In 2009 and again in 2011, the U.S. Department of Education changed the regulations in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), making it easier for third parties to gain access to private information about students.
The DOE is being sued by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on behalf of student privacy. Arguments will be presented on July 24 in federal district court.
“EPIC is challenging recent changes to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) that allow the release of student records for non-academic purposes and undercut parental consent provisions.”
At bottom, this is about Arne Duncan’s desire to clear the way for inBloom, the $100 million Gates-Carnegie-Murdoch project to collect personal student data and make it available to vendors for commercial uses.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Maybe I am confused on what the inBloom project is all about, but it was my understanding that the information collected by the project would be (1) anonymous and (2) only available for data analysis by select few.
As for the DOE and FERPA – it has always been a very “gray” area when it comes to “educational entities”. Interested in seeing how this plays out.
The information collected by inBloom will not be anonymous. It will have 400 data points, including name and address of each student. I will post a detailed explanation of inBloom in the next day or two.
Arne loosened the FERPA refs to make data mining easier and ripe for profits for third party vendors. He also changed the definition of educational program. See here:
The relaxed FERPA regulations also broaden the definition of “educational program” to (see ACLU letter dated 5/23/2011 to Regina Miles, U.S. Dept. of Education):
Any program that is principally engaged in the provision of education, including, but not limited to early childhood education, elementary and secondary education, postsecondary education, special education, job training, career and technical education and adult education, regardless of whether the program is administered by an educational authority. 76 Fed. Reg. 19729, 19730.
This definition, as stated in the ACLU letter, “would allow an extremely wide variety of parties to be classified as “educational programs” and give those same parties access to the sensitive information contained in individual student records without the student’s or parent’s consent.” These changes have very little to do with evaluation or improving teaching and learning.
http://www.aacrao.org/Libraries/Federal_Relations_Documents/FERPA-ACLU-Comments.sflb.ashx
Edward Snowden’s leaks have shown that the NSA captures all electronic communications. It is easy to imagine a future where the government screens “private” student data for a variety of reasons, innocent and nefarious.
Then let’s leave nasty notes re: NSA. Maybe there will be more people with courage and a conscience…like Snowden.
Snowden is a hero. So is Assange.
This has been happening incrementally. In 2002 the Boy Scouts gave a talk at my school and handed out cards to collect names and addresses. I was the only teacher that spoke up and the cards went to the principals office. She came to my class and thanked me. Never did find out what happened to the cards. It was interesting that she was out of the building at the time when she should have been at this assembly. Who knows what the scouts could do with that data base never mind a corporation.
This morning while carting kids around to various summer activities, I popped in an old Smith’s CD. 2 songs struck me as relevant and here they are and here is why (with our lack of privacy reminding me of it):
1. “The Death of a Disco Dancer”– imagine public schools as the disco dancer. Over the last few years hints at school privitazation have popped up, but I imagine most people have just gone about their own business as usual.
“The death of a disco dancer. Well it happens a lot ’round here. And if you think peace is a common goal that goes to show how little you know. The death of a disco dancer. Well, I’d rather not get involved. I never talk to my neighbor I’d rather not get involved.
Love, peace and harmony. Love, peace and harmony. All very nice, very nice, very nice but maybe in the next world.”
——
Now imagine public schools as a girlfriend. She went into a coma in 2002 with NCLB. We take her vitals obsessively (some jealous other hoping they indicate she will die, others hoping she will live). In life we don’t take our vitals every day unless we have an illness or ailment that requires that we do so. Public school girlfriend has been on life support while we check her vitals. Doctors (??) raced in with RttT to keep even better track of her 21st century vitals (because they are different in the global economy–??), and now it is questionable if she will make it. (I do love a good metaphor)
2. “Girlfriend in a coma I know, I know: it’s serious. There were times when I could have strangled her, but you know I hate anything to happen to her. No, we won’t let you see her. Do you really think she’ll pull through? Do you really think she’ll pull through? Let me whisper my last goodbye, it’s really serious.”
But we put her in a coma. We commuted Munchausen’s biproxy syndrome at the suggestion she was ill and we measured her vitals, nearly to death.
Praying for her recovery. Every day.
great analogy! so true. love the smiths
Diane, I think this is bigger than inBloom. It’s really about Common Core. If inBloom disappeared CCSS would live on unless we stop it. The rule changes were to clear the way for the entire Common Core State Standards scheme; inBloom is part of the scheme. At least that’s my perspective of the problem.
Can’t wait to hear what happens today about EPIC’s fight for students v US ED.
I agree with Concerned Citizen’s statement.
CCSS metadata will be misused. Let’s hope people make the connection between NSA (metadata) & CCSS metadata.
“If inBloom disappeared CCSS would live on unless we stop it. The rule changes were to clear the way for the entire Common Core State Standards scheme; inBloom is part of the scheme.”
That seems a pretty reasonable assertion to me. If not “to clear the way for” than “to work in concert with.” Although I don’t think that this kind of thing is dependent on CCSS for its existence. The forces behind data harvesting are like water seeking its level. One way or another, they will breach the wall unless there is a very strong political will to stop them. To keep the analogy going, this requires proactive legislation that makes the walls thicker and thicker, not just maintaining existing rules and laws about data privacy. Because the data, and the incentive to harvest that data, are growing faster than anyone imagined when those rules were written.
add in the moral relativism of outcome based ccss education and its social justice cohort and a wider net of under educated entitled victims lacking any conscience or fear will help to enhance this data rush as the benchmark of awesomeness and excellence in career choice of the most auspicious and glorious 21st century. Happy Hunger Games!
In case anyone’s interested, here’s the main briefing:
DOE’s motion to dismiss on standing and jurisdictional grounds, and for summary judgment in the alternative.
Click to access ED-FERPA-MSJ.pdf
EPIC’s opposition brief and cross-motion for summary judgment.
Click to access EPIC-FERPA-MSJ.pdf
DOE’s reply in support of its motion and opposition to EPIC’s cross-motion.
Click to access ED-FERPA-Opposition.pdf
And finally, EPIC’s reply in support of its cross-motion.
Click to access EPIC-FERPA-Reply.pdf
Thank you FLERP.
thank you EPIC for fighting this!
and the reason the USDOE abandoned privacy rights is because…………….drum roll…….
the MONEY!!!, specifically the money their corrupt officials get paid off with from the private institutions who stand to benefit from this criminality.
Business as usual in the good ‘ole USA.
I really find it disgusting that Duncan has such little regard for families and their privacy. It is just a form of bullying.
His children attend school in Virginia and they did not accept the national standards and still got their waiver, so I wonder if they are exempt from this student privacy invasion.
marxists are all the bullies of the people. they often hide behind the under privileged and experiment on their children because we are “useless eaters”.
To answer the question titled in this article:
This is all being done to make money for profiteers and to continue the extremist merchandising of public education.
Imagine if money was put into wrap around services, small class size, tutoring, teaching assistants in early grades. . . .
It’s done under the guise of “if we gather enough data, then we can figure out how students really learn, and then the private market can respond with products that will meet those diverse needs and eventually we’ll be able to buy the products that serve each and every student”.
What’s shameful about it aside from the repugnance of believing everyone can be broken down to data, is that they assume no responsibility for what happens with the data.
FERPA blew such a huge hole in the privacy laws that it makes the vendors who receive the information gatekeepers and inBloom is not responsible if they misuse or accidentally release any of the data. Read this – even if inBloom is NEVER breached they are NOT responsible if any vendor then does anything illegal with that data.
Take a look at inBloom’s privacy policies:
“Parent Companies/Affiliates of Contractors. Neither inBloom, Inc nor its Contractors will be permitted to share PII with their parent companies, subsidiaries or other affiliates, unless such parent company, subsidiary or affiliate is an inBloom, Inc Contractor under a written agreement with inBloom, Inc and is subject to a service agreement and all other security and confidentiality provisions applicable to the inBloom, Inc or inBloom, Inc Contractor.”
Read: They won’t share information unless they have another contract to share it – and the same accountability will go for those companies that inbloom has….that is to say…not much.
i”nBloom, Inc and inBloom, Inc Contractors strive to keep inBloom and PII secure, and inBloom, Inc uses reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to do so, however, inBloom, Inc cannot guarantee the security of the information stored in inBloom or that the information will not be intercepted when it is being transmitted. inBloom, Inc and inBloom, Inc Contractors will maintain and update incident response plans that establish procedures to follow in case a breach occurs. inBloom, Inc and inBloom, Inc Contractors will also identify individuals within their respective organizations responsible for implementing incident response plans if a breach should occur.”
This one practically speaks for itself – they’ll respond to a breach but will take ZERO responsibility for it. They then go on to speak of it in terms of other situations where privacy is breached (presumably such as a credit card company) where they intend to address identity theft as the #1 concern (and seemingly ONLY concern). They do not address that the information they will carry is as sensitive as the health databases of several hundred doctor, credit card companies, and has some information you won’t find ANY where else.
But be comforted by this:
“The disciplinary measures may include counseling, oral or written reprimands, warnings, probation or suspension without pay, demotions, reductions in salary, or termination of service or employment, as well as criminal referral to law enforcement, if appropriate. ”
Read: We’ll fire those responsible and that’ll be the end of the cause of those problems – if it’s severe enough we may involve law enforcement (though that would mean a huge PR hit to them) – or we could choose to do nothing at all.
Nevermind that a breach could mean the most private information for millions of students could follow them for the rest of their life…
Also, see Congressman Luetkemeyer’s letter to Arne re: common core and FERPA
Luetkemeyer Letter: Education Department Circumvented Congress on New Standards
Click to access commoncore.duncan.final.pdf
See Policy Matters: Amassing Student Data and Dissipating Privacy Rights
Click to access ERM13110.pdf
Thank you for bringing attention to this.
Here in Illinois there is no outrage because people simply do not understand the changes to FERPA. Furthermore, even our esteemed educators do not know how the massive data collection came into being. They need a primer on the P20 data so that they can understand how the longitudinal data fits in with the schema.
Please Illinois educators, educate yourselves!
It is disturbing to know that Catholic schools were made guinea pigs to this 21st century hucksterism by William Daggett ( referred to as the baron von munchausen of education for good reason) http://www.susanohanian.org/show_research.php?id=220
and P21 before all the states were hoodwinked into signing on. They have been taken down the garden path by the USCCB, NCEA and CACE and Lorraine Ozar, Sr Dale Mcdonald and a cast of several organizations selling elixirs of excellence political poison such as county Intermediate Units, Accreditation associations and even NAEP. Social justice pills sprinkled like bacon bits on a sickening salad of wilted OBE, UbD and Backward design and Skinner. So many good people have been tricked and misled into what looks like the sale of our children it is sickening….. read all about it here below:
http://www.pghcatholicsagainstcommoncore.com/must-read-information
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/pages/articles/choice1.html
http://jenkintownchronicle.com/2013/03/25/philadelphia-archdiocese-common-core-who-knew-not-parents.aspx
http://www.wpaag.org/CharacterEducationTowerArticle.htm
inBloom also known as the Shared Learning Collaborative under the umbrella of Amplify and Wireless Generation owned and funded by Murdoch and funded by Gates will fail.
Parents will hire attorneys and file class action suits in every state to keep Murdoch and Gates away from confidential student and family data.
Corporate reformers want choice for vouchers and charters – but the same profiteers say NO to parents about opting out of high-stakes tests and the inBloom database. How will Pearson, Wireless Generation, Amplify and inBloom profit on student and teacher licenses with parents opting out by the thousands across America?
The USDOE is corrupt and must be abolished. Duncan is a puppet for the corporate reformers and ethical educators will never have a chance with Democrats or Republicans to become Secretary since candidates on both sides are bought by Gates and the reformers.
Parents and teachers across America must call the state DOEs and legislators in New York, Illinois and Colorado to register complaints about the lack of privacy related to inBloom.
U.S. School Database Loses Backers as Parents Balk Over Privacy
http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/us-school-database-loses-backers-parents-balk-over-privacy
“That leaves just New York, Illinois and Colorado as active participants.”
Privacy, big data and education: more about the inBloom databases
http://educationbythenumbers.org/content/privacy-big-data-and-education-more-about-the-inbloom-databases_44/
“Of course, there’s plenty to be worried about. What if a school district bureaucrat makes a mistake and accidentally releases data to vendors that he shouldn’t have? What if a software company fails to protect this sensitive information? What happens if personally identifiable information is transmitted to a vendor that goes out of business?”