Department of Education (DOE) officials, empowered a data-sharing requirement that states signed in order to get 2009 stimulus money, are moving to gather personal information on students that has nothing to do with education.
DOE revealed in a February report that it hopes schools with study “attributes, dispositions, social skills, attitudes and intrapersonal resources – independent of intellectual ability.” Joy Pullmann has the story at the Orange Country Register (emphasis added):
According to Pullmann, the DOE report also contemplates studying students’ facial expressions and posture. The studies are explicitly student-specific, rather than anonymous, and the Education Department also issued a regulation allowing schools to grant any “educational representative” access to that data — a term that can be applied to volunteers and private companies.
“In short, the government wants to collect a dossier on every child, containing highly personal information, without asking permission or even notifying parents,” Pullmann writes.
