A Positive Force for Traditional Values in Alabama and America

4th Qtr., Volume 37, No. 4

Education Foundation Newsletter

2015 Civil Liberties and Student Data Privacy Summit University of North Alabama

November 21, 2015

“Glory to God in the highest,

And on earth peace among men with

whom He is pleased.” Luke 2:14

Merry Christmas from

Eagle Forum of Alabama

Continued on page 2

On November 21, 2015, Alabama Eagle Forum, along with the University of North Alabama, and the UNA College Republicans held a public policy forum on the collection of mass data and privacy violations by gov-ernment agencies and private corporations. The lead speaker was Tim Collins, PhD, who is an As-sociate Professor of Political Science at UNA. He spoke on the topic, — “What are Civil Liberties and why do they matter?” Next was Dr. Karen Effrem, Pediatrian and Ex. Direc-tor of Florida Stop Common Core Coalition, re-searcher and national conference speaker. Dr. Effrem spoke about the dangers of non-cognitive data collec-tion and why we must stop it. She stressed the mas-

Summit moderator, Deborah Love - Eagle Forum Executive Director, Stephanie Bell-Alabama School Board member, Dr. Karen Effrem-Education Liberty Watch, Emmett McGroarty—American Principles Project, and Tim Collins- UNA College Republican chairman.

sive data collection involved with Common Core as-sessments and how this data will be used to manage the lives and future careers of students. Assessment

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vendors, such as PARCC, Smarter Balance, and here in Alabama ACT Aspire, collect not only aca-demic data but also data regarding the behaviors, attitudes and beliefs of students. The words assess-ment and tests are often used in-terchangeably, but we should real-ize that assessments measure be-havioral changes over time with a goal in mind, while tests measure acquisition of knowledge with a right or wrong answer. Dr. Ef-frem explained that the Depart-ment of Education document “Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance” states their desire at some point to be able to meas-ure emotions of students using such things as facial expressions, EEG brain wave patterns, skin conductance, heart rate variability, posture, and eye-tracking. Mr. Sean Collin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Accounting and Business Law at UNA. He is also the Executive Director for UNA’s Institute of Export Research and Technology Transfer. Mr. Collin addressed: “Can businesses protect consumer data from third parties and gov-ernment agencies?” He explained the exponential growth of data mining, both by corporations and government agencies, as well as foreign governments. He stressed that in this age of rampant data mining, it is impossible to fully protect personally identifiable data from hackers as well as data sell-ing and sharing arrangements, most of which are legal. He said that our legal system must reach a balance between advancing tech-nology and civil liberties regard-ing data collection. Mrs. Stephanie Bell, Alabama

State Board of Education Dis-trict 3, spoke about the data col-lection and the need for data pro-tection in our public schools. She explained how Governor Bentley’s Executive Order 6 cre-ated the Alabama P20W data system. This system will track data on Alabama citizens from early childhood (birth) through pre-school and K-12, then through college and into the work force. Mrs. Bell reminded the audience that such data collection is as much an integral part of Ala-bama Plan 2020 as the Common Core Standards. It is designed to provide the means for guiding students into jobs and careers to benefit business interests rather than to provide the education for students to meet their own goals and guide their own career deci-sions. Emmett McGroarty, Director of Education at the American Prin-ciples Project, was the speaker during the summit luncheon. He spoke about “Why the big pic-ture on data privacy matters and what we can do.” He talked about the need to protect our pri-vate data and the need to enact data privacy legislation to bring our legal protections into this age of technology. One such effort is the Data Privacy bill Eagle Forum will be promoting in the next Alabama legislative session. The final speaker for this suc-cessful forum was Nathaniel White, chairman of the Univer-sity of North Alabama College Republicans. He spoke about why data privacy is an issue with

college students, not only as they attend college, but as they move into their future careers. After lunch, Deborah Love mod-erated an interesting Q & A ses-sion between the audience and three of the speakers, Emmett McGroarty, Stephanie Bell, and Karen Effrem. The summit was well attended and Eagle Forum made a number of new contacts in the Florence area to help with our on-going efforts to return control of education to parents and local school systems. We were also pleased to welcome a number of lawyers to the sum-mit. This was the first time we have been able to provide Con-tinuing Education Credits for the lawyers attending the summit. We are thankful to all those in-volved in providing and promot-ing this important event.

Privacy Summit continued from page 1

Christian Refugees Get Cold Shoulder

In light of the Obama administra-tion pushing for thousands of Muslim refugees to be brought to the U. S., the refusal to allow refu-gee status to Christians is becom-ing more evident and troubling. The latest example is that of 28 Chaldean Christians who have been sitting in a San Diego immi-gration detention facility while bureaucrats decide whether to al-low them refugee status or be re-turned to Iraq where Christians are facing widespread persecution un-der the Islamic State and an indif-ferent and corrupt Iraqi regime. Source: Patriot Post, Aug. 11, 2015

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Open Letter to ALABAMA SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS From: Eunie Smith, President November 25, 2015 Leslie Whitcomb, Education Chairman Eagle Forum of Alabama

Sadly, the latest NAEP results place Alabama dead last on Math and English, a significant decline from where we were before Common Core when Alabama had been trending upward. The 2011 Ala-bama State Department of Education document touted:

“In 2011 Alabama moved from near last to 25th in the nation in overall grades and scores [Education Week assessment] … 12th in the nation for standards, assessments and accountability… data from the Na-tional Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed a historic gain of eight points in fourth grade Reading for Alabama public school students – the … highest gain ever in NAEP recorded history. Since then, Alabama has maintained its progress in NAEP assessments.”

But that was before common core implementation in 2012 in Math and 2013 in English.

According to PARCA, the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama: “The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) is a battery of tests given every two years to a representative sample of students in all 50 states. The test is designed to serve as a national scorecard, al-lowing comparison of educational performance across the states. The 2015 results are out. They're disappointing for the nation at large, and for Alabama, in particular. In 2015, Alabama's average math score, in both 4th and 8th grade, was the lowest of any state. Between 2013 and 2015, Alabama's average score declined in both grades. Among U.S. states, Alabama had the lowest percentage of students scoring proficient in 4th and 8th grade. Only 26 percent of 4th graders and 17 percent of 8th graders scored high enough on the NAEP to be considered grade-level proficient in math. While Alabama's higher poverty rate puts it at something of a competitive disadvantage in national com-parisons, a deeper look shows it's not Alabama's demographics skewing the results. Name the group - black, white, Hispanic, poverty and non-poverty - all perform worse than their peers in all other states.” (The PARCA Perspective, October 2015)

And according to nationally recognized standards expert Sandra Stotsky,

“NAEP scores nationally did not go down because (1) Common Core standards are more demanding and (2) teachers need more professional development. They went down because Common Core is dumbed down math and NAEP still includes test items based on what we expected kids to be taught by/in grade 4

Open Letter continued on page 5

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BITS AND PIECES Quotable Quotes J ust as citizens across America

are pushing back against Obama's plans to flood their towns with Muslim refugees, Bir-mingham, AL is one of 100 im-migrant-supporting cities whose mayors seem to be in competition with each other to see which city can offer the most services and benefits to attract foreign-born residents. These mayors are beg-ging the president to send a fresh wave. Read more at http:// www.wnd.com/2015/11/u-s-mayors-beg-obama-for-muslim-refugees/ #SxMs7MkxXYYMLzUv.99

“If in the opinion of the People, the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be in any way particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instru-ment of good, it is the customary weapon by which free govern-ments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the use can at any time yield.” Washington warned in the Fare-well address, September 18, 1796

“A liberal’s paradise would be a place where everybody has guar-anteed employment, free compre-hensive healthcare, free education, free food, free housing, free cloth-ing, free utilities, and only law enforcement has guns. And be-lieve it or not, such a place does indeed already exist: It’s called —Prison. —Sheriff Joe Arpaio

A New Jersey school dis-trict has parents justifia-

bly upset over an assignment that instructed eighth grade stu-dents to write a “reactive re-sponse” to a given situation. The topic they were given to write about was what they would do if they went to a party, got drunk, had sex with a stranger and then contracted herpes. This was not part of a sex education class, but an English language class. After an irate parent made several calls to the school and demanded answers, she was told that the assignment was part of the district’s “core curriculum”. The homework is part of a book the students were given entitled, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.” One just has to wonder what happened to teaching about dangling partici-ples and proper punctuation. h t t p : / / w w w . f o x n e w s . c o m /opinion/2015/11/05/eighth-graders-asked-to-write-about-booze-herpes-and-one-night-stands.print.html

T he Arizona Board of Educa-tion voted 6-2 on October

26, 2015 to reject the Common Core State Standards. They will continue those standards while they develop their own standards.

Their superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas made the motion for the vote. Eliminat-ing Common Core was part of her education plan. She said, “We can take care of Arizona’s chil-dren and this is a very proud day for Arizona.” We do hope they will follow through with this re-form and solicit parental, educa-tor, and legislative feedback on the new standards they develop. The Truth in American Education

Speaking of the Constitution: "But the Chief Justice says, 'There must be an ULTIMATE ARBITER somewhere.' True, there must... The ULTIMATE ARBITER is THE PEOPLE." Thomas Jeffer-son wrote to William Johnson, 1823

A nother study has shown that sex does not sell. The

study, published in Psychologi-cal Bulletin, concluded that sex and violence diverts the attention of the viewer to the point that they remember brand names less and ultimately do not purchase the product. Viewers of family-friendly programs, when seeing family-friendly commercials, are much more likely to remember the advertisements and that peo-ple who watch ads with sex and/or violence have become desen-sitized to it over the years. http:..us-mg205.mail.yahoo.com/

"The ULTIMATE AUTHOR-ITY... resides in THE PEOPLE ALONE." James Madison wrote in Feder-alist No. 46, 1788:

F lorida Democrat Frederica Wilson has introduced HR

2232 National Mandatory Vacci-nation Bill. This bill is similar to the one recently passed in Califor-nia. It is aimed to end informed consent by parents and is a draco-nian act of medical fascism that the people will not accept. NaturalNews.com

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only 10 years ago. Today, our kids can’t get these test items right because their classroom curriculum (based on CC math standards) has been dumbed down, [confuses and ne-glects the basics]. Nor can our up- per elementary grades do well on NAEP test items in reading when their lan- guage arts curriculum has eliminated the great children’s literature that got them to read – especially boys.”

Dr. Stotsky, in a 2011 press conference in Montgomery, advised Alabama to continue with its standards upon which success was building instead of adopting the unproven and flawed common core regimen. State Board members Betty Peters and Stephanie Bell listened and voted against common core.

Again, more than half of Common Core states showed historic declines on 2015 NAEP - declines that have not been seen since the early 90s when the NAEP began, but Non-Common Core States showed NO decline on NAEP!!!! For Alabama students, clearly Common Core is a Failure with a capital F! Will school board members rescue students from further failure NOW? According to Math Standards expert Dr. James Milgram’s research, 4 years of common core type math in California beginning in 1992 resulted in irreparable damage. California ditched those standards and returned to what works. Alabama is in its 4th year, as we have pointed out to you before. When will you ditch the flawed regimen that is common core? But what would you use? Just like Alabama has done for years, a committee of professionals and parents could convene. They could use as a template for Math the pre-common core standards that put California first in the nation; and for English, the acknowledged best were pre-common core Massachusetts. There are other

proven sound standard sets upon which to build. There is no limit to what our teachers could do for their students if they were no longer constrained by com-mon core and were equipped with the basics that have worked for generations. You will surely agree with us that it is unfair to our students not to address this ASAP and reverse course be-fore it gets any worse.

Open Letter continued from page 3

All NAEP Scores for Alabama eighth grade students fell since the implementation of Common Core with the exception of eighth grade ELA. In this instance, the white and black student scores were basically flat with Hispanic scores up 6 points, which caused the overall score to be up by 2 points.

For Alabama students, clearly

Common Core is a

Failure with a capital

F!

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The Centers for Disease Con-trol released its national abortion report on Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2015, and the new figures show how the number of abortions in the United States has declined to a historic low. Although approximately 699K babies lost their lives in abortions in 2012, the latest year for which CDC has produced figures repre-sents a decline of about half since the highs of more than 1.5 million in the late 1980s. That is a decline from the 730,322 babies who died from abortions in 2011, according to CDC’s report last year. At their high decades ago, ap-proximately 1 in 3 pregnancies ended in an abortion. Thanks to

pro-life laws, educational efforts, pregnancy centers, and the ac-tions of pro-life groups that have resulted in closing down abor-tion clinics, now just one in five pregnancies in the United States end in an abortion. “Women in their twenties ac-counted for the majority of abor-tions in 2012 and throughout the period of analysis,” the report noted. The CDC data is not com-plete and is based on reports from health departments in 47 states. The CDC admits Califor-nia, Maryland and New Hamp-shire don’t report abortion num-bers, and the data from Wyo-ming is typically incomplete.

Abortions Decline to Historic Low

Still, the year to year comparison is instructive since the same 47 states are compared to each other every year. This report follows on the heels of a report last year showing abor-tions decreasing as well. From 2010 to 2011, the total number and rate of reported abortions de-creased 5% and the abortion ratio decreased 4%. The new CDC report also notes that 20.8 percent of all abortions involve the dangerous mifepris-tone (RU 486) abortion drug — a 10% increase form 2011. Source: www.lifenews.com November 27, 2015

An article by Bryan Fischer with the American Family Asso-ciation that was published on Au-gust 19, 2015, makes a good case that birthright citizenship is un-constitutional. He states that the actual wording of the 14th Amendment makes that case. It reads:

“All persons born or natural-ized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Birthright citizenship only be-longs those who were subject to the jurisdiction of the United States the moment they were born. Illegal aliens are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, but rather to their home country, which is why they can be deported

Birthright Citizenship is Unconstitutional

if identified and apprehended. Since the parents are not subject to the jurisdiction of the U. S., the case is made that their chil-dren are also subject to their home country jurisdiction. Section 5 of the 14th Amend-ment gives Congress power en-force its provisions by appropri-ate legislation. Current law –found at 8 U. S. Code Section 1401 specifies that a baby born on American soil to (1) a foreign ambassador, (2) head of state, or (3) foreign mili-tary prisoner is not an American citizen. American Indians were not recognized in law as U. S. Citi-zens until well after the passage of the 14th Amendment. If Con-

gress can pass laws establishing the citizenship or non-citizenship of other persons born on Ameri-can soil, it can also pass legisla-tion establishing the fact that chil-dren born to illegal aliens are, as are their parents, still “subject to the jurisdiction” of their country of origin. In looking at the 14th Amend-ment, we can look at the Civil Rights Act that was passed at the same time the amendment was passed. It reads: All persons born in the United States, and not sub-ject to any foreign power, exclud-ing Indians not taxed, are thereby declared to be citizens of the United States. Congress has the power to end birthright citizenship. We need a president and a Congress with the will to do so.

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Another Push for Gambling in 2016 Legislative Session

According to the organization Stop Predatory Gambling, “there is overwhelming, irrefutable evidence proving that government’s gam-bling programs have failed as a long-term revenue source because it is anti-economic growth, unsustain-able and inadequate. States that use gambling revenues as a “quick fix” to avoid politically difficult struc-tural tax reforms in the short run have nearly always been forced to

confront the same difficult tax pol-icy decisions in the future. Senator Marsh claims that gam-bling will produce thousands of needed jobs for Alabamians. But again, according to the facts pro-

Prior to Republicans taking con-trol of the Alabama legislature in 2010, pro-family organizations could count on Republicans to fight to stop the expansion of gambling in Ala-bama. However, in recent years with the influence of large business inter-ests who would rather see gambling in Alabama than the prospect of in-creased taxes, Republican legislative leadership has grown increasingly supportive of government run and/or sanctioned gambling operations. As we approach the coming 2016 legislative session, which begins the first week of February, we expect another push by gambling interests for the passage of major gambling bills. In the last special session of 2015, a bill that would approve a lim-ited lottery was introduced. It failed in committee because Del Marsh, the president pro-tem of the Senate, said he planned to reintroduce his 2015 bill that would provide for unlimited gambling in Alabama. His bill would allow Las Vegas style casinos across the state as well as a state lottery in Alabama.

vided by Stop Predatory Gambling, “The appalling truth is casinos make far more gambling addicts than jobs. Illinois state government’s own data shows that many more citizens have been hurt by the casinos than there are citizens who work there accord-ing to the Illinois Gambling Board in 2012.” Additionally, state sponsored gambling corrupts elections and leg-islative decisions. The Alabama Su-preme Court has carefully con-structed its rulings to protect Ala-bama from predatory gambling. It is not too early to contact your senator and representative to tell them we don’t want predatory gam-bling operations in Alabama taking money from hard working families to make rich, fat-cat gambling interests even richer. For more information go to http://stoppredatorygambling.org/facts-research/predatory-gambling-lies/

Kansas recognizes that so long as a person has not negated his right to do so, such as committing a fel-ony, the Second Amendment is the only permission a citizen needs to protect himself and/or his family and property. Kansas is the fifth state to recognize this constitutional right.

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4200 Stone River Circle, Birmingham, AL 35213

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Fourth Quarter 2015

2015 Civil Liberties and Student Data Privacy Summit Christian Refugees Get Cold Shoulder Open Letter to ALABAMA SCHOOL BOARD

MEMBERS Birthright Citizenship is Unconstitutional Abortions Decline to Historic Low Another Push for Gambling in 2016 Legislative Session

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