New $6M Gates grant to Amplify, DOE and NYU MetroCenter; time to ask what personal data Amplify holds for your child!

Last month, the Gates Foundation awarded a $6 million grant to the DOE’s Fund for Public Schools, Amplify, and the NYU MetroCenter “to develop R&D tools and related instructional strategies.”

I wonder why Amplify is involved; are they supposed help develop these R&D tools? And how much money are each of these organizations receiving? The grant notice does not say.

It is amazing how many different Amplify products are being used in NYC schools that collect and use personal student data – with little information made available at about which student personally identifiable information (PII) is being collected, how that data is being shared and how it will be protected.  

New York Ed Law 2-D and its authorizing regulations require rigorous transparency and disclosure to parents about the protection and use of their children’s personal data, through a Parent Bills of Rights for each vendor agreement; and each of these PBORs are mandated to be posted on the district’s website.

There is no mention of either Amplify or NYU MetroCenter on the page disclosing agreements with researchers that have access to personal data. On the vendor page, the requisite Amplify Parent Bill of Rights agreement says this about which types of personally identifiable information (PII) the company  is provided access to "Type of PII that the Entity will  receive/access: Student PII."   

Which says nothing.

As to which of Amplify’s products and programs access student PII, it says the following: “Amplify Education Inc. (“Amplify”) provides core curriculum and supplemental programs and services in ELA, math, and science, and formative assessment products in early reading and math….”

The page goes on to list at least 15 different Amplify products in every subject but social studies.  

One of them is described this way: Amplify Math for grades 6–8 and Algebra 1 is a 100% blended core program based on Illustrative Mathematics IM K–12 Math. Chalkbeat recently reported that DOE intends to roll out a "standardized algebra curriculum from Illustrative Mathematics in at least 150 high schools" next year.

Instead of describing how the data will be secured, instead the webpage says the following: 

Describe the administrative technical and/or physical safeguards to ensure PII will be protected and how the Entity will mitigate data privacy and security risks.  [DOE comment: In its agreement, Amplify outlines in detail how it meets the COSO principles. Please contact studentprivacy@schools.nyc.gov if you would like a copy of this information.]

FYI, COSO stands for “Committee of Sponsoring Organizations” which is not fully congruent, as far as I understand it, with the process and procedures required by the law.

I urge parents to ask DOE exactly how Amplify is protecting your child's data, as well as what data elements they currently hold for your child, which is also your right under the law, as the webpage says:

“In accordance with N.Y. Education Law 2-d, parents, students, eligible students, teachers, or principals may seek copies of their PII, or seek to challenge the accuracy of PII in the custody or control of the Entity. Typically, they can do so by contacting the NYC DOE using the email address or mailing address below.”  [studentprivacy@schools.nyc.gov]

We drafted a sample email you can send to DOE, which is below. According to Ed Law 2-D, parents have  the right to receive this information within a “reasonable period, but not more than 45 calendar days.”  So please keep track.

Once you receive the data from DOE and/or Amplify,  you also have the right to challenge it if you think its inaccurate. In any event, you should also ask that all the data that Amplify holds for your child be deleted at the end of the school year.  The posted Amplify Parent Bill of Rights says that the data will be deleted under the following conditions:

• whenever requested by the DOE
• whenever the entity no longer needs the PII to provide services to the DOE
• whenever a DOE school or office ceases use of a product or service of the entity, for the PII that pertains to that school or office
• no later than upon termination of this Agreement

The agreement, however, doesn’t say when it terminates, contrary to the law and the regs which require that  “the contract’s expiration date” be disclosed. 

The Amplify PBOR adds the following:  “to the extent practicable, it will not retain PII for more than one school year after the school year in which the data was received” without explaining what would make deletion practicable or not.

A little history regarding Gates Foundation’s decade-long involvement with Amplify, for those who may be interested:

Founded as Wireless Generation, Amplify was acquired by Rupert Murdoch for News Corporation for $360 million in cash in 2010.  At  the same time, he appointed former DOE Chancellor Joel Klein as  its CEO.  Murdoch invested $1 billion in the company, and in 2011, it was revealed that Wireless/Amplify was supposed to build the NY State student data system through a $27 million no-bid contract awarded by then- NYSED Commissioner John King. As part of its supposed qualifications to create this system,  NYSED wrote the NY State Comptroller that Wireless had created the $80 million NYC student data system called ARIS, which is rather funny because by that point, ARIS was widely acknowledged to have been an useless if expensive boondoggle.

When advocates like CSM, along with NYSUT and many others,  protested this agreement because of privacy concerns, amplified by reports of News Corp involvement in the UK phone hacking scandal, NYS Comptroller DiNapoli announced he was cancelling the contract on August 27, 2011.

A few weeks earlier,  Vicki Phillips, then director of education for the Gates Foundation, had announced on the Gates website the creation of an "amazing" new software program that resembled a "huge app store … with the Netflix and Facebook capabilities we love the most."  She revealed that Wireless Generation was the vendor chosen for this Gates project, which at the time was called the Shared Learning Collaborative.  She wrote that Wireless  would “build the open software that will allow states to access a shared, performance-driven marketplace of free and premium tools and content.”

Shortly after this, I wrote the first blog post criticizing this venture, pointing out the controversy then raging concerning the proposed Wireless contract  to build NY student data system.

In the months that followed, the Gates Foundation invested $100 million in the massive data project, called the Shared Learning Collaborative (SLC), and boasted that nine states and districts had agreed to share their personal student data with them, including NY State and NYC, with more to come.  

 In February 2013, the SLC was spun off into a separate corporation called InBloom Inc., with Amplify as its prime contractor, which would collect, sort and systematize a massive amount of personally identifiable student data, so that inBloom could deliver it in an easily digestible form to companies, to help them build their tools  around the data and accelerate the expansion and development of the ed tech market.  

Yet within a year, nearly every state and district that had planned to share data with Gates and inBloom had pulled out, after parents rebelled against the whole notion of a private company holding so much of their children's personal data.  Their anger was especially provoked by the provision in the Gates-drafted agreements that neither the Gates Foundation nor inBloom would have any legal responsibility if the data was breached either in storage or transmission. 

 NY State was the last state to pull out of inBloom, and it took an act of the State Legislature to do so, which finally happened as part of the state budget agreement in March 2014.  At the same time,  the Legislature passed the comprehensive student privacy bill, Education Law 2-d.  As NY State was its last customer, inBloom shut its doors in April 2014. A more detailed timeline of these events is here.

As to Amplify, the company kept losing money. In 2013, I had an amusing interchange with Murdoch on Twitter when it was reported that the company had already lost $80 million.  I pointed this fact out to him and said it was certain to lose more, to which he responded, saying  “@amplify not losing money. Not even in business yet.”   

Yet in 2015, it was revealed that Amplify lost an additional $371M.  That year, Murdoch sold it at a huge loss to a “team of 11 Amplify executives” that included Joel Klein.  This group later sold the business to Laurene Powell Jobs at an undisclosed price, though “the company’s top management...picked up a minority position in the Brooklyn-based company as part of the deal.” So, it’s possible that Klein still owns a piece of the business.

How much Amplify was counting on inBloom to keep it solvent one can only guess, but it suffered other disasters over this period as well. With great fanfare, the company produced an educational tablet to be used in schools, preloaded with various curriculum and programs that were supposed to revolutionize education.  Instead, the tablets’ screens easily cracked and their chargers overheated and melted.

Here is a sample letter to you can send to DOE, asking what data Amplify holds for your child, and how it is being protected.  Please let me know if you do, and if you get a response by emailing me at info@studentprivacymatters.org thanks!  Leonie .

________________________

To: studentprivacy@schools.nyc.gov

To whom it may concern,

My name is [name], and I am the parent of [name] who attends [x grade] in [what school], at this address [address].

As stated on the DOE webpage concerning the agreement with Amplify, and in accordance with Ed Law 2-D, I am requesting information on which “administrative, technical and/or physical safeguards to ensure PII will be protected” are being employed by the company for each of its products, and how Amplify will “mitigate data privacy and security risks.”

I also demand that you provide me with copies of all of the personal information that Amplify holds for my child through the use of any of its products, as is also my right under Ed Law 2-D and its regulations. According to §121.12 (e),  “Educational agencies shall comply with a request for access to records within a reasonable period, but not more than 45 calendar days after receipt of a request.”

Thank you,

Your name, address, phone no., and email.

Marist poll results: most voters disapprove of Bloomberg's education record

On Friday, a new Marist poll was released, showing Bloomberg’s approval rating has dropped seven percent -- to its lowest level in nearly four years.

Though most New Yorkers still approve of his performance overall, the majority of voters disapprove of his handling of the public schools – 52% to 40% -- despite the millions of dollars spent to convince New Yorkers otherwise.

This disinformation campaign is being carried out through subway and TV ads sponsored by the Fund for Public Schools (a nonprofit headed by Joel Klein that was ostensibly established to improve programs for public school students); Learn NY (which is funneling cash to community groups so they will back the continuation of Mayoral control); the editorial boards of the NY Post and Daily News (which are controlled by Bloomberg’s buddies, Rupert Murdoch and Mort Zuckerman); and the DOE’s own considerable PR staff of 23– larger than that of any other city agency by far.

For more on the results of the Marist poll, see Gotham Schools: Poll: Majority of voters disapprove of mayor’s handling of schools.

The city will not disclose financial information for the Fund for Public Schools

See this article in the NY Times about how the city is claiming that the Fund for Public Schools – set up by the DOE and headed by Chancellor Klein -- does not have to disclose the finances of its board members, despite a new state law that requires such disclosure for all nonprofits affiliated or sponsored by city agencies.

As usual, the DOE’s chief lawyer, Michael Best, argues that the DOE even under Mayoral control is not a city agency but a state agency. It is this tortured reasoning that has been used by the DOE to openly flout one law after another passed by the City Council – including the law allowing students to bring cell phones to schools.

The Fund for Public Schools is the vehicle that was established to raise private funds to improve our schools, but is being used by the DOE to finance multi-million dollar, nakedly political ad campaigns, with flawed statistics to try to convince New Yorkers that our schools are just hunky-dory and we should “keep the progress going.” Expect to see a lot more of these ads in the future as the debate on Mayoral control heats up.

[Michael Best] said the fund’s affiliation is to a school district, empowered by state law, and not to a “county, city, town or village” as referenced in the authorities law. That sort of hairsplitting, though, has drawn the attention of state lawmakers who had hoped to shine a light on civic groups that operate in quasi-governmental capacities.

“That kind of wiggling around is not acceptable,” said Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Westchester Democrat who is chairman of the Assembly’s Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, which had a hand in developing the law. On Friday, Mr. Brodsky announced that he would hold a hearing on compliance with the law in coming weeks. …

Mr. Best, the counsel for the Education Department, said that he had spoken with the city’s Law Department about the filing issue not long after the bill passed in January 2006. “I had consulted with corporation counsel’s office when the issue arose, and I am confident that the state law does not apply to the fund or its board members, as it is written,” he said, referring to the Fund for Public Schools. Lara Holliday, a spokeswoman for the fund, said, “That’s my understanding of the situation as well.”

Assemblyman Brodsky called the Department of Education’s argument “nonsense,” especially in light of the mayor’s increased powers over the department since 2002. “The law is written broadly,” he said. “What we said was if you’re acting in the place of government, you should be treated like government.”

“The Department of Education of the City of New York ,” he said, “is an agency of the City of New York and not of the State of New York .”

Another Reality Check on NYC's State Exam Scores

The privately-backed Fund for Public Schools has once again entered the public relations arena on behalf of Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein with television ads touting the “remarkable” gains made by NYC public school students in this year’s NYS Math and ELA exams. In so doing, they have joined every imaginable constituency from the UFT to the State Education Department to the editorial boards of major NYC newspapers in extracting as much credit as is humanly possible. After all, nobody’s personal or political agenda is harmed by rising test scores, so why not bathe in their afterglow, real or otherwise?

A few reports, such as Elizabeth Green’s story in the New York Sun or Jennifer Medina's in the New York Times have cast clouds of doubt over this year’s “too good to be true” results. It’s interesting, however, to step back for a moment, take a longer look at the data, and insert a little historical perspective (credit here goes in part to Sol Stern’s City Journal story, “Grading Mayoral Control” and Diane Ravitch's earlier posting in this blog from 2007).

To begin with, the DOE’s formal presentation of this year’s results makes the following self-congratulatory assertion:

Since 2002, the percentage of students meeting or exceeding State standards is up 27.7 points in 4th grade math and up 29.8 points in 8th grade math. In ELA, the percentage is up 14.8 points in 4th grade and 13.5 points in 8th grade.

Governor Pataki signed the legislations authorizing mayoral control of the NYC public schools on June 12, 2002. Joel Klein was appointed Chancellor in August, 2002 and spent his first year learning the system, creating task forces, and the like. As Sol Stern wrote, “Klein knew he couldn’t convincingly claim credit for the 2003 test scores, and he didn’t even hold a press conference to celebrate them.” Clearly, the earliest reasonable base year the Mayor and Chancellor can use for measuring the impact of their efforts would be 2003. Even starting with 2003 as the pre-Mayoral control base year assumes that Mr. Klein moved so quickly and forcefully in one school year as to achieve results in 2004 that could be attributed to the changes he had effectuated, but let’s be charitable and concede that possibility. So what do we see in looking at this year’s Summary Report numbers since 2003?

In 4th Grade Math, the five-year percentage point gain of students at Levels 3+4 shrinks from 27.7 points to 13.0, or by more than half. Furthermore, an inexplicable jump of 9.3 points in 2005 has never been duplicated; NYC 4th graders’ proficiency has only increased 2.3 percentage points in the last three years despite teacher bonuses, principal incentives, accountability threats, cell phone minutes and cash for students, and endless test preparation. In 4th grade English, we see the identical story. The DOE’s claimed 14.8 percentage point increase shrinks to just 8.9 points, and another inexplicable 9.9 percentage point increase in 2005 leaves today’s 4th graders only 1.8 points better off in terms of proficiency that they were three years ago.

In 8th Grade Math, the story is a bit different, but suspiciously so. The DOE’s claimed increase of 29.8 points in percent of students at Levels 3+4 shrinks slightly, to 25.2 points. However, after an 8.0-point jump to 42.4% in 2004, those scores had declined in 2005 and again in 2006 before reaching 45.6% in 2007, a three-year gain of 3.2 percentage points. After essentially flat-lining over four years (2004-2007), this year’s scores rose by an astonishing 14.0 percentage points, a logic-defying increase that certainly calls for further examination. In 8th Grade ELA, the increase since 2003 has been 10.5 percentage points (compared to the DOE’s claim of 13.5 points), and a respectable (and believable) 7.4 points since 2004.

To the extent that some of the test result increases are undoubtedly “real” (despite stories about cheating and suspicions that the tests are being "dumbed down"), consider the following viewer comment posted anonymously on NY1’s The Call blog (thank goodness there are still a few honest souls out there):

I am a fourth grade teacher in the Bronx, and my class is comprised entirely of Second Language Learners. Starting in November, we had to basically drop everything and teach to the test. I had to sit through meetings where my administrators would talk about "strategies" to help them succeed, like looking for key words. During this time, I was never teaching for learning, I was teaching to just scrape by on this test. We are told to stop teaching Science and Social Studies so we can do test prep. The students go until 5pm to the "Test Prep Academy" and in the two weeks before the test, we have to do ALL DAY TEST PREP. While the Language Arts test is challenging for second language learners, the math test is so far below what fourth graders should know it's just embarrassing! There is no long division, no double digit multiplication, no real problem solving that requires actual critical math application skills. I don't get to teach content, and I will leave for the suburbs as soon as I finish my Master's Degree.

Is this the price we have agreed and accepted to pay in our children’s education in order for Messrs. (and Ms.) Bloomberg, Klein, Weingarten, and others to wallow in their accolades? A devil’s bargain if ever there was one. SHAME ON US. ALL OF US.

The truth behind the new small schools

Andrew Wolf has a good column in the Sun about the deceptive ads from the Fund for Public Schools, called "Evander Childs Turnaround". The statistics clearly show that the students who were recruited for the new Gates-funded small schools now housed in the Evander building were much higher achieving before they ever enrolled in these new schools than those who had previously attended the school, undermining the administration's claim that it was its reforms that improved graduation rates.

The NY Times last spring ran both a credulous article and an editorial that read like press releases about the rise in graduation rates in these schools, without mentioning this salient fact. An excerpt from Wolf’s column:

The Fund for New York City Public Schools, a charitable group run by the Chancellor that once raised money to buy things to enhance the education of our public school children, is now spending millions on television commercials to convince the public that the programs are working. One of these commercials, highlighting "progress" at Evander Childs High School in the Bronx, has drawn particular attention on the growing network of blogs that critique the conditions in city schools.

Wolf credits the statistical findings that the students enrolled in these new schools started out way aheadto a recent Eduwonkette column and one posted last spring on the UFT blog by Leo Casey . Both were terrific pieces of work, and it’s great that this issue is finally receiving the attention it deserves, but it is long overdue.

Almost two years earlier, I pointed out some of these same facts to the Panel on Educational Policy and the United Parents Associations, in a summary posted here. Much of it was based on a report by Policy Studies Associates completed in March 2005, but suppressed for many months by New Visions before it was finally leaked to the NY Times eight months later. The authors of the PSA report based their analysis on background student data received directly from DOE. Too bad the reporters – and editors – of the Times seem to have conveniently forgotten its findings.

The PSA report examined not just those new schools placed in Evander but throughout the Bronx, those Gates-funded New Visions schools grandly called the New Century High Schools. It described how the creation of these schools had led to worse conditions and more overcrowding for those students left behind in the large schools who shared their facilities, and/or those who had been diverted to other already overcrowded schools nearby. And it pointed out how these excluded students were far needier academically than those who had been recruited for the new small schools:

Here is an excerpt from my summary:

“By gaining access to student records, the [PSA] analysis substantiates what DOE officials have long denied – that these schools recruit students with better scores, attendance, and overall records than the population from which they are drawn. See for example the recent [Sept. 2005] NYC Partnership report -- which misleadingly compares NCHS students to the average student citywide.

As the Policy Studies report points out, "These citywide comparisons are of only limited usefulness, since [this] initiative is intended to improve education opportunities and outcomes for students who might otherwise attend some of the city's most troubled high schools." Thus their evaluation properly compares the earlier records of students at the new small schools to those attending neighboring or host comprehensive high schools.

The students at the small schools had eighth grade math and reading scores significantly higher than their peers in the comparison schools; and 97% of them had been promoted in the prior year, compared with only 59% of the students at the comparison schools. They had better attendance records (91% compared to 81%), and were less likely to have been suspended. They were much less likely to need special education services. Only six percent of Bronx NCHS students had IEPs, compared with 25% at the comparison schools; and none of the NCHS special education students had the most serious disabilities. Indeed, teachers at the new small schools praised their principals for "recruiting more high-performing students".

I also pointed out that these schools did appear to be doing a better job keeping their students engaged – something ignored by the recent exposes – but not because of the size of the schools, as New Visions and the Gates foundation claim, but primarily because of their smaller classes:

While the students attending small schools maintained their previously good attendance, even the subset of students who previously had good attendance who enrolled at the larger high schools experienced a 10% drop in attendance in 9th grade. And while 6% of NCHS students transferred schools, and 10% were discharged from the system entirely, the transfer rate among incoming students at the larger schools was 14% and the discharge rate was 20% -- showing that more than a third of these students departed from the larger schools each year. …

Why were the new small schools more successful at keeping their students engaged? Students reported that their teachers were able to know them well, give them individualized instruction and help, and provide lots of attention in and out of class. As one pointed out, "the teachers I have had at other schools never knew me."

While class sizes at the larger high schools average 30 students or more, class sizes at most of the new small schools were between 13 and 20 students, as pointed out by the first year evaluation. The fact that these schools provided much smaller classes was noted by students themselves in surveys as their most valuable quality. As a result, “Teachers listen to you and get your opinion.” “In a normal high school, they don’t talk to you when you have a problem. They don’t care.” Another student said, “Slipping through the cracks? Not at this school!” Indeed, without smaller classes it's hard to see how these schools could succeed in their mission at all. …

If you take higher achieving students, and give them smaller classes, it should be no surprise to anyone that they will do far better and graduate in larger numbers than the lower-achieving students left behind in classes of 30 or more, attending overcrowded schools on double and triple shifts.

In the New Visions interim report there is a timeline in which by 2010, "innovative educational methods from NYC's small high schools" are supposed to "improve teaching and learning at the city's traditional high schools." This is critical, since even if its ambitious goal is achieved of 200 new smaller schools, fully two thirds of NYC students will continue to attend larger high schools.

As the smaller classes in the small schools appear to be their most successful elements, without a plan to eventually reduce class size and provide more individualized help to all high school students, it is difficult to see how this will ever occur.

As one parent recently asked, where did all those students who once attended Evander go? I wish I knew. Probably into the great ranks of the desaparecidos -- those thousands of poor souls who each year, magically disappear from the system, without being counted as dropouts.

My more recent City Council testimony from last November is here, with more about how the new small schools not only excluded our neediest students, but also provided them with much smaller classes -- and how the administration has no plan to deal with the increasing inequities of the system it has created.

See also our earlier post about the Fund for Public School's deceptive ads that claim class sizes have been reduced in our schools -- and how this organization, which was founded to provide more resources and programs for students in our turned into a PR arm for the Mayor's political image.