Common Core: The harvesting of data on kids for corporate and political purposes.

If I told you that the federal government and schools are compiling vast amounts of data on kids in the K-12 system, and then selling it to corporations, would you believe it?

This is happening with the new set of standards for education being mandated by the federal government called Common Core. Rather than create academic rigor and learning, Common Core is nothing more than a corporate backed federal takeover of education. The goal of which is to harvest data on kids and turn the children of this country into obedient zombies rather than outstanding citizens capable of critical thinking.

The new Common Core “standards” should be cause for concern.

The standards are a provision inside of the stimulus package, otherwise known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Common Core is rewriting how students are taught in school.  As if American public education wasn’t already bad enough; Common Core will further widen the gap between local governments, parents and the education of their children.

Our education system has been broken for some time now. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development recently ranked the U.S. education system 14th in reading, 25th in math and 17th in science.

My prediction is that Common Core will have the same dumbing down effects that the “No Child Left Behind” act facilitated.

The most controversial part of Common Core is its blatant violation of Fourth Amendment rights and parental privacy. According to an article on the National Review Online, Common Core will begin to store vast amounts of data on every single child in school. This data could represent things such as grades, skills, results from aptitude tests for careers and more, and is easily accessible from the Common Core Standards website databases.

According to Carole Hornsby Haynes at American Thinker, an online political daily magazine, “There seems to be little recognition yet that Common Core gives schools and third parties unprecedented access to students’ personal information.  The federal government is acquiring a massive amount of data that can be sold to the highest bidders.”

Even more interesting, is the fact that corporations like Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Exxon Mobile all have begun advertising campaigns to promote the Common Core standards initiative.  Perhaps these companies are chomping at the bit to get to this data?  Think of what a company could do in terms of advertising if they knew these statistics on every child in America.

David Coleman is the president of the College Board and is claimed to be the architect of the Common Core initiative, according to the Huffington Post.

Speaking to data analysts at the annual Strategic Data Project, Coleman described how private information can be used to facilitate political causes.  He said it does not matter whether one is republican or democrat, the ability and excellence of the use of the information to achieve results is something that deserves astonishment.

Interestingly, the Coleman is heavily passionate and proud of data usage for political purposes. I know that I don’t want my private information being used to push any type of agenda.

The government does not have the best track record with respecting our privacy or protecting the data collected on us.  We only need to look to the IRS targeting scandal to foreshadow what can, and will happen.

Public schools should not be a source of marketing or advertising information for corporations, this is just wrong in every way.

-Mitch Strang is a senior finance major from Bellevue. He can be contacted at 335-2290 or by [email protected]. The opinions expressed in this Column are not necessarily those of the staff of The Daily Evergreen or those of Student Publications.