Updated: Gates grant to NYSED for more PR around standards, testing and data collection

Update, December 11: Nick Tampio had an oped in LoHud news which asks:what if a food conglomerate making high fructose corn syrup bankrolled a state campaign on benefits of sugar? Or if tobacco companies subsidized a government campaign to push teen smoking? Same will likely happen if the Regents accept this Gates grant to push flawed standards, testing and expanded data collection.  The Non-profit Quarterly also  covered the controversy: "perhaps the Gates Foundation might consider the time and energy parents and other stakeholders must spend organizing against Gates initiatives instead of for ones they can believe and invest in among the costs of its growing number of failed educational efforts."

There was a lively discussion of this grant and its potential consequences at yesterday's Regents meeting and whether Gates Foundation would "control the narrative."  Commissioner Elia said the reason for the state to expand its data collection from early childhood through higher ed was that  currently students applying to SUNY and CUNY schools can't have their transcripts sent on time, a claim that is hard to believe. Many questions were raised about the data practices and policies and who would obtain the data.  Elia promised "no outside company" will be given access to it.  The Board of Regents voted to approve the grant, with only Regent Cashin and Regent Oudekirk voting no.  In the end, this decision will likely backfire, causing parents from trusting NYSED even less than they do already on standards, testing and data collection, knowing that these communications are part of a PR campaign, financially supported by Gates.

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December 10, 2018

See how the Board of Regents are discussing tomorrow morning a $225,000 grant from the Gates Foundation to improve NYSED's "consistent and targeted communication " to parents and other stakeholders to help them "understand a variety of critical academic changes" regarding the state's learning standards, accountability initiatives (ie testing) and need for enhanced data collection "to connect early childhood, K-12, and postsecondary student information."   The proposal is posted here and below. 

One wonders if more PR is going to really help persuade parents who are already very distrustful of NYSED's insistence on imposing new standards that are little different from the Common Core.  There is still too much emphasis on flawed high-stakes state exams, and a lack of transparency about their design.  Finally,  NYSED still hasn't released regulations or enforced  § 2-d. regarding the unauthorized release of personally identifiable information , the state student privacy law that was passed in 2014 in the wake of the controversy over inBloom -- though the legal deadline for implementation was more than four years ago. 

Please help us put a stop to the new Gates-funded state plan to collect and share personal student data!

Please send your own letter to the Commissioner, the Regents and Legislative leaders to halt this new student data collection and disclosure project by clicking here.  Thanks!

Class Size Matters, the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy and NYS Allies for Public Education on Friday wrote Commissioner Elia and the Board of Regents, urging them to put a stop to the new Gates-funded data collection plan until there is more transparency concerning what personally identifiable student and teacher information will be collected, why they are needed, with whom the data will be shared, how they will be stored, and what their ultimate disposition will be, as well as why aggregate anonymous student data is not sufficient.

In addition, the 2014 student privacy law must be fully enforced, including the appointment of a permanent Chief Privacy Officer with expertise in privacy issues, who will develop a Parent Bill of Rights with parent input -- as the law says should have happened by July 29, 2014.

There must also be a Stakeholder Advisory Board with representation from parent and privacy organizations to oversee the collection and disposition of personal student data in the NY State's Student Longitudinal Database, including assurances that this data will never be placed in the State Archives, as the state currently plans.

Class Size Matters and NYSAPE Letter to Commissioner Elia and Board of Regents re new student data project

inBloom executives finally testify before the NYS Assembly; what a sad spectacle it was

See the videotaped testimony of NYSED's Ken Wagner, along with a crew from inBloom Inc., including Peggy Brookins, Board Member, Jat Pannu, Senior VP of Services and Virginia Bartlett, Chief Privacy Officer before the NY Assembly Education Committee last Friday, February 28.

Highlights (or low lights): Ken Wagner giving a one sentence testimony at the beginning.  

And inBloom's VP refusing to disclose what other states they are working with, by saying they "respect the confidentiality of their clients"!!!  Too bad they don't respect the confidentiality of NYC public school children or their families. 

Thanks to the Assemblymembers present, especially Chair Cathy Nolan, Danny O'Donnell, Tom Abinante, Ed Graf and Shelley Mayer, who asked great questions but got very little information in return. The inBloom people said the system had the flexibility to allow parental opt outs of the database, contrary to what State Ed officials have maintained.

Here is the testimony of Allison White, co-author of the privacy petition, along with Deborah Abramson Brooks. There was no time allotted for parents to speak, but this is how it ends:

I will not allow my children to go to a public school if this is approved. I will protect my children's privacy and private information like medical records which are protected by our government already. I expect our government to be forthcoming about their intentions and inform us (the public) of matters that impact our children and ourselves. I will not allow the government to take away my parental decision making choice.  STOP THIS EDUCATIONAL FARCE....

Our children are not employees, they are not commodities, and they are not owned by the government or special interest groups! This unnecessary intrusion into their lives needs to stop.

Parents and children should not lose their rights to privacy. These rights MUST be Protected. I'm completely opposed to any sharing or storage of student data for the OBVIOUS and valid reasons listed in this petition.

Is there a connection between the Common Core and data privacy violations?

inBloom was sold to states and districts and still is being justified by NY State as helping kids become “college and career ready,” and its interoperable instructional tools were supposed to be be aligned with the Common Core. 

It is clear, in any case, that having the same common standards and tests across states would simplify the task of comparing and collecting student data, and that the feds wanted to encourage this data collection and sharing through their revisions of FERPA and via their grants for state longitudinal data systems provided by the fiscal stimulus funds and Race to the Top.   

But I had thought the close connection the right wingers had made between the Common Core and violating student privacy was rather tangential until today; when I happened to watch a video of Joy Pullman at the Heartland Institute of all places - with whom I disagree on almost every issue.  She showed this slide:

PARCC and SBAC are the two Common Core testing consortia that were established with federal grants.  Here is a list of PARCC states , including New York (though I believe Indiana Florida and Pennsylvania have now pulled out.)  Here is a map of the SBAC states.

I looked up the quote above, and sure enough I found it in both the PARCC and SBAC agreements with the US Department of Education.  Here it is, from the SBAC site: 

So I wrote the people at the Data Quality Campaign, funded primarily by the Gates Foundation, which is now running the counter-campaign on privacy and holding webinars with other Gates grantees like the National PTA, in a desperate attempt to convince parents that they have nothing to fear from the Common Core or student data collection.

See this for example, from a DCQ webinar held yesterday:

So I asked the DCQ directly about the clear statements in the US Ed Department contracts with PARCC and SBAC which seem to contradict their claim that the federal government has no intention of collecting personal student data.

Here is the response I got from Paige Kowalski, the Director of State Policy and Advocacy:

From: Paige Kowalski [mailto:paige@dataqualitycampaign.org]
Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2013 4:10 PM
To: leonie@att.net
Subject: FW: question re federal involvement in data collection

Hi Leonie,

This is a great question and it’s one that we had asked the U.S. Department of Education a while back and, in response, they have clarified that language on an FAQ website. In addition to the 4 federal laws that prevent student level data from being collected and stored by USED (these laws would trump any poor wording in a federal contract), USED says the following:

MYTH: The two consortia of states developing new assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards are required to provide individual student data to the Federal government.

FACT: The Department does not, and will not, request or collect personally identifiable information (PII) from the consortia and it is not legally authorized to create a student-level database. As stewards of the taxpayers' funds, the Department collects basic project information—such as aggregate research results, but not PII—to evaluate the progress the grantees are making.

You can go to this website directly at http://www.ed.gov/k-12reforms/standards. USED will collect the same aggregate data, originally authorized under NCLB to determine AYP by school, for non-common core states like TX and VA as it will for states whom have adopted the standards (e.g., MD, ID, etc.). This same aggregate level data will be collected for states whom have adopted the standards but are choosing a separate (i.e., non-consortia) assessment including GA and OK.
I encourage you to join our next two webinars and the 3^rd one in particular which will include officials from the U.S. Department of Education to address these very concerns. My understanding is that both SBAC and PARCC governing states are working on data privacy language and I encourage you to check out their websites for the most recent statements they have made on this topic.

Best,

Paige

Paige Kowalski | Director, State Policy and Advocacy | Data Quality Campaign
1250 H St., NW| Suite 825 | Washington, DC  20005

Here is what I wrote back:
 
Now I’ve taken a look at the four laws cited that you say bar federal collection of personally ID student data.  In each of them, there is this quote: 

 “Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize the development of a nationwide database of personally identifiable information on individuals involved in studies or other collections of data under this paragraph.”

And yet these statements do NOT bar the federal collection of PII data, they just say that this particular law does not authorize this.

You guys have a BIG problem on your hands.  I had believed previously that the connection between the Common Core, inBloom and federal data collection was tenuous, but this language in the consortium contracts makes it clear that what the Gates foundation and US Ed Dept had in their heads the whole time is exactly what the critics have made it out to be.

Until and unless those contracts w/ PARCC and SBAC are changed to specifically bar their sharing PII data w/ the feds, no one is going to believe a word you say on this issue.

I also strongly urge you to come out with a position on parental consent quick, unless you are prevented from doing so because of your financial connections to Gates etc.