Hilarious video of DeVos testimony on class size - with a more serious message lurking behing it

Check out hilarious clip below of Anthony Cody reacting to Betsy Devos testifying before the US House of Representatives on Wednesday that larger classes have benefits to students.  Anthony, who is a former teacher and a fellow board member of the Network for Public Education, got up at the crack of dawn to attend these hearings and we're glad he did.

Not to detract from the absurdity of her comments, I'd like to point out that individuals including Bill Gates and our Michael Bloomberg have made similar absurd claims.  In fact, Anthony Cody himself rebutted Bill Gates' damaging ideas on class size in the Washington Post.

When he was Education Secretary Arne Duncan also advised districts to increase class size, offering this likely fabricated example:

"In fact, teachers in Asia sometimes request larger class sizes because they think a broad distribution of students and skill levels can accelerate learning."

In a one-to-one meeting, I asked our former Schools Chancellor Farina to back her claims, oft-expressed in town hall meetings, that larger classes were good for children's social-emotional learning.  Of course, she never did because that research doesn't exist.

Right now in Ontario, the education minister Lisa Thompson has announced that their government intends to increase class sizes in high schools from 22 to 28 students per class.  As justification, she has maintained that this will make students "more resilient." 

That research doesn't exist either.  To the contrary,  there is abundant evidence to show that students' persistence, effort, engagement and self-esteem -- all linked to success in schools and later in life -- are significantly increased when class sizes are smaller.


What's the message here?  Though Betsy DeVos deserves ridicule, so should all the other class size deniers who are trying to force their wrong-headed views on other people's kids -- and in the process deny them a quality education.

How Betsy DeVos much-criticized tweets echo earlier disinformation campaigns by Bill Gates and Arne Duncan

In recent days there has been much criticism of Betsy Devos for putting out this deceptive graph on Twitter that purported to show that school spending has no impact on student achievement as measured by the NAEPs:

The Nation’s Report Card shows that test scores continue to stagnate. This is not something we’re going to spend our way out of and not something we’re going to regulate our way out of. #RISE2018 pic.twitter.com/H6GHz8YpYg

— Betsy DeVos (@BetsyDeVosED) April 12, 2018

Here's a sample of the criticisms that she received:

Chart has some enormous flaws best refuted by research by @SchlFinance101 & @KiraboJackson Data in the hands of simpleminded education commentator is worse than ignorance itself because it will mislead others. But will fight fire with fire in my next post.

— Ed Law Blog (@DerekWBlack) April 13, 2018

Here's the response from economist Kirabo Jackson, showing his contrary analysis that indeed, money matters in improving student achievement:

Here is a similar graph without the nonsensical scaling.https://t.co/1CgoRZxlT1 pic.twitter.com/MZw6NfAP7p

— C. Kirabo Jackson (@KiraboJackson) April 12, 2018

Yet the sort of deceptive chart employed by DeVos has been disseminated for years by corporate reformers.  This includes corporate reform Sugar Daddy Bill Gates, who provided this chart while asserting to the Governor's Association in 2011 that  "Over the last four decades, the per-student cost of running our K-12 schools has more than doubled, while our student achievement has remained flat, and other countries have raced ahead."

 

In his speech Gates implicitly endorsed the successful effort subsequently undertaken by many Governors to defund their public schools - which our education system has still not recovered from.  

The chorus of boos that recently met Betsy Devos' tweet on school spending is similar to how another one of her tweets was received last month:

Does this look familiar? Students lined up in rows. A teacher in front of a blackboard. Sit down; don’t talk; eyes up front. Wait for the bell. Walk to the next class. Everything about our lives has moved beyond the industrial era. But American education largely hasn’t. #SXSWEDU pic.twitter.com/kyy2r7bTud

— Betsy DeVos (@BetsyDeVosED) March 6, 2018

This tweet got 6.7 thousands comments on Twitter, most of them scathing.

Yet just a few weeks before, Laurene Powell Jobs had made essentially the same claim to the New York Times, when her Emerson Collective LLC sponsored a nationwide television program that centered around the assertion that our high schools haven't changed in 100 years:

“For the past 100 years America’s high schools have remained virtually unchanged, yet the world around us has transformed dramatically,” intones the familiar voice of Samuel L. Jackson in a video promoting the TV event."

This contrast in how misinformation is received is also reminiscent of Arne Duncan's distressing record as Education Secretary, when he proclaimed to the American Enterprise Institute in 2010 that that budget cuts to education should be enthusiastically accepted as the “new Normal”:

“My message is that this challenge can, and should be, embraced as an opportunity to make dramatic improvements. I believe enormous opportunities for improving the productivity of our education system lie ahead if we are smart, innovative, and courageous in rethinking the status quo....

In our blueprint for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, we support shifting away from class-sized based reduction that is not evidence-based. It might be that districts would vary class sizes by the subject matter or the skill of the teacher, or that part-time staff could be leveraged to lower class size during critical reading blocks.

I anticipate that a number of districts may be asked next year to weigh targeted class size increases against the loss of music, arts, and after-school programming. Those tough choices are local decisions. But it important that districts maintain a diverse and rich curriculum--and that they preserve the opportunities that make school exciting, fun, and engage young people in coming to school every day.

What did he suggest as the best most “smart” and innovative way to drastically cut budgets? That states and districts should adjust by allowing “smartly targeted increases in class size.”

Then again in 2011, Duncan told journalist Dana Goldstein that “Class size has been a sacred cow and we need to take it on."  Indeed, Duncan got his wish.   Schools all over the country laid off thousands of teachers during the recession, and most haven't recovered from the onslaught to their budgets and class sizes.  According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, while the number of students increased by 1.4 million since 2008, the number of public K-12 teachers and other school workers fell by 135,000.

In 2012, when Mitt Romney was running for President, he visited a Philadelphia school and proclaimed that class size doesn't matter.  His views were greeted with catcalls by many of the same Democrats who had kept their mouths shut when Arne Duncan said essentially the same thing.  Indeed, Obama ran a campaign ad, raking Romney over the coals for his erroneous views on class size, ignoring how this had become a standard line purveyed by Gates-funded DC think tanks and his own Education Secretary.

My point is simple: what's bad for the goose must also be bad for the gander.  Don't let educrats or so-called philanthropists get away with their false claims and damaging policies, no matter what party they belong to or how much funding they offer your organization. Because their rhetoric can become the "New Normal" and hurt kids and our schools for generations to come.

In which I explain how I unintentionally spread fake news about Bill Gates and now set the record straight

Yesterday, EdWeek's Politics K12 tweeted this:

Ten Politics K-12 Headlines You Probably Won't See in 2018 https://t.co/dDiveqQk5U #edpolitics

— Politics K-12 (@PoliticsK12) December 28, 2017

I responded this way:

Here's another one: @billgates admits he was wrong about everything K12 & pulls out of funding charter schls, data-mining, #commoncore & online learning. Instead he will push for small classes & real personalized learning as he & his kids benefited fr/ at their private schools https://t.co/sLzz4b8PCX

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) December 28, 2017

Since then the tweet has been retweeted more than one hundred times and liked another 140 plus times as of 4 PM today.

Unfortunately, too many people didn't read the tweet to which I was responding  and believed this to be actual news - that Bill Gates had actually seen the light.  Here are some responses:

Wow! Doesn’t surprise me in the least! Being a teacher myself for over 23 years- I could’ve set him straight long ago.

From another:

Random thought: I kinda want to note that realizing you were wrong about something isn’t easy, and if you have more money than sense you can surround yourself with sycophants to agree with you. I don’t want to take a patronizing victory lap when someone admits they were wrong.

Another: Better late than never! At least he learns from mistakes. 


If only that were true.

I don't want to be the inadvertent purveyor of #fakenews in this year  -- in a year of so much of the same. 

So you heard it here first:  As far as I know, Bill Gates has NOT renounced his support of any of the above policies, including charter schools, online learning, Common Core standards or the data-mining of students. 

He did NOT say that he would push for meaningful research-based reforms in our public schools like small classes, or any of the other benefits provided him or his kids at their private schools. 

This is easily ascertained by looking at his foundation's recent K12 grants. 

See this one from April of 2017,  for example, in which he awarded $225 to the Seattle public schools "to ensure the K-12 team’s work in equity is grounded in the real experiences of teachers, we must engage them directly in our learning." Yes, you read it right, an entire $225 to ensure K12 equity in the Seattle public schools.  

Compare that to this grant in June: $10 million "to support implementation of the Summit Learning program in targeted geographies."  This will help them expand their online learning platform further into public schools, where it has  caused many students to become bored and disengaged, according to their parents, and to lose the control of their children's personal data to the CEO of the Summit charter chain, without their consent.

He may be getting older, as are the rest of us, but apparently no wiser. 

Arne Duncan still arguing for mayoral control -- when the trend is in the opposite direction

Arne Duncan - a fan of mayoral control

In the Sunday Daily News , former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan argued for the extension of Mayoral control.  The official legislative session is supposed to end Wednesday and Mayoral control expires at the end of the month.  Yet considering Arne's unpopular and controversial policies this probably is not the most effective endorsement.  He wrote:

"Mayors who are in control of their schools are directly accountable for the success of those schools. Education becomes a key to the Mayors' success. To put it another way, parents are hard to fool and parents vote."

Really? This certainly is a change of tone from Duncan’s earlier condescending remarks that parents only opposed the Common Core standards after finding out that “their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”

If NYC parents are so hard to fool, one wonders why can't they have the right to elect a school board as voters do in most of the country? 

Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Farina have offered their own unconvincing arguments.  The Mayor has said an era of “corruption and chaos” would return if mayoral control is not renewed: 

“Unfortunately a lot of chaos went with that. A lot of corruption went with that. A lot of patronage ... a lot of people went to jail, we’ve got to make sure we never go back to those days.”

Chancellor Farina’s hand-wringing is  even more extreme:

Managers, appointed by the local school boards, inflated the price of contracts to generate lucrative kickbacks that took money directly away from students and siphoned money from taxpayers. One district alone stole $6 million from students, paying 81 employees for jobs they never showed up to. In another, school safety was entrusted to a high-level gang member.

Yet as Patrick Sullivan points out in this blog, mayoral control in NYC has not ensured a lack of corruption.  In fact, several  multi-million dollar fraudulent DOE contracts were paid out while Mayor Bloomberg was in charge, far more costly than anything was stolen during the days of the local school boards.  A huge, potential billion dollar contract was awarded by the DOE in 2015 to a vendor that had engaged in a massive kickback scheme, only to be rejected by City Hall after the media had called attention to it.    Moreover, local school boards lost all power to hire or to award contracts in 1996, years before mayoral control was established, as well as the power to appoint district superintendents. All that authority was given to the Chancellor.  More on that here.  

Arne Duncan famously said in March 2009, “At the end of my tenure, if only seven mayors are in control, I think I will have failed.”"  In fact, no school district in the country adopted this governance system since Duncan made this statement – with Washington DC the last to do so in 2007, according to Wikipedia.

Just this spring, the Illinois Legislature voted to revoke mayoral control in Chicago, Arne’s home town and the first city to adopt the system.  As Chicago residents also found out, mayoral control is no defense against wrong-headed policies, mismanagement or corruption.  In fact, one could argue that autocratic rule makes it even more likely.  Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s first hand-picked CEO of the Chicago public schools, Jean-Claude Brizard, lasted only a 17 months in the job; and the second, Barbara Byrd Bennett, who closed 50 Chicago schools in one year, is now serving an 4 ½  year sentence for kickbacks and self-dealing.

In 2015, Chicago voters overwhelmingly approved an advisory referendum to return to an elected school board, and a bill to do so was introduced in the Legislature.  As one of the co-sponsors, Illinois State Representative Greg Harris explained:

There is only one school district in the State of Illinois that does NOT have an elected school board, and that is the Chicago Public Schools.  Currently all members of the Chicago Board of Education are appointed by Mayor and are not accountable to the parents, students or communities they serve. It is time for a change. That is why I am proud to cosponsor HB 4268 which would change Chicago’s school board from appointees to an elected school board.

We know about the recent pay-to-play scandals rocking CPS. But for our neighborhoods there are so many other reasons that we need to take back control of our schools. We have seen our neighborhood schools losing resources for enrichment programs such as music, art, sports, foreign languages, advanced placement and special education. This year, CPS is proposing over $8.7 million in cuts to schools in our area.

It is also worth noting that at the same time the Board is cutting our schools and asking for a property tax increase, we will be paying $238 million in termination fees to banks and investors to get us out of interest rate swaps and other financial deals that the CPS Board itself instigated.

Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark

Chicago is not alone in its intention to go back to elected school boards.  Detroit just reinstated an elected school board  with the support of its mayor, after many years of "emergency managers" under state and mayoral control.  At least two major cities have successfully resisted adopting mayoral control despite attempts by their Mayors to exert more power: Los Angeles in 2006 and Seattle more recently in 2016. The Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, has convinced the New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, to allow their elected school board to resume authority after 21 years of state control.

So why do Duncan and others of his political persuasion keep promoting this inherently undemocratic system?  Bill Gates poured $4 million into the campaign to allow Mayor Bloomberg to keep control in 2009, as the NY Post then reported for the following reasons:

Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates — a pal of fellow billionaire Mayor Bloomberg — has secretly bankrolled Learn-NY, the group that joined the campaign led by The Post to extend mayoral control. “You want to allow for experimentation.” The cities where our foundation has put the most money is where there is a single person responsible.

Another big supporter of mayoral control, Bill Gates

Surely, it is always easier to only convince one person in charge to allow for untested policies to be imposed on our public schools and students, in the name of “experimentation,” without having to deal with school boards whose members may have different views.  Indeed, the top-down methods preferred by Gates and corporate reformers are far easier to implement without any of the limitations that messy democracy might require.

So what is the alternative?  As much as I’d like a citywide elected school board to replace the rubber-stamp Panel for Educational Policy, elected school boards are no panacea.  In Denver and more recently in Los Angeles and Oakland wealthy financiers, corporate executives and the charter lobby have combined to spend millions to elect school board members who complacently fall in line with their plans for privatization.  (Watch this terrific video if you haven’t yet of Kate Burnite, a recent Denver high school graduate, excoriating the school board for being in the pocket of Democrats for Education Reform and other privateers.)

Perhaps the simplest alternative would be for the NYC Council to be given the authority to provide some measure of checks and balance in an amended system of mayoral control known as municipal control.  Unacknowledged in all the heated rhetoric about the need to retain mayoral control in its current form is that the Department of Education is the only city agency where the City Council has no real power to affect change – or to exert any counterbalance against damaging policies.  

Right now, the City Council can only influence education by passing bills to try to influence policy through more reporting and/or through the overall budget.  The members have no ability to pass legislation when it comes to school closings, charter schools, testing or any of the myriad issues that deeply affect NYC students. The provision of municipal, local control would be a good first step—and because of strong campaign finance laws in NYC it would be difficult for privateer billionaires to hijack Council elections as they have done in school board elections elsewhere, and in the case of the GOP- and IDC- controlled NY Senate. 

Yet the members of the City Council would have to speak up more strongly to gain this counter-balancing authority over the DOE and our schools.  And the State Legislature tends to be very proprietary about retaining their prerogatives over NYC schools, and all too willing to use it as a bargaining chip, as occurs each time mayoral control comes up for a vote.   

The worst outcome of all would be for the Mayor and the Democratic leadership in the Assembly to trade mayoral control for more charter schools or tuition tax credits, as the Governor and the Senate GOP and IDC leaders seem intent on trying to extort.  Let’s hope this doesn’t happen – make your calls now to your Legislators, if you haven’t yet done this already; more on how to do this here.

Serious privacy concerns with the new Summit/Facebook platform, used in 100 schools across the nation

Our concerns about the open-ended data sharing of the Summit/Facebook software platform was featured on the front page of the Washington Post. This software is in 100 schools nationwide, about two thirds of them public schools. The list is here. Two of the schools are in NYC:  the Bronx Writing Academy in District 9; and J.H.S. 088 Peter Rouget in District 15 in Brooklyn.

Summit is sharing the student personal data with Facebook, Google, Clever and whomever else they please – through an open-ended consent form that they have demanded parents sign.  A copy of the consent form is here.   

I have never seen such a wholesale demand from any company for personal student data, and can imagine many ways it could be abused.  Among other things, Summit/Facebook claims they will have the right to use the personal data “to improve their products and services,” to “conduct surveys, studies” and “perform any other activities requested by the school. ”  

 Here is an excerpt:  

 Summit may collect information that you provide or your child provides directly to Summit, such as contact information, coursework, testing, and grades. Summit also may collect information automatically from browsers, computers, and devices (such as information from cookies and browser and device identifiers in order to remember your preferences)..... Summit may use your child’s information to conduct surveys and studies; develop new features, products, and services; and otherwise as requested by your school or consistent with your consent. ... Summit also may disclose information to third-party service providers and partners as directed or authorized by the school. For example, Summit uses Clever, Facebook, and Google to help develop and improve the personalized learning plan software or to provide related educational services on Summit’s behalf. 

They claim they won’t use the child's personal data for targeted ads (as would be banned anyway in the CA law called SOPIPA) but this is among the only restriction. They say they can sell the data "in connection with a corporate transaction, such as the sale of our Services, a merger, consolidation, asset sale." The one-sided Terms of Service is here; the Privacy Policy is here. 

The Summit platform has never been independently vetted for security protections – or shown to yield any educational benefits, and I believe is a very radical way to outsource instruction and student data to private companies. 

Other reasons that teachers as well as parents should be concerned:

The Terms of Service claims the right to use the intellectual property of teachers in these schools,

including course assignments, etc. and even student work without any recompense: “You Grant Us a non--‐exclusive, perpetual, transferable, sub--‐licensable, royalty--‐free, worldwide License to use content that you post on or in connection with the Services in any manner, media, form, and modes of uses, now known or later developed.”

--Though I’m not an attorney, the Terms of Service seems to explicitly and repeatedly waive any liability  that Summit or FB or any of its partners may have for protecting the data against breaches, complying with state or federal law,  or abiding by their own Terms of Service; 

-- As the Washington Post article points out, the TOS would force any school or party to the agreement (including teachers) to give up their right to sue in court if they believe their rights or the law has been violated, and limits the dispute to binding arbitration in San Mateo CA - in the midst of Silicon Valley, where Facebook and Google presumably call the shots.  This is the same sort of abuse of consumer rights that that banks and credit card companies have included in their TOS and that the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is now trying to ban.

--The CEO of Summit charters, Diane Tavenner, is also the head of the board of the California Charter School Association, which has aggressively tried to get pro-privatization allies elected to California school boards and state office, and has lobbied against any real regulations or oversight to curb charter school abuses in that state.  

- -  Summit says they won't sign individual contracts with school districts or schools, for the    following ostensible reasons, and suggests a legal loophole for states and districts that require such contracts:

Summit Public Schools is unable to sign contracts, MOUs, or other legal documents from other districts, CMOs, or individual schools. Straying from our Summit Partnership contracts would add immeasurable risk to our organization as we are unable to acquire third party validation on different contracts in the way that we did for our own participation agreement. It would not be legally sound for us to enter into two legal contracts with two sets of potentially conflicting commitments for one program.

Some districts that have policies where all third party vendors need to sign one designated contract were able to bypass that requirement given the status of Summit Public Schools as an educational organization rather than a vendor and the nature of the partnership as a free exchange of ideas and services rather than a paid service relationship.

And then they add – presumably to assuage the fears of parents or school administrators:

In order to ensure that our legal agreement meets the high quality demanded by school organizations across the U.S., Summit Public Schools has gone the extra mile to work with one of the best legal teams in the country to draft this agreement. We worked with Jules Polonetsky - CEO of the Future of Privacy Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that seeks to advance responsible data practices - and his team to review our privacy policies and provide his 3rd party stamp of approval. Straying from the language in our participation agreement would add risk as we are unable to also acquire third party validation on different contracts.

        What they don't reveal is that the Future of Privacy Forum is largely funded by the technology industry and the Gates Foundation, and Polonetsky was a big supporter of inBloom.  (Nevertheless, the sample contract they apparently offered to Kentucky schools did not include the binding arbitration clause, though it limits Summit's liability to $10,000.) 

For these and other reasons, I think parents and students should be VERY concerned.  

In my view and that of many other parents, the explosion of ed tech and the outsourcing of student personal data to private corporations without restriction, like this current Summit/Facebook venture, is as risky for students and teachers as the privatization of public education through charter school expansion.  In this case, the risk is multiplied, since the data is going straight into the hands of a powerful charter school CEO - closely linked to Gates, Zuckerberg and Laurene Powell Jobs, among the three wealthiest plutocrats on the planet.   

Gates has praised Summit to the skies, has given the chain $11 million, and has made special efforts to get it ensconced in his state of Washington; Zuckerberg is obviously closely entrenched in this initiative, and Laurene Powell Jobs has just granted the chain $10 million to launch a new charter school in Oakland.  

I sent the following list of questions to Summit at info@summitbasecamp.org nine days ago, but have received no response.  Others -- especially parents at these schools and/or privacy advocates -- might like to send their own questions or resend mine as well.  And if you are a parent or a teacher at one of these schools, please contact me ASAP at leonie@classsizematters.org  Thanks! Leonie

Questions for Summit:

1.      1. What is Summit’s definition of “reasonable and comprehensive data protection and security protocols to protect student data”?  What does that specifically include in terms of encryption, independent audits, security training, etc?  And where is that in writing?

2.     2.   If my child’s data does breach, what rights would I have as a parent to secure damages?

3.     3.  Does Summit claim unlimited rights to share or utilize my child’s homework and intellectual property without notice or compensation that they are claiming with teacher work in the TOS?

4.      4. Can Summit specifically itemize the companies/organizations that they will share my child’s data with, aside from those mentioned below? 

5.      5.  Are each of these third parties barred from making further redisclosures of my child’s data?

6.      6.  Are each of these third parties, and any other organizations or companies or individuals they redisclose to, legally required to abide by the same restrictions as listed under your TOS and PP, including being prevented from using targeted or non-targeted advertising, and/or selling of data, and using the same security protections?

7.       7. Does Summit promise to inform parents over the course of the year all the additional third parties the company plans to disclose my child’s data to?

8.        8. What is the comprehensive list of personal data Summit is collecting and potentially sharing from my child?  You mention a limited list below, but does it also include my child’s homework, grades, test scores, economic status, disability, English proficiency status and/or race as well? 

9.      9.  The TOS mentions survey data.  Is there any personal data from my child that Summit promises NOT to collect via a survey or otherwise?  Will parents have the right to see these surveys before they are given and opt out of them, or does signing this consent form basically mean a parent is giving up all their rights under the PPRA?

      10.  Why can’t Summit simply give the software platform to schools to use if it is beneficial, along with links to instructional materials, rather than demand as “payment” in the form of all the student information as well?

1   11. Do you promise not to use the information gained to market products directly to students and/or their parents, and are all your partners and/or those they disclose the information to barred from doing so as well?

1   12. The PP says you will use my child’s personal data to develop new educational “products” – what does that mean?  Why can’t you use de-identified data for this purpose?

     13. It also says you will use this data to “communicate with students, parents, and other users.”  What does that mean? What kind of communications will you engage in with my child or with me?

     14. The PP states a parent can “review, correct or have deleted certain personal information”.  Which kind of personal information can I delete, how will I be able to do that and will that stop my child from using the platform?

1    15. The PP also says you will share the data with anyone “otherwise directed or authorized by the school.”  What does that mean? Does my signing a consent form mean that the school can authorize to share this information with ANYONE else, without specifying the sort of third party, for what reason, or without limitation, without informing me or asking for my further consent?

1   16. It says it will send notice of proposed changes to the PP ahead of time to the participating schools; why not parents if you have their contact info?  Shouldn’t they hear this directly from you and immediately if you are considering changes?

     17.  Does Summit consider this parent consent form to mean that parents are waiving the privacy rights of their children under all three federal student privacy laws, including FERPA, COPPA and PPRA?

1  18. The PP says that “FERPA permits schools to share students' information in certain circumstances, including where the school has gotten a parent's' consent or where the organization receiving the student data operates as a “school official.” Summit Public Schools operates as a “school official” consistent with the Department of Education's guidance under FERPA.”  If this is true, why does Summit need to ask for parental consent?  What additional rights does my consent afford Summit that you would not have without consent in terms of the collection, use and disclosure of a student’s personal information?

     19. Summit says that “Participating schools and individual teachers own, and are responsible for, student data provided through the Summit Personalized Learning Platform.” Why don’t students own their own data?

      20. This raises another related question: the Summit Privacy Policy and Terms of Service grants schools and teachers some rights (however limited.) What rights do parents and students have under these conditions?

      21. The TOS says that if schools believe Summit has violated its promises or complied with the law, instead of suing they must submit to binding arbitration in San Mateo CA and are barred from filing class action complaints.  This type of provision has been heavily criticized when banks and credit card companies have included in their consumer agreements, and the Consumer Financial Protection Board is considering restricting their use. Why is this clause any more acceptable in your TOS?

      22. What legal recourse do schools, teachers or parents have if Summit violates the law or its TOS, for example if Summit decides to sell or give away or carelessly store the data given that the TOS  says “UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, NEGLIGENCE, WILL SUMMIT, ITS AFFILIATES, OR ANY PARTY INVOLVED IN CREATING, PRODUCING, OR DELIVERING THE SERVICES BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES OR LOSSES” in any case?

      23. In yet another clause of the TOS, Summit requires schools to “agree to indemnify, hold harmless, and defend Summit, and its affiliates, licensors, and service providers, and each of their respective officers, directors, contractors, agents…etc.et. against any and all demands, claims, liabilities, judgements, fines, interest, penalties… etc. including attorneys’ fees etc.” Why the need for so many layers of self-protection and disclaimers of liability?

     24.  What rights does a parent have in general if Summit violates the TOS or the PP?  Are they bound to the binding arbitration clause in the TOS that the school must agree to?

     25.  In another FAQ here, Summit says that it will not sign contracts or written agreements with individual school districts, and if the state requires this under law, districts or schools should try to “bypass that requirement" by claiming that a) Summit is not subject to the law because it is not a “vendor” but an “educational organization” and b) that they should not have to sign a contract because of the “nature of the partnership as a free exchange of ideas and services rather than a paid service relationship.”  But if you are gaining potential economic and programmatic benefits from your access to student data, including using it to build new and better “products” as the TOS states, why isn’t this a commercial relationship bound by state law?  And if this relationship is truly a “partnership” with a free exchange of ideas, why is the TOS so one-sided and seems to protect Summit from any possible liability, and not the school?