September 2022 — Ed Reporter Monthly Email Edition

Blockchain in education is positioned as a decentralized digital database (or ledger) for the purpose of holding student transcripts, but which also includes personal information such as vaccine history and mental health data. As researcher, podcaster, and former IT professional Lynn Davenport explained in a July video interview with Catching Fire News, blockchain can be described as “blocks of data shared across a chain of computer systems or blocks stored in a virtual chain. It’s being sold as something great because it’s decentralized; it cuts out the centralized authority, or government, and it’s referred to as ‘decentralized ledger technology, or DLT.'”

Davenport calls the city of Dallas, where she resides, “a hotbed of blockchain enthusiasts.” During her interview with Catching Fire News, she detailed a pilot program involving the Dallas Independent School District (ISD) which shows that just the opposite of decentralization is actually taking place.

A single for-profit company called GreenLight Credentials was awarded what Davenport termed “a sweet no-bid deal through Dallas ISD, our regional [education] service centers, the Texas Education Department, and the Dallas Community College District.” She points out that “this one company holds all this information; all the transcripts, vaccine history, and it holds mental health data.” As many observers may imagine, much of the student mental health information is mined from intrusive questionnaires administered by public school districts such as the Dallas ISD.

Centralizing data and power

Davenport reiterates that “they’re centralizing power and authority over all this private sensitive information with one company,” in what GreenLight Credentials aptly calls the “Life Locker.” As Education Reporter described in its May 2022 issue, blockchain is a digital system that will be employed in other areas of life, such as “records of transactions made in bitcoin or another cryptocurrency maintained across a number of computers linked in a peer-to-peer network.”

While blockchain is a complex subject that appears to not yet be fully developed, it’s easy to imagine that a digital record established when a child enters preschool and maintained throughout his academic career is then used to track him for the rest of his life through employment, medical care, financial transactions, purchasing habits, etc. Davenport notes: “GreenLight’s ‘life transcript’ can expand beyond [academic] grades to include professional certifications, job experiences, verified skills, and more. According to Forbes, GreenLight is one of a handful of companies providing access to blockchain records.”

In researching what was happening with blockchain in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Davenport discovered “the Commit Partnership,” founded by former Goldman-Sachs Real Estate Executive Todd Williams, whom she describes as having no education credentials but who was very successful. “Our mayor appointed him as his education advisor, and from there he grew in power with our Texas Education Agency, and then our governor appointed him to four boards and commissions.”

She adds: “This is important because he has access to multiple ISDs in the metroplex and has access to these data sharing agreements.” She relates that it was Williams and The Commit Partnership that chose Greenlight’s blockchain technology for the Dallas ISD pilot program. Other organizations are embedded in the data sharing agreements as well, and the question becomes, how many organizations actually have access to these volumes of student data?

As Davenport and other investigative researchers have noticed, the data sharing networks “are vast.” Some tentacles “are tied to ‘Teach for America,’ some to big investors such as Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, and some to ‘machine learning’ and artificial intelligence (AI).” Davenport says she learned from fellow researcher Alison McDowell that “all this data is being fed into human capital markets and is also creating the digital twins of our children: you’ve got your virtual [avatar] self and your ‘real’ self and they are ‘learning’ you through massive amounts of data that can be commodified.”

Davenport asserts that the Dallas ISD is also experimenting with a “metaverse campus,” where students attend school virtually by entering into “a video game-like setting a couple of days a week” and for the remaining days attend classes in their regular school setting. The May 2022 issue of Education Reporter described a similar program being piloted at the University of Arizona.

Data sharing across the globe

During her discussion with Davenport, Catching Fire News host Lynne Taylor, a writer, speaker, and researcher in her own right as well as a tireless opponent of Common Core, noted that “all this data sharing has to comply with international data standards.” She cited a recently signed international agreement that will result in “all that data winding up at the United Nations.”

Once the digital blockchain system is fully in place, a child’s digital avatar and data ledger will determine his rewards and penalties throughout his life based on how well he conforms to established “norms,” and many can hazard a guess as to what those will be. Guidelines for acceptable ideas, beliefs, and practices will be uniform across the globe, and conformers will be rewarded while non-conformers will be penalized and/or punished.

Blockchain and school choice

A critical piece of this control involves harnessing school choice. But rather than viewing the school choice movement as a negative, Davenport believes the pushers of blockchain will use it to their advantage by tying the granting of education vouchers to government funding. “When [public] money follows the child,” observes Davenport, “so does the government and so do the strings. Parents who are trying to escape the public-school system will find themselves entangled in a new system of fraud, waste, abuse, and control.”

Taylor notes that this is already happening in Arizona with the state’s universal school choice program. “If you really look at it, there are so many parameters that are not included in Arizona’s constitution,” she observes. “There are so many red flags, one of which is that economists, not educators, are calling the shots.” She reports that Arizona parents must sign an annual contract agreeing to comply with all the program’s criteria. “If you don’t sign the agreement, you can be fined or even imprisoned.” The actual education dollars are doled out by the state on a “card” authorized and operated by a third party, so parents never see the funds in their bank accounts. Taylor says parents must “continually go to this third party and say ‘mother may I please.’ That’s not freedom; that’s not choice.”

The above sounds like a dismal, disappointing prospect for a movement that so many have held in such high and hopeful regard for so long. Both Taylor and Davenport agree that parents are so frustrated with the public schools and what they have become that any offer of school choice is attractive, even if it becomes yet another trap. “They just want to see the collapse of the public-school system,” says Davenport. “And they don’t care about the strings” that may be tied to vouchers.

She is convinced that Texas authorities plan to expand blockchain throughout the education system in the Lone Star State. “There are 5.4 million children in Texas education, and the Dallas program will be scaled throughout the state, and then nationwide. I have seen Department of Education documents indicating that they are absolutely watching what is happening in the Dallas ISD with Greenlight Credentials and with Dallas Community College, which has been involved in expanding the role of ‘The Commit Partnership’ at the state and local levels.”

Running for office

In an attempt to shine a light on the threat posed by blockchain technology, not only to children but which will eventually impact every American, Davenport ran for a seat on the Dallas College Board of Trustees for District 1. Three candidates faced off, one of which was an incumbent. “It was pretty much a David and Goliath situation,” she concedes. “But I ran in order to expose what I had learned. “

When the third candidate entered the race, she knew she was facing an uphill battle. Even though she ultimately lost the June 18 election, she says she accomplished two of her three goals in running. “We managed to bump out the incumbent, so that was one victory,” she says. “The other was to expose not only the blockchain implementation but other issues at the community college level, such as the adoption of U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.

Davenport received 36 percent of the vote and says she has no regrets about her decision to run. She encourages others to run for local offices in an effort to take back their communities. She urges potential candidates not to worry about winning, noting that “the idea is to engage the voters and encourage them to pay attention to what is going on, and that’s a really awesome opportunity.”

She reports having spent only $4,000 of her own money on her race, foregoing the fundraising and printing of signs and instead running a totally “organic” campaign. “You have to put your ego aside. I didn’t want to see myself or my name everywhere on signs. We shouldn’t put politicians on a pedestal; it breeds narcissism and corruption. My goal was to enlighten people about education and that’s what I focused on.”

Although she experienced four months of grueling campaigning, Davenport says she “truly loved the opportunity because it woke people up to things they just didn’t know were happening. They will go back to sleep, but at least now they can’t say they don’t know.”

Although in development for decades, Environmental Social Governance, or ESG, has bloomed in business and higher education circles over the past two years. Like many draconian measures forced on American citizens and institutions since the start of 2020, purveyors of ESG are using the pandemic as an excuse to further their agenda. While the business sector and academia are already involved, K-12 education appears to be next on the list to be conquered.

As with all facets of socialist control efforts, ESG concepts are purposefully nebulous and vague. It is an international movement that appears to have begun in Europe and is spreading over the globe, having made inroads not only in Europe, but in parts of Africa and the Middle East, as well as in some U.S. corporations and universities. ESG invokes the familiar climate change fearmongering: global warming, rising sea levels, air pollution, sea pollution, child labor exploitation, and call for “a greener future.” Diversity and inclusion are also part of the picture.

The Global Goals for Sustainable Development work hand in hand with ESG. Seventeen stated goals for a global utopia include:

One may observe that these goals are not new; they persist from years past but may be accompanied by new rhetoric and new implementation tactics.

ESG in business

For businesses, ESG means becoming “carbon neutral” by a certain date, typically by 2030. It means meeting a plethora of other criteria; such as adherence to international “sustainability” standards, which begs the questions: Who determines the standards? Who measures compliance?

According to Deloitte.com (of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited), beginning in 2023, “almost 50,000 companies will now have to report on ESG issues.” Furthermore, the Hungarian Stock Exchange (BéT) “has issued a recommendation to all issuers that they develop an ESG reporting roadmap by the end of the year.”

This means that companies will be measured by how they operate in accordance with the international green agenda (the Green New Deal in the U.S.). Under the “Environmental” pillar, greenhouse gas emissions as well as water and ground pollution will be measured. Also to be assessed is whether recycled materials are used in the processing or manufacturing of goods, and whether or not a company’s end product is recyclable. Land use restrictions and “biodiversity disclosures” fall under this pillar.

Labor practices and employee development fall under the “Social” pillar. Without question, this pillar encompasses the entire spectrum of leftwing diversity and inclusion dictates. Under “Governance” are “shareholder rights, board diversity,” and the financial compensation of executives, which depends on how well they drive their companies’ “sustainability performance.”

ESG in education

A recent article in International Teacher Magazine contends that “the adoption of Environmental Social Governance codes by an increasing number of companies could — and should — be an example for school Boards.” Again, the COVID-19 lockdowns are invoked. As British Author Lisa Walsh writes: “We have missed being outside, becoming aware of the natural world in a way that pre-Covid, urbanized, air-conditioned and carbon-fueled society was not. And if we could not get our fix of outdoor life in the flesh during lockdown, we have had Sir David Attenborough’s A Perfect Planet to turn to.”

In case anyone is wondering, A Perfect Planet is a documentary series that imposes an importance and level of “perfection” on everything that exists in nature except for human beings, who are destroying it. The series intimates that nature would be in perfect balance if it weren’t for those pesky humans. But Christians know that God created everything in nature to be subject to man, who was created in His image and likeness, and that man is expected to be a good steward of creation. As man is a fallen creature, he is not always such, which gives those with no God but evolution, who seek power and control, a platform for their relentless push toward global governance.

What will ESG mean for schools? Teacher Magazine’s Walsh doesn’t get specific, but credits teachers with being “among the most environmentally aware social groups in the world.” What she doesn’t mention is that environmental propaganda is a staple at most teachers’ colleges.

She then admits that “environmental education has long been a staple of the curriculum,” i.e., environmental propaganda, but charges that not many schools’ guiding statements “are really environmentally and socially driven.” She predicts that school boards are “increasingly likely to be populated by members who are aware of, influenced by and motivated by ESG commitments.” She muses that we may be approaching a time when younger, more environmentally and socially conscious candidates may take over school boards, i.e. those who have been indoctrinated with the green gospel, CRT, and gender identity studies on their university campuses.

Walsh goes on to opine that school board members “must be accountable for planning their ESG strategy.” She asserts: “Children all around the world will be chomping at the bit to be involved with this because, just like Greta [Thunberg], they want (and deserve) a brighter future devoid of child labour, exploitation, corruption and worse.” She expects a “governance revolution” whereby schools are more widely linked to “business, NGO (non-governmental organization), municipal, regional, and national government communities.”

This is the familiar cradle-to-grave monitoring, and with the new developments in technology with blockchain and other means of digital tracking, the possibilities are indeed ominous. It’s up to informed parents and citizens to ensure this agenda does not become a reality in the U.S.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) continues its international mischief by setting its sights on electronic censorship, using what it claims is artificial intelligence (AI) to bolster the more fallible human intelligence. As Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense noted in its online news vehicle the Defender, one critic of the WEF’s plan, blogger Igor Chudov, suggested it “would globalize the search for wrongthink.”

As pro-family and other right-thinking observers might imagine, “wrongthink” refers to First Amendment rights, beginning with free speech. Most likely due to the fact that more and more people across the globe are becoming wise to the rhetoric of the progressive left and what it really means for the traditional Western standards of freedom and justice, the WEF distances itself from the article before the first sentence.

Titled “The solution to online abuse? AI needs human intelligence”, by Inbal Goldberger, it begins with the following warning to readers:

• Please be aware that this article has been shared on websites that routinely misrepresent content and spread misinformation. We ask you to note the following:
• 1. The content of this article is the opinion of the author, not the World Economic Forum.
  2. Please read the piece for yourself. The Forum is committed to publishing a wide array of voices and misrepresenting content only diminishes open conversations.

The article quickly gets down to business, noting: “As the internet has evolved, so has the dark world of online harms. Trust and safety teams (the teams typically found within online platforms responsible for removing abusive content and enforcing platform policies) are challenged by an ever-growing list of abuses, such as child abuse, extremism, disinformation, hate speech and fraud; and increasingly advanced actors misusing platforms in unique ways.”

It’s of note to point out here that author Goldberger, as reported by the Defender, “is vice president of ActiveFence Trust & Safety, a technology company based in New York City and Tel Aviv that claims it ‘automatically collects data from millions of sources and applies contextual AI to power trust and safety operations of any size.'”

Of course, there’s nothing to see here — nothing but the desire of Goldberger and her company to safeguard “the children.” She is proposing “a system based on ‘human-curated, multi-language, off-platform intelligence’ — in other words, input provided by ‘expert’ human sources that would then create ‘learning sets’ that would train the AI to recognize purportedly harmful or dangerous content.”

Automating censorship

Igor Chudov, who authors the online Igor’s Newsletter on Substack, analyzed Goldberger’s article, writing on August 11 that “the WEF is becoming a little concerned. Unapproved opinions are becoming more popular, and online censors cannot keep up with millions of people becoming more aware and more vocal. The censorship engines employed by Internet platforms turned out to be quite stupid and incapable. People are even daring to complain about the World Economic Forum, which is obviously completely unacceptable.”

Chudov noted that Goldberger’s solution to reach beyond the platform-by-platform basis for digital regulation “would allow [the censors] to move beyond the major internet platforms in order to collect intelligence about people and ideas everywhere.” He continued that “such an approach would allow them to know better what person or idea to censor — on all major platforms at once.”

As the Defender reported: “The ‘intelligence’ collected by the system from its ‘millions of sources’ would, according to Chudov, ‘detect thoughts that they do not like,’ resulting in ‘content removal decisions handed down to the likes of Twitter, Facebook, and so on … a major change from the status quo of each platform deciding what to do based on messages posted to that specific platform only.'”

Chudov concluded that, in this way, “the search for wrongthink becomes globalized.”

Didi Rankovic of ReclaimTheNet.org writes that it’s all an effort to automate the censorship of what the left deems hate speech and misinformation. She wrote: “The WEF continues to beat the drum of the need to somehow merge AI and humans as a supposed panacea [for] pretty much any ill plaguing society and economy.”

According to Rankovic, the totally out-of-touch WEF would like to pretend that the burning issue for the world’s citizens is online “misinformation,” rather than skyrocketing inflation, fuel shortages, including the uncertainty of many to be able to heat their homes this winter, the increasing threat of food scarcity, and the myriad other problems facing humanity, both in the U.S. and around the world.

Rankovic points out that references to AI by the WEF and throughout Goldberger’s article is actually erroneous. “The WEF says it is proposing ‘a new framework: rather than relying on AI to detect at scale and humans to review edge cases, an intelligence-based approach is crucial.'” She summarizes Goldberger’s piece as a “techno-bubble word salad” that can ultimately be discerned to mean “simply pressuring social networks to start moving towards ‘preemptive censorship.'”

Gates Foundation-backed UN involvement

The Defender contends that “the WEF isn’t the only entity calling for more stringent policing of online content and ‘misinformation.'” The UN’s Educational, Scientific, and Cultural agency, UNESCO, has a “#ThinkBeforeSharing” initiative to “stop the spread of conspiracy theories.”

UNESCO opines that “The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked a worrying rise in disinformation and conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories can be dangerous: they often target and discriminate against vulnerable groups, ignore scientific evidence and polarize society with serious consequences. This needs to stop.” They are obviously referring to the skepticism of many citizens who question the effectiveness of the lockdowns, the efficacy of masks, and the safety and effectiveness of the COVID vaccines.

UNESCO’s campaign is a partnership with Twitter, the European Commission and the World Jewish Congress. It is using Twitter to, among other things, dispel the notion that powerful forces are manipulating “secretly behind the scenes with negative intent.”

As the Defender described:

• The #ThinkBeforeSharing campaign provides a host of infographics and accompanying materials intended to explain what “conspiracy theories” are, how to identify them, how to report on them and how to react to them more broadly.
• According to these materials, conspiracy theories have six things in common, including:
• • An “alleged secret plot.”
  • A “group of conspirators.”
  • “‘Evidence’ that seems to support the conspiracy theory.”
  • Suggestions that “falsely” claim “nothing happens by accident and that there are no coincidences,” and that “nothing is as it appears and everything is connected.”
  • They divide the world into “good or bad.”
  • They scapegoat people and groups.

#ThinkBeforeSharing follows on the heels of previous similar UN initiatives to counter “misinformation” and “conspiracy theories.” These include a “plan of action to tackle disinformation, sponsored by the U.S., U.K., Ukraine, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland,” which “emphasizes the primary role that governments have, in countering false narratives,” and “the UN’s #PledgeToPause initiative, which was announced in November 2020, and was described by the UN as “the first global behaviour-change campaign on misinformation.”

These campaigns are part of a broader UN initiative, called “Verified,” that aims to recruit participants to disseminate “verified content optimized for social sharing,” stemming directly from the UN communications department. This means the UN will determine the propaganda to be disseminated uniformly and consistently across social media platforms.

According to the Defender, both “‘Verified’ and the #PledgeToPause campaigns still appear to be active as of the time of this writing.” It states: “The Verified initiative is operated in conjunction with Purpose, an activist group that has collaborated with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the World Health Organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Google, and Starbucks.” It adds that the UN “has been in a strategic partnership with the WEF” since 2019 based on six “areas of focus,” one of which is “digital cooperation.”

As with many digital initiatives underway at the behest of the WEF and other global forces, #ThinkBeforeSharing is advancing without the knowledge or approval of the general population.

In an all-too-common occurrence, the Springfield, Missouri public school district conducted a teacher training session in August that forced teachers to identify their racial and sexual “privilege.” As writer/editor and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute Christopher Rufo revealed on Twitter, the training promoted “identities such as ‘pansexual’ and ‘polyamorous,’ and warned that ‘misgendering a trans person is an act of violence.'” The session opened by recognizing “the Native and Indigenous Peoples whose land we currently gather on. Springfield Public Schools is built on ancestral territory of the Osage, Delaware, and Kickapoo Nations and Peoples.” While it’s unclear whether any tribal representatives were present (or cared enough) to witness this groveling, the slide stated: “In doing social justice work, it is important we acknowledge the dark history and violence against Native and Indigenous People across the world…” Rufo noted that the program included transgender activism by following “the basic principles of radical gender theory: that ‘gender is a universe'” and that “society has created a ‘heteronormative’ system that is inherently oppressive.” Training materials acknowledged that “the goal of the program is to subvert this system and affirm identities such as ‘trans,’ ‘nonbinary,’ ‘polyamorous,’ and ‘pansexual.'” The presenters shared a video featuring “genderqueer” and “nonbinary” children, claiming that some students “don’t have a gender,” and that “pronouns matter.” Unfortunately for the Springfield school district, this radical propaganda matters to Missouri’s conservative attorney general, Eric Schmitt, whose office is investigating the training program, and to the Southeastern Legal Foundation, which has filed a lawsuit in an attempt to shut it down. Rufo’s entire article on this subject can be found at City-Journal.org.

The Family Institute of Connecticut wants parents to “stop feeding the insanity at local schools” by first opting children out of school surveys. As Phyllis Schlafly often wrote, these surveys, or what she called “nosy questionnaires,” collect personal data on children that can be stored and shared. The Family Institute notes that the surveys “feed data about your child and family to school administrators, the State Board of Education, and external data collection agencies.” They report that the State of Connecticut “uses Panorama Education and other out-of-state companies to track your child as authorized by benign-sounding state laws. They use that information to justify, of course… 1) more surveys, but also 2) more administrators, 3) comprehensive sex-ed and accompanying sexually explicit books and materials, 4) categorizing and grooming of children, and more.” The Family Institute’s website contains information and suggestions for parents, including a “Parental Opt-Out Form” that can be copied, filled out, and presented to schools to protect children from controversial activities and programs. The form can be used in any state, for as the organization asserts: “There is no constitutional or moral authority for the federal government to create standards for attitudes, values, and beliefs of American citizens, conduct psychological research on them, and to keep this data in perpetuity in state longitudinal databases.”

A teacher’s union and parents are battling in Woodland Park, Colorado for control of the city’s public schools. The union wants to force-feed liberal propaganda to students while parents want to return to reading, writing, math, and science. The Epoch Times reported that last November, after a slate of conservative school board members won four seats on the local school board and immediately began delivering on their campaign promises, the Woodland Park Education Association, an NEA affiliate, instigated a recall effort “with help from its state and national allies.” According to citizen activist and Woodland Park resident, Jameson Dion, one of the new board members was harassed into resigning, and the recall petition is targeting the three remaining conservative members. Their crimes include opposing mask mandates and supporting school choice, higher teacher pay, and greater transparency, which are positions most parents support, and were the reasons the new board members were elected. Teachers received an 8.5 percent pay increase, the COVID-19 mask mandate was eliminated, and the new board created a “sensitive subject” policy to ensure that parents would be informed beforehand of any controversial or age-inappropriate programs. Woodland Park parents have been fed up for years, which prompted the creation of the classical charter school, Merit Academy, in 2021. (Education Reporter wrote about Merit and its resounding success last year.) In resisting the new school board members, Dion told the Epoch Times that the local teachers’ union was “using a playbook established by the NEA,” and that the NEA’s website contains an article on “How to Oust a Right Wing School Board” that describes a similar campaign undertaken a few years ago in the Jefferson County School District near Denver.