ALEC's student privacy bill and the hydra-headed data predators

Additional UPDATE:  According to Hadi Partovi, founder of Code.org, Mark Zuckerberg had nothing to do with starting the organization.  Hadi is also in the process of revising the privacy agreement for Code.org.

UPDATE: Turns out NYC DOE intends to work with with Code.org (see below) whose sample contract demands 4-6 years of personal student data.  

The huge number of well-funded private interests eager to pirate your child's data or enable others to do so is a many headed hydra which seems to grow new heads every time another is chopped off.

As recently reported in Education Week , the American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC), the conservative advocacy group, is jumping on the student privacy bandwagon and has written a “model” bill for state legislators to adopt, based on an Oklahoma privacy bill that was recently passed.  

Even at first glance, I realized this bill was inadequate because it doesn’t provide for any parental consent before children’s personal data is handed over to vendors, and noted this to the EdWeek reporter:

Leonie Haimson, a New York City-based parent and public schools advocate, also questioned the wisdom of not providing families more say in whether and how their children’s information is being shared.

“To me, it sounds like [the bill is intended] to assuage the fears of parents who want there to be something done to protect their children’s data, but who aren’t really informed about the issues,” Ms. Haimson said.

Bills that contain more specifics but don’t take as comprehensive an approach have gained some traction in other states. In New York, for example, Ms. Haimson and her nonprofit organization, Class Size Matters, have helped push more-targeted bills crafted to stop the release of sensitive student information without parental consent and to allow parents the opportunity to opt out of data-sharing efforts involving third-party vendors.

Even State Rep. David Brumbaugh, the author of the Oklahoma student privacy bill, admitted as such in the article:

For his part, Mr. Brumbaugh, the Oklahoma lawmaker, said his state’s efforts should be construed as a first step. “We want to shore [students’ privacy] up even more,” he said, pointing to parental-consent provisions as one area where the state could see further action. “This is all new territory.” 

Any bill that doesn’t require parental consent before personal student data is shared should not be acceptable to either conservatives or liberals; this is what the federal student privacy protection act known as FERPA required before the US Department of Education rewrote and eviscerated its protections in 2008 and 2011.  

Since then I have taken a closer look at the ALEC privacy bill, and see other weaknesses:

• ·         It wouldn’t prevent states from sharing personal student data with contractors or between agencies without consent;

• ·         It would enable states to make whatever personal data they please available to researchers;

• ·         It calls for only such parental notification already required under federal or state law;

• ·         It would allow for all sorts of involuntary data disclosures for students transferring out of state or “taking a national or multistate assessment”;

• ·         It would encourage the outsourcing of data to private vendors or organizations, as long as there are unspecified provisions made to “safeguard privacy and security and include penalties for noncompliance”.

Though the bill also bars disclosure of medical and criminal records, it would NOT bar the involuntary disclosure of highly sensitive disciplinary or most likely children’s disabilities and health conditions, as specified in their 504 designations and accommodations. 

In short, nothing in this bill would prevent agencies from doing everything the NY State Education is currently planning, in sharing extremely confidential student data with inBloom Inc., without parental consent.

In short, I suspect that ALEC is merely acting to try to pre-empt stronger bills that would actually protect student privacy, such as A.6059A and A.7872 passed by the NY State Assembly last session, and introduced this year in the Senate as  S. 5932 and S. 5930 .This suspicion is reinforced by other draft education bills being proposed by ALEC this year that would instead encourage and expand such risky data practices.

See for example, in this list of draft ALEC bills, the “Student Achievement Backpack Act”:  Though it is promoted as “providing access” to parents of a student’s education records from K-12, it would provide “a complete learner profile” to schools and districts, stored on a data cloud and “managed by the State Office of Education” which would follow “the student from school to school.” Parents would have no authority over who accessed their children’s data but instead this would be controlled by the state and district, who could make it available to anyone they chose “via a web browser.” 

The “Student Futures Program Act” is even more nightmarish -- a “career planning program” that seems designed to steer students to appropriate jobs based upon their test scores and other academic data.  An Orwellian “Student Futures Steering Committee" made up of individuals appointed by the Governor, would “administer and manage Student Futures in collaboration with the Department of Workforce Services, the State Board of Regents, and the State Board of Education.”  

Then “education providers” and businesses would be allowed access to an online website that stores the student data, enabling them  to “research and find student users” to whom they can “promote” their programs” and “market jobs."  No mention of any need for consent, limitations on access to this data, or security or privacy protections.  In fact, the language calls for giving the Student Futures Committee authority to "control all user data within the system.”

ALEC is also proposing questionable bills to require states adopt “interactive” [read: data-mining] software programs, online testing and data collection of young children starting in Kindergarten, with innocuous titles like “Early Intervention Program Act” and “Technology-Based Reading Intervention for English Learners Act.”

Even though we have up till now focused largely on the dangers represented by the inBloom mega-data sharing project, it is impossible to ignore that a huge number of software vendors who are eager to jump into the highly profitable data-mining arena, with or without inBloom.  

For example, a company called Code.org, founded by Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame as well as other technology luminaries, is offering free coursework in computer programming and teacher training to schools in return for four to six years of personal student data:

What restrictions apply? Few if any:

Use or access to any protected data obtained as a result of these studies will be limited to representatives with a legitimate interest in accessing this data, which will include the Entity Coordinator, school administrators, and other persons who are specifically authorized by the Entity [Code.org] as having a legitimate interest in receiving the data.

For more on Code.org, see ValleyWag,  Pando.com and this promotional video, complete with Bill Gates, the original data pirate himself. UPDATE: see above, Hadi Partovi is revising the privacy agreement.

Meanwhile, according to Politico, Kris Amundson, formerly of Education Sector, a Gates-funded think tank, now at the National Association of State Boards of Education, urged state legislators last week "to be out in front of that [data privacy] issue before it comes back to bite you," adding that restricting the collection of this data is "a proxy to defeat higher standards and better testing" and "could really have legs.”

It will be our job as parents and advocates to ensure that the fight against excessive personal data collection and disclosure does have legs, until the right of parents to have their children’s information protected from data predators is secured.

Update on our lawsuit vs. NYSED uploading any MORE personal student data to inBloom, and yet more evidence of the blatant disregard the state has for our children's privacy

UPDATE: the arguments in court are now going to occur on Jan. 10, and NYSED says barring a court order they will not delay uploading names etc. beyond Jan. 22.

On January 3 in Albany, the NY State Supreme court will hear arguments concerning our  lawsuit asking for an immediate injunction to block Commissioner King and the Regents from uploading any more student personal data to the inBloom cloud.  

The original date of December 6 was postponed because our attorneys amended the brief, pointing out even more ways in which the NY State Education Department has violated the state's Personal Privacy Protection Law.  The amended petition is here.  The supplemental memo of law is here.  (You can also check out the original Article 78 petition  and the memo of law.)

Because of this, the state asked for more time to reply, and will serve its opposition papers on December 18.  Our attorneys have until noon on December 30 to file reply papers.  Our attorneys  tried to get a later date for reply in view of the intervening holidays, but SED would not agree to put off uploading student names beyond January 15th.

Sadly, we now have more evidence that much personal student data has already been uploaded to the inBloom cloud: first, last December,  to help with inBloom’s “infrastructure development”, according to the state, and again in July, for the data dashboard “road shows.”  

Why the state couldn’t use dummy data to help inBloom (or really Wireless Generation/NewsCorp) develop its system or to allow the dashboard companies to sell their wares, instead of  providing student unique ID numbers along with an abundance of other sensitive information that could be seen by anyone visiting these "roadshows", I have no idea.  The state's irresponsible decision to provide this data to help these companies develop their commercial products provides yet more evidence of how little respect state education officials have for our children’s safety and privacy.

The blatant disregard exhibited by our state education officials is immense, especially given how New York is last state remaining out of the nine states that inBloom originally claimed as its "partners."  This includes Louisiana, Georgia, Delaware, Kentucky, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Colorado and Illinois -- all of whom have pulled out of inBloom or put their data-sharing plans on indefinite hold because of the protests from parents.

Shortly after my trip to Chicago, Illinois officials decided inBloom was too controversial, and that they would create an entirely separate student data system and allow inBloom data-sharing to be completely voluntary on the part of districts.  Even those 35 districts receiving Race to the Top funds would not be required to share any data if they chose to withdraw from the project. Almost immediately, Chicago announced it would pull out of inBloom and it is likely all the other 34 RTTT districts in the state will follow soon.  Even before that, however, Illinois state officials said they would bar districts from disclosing any student health or disciplinary data, given the extreme sensitivity of this information.

Yet state education officials here in New York are doing the opposite.  Not only does Commissioner King insist on providing to inBloom the personal data of every public and charter school student in the state, even after districts have strenuously objected and returned their RTTT funds, he also continues to insist that he will share student disciplinary data (including how many days they had in-school or out of school suspensions) and detailed health records (including their disabilities and 504 diagnoses and accommodations.) 

Up to now, this highly sensitive data has been very closely held at the school and district level, as Mary-Fox Alter, Superintendent of Pleasantville, pointed out at a recent meeting of the Westchester-Putnam School Board Association.  As quoted in in LoHud News, Superintendent Alter said that “A child is better protected in the criminal justice system than in this,” given the strict rules of confidentiality required restricting access to criminal records of minors.  

 At the Westchester/Putnam school board meeting, I also pointed out that even if this information is not breached or abused, the data dashboards required by NYSED will offer at the touch of a fingertip all of a child's disabilities, academic and disciplinary records going far back in time, and that this is likely to create negative stereotypes in the minds of their teachers.  There is much research showing that teacher preconceptions often become self-fulfilling prophecies –with especially damaging results for those children who once struggled academically or had behavior problems.  

Despite the strong objections expressed by many  school board members and Superintendents at the meeting, Ken Wagner, the NYSED representative, was unable to offer any convincing rationale for the educational usefulness of this data-sharing plan that made it worth all the serious and potentially life-altering risks it poses for New York’s children. 

Carol Burris and Ethan Young on the Common Core and testing

Last night, principal Carol Burris of South Shore High School on Long Island and Tennessee student Ethan Young were on the Huckabee Show on Fox News.  Carol was named principal of the year in New York State and is the author of a petition against the state's teacher evaluation system in New York that more than one third of the principals in the state have signed onto.

Ethan's brilliant speech blasting the Common Core before the Knox Co. school board has gone viral on YouTube, BuzzFeed and elsewhere. Their appear appearance on the show is in two segments below; Carol and Ethan come on at about seven  minutes in the first segment.

Apparently Huckabee has been getting heat from his audience for his support of Common Core and testing,so the first and last part of the show features his attempt to clarify his views -- not altogether successfully.

It is fascinating how the conservative news shows have picked up on the grassroots rebellion against the Common Core, testing and student data sharing before the liberal cable channels like MSNBC; but still seem somewhat ambivalent -- probably because the Common Core high-stakes tests are so useful in allowing the bashing of public schools and teachers.

King and Tisch finally coming to hear from NYC parents next week!

Commissioner King and Merryl Tisch, head of the board of Regents, are finally coming to hear from NYC parents on their controversial education agenda, after already appearing at 14 forums in the rest of the state.  

Unfortunately, they have given us only one week of warning and will hold only three forums over two nights: Tuesday Dec. 10 in The Bronx and Brooklyn; and Wednesday Dec. 11 in Manhattan.  Here and below are the locations and times.

PLEASE come and let your voice be heard at one of these forums, and let these all-powerful state officials know how you feel about the Common Core, testing and privacy, including their plan to share the personal information for all public school students in the state with inBloom Inc. -- the only state in the country that hasn't yet pulled out of this project.  

Here is a flyer you can post in your schools for Manhattan and Brooklyn; Bronx is coming soon.

Tuesday, December 10 in Brooklyn   

Medgar Evers College
1650 Bedford Avenue (map here)
6:30-8:30 PM

Tuesday, December 10 in The Bronx

Evander Childs Campus
800 East Gun Hill Road (map here)
6:00-8:00 PM

Wednesday, December 11 in Manhattan

Spruce Street School

12 Spruce Street (map here)

6:00-8:00 PM  (SEE NEW TIME)

The record of Joshua Starr, candidate for NYC Chancellor

This is the third in a series examining the record of educators who have been mentioned as serious possiblities for NYC Chancellor.  Previously we examined the records of Andres Alonso and Kathleen Cashin.  The following was compiled by Peter Dalmasy, Class Size Matters researcher.

Background

Joshua Starr grew up in Larchmont, New York and holds an undergraduate degree from University of Wisconsin, a Master’s in Special Education from Brooklyn College, and a Master’s and Doctorate from Harvard Graduate School of Education in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy.  

After graduating from the University of Wisconsin in 1991, he moved to San Francisco where he worked at a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed kids.

Starr began his career as an educator in 1993, first as a substitute English teacher and then in 1995 as a special education teacher at PS 753 in Fort Greene, Brooklyn where he taught until 1997.  He then served as Director of Accountability for Plainfield (NJ) Public Schools while completing his graduate studies at Harvard, and later as the Executive Director for Operations in Freeport (LI) School District. 

In 2003, he was hired by Andres Alonso to be a Deputy Senior Instructional Manager and then Director of School Performance and Accountability at the New York City DOE, where he helped design the initial stages of the school accountability and grading system.

Starr’s record as Stamford Superintendent

Starr was appointed the Superintendent of Stamford (CT) Public Schools in 2005 and served for seven years. The district has 15,000 students in 20 schools.  Like Andres Alonso, he had never served as a principal before being hired as superintendent.

While in Stamford, he altered a program in the district’s middle schools that had grouped students by academic ability, known as ‘tracking’, by consolidating five tracks into two, despite facing opposition from some parents, who demanded multiple tracks.

In a December 2012 Washington Post Answer Sheet op-ed, Long Island principal Carol Burris explained, “In 1976, the Connecticut Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights initiated a review of the status of Stamford’s progress with desegregation and expressed concern that middle- and high-school ability grouping was re-segregating classrooms, with high-track students being predominantly White, and low-track students being predominantly Black or Latino.”

“When Dr. Starr arrived in 2005 as Superintendent, nearly 30 years after the report, no progress on improvement recommendations had been made. There were up to five tracks in the middle schools. Although only 40% of all students in the district were White, nearly 79% of the honors track was White. Conversely, although 53% of the district’s students were Black or Latino, only 11% of the honors track was Black or Latino.”

With funding from a $27 million grant from General Electric Foundation, “he led a middle school transformation committee to review data and grouping practices and unified a curriculum based on rigorous standards.” As a result, “the percentage of Black or Latino students in the honors math track increased from 11% to 30%—a dramatic shift in the proportion of student groups in the highest track.”

When he arrived at Stamford, there was no centralized teaching curriculum across the twenty schools.  By the end of his tenure, all twenty schools in the district taught the same curriculum.  Wendy Lecker, then co-president of the Parent Teacher Council of Stamford, told the Washington Post, “We had 150 different ways of teaching reading. He came in and made it much more uniform.”

Despite engaging with the union early on in his tenure as Superintendent, his relationship apparently worsened towards the end of his leadership. According to Lori Rossamando, president of the Stamford Teachers Union, the union filed eight unfair labor practice grievances over the course of Starr’s tenure.

He unexpectedly laid off twelve classroom teachers in May 2011, and blamed this on the teachers union’s “unwillingness to bend.” He also eliminated 20 literacy and math coaching positions because of an $8,000 stipend that the union had demanded for the positions, which had been previously funded under a grant from General Electric.

Starr in Montgomery County, Maryland
Starr left Stamford after the 2010-2011 school year to become Montgomery County (MD) Public Schools’ Superintendent.  Montgomery County is the largest district in Maryland with 151,000 students in 202 schools.

Before Starr arrived, the school system had reduced spending by $430 million between 2009 and 2011, which caused the elimination of more than 1,300 positions and an increase in class size of one student on average.

In May 2012, when several Montgomery council members reported class sizes of 40 students or more, Starr responded that he was not aware of this.

In September 2012, he acknowledged class size “is something that teachers and parents feel is incredibly important, and I, too, want to have very reasonably sized classes. And we know that a skilled, effective teacher is the most important in a child’s success.”

In October 2012, when interviewed on public radio, he said, “There really is no ideal [teacher/student] ratio….We provide additional supports during the school day, and there really is no ideal. It depends on the kind of work that the kids are doing, the task that's before them.”

He added, “…the research is clear on this that the only significant indication that class size matters is at K to three, but it's got to be small. It's got to be -- I think it's lower than 16, I think, is the number. After that, the national studies have shown it doesn't have much of difference. But I also know, you know, there's another issue here.” [note from LH:  Actually research shows that there is no threshold that has to be reached before reducing class size has a positive impact on student learning. And though there have been no experiments to show the benefits of class size in the middle and upper grades, there are many controlled studies that suggest a correlation between higher achievement, lower dropout rates, and more student engagement in smaller classes in these grades as well.]

At a community meeting in April 2013, Starr was asked whether or not there were plans to reduce class sizes, and he responded, “30 teachers have been added in focus (high need) schools, but class sizes will not be reduced across the board any time soon. It is very expensive, and not the most effective way to improve school experience.”

Three Year Moratorium on Testing

More recently, Starr has become a prominent critic of high-stakes testing.

In December 2012, he called for a three-year moratorium nationwide on standardized testing. 

In February 2013, he wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post that said, “Most U.S. public school systems are attempting to implement at least three things at once right now: revamped accountability measures, reforms as part of the federal Race to the Top program and the Common Core State Standards. This is simply too much at one time.”

While he said he was a believer in Common Core, he argued, “Districts around the country are spending so much time implementing new accountability measures and other supposed reforms that they are not developing the system capacity to change teaching and learning in the classroom in ways that will enable our students to achieve Common Core’s promise. School districts are not investing in new curricula, assessments, professional development or data systems.”

Starr also said there needs to be a “stop [to] the insanity of linking student test scores to their evaluations,” and that “Race to the Top dollar reforms are based on “bad science and bad theory.”   In a radio interview he commented, “There’s tons of what the statisticians call noise in the test scores. They're an important indicator, but they're not the goal.”

Surveys in Montgomery County Schools

Starr paid $900,000 to Gallup for three years to give surveys to students and staff, and compare the results to a national database of respondents. According to the Parents’ Coalition of Montgomery County, this decision was made without a vote of the Board of Education.

In the fall of 2012, and again in 2013, the survey asked 5^th-12^th grade students twenty questions on their views of their teachers and their classroom experiences, and looked at their hope, engagement and well-being as measures school administrators should track and improve.

To measure well-being, students were asked:  “Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to ten at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?”

Some questions included whether the students “energetically pursue goals,” “learn or do something interesting yesterday,” “laughed or smiled a lot yesterday” or “had a best friend at school.”  Other questions asked students if they “know they will graduate from high school,” “can think of many ways to get good grades,” or “know they will find a good job after they graduate.”

Teachers were asked 19 questions, a full list which can be found here. Most questions asked them to rate on a scale of 1 to 5 their agreement with statements such as “I have a best friend at work” and “I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.” Other questions included “There is open communication throughout all levels of MCPS” and “My supervisor involves me in decisions affecting my work.”

Here are the results of the student and staff surveys from 2012-13, compared to national results.

Parents have also been administered surveys by the Montgomery County Public Schools.  Questions include such items as whether a given parent “feel[s] welcome at [a] child’s school,” “believe [a] child is safe at school,” “What grade [one] would give [their] child’s school,” and others. Examples can be found here and here.

Earlier this month, Starr appeared in front of teachers, administrators, students, and parents for a “State of the Schools” address, where he said he would like to use the survey data and make it part of the Strategic Planning Framework. He said, “Hope matters. Hope travels from person to person.”

Changes in the school day

Since 63 percent of high school students and 70 percent of parents said in in a 2013  survey that classes started “too early,” Starr released a plan to move the start of high school fifty minutes later, from 7:25 am to 8:15 am.  He also moved the middle-school day to start ten minutes earlier, at 7:45 a.m.  Elementary schools would have longer school days, with afternoon dismissals 30 minutes later.

At a town hall meeting on November 21, 2013, when one parent questioned the benefits of this plan and asked if he planned to conduct research on the issue, Starr said, “If you’re going to consider these kinds of changes, it’s better to do it all at once.”

Test scores and achievement gap

In March 2013, a report was released by Montgomery County Public Schools showing that the achievement gap had widened between White and Asian students and Black and Latino students in the district between 2007 and 2012.

Starr wrote a letter saying he would use an additional $10 million towards helping address achievement disparities, including adding 30 “focus” teachers to reduce class sizes in English and math at middle and high schools where students were struggling.

Admitting that the achievement gap remains a problem, Starr said, “We must accept that the strategies we have used up to this point – while effective – will not get us to the top of the mountain.”

In May 2013, figures released by MCPS showed that January math final exams were failed by many high school students. For example, 62 percent of students failed who took the standardized end of course geometry final and 57 percent who took the Algebra 2 exam. At the honors level, 30 to 36 percent failed January end-of-semester math tests. Additionally, 86 percent failed finals for Bridge to Algebra 2, intended for students who needed support before moving into the advanced course.

Starr said, “It’s certainly a concern to me that this many kids failed…exam failure does not mean course failure.” In response, Starr and the district would do a school-by-school analysis and an examination of such issues as student placement and professional development.

When asked about these math results, Starr responded, “That’s just one slice of the data, along with course completion. Course completion is much better, and one reason is that a lot of kids don’t need to pass the exam to pass the course. So they didn’t study for the geometry final because they were really concerned about the physics final. It’s an important piece of data, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.”

Market driven reform

In a January 2013 interview, in response to the danger of market-driven reform, Starr answered,

“I have become increasingly concerned that public education in the United States is seen as a private commodity rather than a public good. Too often, value is defined as something that I have and you don't, if we both have it, it can't possibly be valuable, regardless of what the "product" actually is. The current achievement disparity between different groups of students is not only a moral imperative, it's an economic one. If we don't better serve children that are poor, African-American, differently-abled, Latino, immigrant or English Language Learners, our economy will greatly suffer because the tax base will decline substantially. I believe that communities have to define what they want from their public schools, organize systems around their vision, and then make sure that all schools within the community have the capacity to achieve it. If we continue to think of excellence as a zero-sum game we will continue to allow too many schools to fail rather than build their capacities to improve.”

Crossway Community Montessori School is currently the only charter school in Montgomery County, which opened in 2012.

Capital plan

In October 2013, Starr proposed a $1.5 billion Capital plan to ease overcrowding in Montgomery County due to “dramatic enrollment growth.” The plan includes increasing the number of classrooms in elementary schools and upgrading the infrastructure of several MCPS buildings. He recommended that 20 current projects for revitalization and expansion be delayed to focus on creating classroom additions and more schools.

Town hall meeting

On November 21, 2013, Starr appeared at a town-hall meeting, where parents and attendees carried posters with “impassioned messages.” Parents cited one elementary school with a major mold outbreak that allegedly caused health problems Parents at a high school with a large Spanish speaking population requested that  bilingual administrative staff be hired. Starr suggested that parents speak with district specialists about the mold situation, about which he said, “They’re doing, I think, everything they can to remediate the problem.” On hiring bilingual staff, he said “We know it’s such a need,” but said that hiring decisions at the individual school level were made by principals.