. North Carolina is now among the Top Five performing states in proficiency and rigor in the most recent survey of all states in the US. North Carolina received a grade of “A” in all categories (4th grade math, 4th grade reading, 8th grade math, 8th grade reading). This is an incredible jump in proficiency since 2005 when North Carolina received an “F” in all our categories.

 

Note Horn curiously mentions 2005 specifically for his comparison for the “F”.

Could that specific reference to 2005 imply that since June Atkinson was elected Superintendent in 2005, NC academics have made some miraculous transformation?  A likely bet.  Remember, Horn and Atkinson are a team working on “Accountability, Transparency and Communications” behind the scenes with BEST NC.

Speaking of Atkinson, Horn’s press release has the same theme as Atkinson’s  “State of States” remarks made in her position as CCSSO President.

 

A word about Education Next & The NAEP

This Education Next report points to NAEP scores and Common Core as being a contributing factor to apparent increases in proficiency. Yet, the Education Next article notes their method in measuring proficiency:

“To identify changes in state proficiency standards, we use the same procedures as in our five prior analyses.”

The same procedures that have been noted to be flawed and not accounting for the tinkering of related scoring systems within the states.

Test scores were the evaluated source, not standards and therefore any attribution to the Common Core as a factor would be at best misleading.

If 45 states are essentially using the same standards, yet some state’s test scores improved but most did not, the only thing one can conclude from this article is that the states with higher test scores are due to the tests themselves, not the standards.  There are far too many variables here.

Is Education Next comparing apples to wrenches? It appears so.

Let’s look at Education Next some more and return to Horn’s press release:

The highly respected “Education Next” magazine reports in its Summer 2015 issue that North Carolina is among the top five states in the nation for strength in academic standards. “Education Next” is published by the Hoover Institute and is circulated world-wide. The grading is based on comparisons of state test outcomes to the internationally recognized National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) also known as the “Nation’s Report Card. The performance levels considered on NAEP tests are roughly equivalent to those set by international organizations that estimate student proficiency worldwide.

Rep. Horn seems to think that he can state the Education Next is a Hoover Institute publication and that implies we should move along, nothing more to see here.

One thing I’ve learned in the last 4 years is that when it comes to politicians and Common Core, there is always more to see here.

More to see like an over half-million dollar grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Harvard University

Date: July 2013
Purpose: to support Education Next’s work in four critical areas: Common Core standards and assessments, digital learning, teacher effectiveness, and charter schools
Amount: $557,168
Term: 24
Topic: College-Ready
Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA
Program: United States
Grantee Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Grantee Website: http://www.harvard.edu

 

 

Fun Facts About Rep. Craig Horn

During the Legislative Research Committee meetings, he patted the moms on the back and told them he opposed Common Core and would fight for them.  Since then, he’s appeared to have done pretty much the opposite. That includes making sure SB812 was triumphant over HB1061, which was the stronger bill.

Horn attended Jeb Bush’s Ed Foundation’s big shin-dig last year.  Rep. Horn and other legislators seem to listen a lot to Bush on education, yet Florida’s schools remain some of the worst.

Horn’s on the board of Former Governor Bev Perdue’s company, DigiLearn. Digilearn is propped up by the Gates Foundation.  Perdue, along with Atkinson, signed away North Carolina’s academic sovereignty in 2010.

He was involved in the BEST NC meetings that were held in private on the SAS Institute campus last Fall and, as previously mentioned, was paired with June Atkinson in work group named, “Accountability, Transparency and Communications“.

The work that came out of those private meetings produced the “Vision 2020 Initiative”. Rep. Horn is currently engaged in a bill to make some aspects of that “Vision” a reality.   Rep. Graig Meyer is doing the same thing Horn is. Meyer is doing it with the help of BEST NC’s “non-partisan” partner, the public relations outlet masquerading as an Education news outlet, EducationNC.

In a nutshell, Rep. Horn appears to have taken sides with the ‘Big Education Complex’ of education ‘non-profits’ and various think tanks which has formed in North Carolina. This Big Ed Complex is driving education decisions in our state much the same way Common Core was brought about —  a collection of unelected and publicly unaccountable non-governmental organizations ruling by fiat.


RELATED

BEST NC’s 2020 Vision Initiative

So, Who Showed Up To Excellence In Ed’s Annual Event?

Will Local Media Finally Report On Who The CCSSO President Is?

 

Posted in Common Core, EDUCATION, June Atkinson, NC State Standards, NCGA, Testing | Tagged , , | 2 Comments