Data Mining Infrastructure in Nebraska Education
by Sue Greenwald, M.D.
In our Dec. 1, 2024 article, we raised the alarm of ever increasing data mining software being brought to the Nebraska Board of Education for approval.
Then, last week we learned how these software packages connect to an AI/SEL “Mind-Set” altering educational program called “Portrait of a Graduate.” This combination could yield “1984” levels of thought control for children in public schools.
This is Part 2 of the “Portrait of a Graduate” series. Part one is here:
Let’s Explore These Data Collection Systems
The Statewide Longitudinal Data System
Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) was discussed in the Dec. 1 article. The video regarding the AI version of Portrait of a Graduate mentions the SLDS as able to interface with the data.
To nobody’s surprise, the SLDS is brought to you by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The genesis of it was all happening in conjunction with the onset of Gate’s Common Core standards during the Obama administration.
A good overview comes from this 2015 article from studentprivacymatters.org.
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.
Under the federal law known as FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, if medical and counseling records are included in your child’s education records they 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.
After a 2012 scandal regarding a Gates corporation called InBloom, the public learned this:
The federal government and the Gates Foundation have been dedicated to the goal of amassing and disclosing personal student data in many other ways.
Ten organizations joined together, funded by the Gates Foundation, to create the Data Quality Campaign in 2005. Since that time, the federal government has mandated every state to 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 data from many state agencies such as the criminal justice system, child services, and health departments.
The Data Quality Campaign collects the SLDS data. The funders of this NGO are friends of Bill Gates. But the funder of the state grants to pay for the data collection system is the US Dept. of Education.
In Nebraska, the SLDS has been supported by federal grants of $3.5 million in 2007, $4.4 million in 2012, $3.5 million in 2019, and $4 million in 2023, for a total of $15.4 million spent on just our little state of less than 2 million people. source
Some of the goals of the 2023 grant are listed here: source
Implementing Policies, Procedures, and Systems to Improve the Educational Outcomes of At-Risk and Systems-Involved Students
P-20W SLDS Cooperation between the NDE K-12 SLDS (ADVISER), ECIDS, and NSWERS systems
The first goal was to add juvenile justice and foster care youth data to the SLDS, but allow us to translate that second line: “Pre-school to age 20 or workforce data mining, interface with ECIDS and NSWERS data systems.” We will discuss ECIDS further and we have no idea what NSWERS is.
Keep in mind, the SLDS may be funded by the federal government, but the data is being collected and stored by Bill Gates and friends at the Data Quality Campaign.
ECIDS and ECDataLab
The Early Childhood Integrated Data System (ECIDS, pronounced ekids) focuses on preschoolers: their family’s personal information, their child care, their subsidies, their “workforce,” and “links to the K-12” data. This is the P-20W portion mentioned above. But since preschoolers don’t really have data, it is mining your family.
On the Nebraska State Board agenda for next month is a grant for the “integration partner” of ECIDS called ECDataLab. These two entities appear to be under the umbrella of ECDataWorks. After reading the entire website full of meaningless jargon, the only thing to be gleaned from it is ECDataLab connects our state’s ECIDS with other states’ ECIDS, and offers tech support. It appears this is a portion of the overall $4 million grant, so this additional $315,000 will likely need to be approved.
Missy Coffey is a Co-Principal Investigator and Co-Founder of ECDataWorks (since 2016), a project advancing ECIDS. Conveniently, she is a former consultant for the US. Dept of Education SLDS Grant Program. She is the Executive Director of ECDatalab launched Sept. 3, 2025, 4 months ago, in Sacramento, CA.
“ECDataLab provides people-centered coaching, multi-agency cohort learning, and applied analytics development for early childhood leaders.”
Both ECIDS and ECDataWorks are products of the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, launched with seed money from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (huge foundation devoted to race-based initiatives) and the Heising-Simons Foundation ( a California family foundation that funds “left-of-center education policy research” along with other Democrat priorities such as climate change.) source
Key Principles of the founding agency called Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy (AISP), claim that data collection is used to improve lives through:
Responsible data sharing with strong privacy protections and ethical governance.
Centering equity (e.g., racial equity toolkit in its second edition, used by hundreds of organizations).
Cross-sector collaboration to address complex social issues.
While this program is based at UPenn and has financial backing from woke liberal foundations, there aren’t major red flags other than- WHY? If the SLDS is already collecting preschoolers’ information, what does this piece add? Why is sharing preschool data with other states even a thing?
Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS)
If you recall, this article started with an explanation about how your medical and mental health records are not protected by privacy laws if they are included in educational files. That is only one of the reasons we believe that doing a mental health evaluation of EVERY student at school is highly problematic. This is a previous article about MTSS if you want to deep dive into that:
Portrait of a Graduate
The mind-melting AI collaboration with SEL “competencies” is what started this foray into the many ways student and family privacy are non-existent in public school.
It is one thing for your ed-tech bot to read you; it is another thing for it to control you. If you have not read Part 1 of this series, here is your opportunity.
The author is a retired Pediatrician and a co-founder of Nebraska Education Coalition
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