Wednesday, February 12, 2025

NEW video about how NYC Dept of Health is enabling Talkspace to share teen personal data with social media platforms, undermining their mental health

 

Please watch the brief video above about how the online mental health company Talkspace, which has a $26M contract with the NYC Department of Health, continues to share NYC teen data with ad trackers and social media companies -- the very same companies NYC is suing for undermining their mental health. 

This is despite our repeated letters to the Department of Health, raising our privacy concerns starting last September. Also, check out this recent piece in Gizmodo, that reports that now Seattle and Baltimore schools also have similar contracts with Talkspace to provide free mental health to teens, with likely similar data privacy violations. 

Moreover, as the Gizmodo article revealed, Talkspace is now developing a “Personalized Podcast” created through AI, that harvests patients' personal mental health info from their therapy sessions and feeds it back to them in the form of a sound file. One can only imagine the damage this could cause to vulnerable teens if someone got hold of the sound files on their phones or they themselves played them back inadvertently in public. Not even considering how the use of AI chatbots can itself be perilous, as shown by the recent lawsuit filed by parents who allege that a chatbot caused their son to commit suicide

One clarification: though the Gizmodo article notes that after we brought attention to this issue, ad-trackers were removed from the NYC Teenspace landing page, we found many other pages on its website are still collecting and disclosing teens' personal data,  as our video explains above, including the page featuring the new supposedly improved Teenspace Privacy Policy.  We wrote about our findings in our most recent letter sent to the NYC Department of Health more than a month ago, and yet have gotten no response.  

Parents: If your child has visited the Teenspace website or has signed up for their services, please contact us at info@studentprivacymatters.org as soon as possible.

CEC 15 President's letter about the importance of resistance and running for your CEC and Citywide Councils

See the excellent letter below from CEC 15 President Antonia Ferraro about how the CEC is responding to Trump's threats to control school curriculums, violate student civil rights, and ban books. 

She also points out how given this political climate, it is more important than ever for parents to run for their district CECs and Citywide Councils.  The deadline to apply is Feb. 16, only a few days from now.  More info on how to apply is here.

 

February 11, 2025 


Dear District 15 Families and Community,


CEC15 has received letters of concern regarding various Trump Administration Executive Orders1 2 3 and their potential impact on school funding4 5 and the rights of our diverse student body.6 I believe advocacy for all our children is more important than ever, and I appreciate the ongoing efforts of families to support students by sending such letters.


In the absence of statements from NYCPS I am compelled to respond to concerns about the executive orders. It is an open question as to how enforceable or legal they are; legal analysts have called their legality and constitutionality into question,7 8 9 and numerous lawsuits10 11 12 have already been filed. What I do know is that the federal government cannot dictate to states and cities how their schools function and what curriculums they use. Regardless of questions of legality, there are workarounds to safeguard student rights and I implore our NYCPS to stay the course and develop those workarounds.


What do I mean by workarounds? After the Supreme Court decided in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 113 that K-12 schools could not consider race in admissions, the Obama administration issued guidance14 that enabled school districts to integrate by looking at measures of poverty. This formed the basis for our diversity plans. This type of thinking is essential right now. It is crucial that NYCPS, together with school and community leaders, stay focused on the mission of ensuring that all children in New York City receive a high-quality education in a safe, caring environment.


I also want you to know that as President of CEC15, I have been reaffirming our organization's commitment to celebrating, protecting and respecting all of our students at every single meeting. I have and will continue to demand that the DOE leadership resist attacks on students’ and teachers’ civil rights, human rights, and First Amendment rights.


I have been doing this through the issues I elevate at our public CEC meetings and in meetings that I regularly attend with our Chancellor. CEC15 has been doing this through the resolutions the council has passed, such as CEC15’s Resolution to Prevent and Respond to Hate Speech.15 And I have been doing this through the banned and challenged books that I highlight in meetings. I often share banned books that reflect identities celebrated by our cultural and heritage months and various overlapping holidays. This month we celebrated Black History Month and Lunar New Year. To honor Black History Month, I featured All Because You Matter by Tami Charles, which offers love, hope and affirmation through the Black experience. And to honor Asian and immigrant families, I featured Drawn Together by Minh Le, which tells the story of a grandson and grandfather, struggling to communicate across a language barrier, but find connection through art.


CEC15’s recent Legislative Breakfast largely focused on the threats of this new administration. The event had more than 80 registrants including elected officials, principals, teachers and school staff, and parent leaders. Many important topics were raised, including SCA accountability, libraries, arts funding, protecting migrant and asylum-seeking families, school transportation, the importance of Title I funding, the importance of mental health professionals and mandated services, and the need to revise building utilization plans in buildings collocated with charter schools.


Here again CEC15 featured banned and challenged books. These books were raffled to attendees. The list of books honored the experiences of the trans or gender-questioning children, Native American, African American, Jewish, Hispanic, and immigrant children. The books included:


I am Enough by Grace Byers

Hold Onto Your Music by Mona Golabeck and Lee Cohen

Dreamers by Yuyi Morales

Fry Bread by Kevin Noble Maillard

Planting Stories by Anika Aldamuy Denise When Aidan Became a Brother by Kyle Lukoff We are Still Here! by Traci Sorell




These books were challenged in 2022 by the Northampton (PA) Area School District (NASD) school board, which unanimously voted to table a donation of fifty books from The Conscious Kid, a non-profit organization focused on equity and promoting healthy racial identity development. They rejected the donation after just ten parents complained during a meeting. One of ten parents/grandparents to object to the donation claimed, “The Conscious Kid uses Marxist critical race theory.” Some of the people had not even read any of the books. 

I feel that elevating banned books does what proclamations can’t. By sharing these books, I aim to shine a spotlight on the creativity and excellence of writers whose work reflects the rich and varied lived experiences of children in our own communities. Others may call it DEI, but I call it reality. 

Therefore, I will keep calm and carry on with the mission of supporting all our students. But I will also keep an eye on protecting the democratic infrastructure that makes supporting students possible. Protecting the independence of democratic institutions and functions should be, must be a nonpartisan concern to all Americans. 

This is why it is so important for all community members to participate. I urge parents and caregivers who want to have a voice in our children's collective education to consider running for a seat on a Community or Citywide Education Council (CCEC). CCECs are a small but impactful part of our local democratic infrastructure. CCEC elections for the upcoming 2-year term will be happening soon, and if you have a child in a New York City public school, you can run for a seat. The deadline to apply is soon!

2025 Selection Process Schedule:

      January 13 - February 16: Candidate application period

      February 28 - April 2: Candidate Forums

      April 25 - May 13: Parents vote online

      May 14 - June 2: Run-off elections, if necessary

      June: Election results announced

      July 1: Members-elect take office

Regardless of whether you wish to run, we need parent voices at our CCEC meetings, Community attendance is critical to engage on these topics. Please join us for our next Business or Calendar Meeting, or join us for an upcoming workshop or community celebration.


Thank you again for your support of District 15 schools, and the children and families who depend on them. Rest assured, I will continue to be clear with the DOE leadership that District 15 families expect them to resist attacks on students and teachers’ civil rights, human rights, and First Amendment rights. Hearing your voices helps me do that.

Keep Calm and Carry On Supporting All Students,

 CEC15 Signatories

Antonia Ferraro Martinelli, CEC15 President Leslie King, CEC15 Co-President 1

Vanessa Gonzalez Ueoka, CEC15 Co-President 2 Nancy Cruz, CEC15 Secretary

Katina Rogers, CEC15 Treasurer Jonathan Davis, CEC15 Parliamentarian Hans Arrieta, CEC15 member

Kwame Egerton, CEC15 member

 D15 Presidents’ Council Signatories

Elton Dodson, D15 Presidents’ Council Co-President

Elizabeth Sanders Greyson, D15 Presidents’ Council Co-President

 

1 https://www.ed.gov/media/document/title-ix-enforcement-directive-dcl

 2 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-indoctrination-in-k-12-schooling/

3 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/keeping-men-out-of-womens-sports/

4 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/expanding-educational-freedom-and-opportunity-for-families

5 https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-advances-school-choice-supporting-charter-schools 

6 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/us/trump-executive-orders-local-control-schools.html 

7 https://www.nilc.org/articles/analysis-of-trump-day-1-executive-orders-unconstitutional-illegal-and-cruel/

8 https://democrats-appropriations.house.gov/news/fact-sheets/background-unlawful-impoundment-president-trumps-executive-orders

9 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/where-do-legal-cases-against-trumps-executive-orders-stand-2025-01-30/

10 https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/tracking-the-legal-challenges-to-trumps-executive-orders

11 https://natlawreview.com/article/dei-whirlwind-continues-new-lawsuit-challenges-constitutionality-anti-dei-orders

12 https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-lawsuits-list-executive-orders-doge-citizenship-2018514

13 https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/551/701/

14 https://www.ed.gov/sites/ed/files/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/guidance-ese-201111.pdf

15 https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/951dd9a1-96ac-438b-8642-d89cc6651997/downloads/6e7a1ac2-4590-4f19-9535-bef161121cd1/Approved%20-%20CEC15%20Resolution%20to%20Prevent%20and%20Res.pdf?ver=173886625285 3

 

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Alert: PowerSchool data breach at (at least) four NYC schools


 As reported in tonight's Daily News (free link here), contrary to previous DOE assurances, four NYC public schools were likely affected by massive PowerSchool breach:  . 

Fordham HS for the Arts

Long Island City High School

Lower East Side Prep 

                                                             Westchester Square Academy

About 3,000 students are currently enrolled in these schools, but former students may also have been affected if the school used the Student Information System in years past. 

Please let parents, students and former students at these schools know to ask questions at their schools as soon as possible.  They should then check for ID theft and sign up for free credit monitoring and ID theft insurance, offered by PowerSchool.  More info here.

What's unacceptable is how DOE still refuses to confirm to reporters the names of affected schools, or announce this publicly, as hundreds of other districts have done.  The information came instead from the NYSED Privacy office. 

NYSED has also put out guidance to districts, suggesting that PowerSchool may not be telling the whole story and that the data breach may affect not only former students, but also schools that no longer use the School Information System but once did.  

 
Yet I can find no mention anywhere on these schools websites nor on the DOE website where they alert parents to data breaches - or as the DOE euphemistically like to call them, "Data Security Incidents." 

Also very problematic is how the PowerSchool contract with DOE for seventeen data-hungry products implies the company will only comply with state and federal privacy laws when they consider them "commercially reasonable." I shared my concerns with DOE over a year ago about this and got no response.


Though up to now, only the PowerSchool SIS has been reported as breached, such lax privacy language applies to all these products and is unacceptable. As has not been widely reported, PowerSchool failed to take the most simple security protections such as two-factor authentication for user access, and instead, the hacker just obtained the password of a single employee.

By the way, according to many reports, teacher personal data was also exposed. Have teachers at the affected schools been informed?

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Free legal resources to help support the rights of immigrant and undocumented students

On Monday, Trump will be sworn in as President.  There is a lot of uncertainty as to what this will mean for thousands of NYC undocumented students.

NY Legal Assistance Group workshop on Know Your Rights for Immigrants, co-sponsored by CM Lincoln Restler and CM Shahana Hanif:  Federal immigration regulations, expectations of the new administration, New York’s sanctuary city policies, and resources available locally. Thursday, February 6th at 7pm.  Register here.

Here are other helpful guides to protecting the rights of undocumented students, some of them compiled by Project Unicorn.  If you have other suggestions, please put them in the comments section.

Sunday, January 5, 2025

Gates Foundation influence on NYC's adoption of Illustrative Math, despite lack of competitive bidding or backing in research


Susan Edelman of the NY Post has written extensively about Illustrative Math [IM], the curriculum mandated by DOE for NYC high schools for Algebra, as the first step in their $34 million initiative NYC Solves, in which they plan to standardize the teaching of math across all schools.  

According to the critiques of some math teachers, as well as an apparent decline in test scores  in the 265 schools that piloted the curriculum last year, IM Algebra and its implementation has been problematic,  though the DOE has resisted releasing comprehensive data. The curriculum has been shown to omit some key topics on the Math Algebra Regents exam.   

Yet in  June 2024, with great fanfare, the Mayor’s office announced that IM would be expanded to all high schools and more middle schools, describing it as a “visionary shift [that] revolutionizes and standardizes how math is taught in schools through high-quality, research-based curricula implemented across districts with intensive educator training and coaching.”

In July, I interviewed Bobson Wong, a math teacher at Bayside High School on our radio show Talk out of School, where he criticized the way in which DOE forbid teachers to use any of their own problem sets with the IM curriculum, and told them they would be evaluated on whether they kept to a very rigid schedule of component lessons and testing modules, which could prevent them from addressing the actual learning needs of their individual students.

More recently, Savvas Learning, a company which produces a competing curriculum called enVision Mathematics, sent a letter of protest to the NYC Comptroller, saying that  It appears that DOE did not follow any procurement process before selecting Illustrative Mathematics”.  The letter, posted below, was first reported on by Politico and then written about more extensively by Sue Edelman at the NY Post .

Savvas Learning went on: “While multiple curricula companies would normally have had the opportunity to submit proposals, it appears the DOE selected Illustrative Mathematics with no competing bids or procurement process.”

The company also expressed concern that the “DOE is actively considering whether to expand the rollout of Illustrative Mathematics or other curricula in additional schools, many of which are K- 5 and middle schools,” without proper competitive bidding or vetting of alternative programs such as their own.

The reality is that the fix was in for Illustrative Math from the start.  The Gates Foundation has funded the development of IM by at least $25 million since 2012, a curriculum that was designed by Bill McCallum, who co-led the development of the Common Core math standards.  The Common Core standards were also funded by Gates Foundation to the tune of over $200 million. 

The Gates Foundation then spent nearly a million dollars for the group Educators for Excellence to push for the adoption of IM math.  They have also provided a  half million dollars to CenterPoint Education Solutions to develop digital assessments aligned with IM, five million to the Achievement Network to create a digital version of IM, and another $5 million to West Ed, to “understand the efficacy of Illustrative Math at improving student math outcomes.”

Proof of that efficacy is elusive.  WestEd appears to be still recruiting districts in a “nationwide” study of IM,  and when it is complete, one will have to closely evaluate their conclusions, given how WestEd itself receives much of its support from Gates.  When DOE officials were asked why the IM curriculum was chosen by DOE, Sue  wrote that “the DOE initially claimed on its website that Illustrative Math had the “endorsement” of a respected think tank, EdReports.”

Later the DOE was forced to remove this claim from their website, as EdReports responded to Sue that they do not endorse curriculums.  DOE also claimed that the program “has undergone a formal review  by a committee of NYC educators” but refused to identify the members of that committee or release their findings.

EdReports does indeed rate curriculums, though they describe this as providing "free reports that help you evaluate instructional materials because high-quality content matters to teachers, to kids, and to our collective future."  Unmentioned here is how they have received at least $37.4 million in Gates grants for these reports, including $12 million since last April, and how their their ratings are not based on any actual studies of student outcomes, but  according to how closely these programs adhere to the Common Core standards.  The Common Core standards in turn was criticized by many (including me) of having no backing in research, and have since been revised by NY State and are now called the Next Generation Learning Standards or the P12 Learning Standards, (though how fundamentally different they are from the Common Core is unclear.)  

The Gates support of IM math doesn’t end there.  In  Oct. 2023, shortly after DOE  introduced the curriculum in 265 high schools, the NYC Fund for Public Schools received $4.3 million from Gates "to support the implementation of high-quality instructional materials and practices for improving students' math experience and outcomes."

Though that grant was supposed to last 26 months, the Fund for Public Schools, which is the mechanism by which DOE receives grants, got another $4.5 million Gates grant in Nov. 2024  “to improve the capacity of its district and school-based professional learning staff and scale the implementation of math curricula and high-quality teaching across middle schools.”

If you put it all together, that suggests that one way or another, Gates has invested nearly $200 million in Illustrative Math or the standards on which the curriculum was based, and  this funding goes a long way in explaining its adoption by DOE.

A similar story could be told about the three Literacy programs that the city has mandated schools implement in their NYC Reads initiative: Wit & Wisdom, EL Education, and the most widely adopted of the three, HMH Into Reading.  The latter in particular has been criticized for its rigidity, for its time-consuming testing, and a lack of opportunity for students to read actual books.  To justify the selection of these curriculums, again DOE cited their ratings on EdReports, and though there is a page on the DOE website that summarizes a few research studies, those studies are extremely weak.

For example, the study that supposedly shows the efficacy of HMH Reading by Cobblestone Applied Research & Evaluation, Inc.,  looked at a few hundred 3rd and 5th grade students enrolled in a majority white, suburban school district.  After a few months, there was a growth in their reading scores,but the study neither compared that growth to previous years, nor to any control group.

Literacy experts have criticized EdReports for giving high ratings to ELA curriculums that are bloated and have no proof of results. Hundreds of literacy specialists, superintendents and teachers wrote an open letter to the governor of Massachusetts, criticizing the state’s approved list of “high quality” curricula for districts to adopt based on their EdReports ratings, adding that  "Teachers need various strategies to do what is best for the students in front of them, and there is no proven curriculum that addresses the needs of every child." 

One would think with all the rhetoric about “evidence-based” research, the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the Gates Foundation and their influence with school districts in NYC and elsewhere given the amount of money they are able to throw around, the Foundation could have sponsored  at least a few randomized studies before pushing any curriculum into hundreds of schools enrolling hundreds of thousands of students.  You would hope that DOE would also insist on more actual evidence, before its widespread adoption. Yet for whatever reason, those in charge still apparently see entire districts as potential guinea pigs, and allow them to engage in large-scale experimentation, despite the risk that these efforts may spectacularly fail, as they so  often have in the past. 

The letter to the NYC Comptroller from Sean P. Mulcahy, Senior VP and General Counsel of Saavas is below.