4. OUtsourcing decisions on children to experts
Outsourcing Decisions on Children to Experts is the fourth category of public education pedagogies, programs, and policies that are overwhelming students, families, and schools featured in Higher Ground’s Tsunami of Systems series.
Big data & tech
When did parents consent to constant surveillance of their children?
The development of sophisticated tech-based surveillance and data-tracking systems and programs has scientized education, virtually obliterating the intuitive arts of teaching and learning.
Children’s digital footprints are forever in a tech-based learning environment.
The digital age, aided by cloud networking, interoperable systems, 1-to-1 devices, and Artificial Intelligence (AI), has drastically shifted learning from the real world to the cyber world.
The tech proliferating in both classrooms and schools through legislative and bureaucratic policy, grants, digital “literacy” initiatives, and public-private partnerships includes:
- Cloud-based and interoperable systems
- Asynchronous and synchronous instruction through video conferencing software
- 1-to-1 internet-ready digital devices — Chromebooks, iPads
- QR codes, RFID badges, facial recognition, and other tracking and surveillance technologies — iAttend, FA6Class
- Social Emotional Learning playbooks — Panorama, Naviance
- Interactive and gamified instructional, curriculum, and assessment tools — Lexia, STMath, Prodigy
- Standalone software programs — Adobe Photoshop, Visio
- Student Longitudinal Information Data Systems (SLDS)
- Learning Management Systems (LMS) — Canvas, Blackboard
- Student Information Systems (SIS) — PowerSchool, Skyward
- Educational web sites — Khan Academy, Quizlet
- Collaborative learning suites and tools — Google Classroom, Padlet
- Social media networks — YouTube, Pinterest
- Mobile learning apps — DuoLingo, Kahoot!
- Data analytics and visualization — Tableau, Qlik
- AI chatbots, virtual assistants, tutors, and curriculum generators — ChatGPT, SchoolAI,
- E-books and online texts & libraries — SORA, EBSCO
- User interfaces and learning frameworks — Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
- NCES Common Core of Data (CCD)
- Early Childhood Integrated Data Systems
- Data backpacks, durable records, and persistent profiles
Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road.
Omnipresent tech in instruction, curriculum, and assessments negatively affects our children and their learning by:
- Decreasing healthy interpersonal interaction
- Reducing parents & teachers to facilitators
- Concealing classroom content from parents
- Giving outsiders access to our children anytime, anywhere
- Turning learning into guessing
- Rewiring our children’s minds (gamification)
- Creating persistent psychosocial profiles
- Annihilating privacy through data collection
- Conditioning and enabling anti-social, self-destructive behaviors through AI algorithms
- Weaponizing data to collect more data (vicious circles & endless loops)
Parents are told that opting out of tech-based instruction is untenable, since it’s inextricably woven into the system at multiple levels, mandated by state or LEA contracts with third-parties or obligated by government grants.
The expansion of the Family Education Rights to Privacy Act (FERPA) means that these third-party entities can be designated as “school officials” to facilitate their unfettered access to student data. The data collection required by state and federal entities alone for compliance purposes is both extensive and intrusive.
Big Data & EdTech market themselves by playing on parental fears (“My child needs STEM skills to be successful”) and selling the convenience of easy “turnkey” digital solutions to what are often complex human problems.
According to Grand View Research, the global EdTech market is worth billions of dollars — $163.49 billion for the year 2024 and almost $350 billion by 2030.
Other analytics from Grand View Research shows just how dominant EdTech is in the U.S. public education system:
- North America dominated the education technology (EdTech) market with the largest revenue share of 35.62% in 2024.
- The education technology (EdTech) market in the U.S. is expected to grow at a significant CAGR during the forecast period.
- Based on sector, the K-12 EdTech segment led the market with the largest revenue share of 39.40% in 2024.
professional associations
Whose interests should state and local representatives be advocating for?
Professional associations use flattery, status, and industry connections to sell themselves as the only specialists qualified to train and steer elected officials, bureaucrats, and employees on how local education needs to be run, and what it should look like.
The myriad professional associations that litter the educational landscape is almost unquantifiable. There are multiple associations dedicated to almost any coalition of employees, elected officials, academic disciplines, public or private entities, credentialed professions, licensed professionals, or unionized staff.
One thing all these associations have in common is that their active membership is contingent upon their pledged loyalty to association’s agenda, which frequently align with equity, SEL, state workforce, and globalist agendas. Parents are either referenced oppositionally in professional association public statements or given token lip service as just one among many stakeholder groups.
None of these associations have any accountability to the public, and yet their actions and efforts often have a very influential and outsized effect on public education due to their extensive networks of institutional connections, resources, and reputational status as “experts” in their respective fields.
I've searched all the parks in all the cities—and found no statues of Committees.
Also of concern are the many regional associations (RESAs) and Regional Education Laboratories (RELs) authorized to create cross-jurisdictional policies that standardize operational change and funding across several cities, counties, or states, all without the explicit consent, knowledge, or input of the affected residents.
Some notable professional associations with clout in K-12 education include:
- Utah State Board of Education (USBE) and Utah State Boards Association (USBA)
- National State Boards Association (NSBA) and National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE)
- National Education Association (NEA) and Utah Education Association (UEA)
- American Federation of Teachers (AFT)
- National Governors Association (NGA)
- Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and Schools Superintendents Association (AASA)
- Chiefs for Change
- National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) and National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP)
- American School Counselor Association (ASCA)
- American Library Association (ALA) and Utah Library Association (ULA
- National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) and American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
Many professional associations host trainings, conferences, junkets, and other forums to invest members in the association’s mission of self-perpetuation, and to hammer the coercive, collectivist message home that, if there are seven members on a board, a single member of the board is not 1 of 7 members, but 1/7th of a board.
For-profits, Non-profits, NGOs & globalists
Is global the new local?
Who is really in control?
There's no end to the list of institutions and organizations, motivated by profit and power, who have positioned themselves as the thought leaders and ultimate gatekeepers of the educational expertise that drives the future of our children.
For-profits, non-profits, Non-Governmental Organizations, and globalists set much of the agenda for what happens in our children’s classrooms. It is these stakeholders, not parents, who have the biggest voice in dictating high-stakes educational decisions hitting our schools. These so-called “experts” are often the “they” referred to when people ask, “Who’s ‘they?'”
To be more specific, the following list contains just a few of the intellectually and financially influential actors behind the cultural and structural shifts in education:
- World Economic Forum (WEF)
- Chan Zuckerberg
- Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
- Walton Family Foundation
- UN/UNESCO
- OECD & PISA
- American Institute for Research (AIR)
- Aurora Institute (now FullScale)
- Knowledgeworks
- College Board
- Collaborative for Academic Social Emotional Learning (CASEL)
- Learning for Justice
- SIECUS
- COGNIA
- GLAAD/GLSEN
- WestEd
- ExcelInEd
- American Federation for Children
Some even believe we (the Rockefeller family) are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.
In addition to funding and providing the research behind the agendas that get promoted by associations & big tech and data, FPOs, NPOs, NGOs, and globalists also leverage their global reach to universalize the adoption of their “one world government” vision so that no child is left untouched.
Stakeholder governance models have further removed decisions from the hands of states and municipalities, or have turned them into token pro forma gestures, as most of the real decisions have been determined beforehand.
It’s both easy (and foolish) to dismiss the prominent presence of FPOs, NPOs, NGOs, and globalists in local affairs as speculative or conspiratorial. The organizations themselves are not particularly secretive of their radical goals, many of which are plainly stated in their own white papers and websites.
The spirit of globalism is, by obvious necessity, all-encompassing in nature. Globalists can’t dominate the world if they let millions of backyards slip through their fingers. To flex at their full global strength, these ideologues must standardize the core metrics of their vision across jurisdictions, including our homes, schools, towns, and states.