Nexus - 0222 - New Times Magazine-pages

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| Permanent Student Records tures”. The second project was the New essary to compete in a global economy To understand how all of this works, Education Data Improvement Project and exercise the rights and responsibilities | you have to get down into the bowels of (1988-91) to provide technical assistance _ of citizenship.” | Washington's educational bureaucracies. plans for each state, which addressed the Since the US Department of Education For example, the National Center for state's problems in responding to determined through its $12-million survey | Education Statistics (NCES) is the grand Common Core of Data requirements. that about half the adults in America can | overseer of all of this data collec- All of these projects are barely read and write, it makes one won- | tion, In 1991, it awarded‘a three- der how Goal 5 is to be achieved by the | year contract to the Council of A Parent's View of OBE year 2000 without all of | ‘Chief State School Officers { The following wo these poor readers | -(CCSSO) "wo facilitate the imple- | excerpts fro; being given crash Parent in mM a letter by ‘ . Boone fntioe ren > Pennsylvania, wd Cet nitle-Smal, a August 1993- arents, published in the Daily Lon on ews, 24 remedial reading courses in intensive systematic phonics. That will never hap- | pen. So what is’ the teal purpose of Goal 5? Tt has something to do with the "responsibili- ties of citizenship." mentation of a national education data system". The project was called the Education Data | System Implementation Project '(EDSIP). Two years prior to EDSIP, the NCES began con- structing "an interstate student records transfer system, cur- ‘rently called ExPRESS", an ‘acronym for Exchange of Permanent Records Electronically for Students and Schools. The function of * ExPRESS is given as follows: | “This activity has included the development of standard data elements for inclusion in an electronic student tran- : script and a pilot exchange | of student records across ‘school districts and from districts to institutions of | higher education.. The sys- tem is now ready for fur- ther development, includ- Saw ski walls. No er towards frien py “olour or ethnic | ing the appointment of a 1 only h . ‘dship a ili; . Governing Board, making | Walls, but they Toeede my children been re building social exclude, 1 | formal arrangements with “Academical, ly ‘SO Constructed some of t ws » J ion Social @ communications net- work for exchanging the | records, and expansion to more sites.” Enter Anita Hoge For a better idea of what the government has in mind, let us look into a publication put out in| 1975 by the Pennsylvania Department of Education. Its title is Getting Inside the EQA Inventory. EQA' ‘stands for Educational | Quality Assessment and it was meant to be a proto- | type for measuring national objectives. This is the doc-: ument that got Anita Hoge, | the indefatigable Pennsylvania mother, into a David and Goliath struggle with the Federal and Pennsylvania governments | over a parent's right to see the psychological tests which were being given to her child in school without her knowl- edge or consent. Beverly Eakman’'s book is about Anita Hoge's saga, without which we would know very little about the data coilection plans of the assignments bec, ause she didn‘ Copy answers from. © Hadn't have her "coope Parents. OB E is an Personnel Exchange Suture generations are System for sharing state expertise in solving educa- tion data problems, the development of an Information Referral System for sharing being carried out by highly-efficient government. The document | information to improve data systems bureaucrats who love to micromanage the __ states (p. 19): | across states, and the development of stu- —_details of data collection, with no thought "Viewed in its broadest sense, responsi- | | dent and staff data handbooks. of what all of this means to American _ ble citizenship implies a respect for law | The CCSSO has carried out two other freedom. and proper authority, a willingness to | projects for the NCES. The first, the The federal government's rationale for assume responsibility for our own actions | Education Data Improvement Project collecting all of this data is that itis need- and for those of the groups to which we (1985-88), “analyzed each state's capacity ed to see if the nation is reaching the _ belong. to provide standard, comparable, and _ national goals set by Goals 2000. Goal 5, "Opportunities should be provided for timely data to NCES on public elementary for example, states: “By the year 2000, pupils to cooperate and work toward and secondary school and school district, every adult American will be literate and group goals and to demonstrate integrity staff, students, revenues and expendi- _ will possess the knowledge and skills nec- _ in dealing with others. Pupils should be NEXUS e 25 OCTOBER - NOVEMBER 1994