Here, with yet more appropriately strong language, we have The Devil's Kitchen on the impossibility of maintaining a genuinely open society when all your children are databased. I think it unlikely that he exaggerates the case. Children, once codified and checked over, will indeed effectively be owned by the state.
He also addresses the issue of awkward PR for those who campaign to expose the dangers of a kiddie database.
4 comments:
Carlotta,
I had put you in my bloglines, because I'm interested in the student data collection there in the UK and I know you are following it. Just want to let you know I reading these type of posts. Glad you have this blog for this.
Here is a list of possible items that may be collected on US students:
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/handbook/toc.asp?tocid=351562&details=1&parentid=0
Annette
Oh my! When you say "may be collected", is this the one I read about recently via Spunky about the proposed US databasing of children? Truly terrifying.
Actually, as far as I know this is much of what is already required for NCLB. Not sure how much listed that would be voluntary.
This might help in answering this question.
Improving Data Quality for
Title I Standards, Assessments,
and Accountability Reporting
Guidelines For States, LEAs, and Schools
[Non-Regulatory Guidance]
April 2006
http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/guid/standardsassessment/nclbdataguidance.pdf
Check out too the state of Virginia's DOE website:
http://www.pen.k12.va.us/VDOE/Publications/NCLB/NCLB.html
and Wisconsin: http://www.dpi.state.wi.us/lbstat/isesfaq2.html
The handbook is from NCES (National Center for Education Statistics) so this snip from the first link above relates:
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is charged with the responsibility of working with other components of the U.S. Department of Education and with State and local educational institutions to improve the quality
of education data. NCES is responsible for a grant program that provides funding to States for the development of high-quality longitudinal student information
systems needed to compute a true cohort graduation rate. At the elementary/secondary level, NCES recently released a Cooperative System Guide to Building a Culture of Data Quality, aimed at schools and school districts. At the
postsecondary level, NCES has redesigned the Integrated Postsecondary
Education Data System from a paper system to an online data collection, helping improve the quality of these data, while at the same time increasing their utility.
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