By Doug
Martin
You would think with many more Hoosiers finding out
each and every day about the complete scam known as Indiana school reform, the legislators
in Indianapolis would be smart enough to give it a rest. But no, instead of doing damage control on
the eve of the release of my book Hoosier School Heist—which spills
the beans on the out-of-state money, the handing over of charter schools to
campaign donors and friends, the plagiarism at the State Board of Education, school
vouchers and torture, felonies, the breaking of Open Door Laws, and other scandals
and outright corruption—Bob Behning
and
Republicans in the Indiana legislature now want to turn
our children’s private information over to Mike Pence’s corporate-theocratic
State Board of Education and his undemocratic Center for Education and Career Innovation
which runs it.
Pence and Republicans want the state board and its CECI
school privatizing department to oversee a new student data system, and the House Education Committee will hear HB1320 on
Monday
at 8:30 concerning the issue. If passed
into law, HB1320 will probably hand another $3.7 million of our tax dollars to
a private company which will sell off personal and confidential information of
students and families to companies out to market their products and agenda to
them.
This new move is not a new one. In fact, HB1320 was probably inspired by a model
bill
drafted for various states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, the
corporate sponsored bill-mill behind the scenes in Indiana and across the
country bringing us school privatization, attacks on the postal service and
unions, and the infamous Stand Your Ground Law.
ALEC and Indiana Republicans know that parents across
the country are very upset about student data being
handed to private companies, and ALEC’s model bill is a ruse to appear that
something is being done about privacy, when in fact, it does the exact opposite.
It is common knowledge that a good many of Indiana Republicans are not educated enough to write their own
legislative measures, and that ALEC helps run
the Indiana government.
Speaking of the student data system agenda, Class Size
Matters’ Leonie Haimson recently wrote: “The
huge number of well-funded private interests eager to
pirate your child's data or enable others to do so is a many headed hydra which
seems to grow new heads every time another is chopped off.”
In Haimson’s state, New York, Class Size Matters helped brief attorneys for parents to file
a “court injunction
to stop the New York state education department from moving forward with a
partnership with inBloom Inc.,” Bill
Gates and Rupert Murdoch’s data-collecting company. Murdoch’s Wireless Generation funded Tony
Bennett’s campaign and has profited handsomely in so-called school reform in
Indiana, and Wireless Gen. is behind inBloom, too.
Essentially, Pence and Republicans know that Glenda
Ritz is opposed to private companies stealing the personal data of students and
Hoosier families, so in order to maneuver around this roadblock, Pence and crew
want to take away Ritz’s power to oversee the data.
It is time for the people to take action now:
EMAIL
THE COMMITTEE DISCUSSING THIS BILL ON MONDAY
Rep. Woody Burton (h58@iga.in.gov )
Rep Dale DeVon (ddevon@iga.in.gov )
Rep. Todd Huston (thuston@iga.in.gov )
Rep. Jeffrey Thompson (h28@iga.in.gov )
The House Switchboard phone number is 1-800-382-9842. Please call first thing Monday morning and
let these people know we have had enough.
