Anthony Cody has an excellent post that explains what you need to know about the massive data-collection program called inBloom.
The database will contain detailed personal information about students and teachers. The corporation cannot guarantee the security of this data.
Arne Duncan made inBloom possible by loosening the regulations of FERPA, the federal law that is supposed to protect student privacy.
Let’s just say that this whole project is an outrage. It is a massive invasion of privacy. As the grandparent of a public school student, I am furious! I don’t want Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, and Joel Klein to have my family’s personal information.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Can you imagine the nightmare of trying to correct a mistake on this? Anyone who has had to clarify a “credit report” or who has had their identity compromised can understand this will be a nightmare. Parents and teachers must take control of this!
So, any ideas on any politicians who might be open to doing something about this at the local, state or federal level? We need to slay this beast.
Mark, search for Parents and Educators Against Common Core on Facebook. Our group has tons of info, resources, and support. That’s where I got the link to this article actually. Also stopcommoncorenow.org
My understanding, as a parent in one of the districts that’s involved in the pilot, is that only selected information that will be shared with third parties and to employees of the district itself (very similar to the way digital medical records are handled today). I was originally concerned, but after having listened to a few presentations and talked in person with our district’s information officer, I’m not concerned about inBloom. Like medical records, individual student records won’t be released with names and street addresses, but in a more generic “3rd-grader in this district with whatever parameters” are decided by the school district. For medical records, a researcher might be interested in the population of men ages 40-60 who have asthma and live in specific zipcodes; student records are likely to be tagged by test scores, grades, and possibly also zip codes or areas of a district. Each district will decide what is made available and what is not, and I am comfortable with what I’ve heard from my district. Other parents should certainly talk to their own districts or, if necessary, suggest that a group of parents, teachers and administrators talk about how this information is being made available within their districts and outside of it. This is true whether or not districts are using inBloom, because many if not most districts are using digital records now. Those records can be hacked into now. Those records may be made available to third parties if the district is using a third-party vendor (as mine currently does for some of our information systems) as opposed to constructing their own database. inBloom certainly presents more challenges, but they are challenges that have already existed.
What I continue to be concerned about is the larger marketing picture. I don’t like that my child’s (not personally-identified) information will be used to help for-profit companies develop companies at reduced cost to them but without an obvious profit for the schools, for example. But I also don’t like the fact that local companies come to our school to do free assemblies and get free advertising for their programs, or that cola companies write exclusive contracts with school districts that ban them from serving products from the competitor, even during after-school PTA events. I don’t like the pressured marketing from Scholastic Books (like showing the kids a video before a book fair to market their newest products!). And if my kid is going to be part of their target market, I think that our schools should be well-reimbursed for it–not just Scholastic giving teachers a few free books, but in actual cash. It would likely reduce both the amount of marketing and provide much-needed funding for schools to invest in arts, music, PE and more hands-on learning (as opposed to expensive test prep). Or even better: our country could start funding education with enough money that schools wouldn’t feel a need to sell out to cola companies and book companies and testing companies in order to bolster the budget a little bit.
inBloom and schools don’t have to get your permission to share data, collect data or sell it to third parties. FERPA has been drastically changed. I was at a presentation by ISLE, the Illinois link to inBloom, and as the presenter said in his opening “we’d like to collect data on everyone, WOMB to TOMB”. I’m sure he saw our faces drop with the big brother type implications. This is actually a program to track students into what they call suitable career paths. There will be no such thing as youthful indiscretion. Every school, every employer, and every vendor will know everything about your children.
And I’m sorry, yes they are personally identified. We already send reports to the state every week with every referral, detention, suspension, absence, grades and weather or not they moved, listed by name.They add more information to collect about every 6 months. I know because I’m a tech director and I have to do the updates. The difference is (at least at our school) we host the data here, not in the cloud. When we send it off it is encrypted and only goes to the state. Parents should be concerned about what schools are collecting…but parents should be VERY WORRIED about what inBloom is collecting (with their partner Rupert Murdoch).
I never said the school needed permission to collect or release data. Of course they don’t. They have my child’s data now, and it’s digital–and vulnerable to hacking just like EVERY SINGLE LOCAL SERVER. Keeping data on a local server doesn’t keep it more safe. How do I know? Our university’s server was hacked into THREE times over five years, making thousands of records available to who knows what. Also the inBloom data is encrypted at rest and in transit and in every step of the way. Nothing is foolproof, but it’s foolish to believe that information is ever safe. Even paper records can be stolen or copied.
The difference I see is that *my district* will determine what information is released to third-party vendors. I don’t consider the state of Colorado a “third-party vendor” for the record, and have always assumed the state did have information about my kids like oh, their birth certificate and the fact that my oldest is progressing from grade to grade and starting next year, her TCAP scores. (To continue the medical analogy, my insurance company also receives personally-identifiable information from my doctor, but medical researchers, on the other hand, do not.)
My district also made it very clear that no, the data will not be for sale so that a future employer could find out about behavior issues, test scores and everything else about my children. What other districts do, I don’t know, but I’ve talked to the people in charge in Jeffco. They’re very clear: Jeffco controls the data, period.
I don’t understand under what legal authority does Arne have to loosen FERPA? He had to rewrite the regs but should they align with the spirit and intent of privacy mandated by FERPA? I’m not a lawyer but this appears to be an unilateral power grab by DoEd.
The regulations essentially define how the statute is administered, and the Ed Department has the authority to write the regulations in accordance with its interpretation of the statute. An agency’s interpretation of a statute can indeed exceed the scope of its regulatory authority. Only a court can decide whether that’s happened, and that can only happen if someone with standing challenges the agency’s interpretation.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a lawsuit against The US Department of Education. Scroll to #18, and it says that the Dept. of Education has not identified any statutory provision that gives them the authority to amend FERPA as they did. Can you say lawless?
Click to access EPIC-FERPA-Complaint.pdf
Well, I have yet to see a complaint or indictment that didn’t say the defendant was guilty.
So my personnel records are no longer private because…. What an invasion of privacy on both ends.
Gives new meaning to the phrase “private schools.” The children of the wealthy will not be violated like this!
Shame, shame, shame.
Privacy is for the rich only.
Exactly.
Those in power do not put others “first”, least of all students.
This is maddening.
InBloom agreement is not cancelled in Louisiana. John White is lying. (Big surprise):
Council Members Brewer, Jackson & Lander introduce resolution to protect student privacy
Council Members Gale Brewer, Robert Jackson and Brad Lander introduced a resolution in NYC Council today, calling on the NY State Legislature to pass and Governor Cuomo to sign a law protecting student privacy, requiring parental consent before personally identifiable data can be shared with private vendors and inBloom Inc.
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2013/05/council-members-introduce-legislation.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FEJcmuc+%28NYC+Public+School+Parents%29
Wow, someone in Obama’s admin. that doesn’t respect privacy. Who would have thought?
Any idea how one finds out which states are participating in inBloom or any other cloud-based data storage? Or choosing not to participate?
Jill, go to the website of Class Size Matters. Leonie Haimson has a list of the states and districts that have agreed to give student and teacher data to inBloom.
I work in a school where Wireless Generation( a part of ImBloom) conducts our weekly PLCs facilitated by a “data coach” paid by Wireless Generation. While the data studies are sometimes helpful I’m concerned about the privacy of the data and how it will be used by ImBloom to support businesses that target categories of students. I’m fearful the data will be used to sell products targeted to students to support our all-out misguided attempt to satisfy NCLB’s frenzied high-stakes testing requirements.
Diane,
Just curious – are you against inBloom because of the people who are running it (Murdoch, Klein, Gates), or fundamentally against a standard data format for all edtech tools?
Obviously, there is a huge data interoperability issue (see here: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2013/05/post_4.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-TW ). So I’m curious, in a perfect world, how would you solve it?
Thanks
Zach
Zachary, I am opposed to massive invasion of student and teacher privacy.
Diane,
So how can we solve the data issue safely, without invading student and teacher privacy?
Would parent and teacher opt out be suitable?
There is no reason, none, to collect personal confidential data about students and teachers. It is a police state tactic.