On a recent Saturday night, Caroline Licwinko, a mother of three, a
law school student and the coach to her daughterâs cheerleading squad,
sat in front of her laptop and tapped three words into an internet
search engine: âPanorama. Survey. Results.â
Within three clicks, Licwinko was in an online âdashboardâ created by Panorama Education Inc.,
a government contractor hired by school districts to gauge their
studentsâ âsocial and emotional learning.â However, Panorama digs far
deeper than whether students might feel depressed or lonely, raising
serious public policy questions. It asks all kinds of prying questions,
including gender and sexual orientation and views on racial issues.
Licwinko and her husband, Eric, became concerned in September when their
sonsâ school, North Hunterdon High School, told parents they were
sending students a Panorama survey. Although they opted their sons out,
as parents are ostensibly allowed to do, their sons were sent the survey
anyway. Whatâs more, a school official confirmed to them, the private
information of all students â including whether they receive special
education services and free and reduced meals â was sent across four
state lines to Panorama, based in Boston. Last week, Panorama refused to
give the Licwinkos the data the company received on their children.
âThey are data mining and psychologically profiling our kids. The
questions they are asking are absolutely inappropriate in a school
setting,â says Licwinko. âSchools have sold our childrenâs privacy to a
data analytics company that is tracking attendance, behavior, and
familyâs financial status.â
Raising questions at the House hearing about a possible conflict of interest,
Garlandâs son-in-law is a co-founder of Panorama, and Facebook founder
Mark Zuckerberg and other big-name venture capitalists from Big Tech are
investors.
School districts defend the decision to hire companies like Panorama,
claiming that addressing studentsâ âsocial and emotional learningâ
helps identify struggling kids through another sales product, the âEarly Warning System,â that
gives students a rating based on algorithms. But concerned parents see
the surveys as fishing expeditions that violate privacy and give
activist school boards cover to infuse curricula with divisive ideology,
from âqueer theoryâ to critical race theory, which teaches that
societyâs ills must be viewed primarily through the lens of race.
The private information of students that is being exploited is
startling. In Licwinkoâs search, Portland Public Schools popped up from
Oregon. Panorama surveyed students, teachers, and parents in 2019 in 102
schools in the school district. Clicking on âBackground Questionsâ at Alliance High School at Meek Campus,
Licwinko saw there were 15 respondents in ninth and tenth grades, and
five students responded they were a âGirl / Woman.â Nine said they were
âBoy / Man.â One student responded, âNonbinary.â
To a question, âAre you transgender?â Fourteen said, âNo, I am not transgender.â One did not respond.
Next, she read the answers to the question: âHow do you describe your sexual orientation?â
Nine students said, âHeterosexual / Straight.â Zero students said
âLesbian,â âBisexual / Pansexual,â âQueer,â or âQuestioning / not sure.â
One student said, âGay.â She also learned studentsâ feelings about a
âSense of Belonging.â
This data collection isnât limited to students. Licwinko discovered that 4,191 parents in Portland Public Schools
said they were âHeterosexual / Straight,â and 16 parents said they were
âQuestioning / not sure.â Of the teachers and staff, 67 said they were
âBisexual / Pansexual.â
This momâs discoveries are just the tip of the iceberg, offering a
glimpse of how agenda-driven companies like Panorama are data mining and
exploiting Americaâs children for profit.
Over the past four months, at Parents Defending Education, an
advocacy group formed earlier this year to give parents a voice in these
matters, we filed 207 requests with public school systems under the
Freedom of Information Act and other laws, identifying 122 consultants
in a new Consultant Report Card we have published today, with 249 contracts that add up to $19,575,169.45 spent for consultants who teach lessons like, âDefining the âNâ word,â including to â3-5 years oldâ kids, according to a copy of the contract. Earlier this month, we sent a letter to
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on
Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and Sen. Marsha Blackburn,
ranking members of the committee, requesting a hearing on Big Techâs
data mining of Americaâs children.
One of the biggest contractors is Panorama, a company started in 2013
by two then-Yale undergraduates. Today, they boast they are in 23,000
schools and have statewide contracts in nine states (including Hawaii
and Iowa) and the entire District of Columbia.
Parents like Licwinko are very concerned Panorama skirt federal and
state student privacy laws, including the Family Educational Rights and
Privacy Act (FERPA), the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA),
and the Childrenâs Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
For example, in Fairfax County, Va., the fine print in the Panorama contract gives new powers for company staff as âschool officials.â This
contract ought to be considered a clear violation of privacy laws
protecting children, especially the strictest laws protecting children
under the age of 13. Panorama and Portland Public Schools didnât respond
to requests for comment.
Across the country, parents have been complaining to school boards
about the intrusive surveys their children are getting. In Arlington,
Va., last week, a father learned that his school district and Panorama
only seek âpassive parent consent.â
âThe data mining of Americaâs kids should be a national scandal,â
says Jennifer McWilliams, a former teacher in Frankton, Ind., and mother
investigating the semantic game of âsocial and emotional learningâ and
âequityâ used as a Trojan horse for consultants with innocuous names
like Pacific Educational Group Inc. and Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning,
or CASEL. Some, like CASEL, are nonprofits that operate like for-profit
companies, with high-profile funders, including Microsoft founder Bill
Gates.
In early September, a northern Virginia mother tipped us off to the contract, now worth $2.4 million,
that Fairfax County Public Schools signed with Panorama. âOur children =
lab rats,â she wrote. Mom Tiffany McCaslin soon learned the school
system had sent her daughterâs personal data to Panorama even though she
opted her out of the survey. âItâs criminal,â says McCaslin. Indeed,
weâve now learned some children were given the survey even after their
parents submitted opt-out forms.
The next month, at the alleged behest of the White House, facing
tough political battles stoked by frustrated parents, including the
Virginia governorâs race, the National Association of School Boards sent
a letter to President Joe Biden, equating protests at school board
meetings â carried out largely parents â to âdomestic terrorism and hate
crimes.â U.S. Attorney General Garland outraged many parents by
marshaling the FBI to investigate them.
In New Jersey, Licwinkoâs jaw dropped when she heard
that Garlandâs son-in-law Alexander Tanner is a co-founder of Panorama.
She wasnât satisfied with Garlandâs answer, âI donât know,â when asked
if Justice Department officials met with White House and school board
officials before his memo was written. In fact, we have learned that
school board association staff were speaking to White House officials
for âseveral weeks,â according to an internal email.
Further, Licwinko wasnât convinced by Garlandâs argument: âThis
memorandum does not relate to the financial interests of anyone.â
She wants a hearing on the data mining of students and Garlandâs
apparent conflict of interest. Now, she has learned another Panorama
co-founder, Aaron Feuer, the CEO, is the son of Los Angeles Cityâs
elected attorney, Michael Feuer, who is embroiled in a contracting scandal.
Her daughterâs drawings of unicorns on her office wall, Licwinko is
following the data. On her desk, she has copies of federal and state
privacy laws. She runs two nonprofits helping vulnerable children. She
is unrelenting. âI will not stop,â she says, âuntil we end this
exploitation of our children.â
Now you know!
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