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

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

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

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

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

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

2.     

Tuesday's elections disastrous for inBloom: Seven states out, two to go

Big News from Jefferson County, the only inBloom pilot district in Colorado. Anti-inBloom candidates swept the school board elections on Tuesday night, on Thursday their Superintendent resigned, and the existing school board unanimously voted to scrap inBloom. The school board president, Leslee Dahlkemper, was quoted as saying,  "We decided that it was important to listen to the community."   Congrats to the parents of Jefferson County, and especially activist Rachael Stickland who led the fight! See Columbine Courier, Colorado News, Michelle Malkin’s column , Politico and EdWeek. 

Now, only two states remain from the nine original inBloom “partners”: New York and Illinois.  

In Illinois, the parent coalition More than a Score, along with the Chicago Teachers Union, have just begun the fight. The Illinois Federation of Teachers passed a resolution against sharing any personal student data to vendors without consent, and I am going to speak at a public forum on inBloom in Chicago on November 21.

Here in New York, we are gaining strength every day.  On Tuesday, New Yorkers elected Bill de Blasio as Mayor by a huge margin.  De Blasio is already on record against inBloom, having written a letter last spring to the State Education Department and the NYC DOE against this, repeating his opposition this fall, and vowing to pull student data out of the inBloom cloud as soon as possible. Here is an excerpt from his NYC KidsPAC candidate survey:

District leaders and school boards throughout the state are speaking out in protest, returning their Race to the Top funds,  and refusing to sign up for the inBloom-linked dashboards. Superintendents from the Lower Hudson region have decided to send letters to inBloom, citing the provision in the state's contract allowing districts to opt out, and demanding that their student data be deleted.  

They are also demanding that the corporation "immediately notify us so that we can consider next steps."  South Orangetown Superintendent Kenneth Mitchell, president of the Lower Hudson Council of School Superintendents said, "Based on the contract, we believe we can do this."  

More and more, it seems inBloom's days are numbered.  If the Gates Foundation is wise, they will drop this unethical data-mining privacy-violating project, before they are targeted with lawsuits and the ensuing controversy brings down the Common Core as well. 

NYSED's new scary data dictionary, with 400 elements to be uploaded to inBloom cloud and shared with vendors without parental consent

According to the new NYSED data dictionary, updated just yesterday, among the mandatory elements to be uploaded to inBloom and shared with vendors are approximately 400 data points, for every student, public and charter school and teacher in the state.  They include the following:

•  Students’ name, addresses, unique ID;
•   Their parents’ telephone number, email, and nature of their relationship (i.e. whether mother, father, stepfather, foster mother, guardian etc.)
•  The date the student was born and if not born here, when  entered the US; 
•  Their family’s economic situation, including whether they participate in public assistance programs and whether they get free lunch;
•   Their race, their ethnicity, their home languages, and whether they are limited English proficient;   
•  Their disabilities,  and what services they receive (including  special education services, counseling, etc.) 
•  What their 504 status is, which can include a wealth of medical and health conditions, such as hearing issues, epilepsy, allergies, etc.  (504 conditions are defined by the feds as any “physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities”  and including "any physiological disorder or condition, cosmetic disfigurement, or anatomical loss affecting one or more of the following body systems: neurological; musculoskeletal; special sense organs; respiratory, including speech organs; cardiovascular; reproductive; digestive; genito-urinary; hemic and lymphatic; skin; and endocrine; or any mental or psychological disorder, such as mental retardation, organic brain syndrome, emotional or mental illness, and specific learning disabilities." ) 
•  When any of these conditions was first identified and when it was removed;
•  Every day the student was absent, and whether this was due to an out-of-school, or an in school suspension, an unexcused or excused absence, and the reason why; 
•  Every course they took in every year, how many credits they  accumulated, and what grades they received; 
•  Any and all assessments they were given, including achievement tests, “attitudinal tests” and “cognitive and perceptual skills tests”;
• The results of any and all those tests, including their scores and performance levels;   
•  Any subtests or assessments that relate to specific learning objectives  (or SLOs), and the assessment “response” (ie “a student’s response to a stimulus on a test”, whatever that means) 
•  The learning standards tested, the content standards and the grade levels for which the learning objective is targeted.   
  

And on and on and on...

The state claims in the data dictionary that districts “already submit these elements into the Level 2 data warehouse”, with personally identified student names and ID numbers attached.  In fact, data guys tell me that much of this  information has never been shared before with the state.

Moreover the newly updated NYSED FAQ  claims that “With few exceptions, the State does not possess any school district data that was not first provided to the State by school districts by means of a school district relationship with a third party vendor system.”  I doubt the veracity of this statement as well; perhaps SED’s is mistaking data contained in software sold by a vendor with the vendor accessing the  info itself.

The NYSED FAQ also states: “the EngageNY Portal will include date of suspension and whether or not the suspension was assigned in- or out- of school.. No other information related to the incident or the suspension will be included. This basic suspension information is necessary (along with course grades and attendance information) to help identify students who may be at risk of school dropout. “

Yet this seems to contradict the data dictionary which on p. 10 says each attendance “event” must be uploaded, including out of school or in school suspension, and then on pg. 11, the “reason” for this event.  

All in all a very scary amount of personal information for every schoolchild, to be stored on a data cloud and provided to third party vendors without parental or district consent.

More districts opt out of Race to the Top but NYSED insists their personal student data will "travel" anyway -- without their consent

UPDATE: 11/11/13 We are now keeping a list of the growing number of districts opting out of Race to the Top funding and data dashboards, hoping to protect student privacy. Please let us know at info@classsizematters.org if you have additions or corrections.


I wonder if any NY district Superintendent is refusing to share with the state the personally identifiable details described below, including student disabilities and disciplinary records, knowing that they will be disclosed to inBloom and dashboard vendors, despite the lack of parent consent.  Please let me know at leonie@classsizematters.org if your district is considering holding back this data from the state, has joined the growing list of RTTT opt outs, or has written a letter to inBloom, like this one, demanding their data be deleted.

There’s a good article in today’s Buffalo News, about at least two more NY school districts upstate, Williamsville and West Seneca, that have decided to turn down Race to the Top funds to try to protect their students’ privacy, joining the growing list of suburban districts that have already announced this. 

Here are just some of the districts that have announced their withdrawal so far:  Spackenkill (See here); Hyde Park ( here); Pleasantville ( here); Comsewogue (here); Rye Neck,  Pelham, Pocantico Hills, Hastings-on-Hudson, and Mount Pleasant(here)  Districts considering doing the same include Dobbs Ferry, and South Orangetown (here).  (Thanks to No DATA NY blog).

According to an article in Capital NY, 90% of the state’s 700 districts were originally participating in the RTTT program, and of these, one fourth of them, or about 160, failed to sign up for dashboards by the official deadline of October 30.

This is despite the fact that Ken Wagner of NYSED has made it clear, including again in the Buffalo News, that this does NOT mean the state will spare their personal student data from being shared with inBloom and via inBloom with the dashboard companies. 

One recourse that people are saying is, ‘OK, then let us at least opt out of Race to the Top,’ ” Wagner said. “That is, of course, an option, but unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to answer their particular question, which is, does that mean my data won’t travel? The answer to that is, yes, the data will still travel.”

Though he is clear about this, he doesn’t explain why inBloom needs this data if a district doesn’t want the dashboards.  A suggestion is provided here, in NYSED’s updated FAQ: “NYSED will provide statewide data to inBloom so that dashboard providers may meet their contract requirements.”

Though Wagner doesn't explain what contract requirements are meant here, reporters say that the state has indicated that inBloom, as well as the three dashboards companies, including Datacation, E-Scholar, and SchoolNet/Pearson, need statewide personalized student data, so they can do comparisons of achievement data of “selected sets of students,” based on their demographic, discipline and disability status.  Yet why ANY individual, personalized student data is necessary for this goal is beyond me.  Such comparisons are commonly done and are already widely available through de-identified aggregated student data.  

Even more obfuscation from Wagner is quoted in the Buffalo News:

“Wagner said the parent information would be used to verify the identity of a parent. The details of a student suspension or disability are not required to be submitted.” 

This depends on what you mean by “details”; according to NYSED's data dictionary every student’s disability diagnosis IS required to be submitted to the state, which in turn will be shared with inBloom and apparently all the dashboard companies, as well as any special education services he or she  receives.  Highly sensitive information will also apparently include whether the parent is a “displaced homemaker”, whether the student is an immigrant and/or a pregnant teen.

NYSED has demanded more and more personal student data  in recent years, as the article makes clear, all of which is apparently to be shared with inBloom and the dashboard companies.  Moreover, King is encouraging districts to disclose even hundreds of more details pertaining to a child’s disabilities, behaviors, learning style, health conditions, and disciplinary issues– to help vendors data-mine and develop their software products. 

Meanwhile, some legal experts say that according to FERPA, the district not the state is the controlling party for the use of personal student data.  NYSED’s contract with inBloom seems to admit this, as it appears to allow districts to opt out of inBloom’s data bank, though the state has denied districts this right. See this Suffolk Times article about Southhold’s Superintendent letter to inBloom, citing the state’s contract and demanding that their student data be deleted. 

Indeed, from the beginning New York has been the only inBloom “partner” out of the nine original states that refused to allow districts to decide whether they wanted to participate in data-sharing with inBloom or not, and is still the only state sharing data with Bloom regardless of district consent.

Jefferson Co, the only participating district in Colorado, is refraining from sharing ANY disciplinary data with inBloom and is allowing parents to opt out.  Illinois is allowing districts to decide for themselves.

Meanwhile, even the Medicaid forms that NYC uses to obtain federal reimbursement for students’ special education services require a signed parental consent; so why doesn’t sharing this very same information with private vendors require the same consent?