Online gaming is like every kid’s way of spending free time these days. From kids as young as five to adults, gone are the days when gaming was shied upon. While it’s fun and entertaining, games can be addictive, and not in a good way.

For most players, especially gamblers, gaming starts as a harmless way to have fun. You win a few times and lose sometimes. You don’t care because the games are thrilling and addictive. With time, the addiction becomes compulsive. What began as a fun way to spend time becomes a pathological behavior with great negative impact in your life.

Problematic gaming is endemic, which is why most developed countries have systems meant to help addicted players quit gaming. But as a gaming society, there is a lot to be learned, especially for games that involve gambling or spending money compulsively.

#1: It happens even to the Best

Some of the world’s worst gamers were the best players at one point. Take Stu “the kid” Ungar, for example. Forced by life’s circumstances to fend for his ill mother after his father died while he was a teen, Stu resulted to doing the one thing he knew the most: gambling.

With his natural talent for gambling, Stu would defeat anyone who dared to play against him. Sometimes he gambled hundreds of thousands and won millions in return. As his confidence grew, his wins and fame followed.

Stu was the based poker player during his time and he knew it. He also had his flaws, the biggest being he couldn’t manage his wins. He was also addicted to drugs, the primary way he spent his bankrolls. In the end, Stu wasted away his millions, his bankroll, and his marriage and led to his untimely death in 1998.

#2: It disrupts more than Finances

Financial loss is the biggest consequence of compulsive gambling. But it’s not the only one. Most people only see the money impact because it’s the first sign of problematic gaming. Addicted people will usually borrow money from friends and families. They become indebted and start selling personal assets, sometimes leading them into poverty.

What may don’t see is the emotional implications of gambling, the social effects and its impact on the user’s mental health. Many pathological gamblers get anxiety the more their problem worsens. For some, it turns into constant worry of being targeted by debtors.

It’s not uncommon for problem gamblers to turn into drugs and alcohol addiction to cope with what’s happening in their lives. While revealing his problems with gambling, former Arsenal playmaker Paul Merson once said his primary was of dealing with his problem was to use drugs. The problem became so bad that after wasting all his wealth, he had to sleep at an open park.

#3: It’s a Problem even if you can afford it

While most people gamble their pocket change, some waste thousands of dollars. You can deposit up to $10,000 on online casinos like Kiwislots, so it’s easy to spend all your monthly salary playing. Unfortunately, most people don’t feel empathetic when you are spending large sums of money.

And that’s a big problem in the gambling society. Simply because someone’s rich doesn’t mean they can’t have an addiction. A lot of millionaires have wasted millions of dollars unnecessarily because they couldn’t help it. While some got help before ruining their lives, many of them sell assets and funds meant for their children and families.

Again, addiction isn’t more about the financial loss than the impact it has on your mental health. Most addicts view gaming as a way to escape something else. It could be their work stress or marital problems. With time, it becomes pathological and they can’t help it.

#4: More needs to be done

When the Financial Times made an effort to reach banks, media organizations and casinos to talk about gambling addictions, almost everyone declined. Banks process the payments and have the data of how gaming affects players financially but they don’t really care.

Most brick and mortar casinos spend millions advertising their games but will do everything possible to suppress talks about addictions. Worse, even problematic players shy away from getting help or talking about their issues.

With few people willing to address the issue, the gambling industry has a long way to go. For a start, refusal to address the problem means players will continue suffering from pathological gaming. Casinos may enjoy gambling in the short term but they have to deal with indebted players sometimes in the future. Simply put, there is no winner when society fails to address major problems.

On the bright side, stakeholders are beginning to take responsibility. Several of the top gambling sites also have partnerships with gambling anonymous companies. Zamsino, for example, supports more than 20 casino sites, most of which also display their partners in helping those that are addicted. Zamsino offers online casinos for Kiwis but also have games that can be played by anyone in the world.

#5: It’s never too late to get help

Although thousands of gambling addicts waste away all their wealth to feed their addictions, thousands more get help. Paul Merson, NBA legend Charles Barkley and many more who’ve had issues with gambling turn their lives around.

It’s easy to know when gaming stops being fun and get help. If you keep increasing your bets even when you lose. You gamble when distressed and always lie to conceal your activities, start re-evaluating your relationship with gambling.

Try DIY tips to stop gambling like limiting your bankroll to a few dollars per month. Don’t use loans to gamble and never sell anything to feed your addiction. If nothing seems to work, contact gambling anonymous.

In Conclusion

No one should be blamed when gaming takes a toll on them. It happens to superstars and champions like Stu Ungar. M.I.T. geniuses and executives have wound up in the traps of gambling, including bankers. So, when you start to feel like gaming is a liability, look for a way out. If you are able to manage your bets, have fun gaming.

Should you check around the arena of UX developers, you’re certain to find any number of designers claiming to be better than the others. But, there are certain critical factors that set the high-grade, experienced developers apart from their less competent competitors. Read ahead to understand what you can do to ensure that you always remain a step ahead of the herd.

1 – Focus on Constantly Upgrading Your Skills

With the world of web development evolving at breakneck speeds, a smart UX professional needs to keep pace with the newest protocols. You can do this by taking continuing education courses in UX. Also, consider investing in newly-released texts by reputable UX developers. Or, adopt new tools like advanced wireframes to explore how you can build more innovative designs.

2 – Make Sure Your Designs are Original and Customized

While learning new skills is critical, at the same time, it is essential that you learn to use your own ideas to create designs that improve the user experience. Upgrade your skills to infuse originality and versatility into your designs that match your customers’ requirements to a tee so that they always keep coming back for more. Another smart move is to work closely with the actual people who use your designs so you have a better understanding of how the programs perform at the ground level and what users need.

3 – Keep a Careful Record of the Designs You’ve Created in the Past

The job of a UX developer involves constant learning and as you go along creating newer and fresher designs, it helps to go back from time to time to review the work you’ve successfully executed in the past. This exercise allows you to refresh your memory with the learning curve and adopt ideas you may have used only occasionally. Keeping records also helps you develop a portfolio of designs that you can use as advertising tools to get new business from prospective clients.

4 – Learn How to Market Your Products and Designs

A successful UX developer must develop the necessary marketing skills to be able to sell his products and designs. And, the one way to make that happen is to explain the features and positives of his programs in layman’s terms. Many professionals make the mistake of using technical jargon that is completely beyond the understanding of the average user. Your clients need to be able to comprehend what the program does and how it benefits them. When pitching to buyers, try to use basic terms that they can catch on easily.

5 – Be Open to Criticism

Even the most skilled of UX developers are not perfect. Recognize the fact that human error is a real possibility and revisit your programs from time to time to identify bugs so you can fix them. You may also need to make changes to existing programs so they are compatible with the changing requirements of the client’s organization.

Keep these critical factors in mind and you can ensure that you’ll remain always a step ahead of the mediocre UX developer. Good luck!

If you are looking for mobile app development agencies, please visit www.2easy.io or https://www.2easy.io/category/web-development

Tony Perkins –

“You did what?!” Parents across Santa Ana couldn’t believe it. In one house after another, the answer to “How was school today?” was nothing like they expected. Moms and dads listened in disbelief as their middle schoolers talked about going to an “LGBT Fair” that no one bothered to ask their permission for. There were even people in drag, their 11-year-olds said, giving makeup lessons—right there in school.

Townhall’s Kira Davis listened as one mom fumed about not knowing about the fair until after it happened. There wasn’t even an opportunity to opt out, she complained at last Tuesday’s school board meeting.

Unfortunately, that was just one of the infuriating examples the largely-Hispanic community used to explain how fed up it was with the state’s new sex ed law. But the problem is a lot bigger than the law, Davis explained. It’s how liberals are exploiting the Spanish-speaking communities to implement it.

In one of the more fiery exchanges of the night, a mom seethed that so many liberals were trying to marginalize California’s multi-ethnic communities. “How can a state that claims to be so much for the rights of immigrants and minorities then ignore our concerns on purpose? They are hypocrites!”

Although California’s law does order schools to offer the curriculum outline in both languages, Santa Ana hasn’t made the Spanish materials available to parents. Hardly an accident, Davis argues, since most of the communities like this one are “whole-heartedly opposed to LGBT-based sex-ed.”

One thing’s for sure: The more radical the social policy, the greater the opportunity for conservatives. Santa Ana’s meeting room was bursting with the latest evidence that Democrats have a huge problem on their hands, especially when it comes to abortion and sex ed.

What’s even more insulting, these parents pointed out, is how liberals are purposefully taking advantage of them—deceptively leaving families in the dark because they know “this particular community would absolutely not approve of the more graphic elements.” Not to mention, Davis goes on, “the unmonitored discussions” on gender and sexuality.

Like a lot of other California districts, these parents have reached their boiling point. Tuesday’s meeting was so jam-packed that even the overflow rooms could barely hold the families. Holding signs that read, “No SeXXEd!” moms and dads fended off the ACLU attorneys who’d been farmed out across the state to handle complaints. Later, parents were even more furious to find out that 4 of the 5 people who testified in favor of the curriculum didn’t even live in the district.

In between emotional testimonies, Davis was appalled at how condescending board members were, firing back hostile—and at times, demeaning—answers. “As an outside observer, I was terribly vexed by how dismissive and deceptive school authorities were to this particular group of parents. It was clear they did not believe immigrant Hispanic parents were engaged or informed enough to be welcomed into the process.”

“All these people were asking for was a say, a chance to be involved, to be heard and to be active participants in the education of their children. They were asking for respect and instead received nothing but contempt and disrespect from the very people they trust to care for the development of their students.” But, she warns, “If you think this is just another case of ‘whacky’ California paying the price for their ‘whacky’ voting habits, think again. This is coming to a state and a school district near you.”

Are you prepared for that day? Make sure you’ve read the Family Research Council’s “A Parent’s Guide to the Transgender Movement in Education”—and share it with your friends.

Source: California Parents Outraged After Children in Middle School Attend LGBT Fair

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3.12.19 — The Pioneer Institute

“Pioneer Institute Releases Major Study on Dangers of Social Emotional Learning”

The Pioneer Institute has just released a new study titled  Social-Emotional Learning: K-12 Education as New Age Nanny State.

The study is co-authored by Karen Effrem, M.D., Jane Robbins, J. D., with a foreword by Kevin Ryan, Ph.D.

The study reaches several important conclusions as described in these excerpts from the Pioneer press release:

Proponents of SEL call for focusing less on academic content and knowledge in schools, and more on student attributes, mindsets, values, and behaviors.  Not only are the goals of SEL ill-defined, but they also raise significant, unanswered questions about what attitudes should be promoted.

“It’s one thing to direct your own moral, ethical, and emotional development or that of your children,” said Jane Robbins, co-author of “Social-Emotional Learning: K-12 Education as New-Age Nanny State.”  “But having a government vendor or unqualified public school officials implement an SEL curriculum based on coffee-table psychology is quite another.”

Educational software developers purport to have created products that can determine a number of sensitive personality traits through students’ interaction with digital platforms.  Much of this monitoring occurs without the consent of children or their parents. Some software – especially for video gaming – goes beyond assessing traits, and aims to encourage the production of students who are well suited for a workforce development-centered education.

“This technology, when coupled with SEL, will further spread the recent wave of amateur, unqualified psychoanalysis in schools,” said Dr. Karen Effrem, M.D., who co-authored the study with Robbins. “Given the uncertainty around diagnosis and treatment of mental or emotional problems, even by highly trained physicians, the SEL movement runs the risk of further increasing the trend toward dangerous over-diagnosis and over-medication of American schoolchildren.”

Social-emotional learning is being interwoven into the Common Core State Standards and school efforts to implement competency-based education (CBE). CBE digitally documents the attainment of various skills with the goal of demonstrating that a student is ready to move on in his or her “personalized learning path.”  SEL and CBE are heavily weighted toward a conception of education as focused on workforce development rather than preparing active, informed citizens. 

TO WATCH THE 5:42 MINUTE YOU TUBE – INTRODUCTION TO THE SEL REPORT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RUstt5FAT8

LINK TO EDUCATION LIBERTY WATCH:  http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?m=1104610489842&ca=01042a54-7140-4090-879a-071bbb0f3048

Source: Pexels

In college, being well prepared for an exam is not enough. You have to take care of everything else as well. This includes your financial state.

With a third of young adults being financially illiterate, and Americans owing 1.5 trillion in student debt, it’s about the time to embrace financial responsibility.

Here are 7 steps on how to save money in college.

Grow up before the college

Nowadays, a college degree will cost you anywhere between $30,000 and $200,000 in student loans. This is not a small sum, as you may imagine.

The starting salary in tech may be around $60,000 a year, but you want to get into journalism, marketing, or any other profession where it’s significantly lower, you have to measure the risks.

When you’re looking for a college, answer these questions:

• Does this degree give me marketable skills?
• Will this degree be relevant in 10 years?
• Will I be able to find a job in the field straight out of college?
• Does the price allow me to pay off the loan in a couple of years?

Be very honest with yourself when you are answering these questions. It’s not just a couple of years of your life that are at stake. If you make a big mistake, you may find yourself with no skills, no experience, and with a $100,000 in debt.

If you’re not sure, you can always go for courses, apprenticeship, internship, or go to a cheaper college.

Find scholarship opportunities

Are you a bright student? You shouldn’t pay for your education yourself!

Find a range of scholarships and apply for all of them. If you do get one, your problems with finances in college are pretty much solved.

Some scholarships will cover the full cost of tuition. They are normally merit-based and are awarded to those students who show great skill or talent in a particular field. Some will only give you a couple of thousands of dollars for studies. Some are given to minority students or kids from military families.

Either way, even a small bonus to your tuition cost counts. Discover what scholarships you can apply for and do it.

Find a job

Going to college is about adulting and becoming financially independent. The basics of financial literacy for college students is getting a job to support yourself and rely on your parents less.

But don’t rush to become another student waitress. You may earn a ton of money in tips, but long shifts are not the best thing for your studies.

Before you hit the local bars looking for work, try to get a freelance position at a company that can help your professional growth. Before long you’ll start asking yourself “is edusson legit?”, and  thinking about buying a paper because you work such long hours.

If you get an assistant’s position at a small company, you can earn a bit of money to get by, and a lot of experience. This will help you be the first among your classmates to get a really good job once you graduate.

Have an emergency sum

As a result of financial illiteracy, many people don’t have spare money. They just live from payday to payday. This results in people getting payday loans, overspending from their credit cards, and driving themselves deeper in debt.

How to save up money? It’s easier than you would imagine. You have to budget your spending.

It may be hard to pass on some of the things that are so great about youth. You may not be able to drink every Friday or give your girl a great date, but the result is worth it.

Set aside a bit of money each month and don’t touch it until you really need to.

Don’t eat out

Source: Pexels

This may sound awful, but eating out can destroy your budget. Sure, eating at the college canteen is okay, but spending each evening eating at a restaurant will leave your finances in ruin.

Even if you’re going out to have drinks, you’d be better off in a bar that doesn’t serve too much food. Otherwise, you can spend half the check on eating expensive gourmet meals.

Live cheap

Housing is in big trouble these days. Most people can’t afford to rent a flat alone, not to mention the students.

If you can live on campus, do it. Especially so, if you live in a big city like LA or San Francisco. It’s probably impossible to find a decent room for a bargain, even if you have a roommate.

If living in a dorm is not an option, go for the cheap and humble flat in good condition. You don’t want anything above the bare minimum, but you don’t want to spend a fortune on repair either.

Have fun for free

While drinking all night is quite an expensive thing to do, this doesn’t mean you can’t have cheap fun.

Most of the good things in life cost you nothing. You won’t see people paying to cuddle with their significant other, to swim in the ocean, or to participate in a student play. Add a couple of free art exhibitions that you can find in pretty much every city, and you have all the fun you need.

What you can’t get for free, you can get cheaper. Just ask if the place offers student ID discounts.

Do I have to be frugal?

Making it through college doesn’t mean working all night long and living on bread and water. You will have to cut on some fun, but you shouldn’t withdraw from social life.

Being financially stable and having a great college experience is possible!

As valuable as higher education can be, can you imagine that statistically speaking, obtaining it indebts you more than credit cards and auto loans? That’s right, student loans account for the second highest consumer debt, passed only by mortgage debt.

In the U.S. alone, student loan debt amounts to the staggering $1.5 trillion, distributed between more than $44 million people, according to Make Lemonade. In 2016, the average student owed $37,172-worth in student loans.

When you let those startling numbers sink in, and add to them the mounting disappointment of higher education and its lack of real-life value that many students trumpet, one can’t help but wonder, “Is it worth going to a University anymore?” especially considering the increasing flexibility technology enables in various aspects of our life. 
Rise in Enrollment for Online Courses

It’s no wonder then that between 2012 and 2016, the number of university students who attend a strictly physical campus dropped by more than a whole million, 6.4%, Make Lemonade’s research shows. To a large extent, this is attributed to more and more people acknowledging the sweeping benefits of online education.

Enrollment for online courses is at an all-time high and only keeps rising. 2016 was the 14th year in a row in which Babson Survey Research Group reported growth in online enrollment. According to Babson, more than 6.3 million students in the U.S., most of which undergraduates, signed up to at least one online course in the fall of 2016, which was a 5.6% increase from the previous year. For public schools and universities, that increase was even higher – 7.1%.

And an interesting trend that surfaces amidst the statistics is of online students actually residing in the same state as their institution – going from 50.3% in 2012, to 56.1% in 2016. For strictly online students in public schools, this number is even higher – 84.2%. In fact, previous Babson surveys reveal that a large portion of online students even live within a 50-mile radius of their university’s campus.

While that trend may seem somewhat counter-intuitive at first, on second thought, it actually makes a lot of sense when you consider a certain advantage which online education has.

Why Study Online

To help you navigate the changing educational landscape, James Cook University, which also offers online courses has outlined a few of the major benefits of studying online.

The likely reasons why so many online students actually live in the same state as their institution are two. The more obvious one is the potentially lower in-state tuition fees. The other reason is that online education can actually be a blend of the best of both the virtual and the physical academic world, meaning students can generally study online, but they also get access to on-campus resources.

But besides that, studying online has some things to offer which traditional education simply can’t.

First off, it’s important to clarify one common misconception up: there is no mention of the word “online” on a degree from an online course. An “online” degree weighs just as much as an on-campus degree. 

The flexibility is perhaps the most universally coveted attribute of online education, especially in the case of mature professionals who are looking to take it to the next level without sacrificing the life they’ve worked hard to build for themselves. Online education allows you to fit studies into your schedule rather than the other way around. That doesn’t go to say the studies come second or require less effort than they would in a traditional environment – they’re simply not confined within rigid time slots that can’t be moved and around or adjusted.

An extension of that benefit is the autonomy you get with online education. Autonomy isn’t for everyone, but for those who can harness its immense potential, this perk is simply invaluable.

You can tailor the structure of the education to both your schedule and your learning style. It’s basically like freelance work – you are measured by your performance and the quality of your work, not by the amount of hours spent or the time of day when you spend them.

Another major benefit is the elimination of all the indirect costs of on-campus education like travel expenses, paid parking, childcare, buying food outside, and a myriad of other little expenditures, in addition to the extra time it takes to go back and forth.
Something else that can sometimes go overlooked is the higher level of teachers’ personal attention which online education can paradoxically provide. Raising questions and voicing concerns can generally be harder in a room full of other students, both from a social standpoint and from a time-related one. With online education, you can often get more direct assistance, adjusted specifically to you, in a more comfortable manner.

The world is changing fast, and the traditional notions of education and work are no longer tied to trivialities like geography. Whether you obtain a degree online or offline is not what’s important. It’s the knowledge and skills that the degree represents that matter, and more often than not, online education is a more cost, time, and energy-efficient way to get them.

Not only does P.E. do little to improve physical fitness, but it can also lead to truancy and other disciplinary problems.

Alia Wong –

It’s almost too easy to satirize physical education, better known by its eye-roll-inducing abbreviation P.E. From Clueless to Superbad to Spiderman: Homecoming, parodies of gym class are a pop-culture darling. Perhaps that’s because they speak to one of America’s fundamental truths: For many kids, P.E. is terrible.

A recent working paper focused on a massive P.E. initiative in Texas captures this reality. Analyzing data out of the state’s Texas Fitness Now program—a $37 million endeavor to improve middle schoolers’ fitness, academic achievement, and behavior by requiring them to participate in P.E. every day—the researchers concluded that the daily mandate didn’t have any positive impact on kids’ health or educational outcome. On the contrary: They found that the program, which ran from 2007 to 2011, actually had detrimental effects, correlating with an uptick in discipline and absence rates.

As for why this particular P.E. program was counterproductive, Analisa Packham, an economics professor at Miami University in Ohio who co-authored the study, points to bullying as one potential reason. Students are more likely to be bullied in middle school than at any other point in their academic careers, and P.E. presents a particularly ripe opportunity for abuse, whether because the class forces them to use a locker room, where adult supervision is limited, or because it facilitates the teasing of overweight or unathletic kids.

Source: Why P.E. Fails at Solving Problems Such as Obesity – The Atlantic

Old timers remember the good old days of “lovers lane” and intimate engagements under the stars in an old classic car. Those who can remember those days with fondness probably never dreamed of the future and more specifically driverless vehicles.

In the not so distant future, young people will order up an autonomous vehicle with their smartphone and choose from thousands of digitally downloaded romantic songs to get in the mood. They can also “get physical” while the car is moving and not worry at all about getting into a wreck or getting stopped by the police. There will be a lot more sex in cars in the coming years, according to many futurists, than ever before.

Perhaps one of the least talked about changes autonomous vehicles will bring, is the freedom to have sex in these types of cars. While not everyone will indulge in this type of activity, many younger folks will. The good news it won’t lead to distracted driving accidents that cause a multi-vehicle pile-up. The computer aided vehicle of the future will do all the driving, leaving the passengers with the freedom to engage in other activities like sex.

Autonomous Cars are Coming Sooner than you Might Think

For those residents in Silicon Valley, driverless vehicles are a common sight. However, for most areas of the U.S. and the world, the technology has not yet been introduced. Many tech visionaries think within the next ten years, autonomous cars will be in nearly every state in the U.S. One of the big reasons politicians are so eager to approve the technology is public safety.

Driverless cars don’t drive recklessly, drunk or hardly ever make mistakes. According to VikingInsurance.net every year over 30,000 people in the United States die from vehicular related accidents. This also causes insurance rates to go up for everyone. Self operating automobiles will drop that number to near zero. One day, human operated vehicles might be banned, because they just cause too many deaths.

Self Driving Cars Will be Entertainment Centers Equipped for Pleasure

Back in the old days, people had sex in cramped cars, often parked in dangerous areas. Future automobiles will be entertainment vessels. They will also have larger interior room. This will leave ample space for large televisions, WIFI-internet screens and yes, small beds or sleeping pods. These little beds will not only serve for naps on the way to work, but sexual trysts for millions of travelers looking for the next new idea. Since passengers won’t be operating the car, they can drink all they want, watch TV and get intimate, all while the vehicle roams down the road at 70 miles per hour. Multi-function cars will never be the same.

Some Vehicles may be Used as Legal Brothels

Cars of the future may become roaming brothels, many futurists believe. This means a business person in the hurry can take an autonomous car from his office to the airport and also order up “special services” to accompany his journey. Since drivers will be free from, well driving, they can pretty much do whatever they want in the car. This means, eating, drinking alcohol, sleeping, working and yes having sex.

There are those that envision self-driving cars being ordered up with escorts… roaming brothels as some have described. While these activities are illegal in almost every area of the United States, futurist sex workers will find ways to innovate and provide enhanced customer service, to meet this new market demand. According to several national surveys, more than sixty percent of people have had sex in a vehicle before. Driverless automobiles will only serve to increase this number.

One popular professor, Scott Cohen, predicts sexual activity in autonomous vehicles will be a “growing phenomenon” in the coming years. It takes multi-tasking to the next level. Someone can get to work, check stocks on CNBC, listen to music and have sex all at the same time. This could have a negative impact on some of the seedy hotels that have traditionally served the sex tryst market. Hotels by the hour will be ditched in favor of personalized, more private self-driving cars.

This could happen faster than many believe. While Uber and Lyft do not allow customers to engage in sexual activities, entrepreneurs will soon fill this market. In areas like Amsterdam’s red-light district and other cities where prostitution is legal, sex cars could be the preference of choice, rather than motel rooms. AV cars will be more private but it could also lead to more assaults against sex workers and an entire new criminal problem.

Autonomous SUVs will be Small Studios

As autonomous vehicles evolve, they will become more like small home studios you can practically live in. A large AV SUV for example, will have enough room for a 36-inch flat screen TV, two small beds and maybe a mini kitchen. Motorists in love and looking for new sexual adventure might be having as much sex in their cars as at home.

Only time will tell, but the future will be amazing. Sex and technology will continue to merge together in our lives and there is no stopping it.

1.23.19 – Truth in American Education

“How Well Does Your State Protect Student Privacy?”

BY CHERI KIESECKER 

The Parent Coalition for Student Privacy released a comprehensive report cardon each state’s privacy laws. It is an amazing tool for parents, teachers, legislators, and privacy advocates.  The full press release is posted below. You will want to be sure to use the downloadable comparison matrix and share the report cards with your schools and legislators.

Why Student Privacy is Important

Thanks to the federal student  privacy law FERPA being weakened in 2011, student’s personal data can be shared outside of school walls, without parents knowledge or consent. The data can be shared and analyzed by government agencies, nonprofits, businesses, researchers, and edtech companies who can further share with third parties, (or even sell student data), or used for advertising to students.  Online “Personalized Learning”,  computer “edtech” programs that collect millions of points of data, and use hidden algorithms to profile children are not regulated by federal law and are exempted from state laws.   Recently, the FBI issued a warning about the dangers of edtech data collection. With multiple data breaches, and cyber hacks into school databases,   education performs dead last in terms of cyber security. Over the last few years, parents across the country have gone to schools, state and local boards, state legislators, and asked for transparency and more control of their children’s data.  In every state, parents have received pushback, often from the BigTech lobbyists who send representatives to weaken bills and fight privacy legislation. Silicon Valley spends millions to lobby and shape “tech favorable” privacy policies at the federal level. Google led the multimillion-dollar tech industry lobbying blitz in 2018.

Besides the millions of data points collected by edtech, astonishing amounts of student data are stored in local and state databases, often called SLDS, or P20 databases.  With the recent passage of Federal law HR4174, making data held in federal and state databases linkable, (shareable) and interoperable, it is more important than ever to minimize what student data, especially sensitive medical, mental health, disability data, goes into these databases.  FERPA is a 45 year old law that needs updating. We need a strong data privacy law that ensures opt-in consent, provides enforceable penalties,  data minimization, and private right of action to parents. This 2015 Answer Sheet  article in the Washington Post, explains the issue and need for student privacy legislation:

“During a February 2015 congressional hearing on “How Emerging Technology Affects Student Privacy,” Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin asked the panel to “provide a summary of all the information collected by the time a student reaches graduate school.” Joel Reidenberg, director of the Center on Law & Information Policy at Fordham Law School, responded:

“Just think George Orwell, and take it to the nth degree. We’re in an environment of surveillance, essentially. It will be an extraordinarily rich data set of your life.”

Most student data is gathered at school via multiple routes; either through children’s online usage or information provided by parents, teachers or other school staff. A student’s education record generally includes demographic information, including race, ethnicity, and income level; discipline records, grades and test scores, disabilities and Individual Education Plans (IEPs), mental health and medical history, counseling records and much more.[Emphasis added]

Under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), medical and counseling records that are included in your child’s education records are unprotected by HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act passed by Congress in 1996). Thus, very sensitive mental and physical health information can be shared outside of the school without parent consent.

… the federal government has mandated that every state collect personal student information in the form of longitudinal databases, called Student Longitudinal Data Systems or SLDS, in which the personal information for each child is compiled and tracked from birth or preschool onwards, including medical information, survey data, and ….

Every SLDS has a data dictionary filled with hundreds of common data elements, so that students can be tracked from birth or pre-school through college and beyond, and their data more easily shared with vendors, other governmental agencies, across states, and with organizations or individuals engaged in education-related “research” or evaluation — all without parental knowledge or consent.

Every SLDS uses the same code to define the data, aligned with thefederal CEDS, or Common Education Data Standards, a collaborative effort run by the US Department of Education, “to develop voluntary, common data standards for a key set of education data elements to streamline the exchange, comparison, and understanding of data within and across P-20W institutions and sectors.”… You can check out the CEDS database yourself, including data points recently added, or enter the various terms like “disability,” “homeless” or “income” in the search bar.”

The US needs to do more to protect students from identity theft, invisible digital profiling, trafficking and selling of their personal data. Children should not be subjected to compulsory surveillance, forced to forego privacy, as a condition of attending public schools.  Parents, not corporations, not the government, need to know what data is collected and should have the Right to NO when it comes to sharing or processing their children’s data.

Here is the press release from the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy and the Network for Public Education:

New Report Card Grades Each State On How Well it Protects Student Privacy

In the first of its kind, the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy and the Network for Public Education have released a report card that grades all fifty states on how well their laws protect student privacy.  

The State Student Privacy Report Card analyses 99 laws passed in 39 states plus DC between 2013 and 2018, and awards points in each of the following five categories, aligned with the core principlesput forward by PCSP: Transparency; Parental and Student Rights; Limitations on Commercial Use of Data; Data Security Requirements; and Oversight, Enforcement, and Penalties for Violations. 

Two more categories were added to the evaluation: Parties Covered and Regulated and Other, a catch-all for provisions that did not fit into any of the above categories, such as prohibiting school employees from receiving compensation for recommending the use of specific technology products and services in their schools.

No state earned an “A” overall, as no state sufficiently protects student privacy to the degree necessary in each of these areas. Colorado earned the highest average grade of “B.” Three states – New York, Tennessee and New Hampshire– received the second highest average grade of “B-“.  Eleven states received the lowest grades of “F” because they have no laws protecting student privacy: Alabama, Alaska, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Carolina, Vermont and Wisconsin. 

The report tracks specific versions of state laws over time.  For example, many of the state privacy laws enacted since 2013 were modeled after the California’s 2014 law known as the Student Online Personal Information Protection Act (SOPIPA). While California barred all school vendors from selling student data, eight states subsequently passed laws that allowed the College Board and the ACT to do so.  Laws with specific loopholes to allow these companies to sell student data were enacted in Arizona, Colorado, District of Columbia, Nebraska, North Carolina, Texas, Utah and Virginia –presumably because of lobbying efforts.

The issue of data security is also critical.  The primary federal student privacy law known as FERPA requires no specific protections against data breaches and hacking, nor does it require families be notified when inadvertent disclosures occur.  In recent years, the number of data breaches from schools and vendors have skyrocketed, and some districts have even been targeted by hackers with attempted blackmail and extortion. A recent report rated the education industry last in terms of cybersecurity compared to all other major industries.  As a result, this fall the FBI put out an advisory, warning of the risks represented by the rapid growth of education tech tools and their collection of sensitive student data,  saying that this could “result in social engineering, bullying, tracking, identity theft, or other means for targeting children.”

“The inBloom debacle in 2013 exposed the longstanding culture of fast and loose student data sharing among government agencies, schools and companies,” said Rachael Stickland, co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, parent of two public school children in Colorado and the primary author of the report. “Consequently, parents across the nation began urging their state legislators to address the problem, resulting in a complex web of state privacy laws that are difficult to untangle and understand. Our hope is to bring attention to state laws that make a reasonable effort to protect student privacy and identify those that need improvement. Parents and advocacy groups can use our findings to advocate for even stronger measures to protect their children.”

NPE Executive Director Carol Burris noted, “This report card provides not only critical information regarding the existing laws, but also serves a blueprint for parents to use for lobbying for better protections for their children.”

As Leonie Haimson, co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, pointed out, “FERPA was passed over forty-five years ago and has been weakened by regulation over time to allow for the sharing of personal student data by schools and vendors without parent knowledge or consent.  State legislators have stepped up to the plate to try to fill in some of its many gaps and to require more transparency, security protections, enforcement, and the ability of parents and students to control their own data. Yet none of these laws are robust enough in each of these areas.  Congress must strengthen and update FERPA, but meanwhile, this report card can serve as a guide to parents and advocates as to which state laws should be strengthened and in which specific ways.”

An interactive map that shows the grades of each state, both overall and in each of the categories is posted here. The report is posted here; here is a technical appendix with a more detailed account of how each law was evaluated.   There is also a downloadable matrixwith links to all of the state laws, as well as specifying how many points were awarded in every category.