Monday Musings: More than Meets the Eye

If you are fighting the data collection that accompanies the CCSS Machine’s overreach into our educational systems, its leaders, its students, then you will want to be sure to reach today’s “Monday Musings”.

As you may know (or maybe you didn’t know), I am a huge college football fan. As such, I try to take a little time off each Saturday afternoon to watch the games. On Saturday, Dec. 5th, I was doing just that when I noticed this one commercial from Microsoft appear. It didn’t appear just one or two times, it appeared several times (sorry, I didn’t get an exact count). At first, I basically ignored the commercial (after all, it is over 1 minute long). However, I began to notice the rhetoric in the advertisement was causing the anti CCSS Warrior in me to say, “Wait, what did that ad just reveal?”. I am including the ad below from You Tube, so you can watch it before we dive into the rest of this article.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw9-pJUaUpA&w=560&h=315]

Go back and listen for how many athletes are tracked data wise, listen again for what information about those athletes is tracked. If you didn’t catch it, these special needs kids’ health (which includes every aspect of their health) is not only being data mined/tracked, it is being used as part of their progress! Did you catch how the Microsoft Cloud can even look at their past performances?!

While Microsoft is supplying the data mining tool, did you notice it was the Special Olympics CEO who was speaking about the data tracking? Did you notice the ‘global’ vent in which she was speaking? If you would like to see the global agenda behind SO (Special Olympics), see:
http://www.specialolympics.org/uploadedFiles/Fact%20Sheet_SOI%20General%20Overview.pdf

SO and CCSS in the Schools:

Don’t get me wrong, I am not out to vilify SO. Rather, my point is to show you the ties back to CCSS, SO is participating in. For example, the SO school program “Get Into It” is funded by the U.S. Dept. of Education!
See (https://getintoit.specialolympics.org/) While you cannot access the lessons unless you are a registered member, the fine print tells you the school program fits state standards. Another school specific program SO has is called “Project Unify”, check out the pro CCSS groups tapped as the partners, “Partnerships with education organizations such as the NEA Foundation, The State Education Agency K-12 Service-Learning Network (SEANet), the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), National School Boards Association (NSBA), The National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), the National Dropout Prevention Center (NDPC),the IDEA Partnership and many others.” (Source: http://www.specialolympics.org/uploadedFiles/Sections/What_We_Do/Project_Unify/Project%20UNIFY%20Toolkit.pdf)

Project Unify’s 2010 Case Study is another document you can easily find pro CCSS ties in. Be sure to see all 200 plus pages of this Study. You will learn much more about the SO’s support of the re-authorization of the ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Act) See the screen shot below:

Source: http://www.specialolympics.org/uploadedFiles/Sections/What_We_Do/Project_Unify/Project%20UNIFY%20Toolkit.pdf

SO and CCSS Outside the Classroom:

Among SO‘s sponsors is the AFT (American Federation of Teachers) who have shown their CCSS love all to well. Notice, also that a national organization representing school counselors is also a sponsor. What’s so CCSS friendly about school counselors? In case you missed my very special article detailing a White House led program to align all school counselors to CCSS, here it is:
https://www.commoncorediva.com/2014/10/10/fridays-post-breaking-news-you-need-to-know/

As far as those pro CCSS organizations who partner with SO, you will find Bank of America, Unicef, Microsoft and others. To find them all, http://www.specialolympics.org/faqs.aspx (*Note, the Partners will be all the way down at the bottom of the page and you will need to click on the right hand arrow to see all of the partners.)

CCSS and Sports:

Sometime last year I wrote this CCSS Physical Education article. In I reveal for you just how much of our school’s PE programs are crossing over to the CCSS way of education. See: http://preventcommoncore.com/?p=1080 

Gates Foundation and the Kennedy Foundation:

As you may, or may not know, Eunice Kennedy Shriver was a key person in the history of SO. However, since her passing did you know the Foundation which bears her name has received Gates Foundation grants for the purpose of human scientific research? What does this have to do with the Microsoft Cloud commercial?
Let’s see if there is a connection.
First, consider that the Gates Foundation’s 2009 grant to the Shriver Foundation was for ‘biomarkers to assess micronutrient exposure, status, and function/effect’ (see: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database/Grants/2009/09/OPP1003253)
While this may (or may not) in fact have been some of the ground work needed to help the Microsoft Cloud collect the type of human data featured in the commercial, I cannot prove beyond the shadow of a doubt.

 However,  it is very important to note here that Mrs. Shriver’s Foundation is a part of the NIH (National Institutes of Health) and that the NIH is part of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, the 3rd federal department helping the nation’s alignment to CCSS/CTE (Common Core State Standards and Career Tech Education). The others? The U.S. Dept. of Education and the U.S. Dept. of Labor!  What is very interesting is when I did a general term search on the NIH for “Common Core Standards”, I was led to a document where NIH‘s data mining, sharing, and “biobanking” are laid out. Access the document, pmi-working-group-report-20150917-2
What is ‘biobanking’? It refers to banks where human tissue samples, their DNA, and other such personal items are stored. While I was able to find a University of Helsinki/Microsoft Cloud agreement where it was stated that non public bio banking and genome data was not to be shared, it did NOT appear to prohibit public bio banks! See the screen shot below:

See the entire agreement: http://www.helsinki.fi/atk/tike/liitetiedostot/Office365_EULA_en.pdf

Related Evidence: 

You can learn how the 3 U.S. Departments have joined efforts in my previously published posts:
1) https://www.commoncorediva.com/2015/10/08/tech-thursday-technically-speaking-for-ccss/
2) https://www.commoncorediva.com/2015/09/29/ftf-more-tracking-the-workforce-aligned-society/
3) https://www.commoncorediva.com/2015/02/06/fom-trying-to-turn-the-tide-to-ccss/

Closing:

Anti CCSS Warriors, please note that all the above information is given to help point out some of the sheer audaciousness the pro CCSS education reform agenda is becoming. It isn’t the first time we will see a wolf in sheep’s clothing ad, nor, will it be the last. However, if we don’t stop, take notice, and then, share information connected, we will be no more helpful than a screen door on a submarine! We must be diligent, even in our ‘down time’. Please, if you have more information about data mining, biobanking, how invasive the Cloud (no matter if it is Microsoft’s, Apple’s or some other company) is with regard to human information, or other connections which we can use to help shine the light; share what you know! We, as anti CCSS Warriors need every bit of teamwork we can muster.