Monday, February 24, 2014

inBloom to testify on Friday & state plans to upload your child's private data in July



      Last week, the Commissioner King revealed that, despite the calls for an indefinite delay by legislators of both parties, he intends to start uploading student data to inBloom in July, with the full launch of the data dashboards in September.  We are the only state in the country in which the State Commissioner has been impervious to the objections of parents, educators, school board members and administrators, and  has refused to pull out of this egregious project.

Not to mention inBloom and the data dashboards will start charging for their "services" in January, and all districts will be able to cancel the inBloom-linked data dashboards at that time.   Many will likely do so.  So why does inBloom need to have all this student data for three or four months of data dashboards?

On Friday  the NYS Assembly will be resuming its hearings on privacy, and reps from inBloom are expected to testify.  Their refusal to show up last time really backfired and angered the legislators.  

The hearings will take place Friday, Feb. 28 at 10:30 AM at 250 Broadway in Lower Manhattan; livestream hereMore info and a form you can fill out if you want  to testify is here.  See also the RT video interview from NYC parent activist Karen Sprowal on why she opposes inBloom and feels it will put at risk her child’s privacy and security on our blog below; please also sign the MoveOn petition to stop inBloom in New York state here. 

See the video below and also the discussion/debate on NPR today between Aimee Guidera of the Gates-funded Data Quality Campaign and Superintendent Mary-Fox Alter of Pleasantville NY.


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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

If the curricula of the future are to be computer-adaptive (and that’s the vision that Bill Gates has articulated for U.S. education), and if inBloom controls the national database of student responses to which every publisher of such curricula must adapt its lessons, doesn’t it become, by virtue of that fact, a monopoly? Is it not the case, then, that only companies that work with inBloom play in the computer-adaptive curriculum market? Doesn’t this mean that the state is establishing a prior restraint on free trade in educational materials by creating a defacto monopolistic gateway controlled by a private entity? And given all that, how could anyone possibly think that this Orwellian database is legal?

So, there are other issues than simply the privacy one. That one’s a biggie. Russian television recently ran a piece about how the U.S. had this new system for inuring citizens to continual, total surveillance from day 1. When even the Russians are saying that we’re taking surveillance too far, we’re in trouble.

Stop the Orwellian national database. 1984 was not supposed to be a public policy manual.

Unknown said...

You continue to say (see your post) that inBloom refused to attend the Nov hearing. This is not true. You asked inBloom why they weren't there and they answered yet you continue to state they refused. http://educationnewyork.com/files/Screen%20Shot%202014-02-26%20at%209.20.05%20AM.png

Leonie Haimson said...

Sheila, inBloom was asked to testify at the hearings by the Assembly education committee and they refused. This was extensively discussed during the hearing and by the press. Later when I asked her why on twitter, Sharren Bates responded that they refused because "our customers are in charge of which local events we attend". Presumably she meant NYSED asked them not to testify. What part of that do you not understand?

Unknown said...

I understand everything you say & why you say it, Leonie. I know much of what has been written is inaccurate.

InBloom wasn't fired from LA. inBloom fired LA.

And NYSED & inBloom didn't act unlawfully. Decision based on facts of law not your perception & opinion

Judge Breslin Decision
http://educationnewyork.com/files/205490395-InBloom-Decision-by-Judge-Breslin-3.pdf

You seem to forget I was against inBloom before I learned more. Now I am inBloom neutral other than asking questions & tweeting answers. Sure, you'll say otherwise. But that would be your opinion, not fact.

Anonymous said...

Scott Bakker, the polymath philosopher and novelist who developed the Blind Brain Hypothesis, one of the leading contemporary models of consciousness, writes of a near future "when retail giants use biometric surveillance to catalog their customers and to insure that their employees continually smile."

inBloom will be PERFECT training for kids who will live in such a world.