Louisiana has agreed to turn over the confidential personal data of all its students to a corporation created by the Gates Foundation and Rupert Murdoch’s Wireless Generation (it is called inBloom).
Many parents are furious and want to know what they can do.
This father sent an email to the State Department of Education directing them not to release his child’s data to inBloom. He cited FERPA, the law intended to protect the privacy of student data. He made clear that he is prepared to take legal action to protect his children.
Here is the email he sent:
john.white@la.gov
My name is (PARENT’S NAME) and I am a parent of children in Louisiana public schools. This is to formally inform you that you do not have my permission to share my children’s personally identifiable student information with any external agency, researcher, non-profit group, vendor or government or quasi-government agency under any circumstances (specifically, name, DOB, SSN). They are public students in the (parish/city/parochial) school system and you have not asked my permission to share their information as required by law. I am purposefully informing you that you do not have permission to share their information unless I provide appropriate parental guidance. Their/his/her name(s) is/are (STUDENT’S OR STUDENTS’ NAME[S]). If you already have, I would like you to promptly request that his/her/their information be expunged from any data set you have already shared.
Mr. White, on the basis of your e-mails it appears you are planning on sharing this data and I will hold you personally responsible for any subsequent violations. I will be recommending that other parents likewise notify you if they do not wish their information to be shared with corporations/vendors whom you have agreed to not hold liable for any security breaches or unauthorized releases (which I don’t believe you have a legal right or authority to do). Moreover, any such release of personally identifiable information without each parent’s express permission will be a direct violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and a willfully unnecessary one since you have non-personally identifiable student identifiers and have taken great pains to claim FERPA exclusions for all other releases of de-identified student data to the media, researchers, and the general public.
Please note the section in the last paragraph below. Schools may disclose, without consent, directory information. But you must notify us when doing so. You, however, do not have my consent and you are not a school. You have my absolute, unequivocal, official refusal on record.
You also do not have a legal right to require social security numbers from any student in Louisiana. I will be recommending parents and school districts to promptly stop providing them as you seem unwilling to guard this information as required by law.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
(PARENT’S NAME)
Very nice letter! I presume the email above is to the recipient, not the send-er. I would love to pass along my applause to the writer.
All parents need to tell the DEFORMERS that this is UNACCEPTABLE…period. I don’t want to live in an Orwellian world. Our young certainly don’t want to live THE HUNGER GAMES!
This father and others like him might also want to know that, thanks to the edTPA, across the country videos of children are being sent to Pearson Inc. Student teachers in states that have signed on to use the edTPA must record classroom practice and send those recordings to Pearson. In NYState, the commissioner snuck in some changes to the regulations so that schools that take credential candidates have to agree to the video recording and to it being sent to a third party.
But parents can and should refuse these video recordings of their children. Find out if your child has a student teacher. Refuse to have your child videotaped for Pearson.
Data–video records—all breaches of privacy.
Time to say -no more.
Bravo to him! I often tell my students and their parents that if they want to affect any change, they need to complain in writing. Teachers’ complaints (such as the lack of heat in my room, lack of desks [I currently have two students sitting at my desk], safety violations, lack of materials, etc.) are often ignored. It’s time to push back parents!
My readers will really appreciate this. Thanks! (I write for the Seattle Schools Community Forum blog and we are very worried about this issue.)
The rentier class, Wall Street, has been able to bilk America out of $20 trillion over the last few years. Without anyone spending a minute behind bars. At least we’ve seen Madoff, and some Enron folks be herded off to prisons. Patsies. How fast things do move, yet stay the same. A president who bought an election by petitioning the Supreme Court. Wars waged on lies. Corporate provisioning and fomenting destabilizing revolts of both friend and foe to American interests. Homeland security? Give me a break.
As they, the ownership class, move in on other public assets, public schools and the testing industry, GERM, the rewards of huge profits encourage continued investments. Leveraged dollars by banks too big to be regulated. Everyone gets rich. At the expense of those same people from whom extractionist vulture capitalism had just recently robbed trillions of dollars of personal wealth.. What makes anyone think these 21st Century robber barons will heed anything as inconsequential as a few lawsuits?
Except for one thing. A letter from one person can become as important as a video of a charlatan that changed the course of a presidential election. May this letter be duplicated and in such great numbers that the hedgefund buyout of public schools is taken down as their bubble bursts.
Kudos to this father. This is a great letter. Diane, could you keep your blog posted as to any follow up as to a reply, if any, from Mr. White or whether the father ended up taking legal action? I would be interested in finding out how this plays out.
I noticed in the comments section White proposed free lunch/breakfast for all. That was discussed by an fraudulent reformer here in CT….this IS a way to make it look like one subgroup has improved in terms of test scores. Their scores will increase as those who test well will be included and then they claim they are closing the “achievement gap”.
This isn’t about improving teaching and learning. We all know that.
I just wonder if they have a reformy playbook of tricks and ploys they all share.
What despicable people…really…they make me sick!
Just saw a short TV news clip about this. The parents who were hearing about this for the first time were outraged.
Next up on screen was Mayor “1%” Bloomberg, he said that Albany directed them to collect the data, “there’s nothing we can do, we’re just creatures of the state”
Can you link the news clip?
The real question is will Mr. White answer. I doubt it. People like him consider us parents nothing but peons to be ignored. Let us see how much he ignores these parents when thousands of lawsuits come his way.
I’m a teacher and I would LOVE a parent like him! We have been sending FAIR test scores to some machine for three or four years now. These results are saved from day one in some database, starting with kindergarten scores. I don’t think the parents have a clue. Who knows what could be done with this information in the future.
I’m tempted to write in my newsletter “Please let me know if you want to opt-out…” but don’t want to get fired. Hmmmm, perhaps I could threaten to do this as a counterpoint to a bad evaluation, if I’m ever threatened with one? Since every child is required by the state to be tested, a refusal could be a problem.
I have emailed and called John King’s office over 40 times the past month refusing to consent to allow the DOE to transfer my children’s personal information into InBloom to be bought and sold around the world so Venders get rich. King’s office refuses to allow parents to opt-out.
I consider InBloom Identity Theft. We need a class action law suit to protect students privacy.
Please see the extent of data that is being collected and entered to be sold without a guarantee of security. Even your billing address from credit cards can be entered along with birth weight, homework completions, medical reports for IEP’s, disabilities, discipline, and much more.
https://www.inbloom.org/sites/default/files/docs-developer-1.0.68-20130118/ch-data_model-enums.html#type-SexType