Friday, April 29, 2016

MORE FEDERAL GRANTS TO CONTROL EDUCATION?

MORE FEDERAL GRANTS TO  CONTROL EDUCATION?

 

Is the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) Grant Program from the National Center for Educational Statistics and the Department of Education coming to your State?  Did we really believe that the passage of the ESSA would establish “local control”? 
 
 
Brookings Institute informs us thatWith the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), state education agencies (SEAs) and local education agencies (LEAs) need to make evidenced-based decisions for students”.

Please remember that the scope of the ESSA includes “mental health”, and  “work-force training”.  State standards include behavioral and attitudinal conditioning to accommodate "Social Justice" and "Agenda 2030".  With pre-determined goals and objectives and with the student virtually wired to the computer what do we think the outcomes will be?

“Better decisions require better information. This principle lies at the heart of the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) Grant Program. Through grants and a growing range of services and resources, the program has helped propel the successful design, development, implementation, and expansion of K12 and P-20W (early learning through the workforce) longitudinal data systems.”

Through this grant program, aimed at state Longitudinal Data Systems, will this be the fail-safe, lock-in for total control of the student?    Keep the definition of “Scientific Communism” in mind when reading the ramifications of the Grant Program.

Scientific communism was one of the three major ingredients of Marxism-Leninism as taught in the Soviet Union in all institutions of higher education and pursued in the corresponding research institutions, and departments.  The discipline consisted in investigation of laws, patterns, ways, and forms of class struggle, socialist revolution, and development of socialism and construction of communism.  Passing exams in scientific communism was an obligatory prerequisite in obtaining any postgraduate scientific degree in the Soviet Union; see "Kandidat" article for details." [Emphasis,Ed.]
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 Through this national program, emanating from the Department of Education, Grants are being made to the states to implement this system for work-force training for K-P20W.

Better decisions require better information. This principle lies at the heart of the State-wide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) Grant Program. Through grants and a growing range of services and resources, the program has helped propel the successful design, development, implementation, and expansion of K12 and P-20W (early learning through the workforce) longitudinal data systems.”

The following article is an overview of the Program:

Excerpts:
“The research agenda can help a researcher propose a study that is aligned to the state needs, has relevance, is practical, and focuses on finding solutions for students, their families, and the good of the state.”  [Community education, Ed. comment and emphasis]
 
 Utilize a research request process. Most SEAs have a process by which a researcher can make a request—and typically, the applicant has to explain how the proposed research aligns with the SEA’s priorities. In this way, the SEA can abide by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) requirements, a law that ensures the privacy of student records. FERPA restricts information sharing to protect students, but does allow the disclosure of information to specified officials for audit or evaluation purposes. Therefore, in order for an SEA to enter into a data-sharing agreement [1] with a researcher for student-level data, the researcher’s study needs to be aligned with SEA priorities, so that the results can be leveraged for audit or evaluation purposes. If the study does not align, the SEA cannot enter into an agreement as it would not further the understanding of their programs or priorities.”  [Emphasis, Ed. State standards are written to include, “social justice” and behavioral   attitudes.  Couple that with mental health and is anything off-limits? Ed. comment]
 
Ultimately, both SEAs and researchers stand to benefit from successful partnerships, and not just through increasing the number of publications by researchers or having evidence-based results available for SEAs to put to use for decision-making about student learning—though these are two very compelling reasons. As these partnerships become an integral part of how SEAs and LEAs conduct work, there will be changes in how decisions are made. There’s greater potential to have impact on students and to be more efficient and effective in their day-to-day business. For researchers, they will be able to see a more direct impact of their work, and can potentially explore further to help guide SEAs and LEAs as they make critical decisions for students. These mutually beneficial relationships have the potential to truly help propel students and make positive changes in the future.
 
The following are just a few bullet points taken from a SLDS Conference with various participating States and their innovations:
 
 
“This past summer, the Arizona Department of Education launched its new education data system AzEDS to LEAs throughout the state. Not only will the system provide instantaneous student data to dashboards for educators to utilize in the classroom, it will also incorporate the element of payment and is expected to save LEAs up to $57 million a year.  
 
 Learn how schools across Delaware are training users in phases and how district and teacher leaders are becoming subject matter experts to support local staff. Additionally, Delaware has provided periodic stakeholder support through user group conferences developed in collaboration with another SLDS state and with travel supported by a Personnel Exchange Network (PEN) grant
 
Delaware will demonstrate a customized Individual Learning Plan module within Performance PLUS that can be used to view and analyze assessment data while developing customized student learning plans. With this tool, teachers have access to filterable, longitudinal data reports to make well-informed, 

Learn about the current phase of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) multi-state data exchange project, including identity resolution issues and solutions in a multistate environment
Representatives from the RELs program, located within the Institute of Education Sciences’ National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, will discuss the RELs’ work, which involves partnering with school districts, state departments of education, and others to use data and research to improve academic outcomes for students.

See and review Nebraska’s stakeholder engagement efforts around its educator-facing dashboard, which included prioritizing and conducting focus groups virtually through the Design Teams process. Nebraska will also discuss its training curriculum and train-the-trainer approach to empowering educators to use data for continuous school improvement.

Indiana will discuss how it developed the data story for its report Research Analysis for Educational and Workforce Churn Patterns within Economic Growth Region. The demonstration will focus on navigating and interacting with stakeholders and technical/research advisory groups. The state will also discuss the technical resources and personnel hours needed to develop a robust data story.

Nevada will demonstrate the Nevada Pre-K to Workforce Research system (NPWR). Users can open and drill down into public-facing reports that use data from K12, higher education, and workforce sources to show trends and patterns in Nevada education and how those trends affect the workforce.

This presentation will describe how North Carolina engages and solicits input from research stakeholders for its Early Childhood Integrated Data System (NC ECIDS). It will cover how the state is developing an early childhood research agenda for its longitudinal data system. The state will also describe the data request process as accessed through its web portal and related procedures for approval and support of any research request.

“Just as technology has rapidly advanced the healthcare and communications industries, it also is being used to transform education. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the majority of classrooms across the U.S. now have computers and Internet access, and investment in educational technology (edtech) is reaching record highs.”