Brian Halladay, Alpine School District Board Member, sent out this email today alerting residents to a meeting next week in the school district. This should be sent to every legislator in the state so they understand what happens when the USOE tells them they are exiting their relationship with SBAC, but then writes an RFP (Request for Proposal) in such a way as to guarantee that only an SBAC related vendor will be selected. At the time we published that tidbit, we were criticized by numerous people at the state office and school board. Then Utah selected AIR and our state superintendent called them the “only organization currently delivering statewide, online adaptive tests approved for ESEA accountability.” Really? There were 13 applicants, and one already being used successfully in Utah. Check out what’s coming down the pike from AIR.
Next Thursday, April 11th, you are invited to participate in the SAGE assessment System presentation at 4pm at the Alpine School District Office Building.
SAGE is the acronym for the common core testing system that will be collecting data from our children.
I think it’s important for all of us to know before the meeting what SAGE is and it’s implications for our children, our privacy, and our school district.
Student Assessment for Growth and Excellence (“SAGE”) is being developed for Utah by the American Institutes for Research (AIR). SAGE is Utah’s comprehensive adaptive assessment system, or the testing mechanism that will replace the CRTs. It is designed to replace and expand UTIPS, and provides the test delivery and administration of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.
So, who is AIR? AIR is not an academic assessment company – it is a behavioral research organization. AIR has been around for over 60 years. Their founder, John Flanagan, a psychologist, started AIR by developing the “critical incident technique” one of the most widely used behavioral methods that is even now used in assessment models today.
In 1960, AIR initiated “Project Talent,” a research project administered by John Flanagan and a group of other behavioral scientists involving 440,000 high school students, collecting information on “aptitudes, abilities, knowledge, interests, activities, and backgrounds” of each student. These questions included questions about “hobbies, organizational and club memberships, dating and work experiences. There were questions about students’ health and about their school and study habits. Students were asked about their fathers’ occupations, parents’ education, financial situations, etc.” One question asked was, “How many children do you expect to have after you marry?” and “How old were you when you first started dating?”
What is AIR doing today? AIR is currently working with multiple partners, including the Department of Education, United Nations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Open Society Institute (George Soros), to “conduct and apply the best behavioral and social science research evaluation towards improving peoples’ lives, with a special emphasis on the disadvantaged.” AIR prides itself on its “long history of contributing to evidence-based social change.”
What does this mean for the Alpine School District, or even the State of Utah? In 2012 USOE developed the USOE Technology Standards 2012. One of the standards is to have a network-enabled computing device capable of providing access to the school’s technology resources. A purpose of this is for the understanding “human, cultural, and societal issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior.” I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that AIR will be heavily involved with this.
AIR will be developing these assessments, which will include behavioral questions. It’s what they do. One of their primary objectives is to use this data not only in collaboration with other states in relation to common core, but also in collaboration with the United Nations.
With the recent amendments to the FERPA laws, the question becomes what will we as parents do right now to protect the privacy of our children?
Come to the meeting next Thursday at 4pm at the Alpine School District Office Building and get informed!
Brian Halladay
Thank you Brian for shining the light on this insanity.
Here is the schedule for all school districts in Utah for their AIR meetings.
I live in south Mississippi. I am doing EVERYTHING in MY power to get the word about Common Core out to everyone who will listen on my Facebook page. I have also written my Governor and Lt. Governor to sound the alarm about this cirrirulum and the danger it is to our children’s education. I am trying to get as much information as I can to back up what I am telling others. I know a LOT of teacher and educators, hopefully THEY will listen.
I want to get involved. What can I do? I try to warn my friends and neighbors, but they just think I’m criticizing their children’s schools, or that I’m just a little eccentric. I’m usually pretty good at promoting ideas and being a good talker in general. But I’m stuck here. How else can I get the word out? I used to be a teacher so that lends some credibility to my conversations. But in discussing this topic, I have to bring up subjects people usually have never heard of in the first place, such as George Soros and – dare I- Agenda 21.
I wouldn’t start with the complicated stuff. I would start with local control over education. If we don’t like what the federal government is doing, who do we address our complaints to? We all know that nobody will listen and nothing will get fixed. Then I would probably talk about cost of implementation and about data tracking. As a former teacher you could also address the restraints on and data tracking of teachers.
Come to an Eagle Forum sponsored meeting if you can on common core in Payson Banquet Hall
on Center street April 26 this FRIDAY. Lisa Cummins and Swasey, our
House Rep Marc Roberts.
I start out by asking people if they pay real estate taxes and if they say that they do I inform them that their taxes are being used to fund the curriculum of the schools and how much their taxes will go up with this implementation. Some people don’t care about education but most care about their money or lack thereof.
I attended an apparently mandatory meeting a couple weeks back at GTI where some one hundred teachers and supervisors, including the superintendent, were in attendance. A man presented the SAGE program to us and as he did so I ran some research on smartphone. I found a number of alarming things pertaining to SAGE, including that it’s designed by American Institutes for Research whose board members and CEOs include persons involved in at least a racialist approach to education, including a stated mission for helping the disadvantaged. Here are some results of my research:
Leaders or CEOs of AIR include David Myers and Alan Krueger. If I have the same Krueger, Barack Obama appointed Krueger to the Department of Treasury (the department that recently granted Jay-Z and Beyonce’s suspicious trip to Cuba a green light; see also the connection there with Jada Pinkette who will shortly release a movie celebrating communist radicals in the U.S. in the 1960s) as an assistant, but Krueger’s work there focuses not on issues of money (treasury) but of researching connections between education and income levels. I found a David Myers who works as a sociology professor and researcher; that’s all I could find on him during my brief search. I found the names of at least two AIR and SAGE board of directors, Patricia Gurin of the University of Michigan and Lawrence D. Bobo of Harvard University. Furthermore, I learned that SAGE directs data collected from students to the Department of Education under the guise of assiting the “disadvantaged” (as stated in AIRs mission), specifically serving purposes of the No Child Left Behind initiative.
Gurin specializes in women’s and blacks’ psychology and sociology. Bobo, a black scholar from Harvard, focuses research and instruction efforts on the “intersection of social inequality, politics, and race” (see Bobo’s page at http://scholar.harvard.edu/bobo/). If I were to summarize the meaning behind the facts listed above, and given the greater context of radicals’ connections to the Black Liberation front, I believe the intent of SAGE comes as an assault, albeit an apparently secretive one, against our liberty–and a racist one at that! SAGE, in conjunction with core curriculum initiatives, does not merely strip parents’ power to hold public officials accountable; strip parents and teachers of their influence over curriculum; nor merely subtly deprives students of rights against unlawful search and seizure as teachers transmit inordinate amounts of data on them to unseen, unrepresentative federal authorities (whether elected or not), but it does so under the guise of what J. Christian Adaams termed “racialist” policies.
Apparently, Bill Ayers isn’t the only radical who feels that education is ground zero for political revolution (not to mention the treasonous subversion of American soveriegnty). Any fool with a head on his or her shoulders can safely deduce the ultimate aim behind these measures: A secretive power grab.
“AIR will be developing these assessments, which will include behavioral questions. It’s what they do. One of their primary objectives is to use this data not only in collaboration with other states in relation to common core, but also in collaboration with the United Nations.
With the recent amendments to the FERPA laws, the question becomes what will we as parents do right now to protect the privacy of our children?”
This is a very speculative statement. I don’t get, at all, what the problem is with AIR. Is the problem with AIR that they might ask behavioral questions on student tests? Or is it that the tests will require a computer. I do not understand what the problem is with AIR based on the lengthy quote from Halladay.
Please explain.
I keep hearing that the CCSS is bad bad bad but it really strikes me as very partisan, even though this website keeps saying it isn’t partisan. I have yet to see some good points that don’t sound like xenophobic/fear mongering/conspiracy theory stuff. And I immediately discredit any points that smack of conspiracy theory.
Thanks
Xenophobic? And you say YOU discredit people??? I’m taking a stab in the dark here that when you say partisan you mean right-wing tea-partiers. This site and the nationwide effort against Common Core has major involvement from all over the political spectrum. Even the World Socialist’s are against Common Core.
You need to know that AIR is a behavioral testing company. Here’s a letter from another individual that explains it pretty well.
https://www.utahnsagainstcommoncore.com/zinger-letter-to-state-school-board-members/
Then here’s an article from Dr. Gary Thompson, a clinical psychologist and Democrat that campaigned for President Obama.
https://www.utahnsagainstcommoncore.com/dr-thompsons-letter-to-superintendent-menlove/