Education Week reports that inBloom is going out of business.
The company was started with a grant of $100 million from the Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, to gather confidential student data and store it on an electronic “cloud.”
The technology for collection and storage of student data belonged to Wireless Generation, a subsidiary of Amplify, run by Joel Klein and owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Parental objections were strong wherever inBloom planned to gather data.
The last state to sever ties with inBloom was New York, where the Legislature barred the State Education Department from sharing data with inBlooom.
See this story in the New York Times and you will understand why parents got angry. InBloom would have collected 400 data points about students: “But some of the details seemed so intimate — including family relationships (“foster parent” or “father’s significant other”) and reasons for enrollment changes (“withdrawn due to illness” or “leaving school as a victim of a serious violent incident”) — that parents objected, saying that they did not want that kind of information about their children transferred to a third-party vendor.”
The national leader of the fight was Leonie Haimson, leader of a New York City-based group called Class Size Matters, who testified across the nation and alerted parents to the possible breach of their children’s confidential data.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I hope a whole lot of people lost a whole lot of money on this.
I’m worried that tax payers might have lost money on this. Did they?
Didn’t really think about that – maybe. I was thinking of people like Bloomberg.
According to New York State Ed (Ken Wagner), NYS spent approx. $50 million of taxpayer money to gear up infrastructure and technology for inBloom. I’m pretty sure he meant $50 million of RTTT grant money.
Regular taxpayers yes…
Bloomberg et al will apply it to their profit/loss margins and likely get a refund from the fed.
This seems HUGE!! We must be vigilant that this is not a whack – a-mole situation where inBloom comes back with a different name. So proud of Leonie and her league of supporters.
Good place to start watching for the mole to pop back up would be at Scottsdale get -together. Their system needs the data collection.
People of this nation must be on guard because surely the corporate world will create another “In-Bloom” with new packaging and a new name. I don’t want to be a “glass half empty” thinker but… they are probably working on a much more full-proof way to enforce “In-Bloom” (aka how common core was foisted on the nation via RTTT). Hopefully we are on guard this time and will not allow the “kool aid” package to even be opened!
Okay, it’s not over, but this is great news. Leonie Haimson, we can never thank you enough for your determination and energy.
Tweet it high, tweet it low.
Uh-oh. What will blow in next?
Wow. Good Work Troops (Leonie in particular).
Borgs always go and go and go … no way could this be the end, but it’s certainly a local win.
I agree with the other commenters — the “evil-doers’ will not go away! We MUST remain vigilant. Remember the Board of Regents and their Education Commissioner, as well as the Most Evil Governor, are all very powerful and determined to bring NY into the Big Data world. I hope everyone in NY reading Diane’s blog votes for someone OTHER than Andrew Cuomo in November. He has joined the Corporatists against the Public School parents. He must learn how stupid a move that was.
Cuomo may just be in some political trouble. He has alienated a lot of large voting blocks. I don’t believe the poll numbers. He probably wont lose but there will be no mandate; no crowing of the next president.
He has wrecked this state in an attempt to fulfill his political ambitions.
He should be impeached for his corrupt dealing with the charter industry. Where is the ACLU when you need them?
Where one head of the hydra is chopped off, a dozen grow in its place. Don’t for a moment think that this data-mining thing is dead because
the combination data portal and curriculum gateway is KEY to achieving monopoly control over educational materials markets.
They will now have to work this at the state and district levels. How? Well, it’s not difficult. You sell the state department a data portal–the state portal, not yours, so who could object?–but you control it, directly or through your lackeys, and you control what vendors of materials are hooked up to it, who will be, of course, you and your partners. Or you sell a suite of products to a district, including your data portal for those products, and that portal has a lot of other features and gradually becomes THE PORTAL for the district.
inBloom was the attempt to go for the whole thing–complete monopolistic control over the data and access to it by vendor/competitors–in one fell (extremely fell) swoop. That didn’t work, but there are many ways for the monopolists to achieve this end.
Those are equally insidious.
Here’s something that saddens me in all this: Almost all the attention was on the privacy issue through this entire struggle, and almost no one was paying attention to the command and control issue–to the way in which the data portal acts as a gateway through which only select vendors can pass.
BUT THAT’S A REALLY KEY ISSUE. The whole reasoning behind the creation of national standards and of these centralized databases is market control.
It’s really, really important for people to begin thinking about and understanding this, because the issue is NOT going away, and free markets in educational materials need to be reestablished, for the sake of our kids and teachers and developers.
Exactly. The state by state strategy will creep in quietly, on cat’s feet. The data mining will still be in the hands of subcontractors whose legaleze will create a fog that few districts can ignore.
Also, don’t forget that USDE has been funding state efforts to have “clean” and standardized data since 2005, in tandem (of course) with the Gates-funded Data Quality Project. For a graphic of the USDE data gathering program, with the Orwellian title of “Total Information Management Tool,” see: http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/os/technology/plan/2004/edlite-xplan-sdm.html
It is a great relief to me, Laura, to encounter, finally, someone else who understands this.
Bob, since this is your area (sort of), can you envision yourself setting up some kind of national clearing-house site, like United Opt Out did? People need information on their own state’s contractors, to enable state-by-state rollback of enabling legislation and procurement contracts.
I found this description of the end-run of our Massachusetts DOE around our state’s procurement process, right on the DQP website.
http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/blog/2013/05/go-far-go-together/
I’ve known since October that the state was abandoning inBloom, and our actual (out-of-state) contractor is called Thinkgate, because we were “trained” in it in my district. Nobody will take the question up, and there’s no base from which to work against it.
Yeah, that’s a really great idea. Do you think the Ecuadorian Embassy has another spare room?
chemtchr. That is a great idea, though my area is really ELA curriculum development, and I come at this only because of my horror at what has happened to educational materials now that they are pretty much controlled by a few monopolists. I wonder if one could get lawyers from, say, something like the Southern Poverty Law Center interested in this. Because it has to be fought via legal challenges. (in addition to a campaign of education of the consumers–the administrators who buy from the monopolists and the and teachers who sign off on their products during district-wide reviews).
And Michael, you have a point there. Seriously, you do. Hmmm.
I predict that the “corp ed” attackers are now strategizing how to link InBloom to RTTT money… it worked for common core. Keeping eyes open to this possibility and others is vital to being able to fend it off. Truly sad that so much energy must be wasted on this “war” to fend off profiteers out to destroy public education… oh…. “meant to say” democracy!
This bill on cloud computing and student data privacy was recently introduced in the RI House. The chair of the HEW committee is the sponsor. He said during a Hearing on a different bill regarding the privacy of student data that this bill addresses the privacy concerns, has been adopted in other states, and is recommended by the GATES Foundation. Does anyone with the expertise to understand the language of this bill think that it provides any assurance of student data privacy? http://webserver.rilin.state.ri.us/BillText14/HouseText14/H8052.htm
It is not dead…just dormant. The whole Big Data movement depends on it. This is the new American Revolution:
“For the first time in history, technology will enable students to be diagnosed and to be prescribed real-time coursework tailored to their precise needs. Every click is captured allowing Big Data to provide rich analytics for teachers and parents.”
Click to access American%20Revolution%202.0.pdf
The whole monopolization thing depends on control of the gateways through which products must pass to get to classrooms. Increasingly, those will be curriculum portals. This is very, very important for people to understand. Unless, of course, they look forward to replacing persons with Pearson.
Parents – pushing back against the machine. This is what we can do with information and persistence. The holes in the wall are starting to look like Swiss cheese.
Lesson the establishment has yet to learn: Don’t come after our kids.
Hey! High stakes testing, you’re next!
Imagine that you are a small curriculum developer in, say, Iowa, started by some ex-teachers and publishing, say, a social studies program for K-12. You try to sell you books in state Y, but in that state, the big competitor–let’s call it Poison, Inc.–also happens to be the vendor for the state’s online learning materials system. And guess what? Hooking up to that system costs 8 gazillion dollars and takes a decade, and the adoption will be past before you even file the online paperwork to connect to it, and among the adoption criteria will be that you offer this or that online capability that Poison, Inc., has developed its product, from scratch to offer through the state learning system that it sells.
You see how this works?
The competition is kept out. You have a safe little monopoly, and the state department is your partner, to some extent unwittingly, in maintaining that monopoly. You will absolutely CRUSH that little publisher from Iowa, even if that publisher has a far superior product (and chances are, because you are a monopoly and have no need to innovate, that will be so).
Terrific! Now we just have to see what comes next, but as long as we are vigilant, we can defeat the next one, too!
A lot of people are fooled because there seem to be a lot of different names being bandied about. But scratch the surface, and these are “partners” or fully owned subsidiaries of, for the most part, four large, monopolistic companies and their new megapartners–Microsoft and Amazon.
Now we need to throw a bucket of cold water on Bill Gates and his Common Core.
Oh, it will be good to see that!
well I think it could go far beyond market control if data is collected on every student in the land. it gets dark.
In any case it is good news that one battle has been won. very good news. yes..and be ready for the next.
Yes, it gets very dark and we don’t really know where the tipping point is. Fight it now, with all your might, while we still have democratic structures in place, and the remnants of a free press they haven’t bought or intimidated into silence.
If it tips past that, it will be just the beaten-down working class and our hungry, tattered kids, struggling in the dark against a remorseless and total wealth-transfer machine.
By closing they just made another argument against Big Data. What if they had collected legitimate data, useful data, no privacy issues. Would the data have been lost? Many fold don’t keep local copies.
Watch out for a “rebirth.”
Pay attention to Streichenberger’s closing remark:
I want to thank you for your partnership in our endeavors and look forward to speaking with many of you in the coming months.
Yes, he seeded that announcement with lots of hints that they’ll be back.
“I joined because I passionately believe that technology has the potential to dramatically improve education. My belief in that mission is as strong today as it ever was. Students, teachers and parents deserve the best tools and resources available, and we cannot afford to wait.” Best tools and resources for what purpose? For whatever reason, I don’t think he’s giving up.
“…building public acceptance for the solution will require more time and resources than anyone could have anticipated.” Will they try to buy compliance, or use a blunt instrument of some kind?
“It wasn’t an easy decision, and the unavailability of this technology is a real missed opportunity for teachers and school districts seeking to improve student learning.” The kids and parents dodged a bullet, but next time they’re bound to bring more ammo.
Someone posted W. H. Auden’s mock elegy titled “The Unknown Citizen” a few months back. It’s worth another look today.
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15549
Anyway, thanks and congratulations to Leonie Haimson & Co.
Pay attention to what Mercedes is saying!
Mercedes, I’m picturing you in Glenda’s costume, saying that with your wand held protectively around Leonie.
Just the beginning…also an appeasement…just a carrot in my opinion so that NYSED, King and Cuomo can say they are listening…we all know they are not..this was an easy call on their part because what’s a few million dollars out of Gates pocket.
Bravo, Leonie!
Arne are you listening? inBloom woke the sleeping giant and parents joined together to instruct Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates. Hands off! Children’s data will not be monetized.
King, Cuomo and the Regents were outmaneuvered and failed in their attempt to hand over 400 data points on each child to Rupert Murdoch.
Public school advocacy groups will not allow children to be monetized by News Corp, Pearson, Amazon and Microsoft and other so-called reformers for the purpose of “individualized learning.”
Legislators will be voted out if they pass data mining legislation with another name. Parents are now following the contracts that go straight to the corporations with NO value for students.
Next step should be shutting down the “Data Quality Campaign” funded by Gates.
http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org
Actually, that Gates site might be hugely helpful in tracking the hydra-heads as they sprout. I know my state;s provider, Thinkgate, is discussed in articles posted on the site, but a search for it came up blank.
However, here’s what I got when I searched it for my state, Massachusetts:
http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/search/node/massachusetts/
Mega kudos and thanks to the truly wonderful Leonie Haimson!
Good riddance.
This is encouraging and hopeful, It is progress. It also demands that we continue watching for a less obvious alternative with the ability to accomplish these same goals. Those who would harm our children are not likely to give up easily
.
I agree, Kas.
As of February 2013, there were 21 Ed Tech companies developing applications to work with inBloom. They aren’t just going to disappear. Nor do they need to – since the U.S. Dept. of Education has hundreds of millions in contracts with data collection type companies. Check out some of the 596 active contracts. If you do a search on these individual companies, you see Big Data everywhere. The fun starts 50 + contracts in. Look at the XLS Active Contracts spreadsheet. Remember, these are current contracts – and some have been active for years.
https://www.google.com/#q=US+Department+of+Education+Active+contracts&safe=active
Here’s contract #586 for more than $45 million with 2020 Company LLC (read in their own words the service they are providing for the Federal Gov.):
http://www.2020llc.com/2011/solutions/education.html
That’s quite a cozy partnership they have with our US Department of Ed. don’t you think? There are dozens and dozens of these.
I worry about Infinite Campus & Mastery Manager – all kinds of info being stored there!
Do we know what is going on with Knewton? I can’t believe the desire to collect data on our children will go away?
Also, How will Knewton collect student data? Any chance data would come from Common Core tests?
While They will be back in another guise, this is an important win for democracy and privacy.
Cheers for Leonie!
Readers need to be on top of the “Data Quality Campaign” across the states funded by Gates. Take a look at the “partners.” It’s about monetizing child and family data without consent.
http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/who-we-are/partners/
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2009/01/Foundation-Invests-in-Research-and-Data-Systems-to-Improve-Student-Achievement
“Data Quality Campaign ($600,000 over 3 years) to expand the focus of the National Center for Educational Achievement’s Data Quality Campaign to include postsecondary education. Working with national postsecondary organizations, such as the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems and the State Higher Education Executive Officers, the Data Quality Campaign will facilitate state efforts to share data between P-12 and postsecondary education systems, build support to sustain these systems, and change the culture around data sharing and use. The Data Quality Campaign is a national, collaborative effort to encourage and support state policy makers to improve the collection, availability, and use of high-quality education data and to implement state longitudinal data systems to improve student achievement.
Media Contact: Aimee Guidera, 703.303.6912”
“to improve student achievement” – reformer for-profit whistle call
Here’s another data collection scam from Texas:
OZ Intelligent Education Systems
http://www.oz-systems.com/education
OZ-Systems or Optimization Zorn (before Texas bankruptcy) seeks to collect your child’s data without your permission.
there are other companies doing that; footteps2brilance is collecting data points on preschool children and the state department permits it and encourages it. The chid has an “app” in his pocket to play games and they are gathering all the family data; the state department says because the parent gave the permission to have the “APP” FOR GAMes that is permission as an “electronic signature” to do the data mining. Mayors in Massachusetts have bought into it and the mayor of one city is going to Texas for the Company to push the products. The trick is the “games” and the kid wants them but it is really data mining and it is authorized with state department approvals…. they are primarily pushing this “app” in inner city where there regroups that speak 50 or more different languages and the parents are less affluent whereas the suburbs of Boston with more affluent parents would be “savvy” about what they are singing up for. I fault the Mayors and the state department for this abuse of families in the inner cities.If anyone wants to see the “bid” that was “awarded” for Footsteps2Brilliance I will gladly send the PDF copy so that people are more aware of these marketing ploys. jeanhaverhill@aol.com
Wonderful news. Now to get rid of Obamacare which wants to do the same thing.
If this does pop up again, is it possible to petition for a law that requires parents to “opt-in” and make “opting out” the default?
I wonder what they will call their new data mining/storage company? Will Bill Gates give them another 100 million? These evil, child-abusing, money worshipping people are not going to just go away that easily. Do not be fooled, we must continue to fight against this “machine” . Is anyone else watching the award-winning performances between Jindal,white,and roemer? Good cop bad cop and they all win…I for one am not buying the show.
Good points, Nikki. They keep coming back over and over again like a bad dream…$$$$$ and power drives them. Everytime I view the Hunger Games, I think of this country.
No doubt the NSA can give them what they want.
Don’t for a minute think this is over. Big Data will lick its wounds and find other avenues to try and achieve the same ends. Nothing short of laws to prevent this sort of database altogether — and eternal vigilance — will prevent inBloom from being reanimated like some zombie corpse in a B-grade horror flick.
Boo hoo! Don’t expect me to be upset by this development.
I just wish the money had been invested in a project that would have helped, instead of a plan to abuse, the children of this country.
That is really the sad part – the opportunity cost of what that money really could have accomplished.
Thank you Leonie, Bob, Diane, and everyone involved in this.
Legislators, both democrat and republican, must remember their commitment to the American people and our nation…truth, light, and justice, and their oath to protect and defend the Constitution…to hold Gates and his corporatist deformers at bay and pass laws that a) prevent them from using their wealth to destabilize our great nation, b) protect our society from the few, and c) punish them severely for attempting to perpetrate crimes against the United States.
A free, healthy, and thriving public education system and an educated citizenry is what the billionaires and their Cuomo-esque servants fear the most.
Yes, Leonie, Diane, thank you.
But again, the concept does not go away because they can’t implement it in one fell swoop. This is just the point at which they roll out the more subtle means to the same ends.
AGREE!
So much happens in secrecy, it makes you wonder why they still openly try to do anything! Perhaps it is to gauge how much they can get away with, and to see how complacent the population has become.
As we have watched the emerging stories about hacking scandals hitting major retailers, why are we supposed to buy into a massive collection of personal data? As a non techie, it seems obvious to me that centralizing such information is just plain stupid and of little value other than anyone who plans to cash in with personalized eduproducts. I’m not sure why I am supposed to like having a cashier at the local megamarket call me by name.
This is quite the case study of education culture in the 2010s.
In all the years of the math wars, the OBE wars, the reading wars, the Texas book controversies and Kansas’s creationism curriculum, the E.D. Hirsch-world, the block scheduling wars and others there has not been scope and magnitude of backlash from legitimate privacy concerns to conspiracy theory to rage against the machine to displaced anger over the root issues.
Sadly, the poor communication and rollout combined Arne Duncan/DOE arrogance either lit the fuse or added fuel to the fire. And, sadly, a lot of babies are being thrown out with bathwater.
Was InBloom THAT evil? Maybe yes – maybe no – but that’s just they are just the symptom. Were there that many identified leaks in their system and algorithms? Were the privacy laws and security expectations that weak? Were they really asking for too private identifiable information and couldn’t that be changed? Again – maybe yes – maybe no – but we’ll never know if could be fixed because of the poor communication, motives, and roll out.
Similarly, the standards need a lot of work and more flexibility for districts / states but they, too, will get thrown out because of communication and roll out even though the content could be fixed.
NY / US may or may not need a monster data base and it is certainly million$ down the drain, but this is just a symptom of the scarier issue of the fate of public education in the U.S.
The politicos and corporate folks are stuck on tree thinking and don’t see the forest.
This inBloomplosion is a battle victory – but while these pieces of the puzzle battles are being fought – don’t lose sight that the war we are fighting is the one against public education and the education of every child – not just some or a segregated few in non-inclusive schools.
Jere, I see you’re the superintendent of a public school district. You say that “sadly, a lot of babies are being thrown out with bathwater.”
You’re arguing to preserve corrupt and unsound data-driven accountability structures that are the very lever of the corporate drive for control of public education. I’m thinking you’re arguing to preserve your job, at a measly $254K, which is surely contingent on the continued patronage of those “politicos and corporate folks”, who are “stuck on tree thinking and don’t see the forest.”
You not only won’t defy them, you come all the way here to declare your continued embrace of their power.
Here’s your own paragraph, with the truth right at the surface, barely camouflaged by your bad-faith dither:
“Was InBloom THAT evil? Maybe yes – maybe no – but that’s just they are just the symptom. Were there that many identified leaks in their system and algorithms? Were the privacy laws and security expectations that weak? Were they really asking for too private identifiable information and couldn’t that be changed? Again – maybe yes – maybe no – but we’ll never know if could be fixed because of the poor communication, motives, and roll out.”
Yes, InBloom is that evil. You say maybe. You are being paid a quarter million dollars every year by the people whose children you supposedly serve, and yet you think you can pass on your professional obligation to discern good from evil. You’re working as an instrument, a tool, a hired puppet to put the corporate heel on living children, and even you can’t defend the thing you’re imposing and enforcing.
Rupert Murdoch’s profit-driven claws are all over inBloom. So, if it’s “just the symptom”, what is the disease we’re fighting? Exactly what is it you were hoping to “fix”, so your masters can continue milking it?
wow. where to begin.
” You’re working as an instrument, a tool, a hired puppet to put the corporate heel on living children, and even you can’t defend the thing you’re imposing and enforcing.”
You missed the point completely.
Since you asked. yes – these are all symptoms.
The disease is the demise of public education.
The quick-fixes, ignoring experts for a political victory, no-excuses state directives, corporate takeover, union-bashing, TFA business model, segregated schools, leaders who are not educators, obsession with testing.. ARE all symptoms.
Battles do need to be fought about privacy, security, standards that make sense and work, evaluation systems that are fair and not punitive or tied to test scores, roll out that is thoughtful and well developed, and more.
But again, public education is at risk. Professionalism is at risk. Educating EVERY student, not just some, is at risk.
And, I stand by the babies and bathwater or tree thinking remarks. I read the criticism and commentaries on the issues I cited above daily. What I do not read is the “then what?”
Sorry, I detest what is happening to public education and fight it routinely whether you choose to accept that or not. But, I also have an obligation to figure out what will work to keep standards and expectations high, assessments fair, standardized testing every three or four years (grades 5, 8, 10) to benchmark curriculum, evaluations that are fair and objective and not just complaining.
“standardized testing every three or four years (grades 5, 8, 10) to benchmark curriculum,”
Now that I could see. Are we actually teaching something that most of our students can master at a certain age? Not used to declare certain students who score on the lower end of the curve as failures. After all, a bell curve is describing a normal distribution, which by its nature means that all scores are within normal expectations. All it tells us is that we need to develop a process for proving content to a certain range of students, which can be defined much more accurately from our own local interactions with individual students.
Am I describing what you are saying accurately?
These are “babies” being thrown out they are vultures. It’s not “bathwater” it’s blood. Quit using tired cliche’s. Educators should know better.
Edit: These aren’t “babies” being thrown out.
It’s a mistake to think of whether inBloom was good or bad as a technology question. From the start, this has clearly been mainly a human problem. There are robust security and privacy technologies and practices out there in the real world, but these were explicitly excluded from the inBloom business (not technology) model and its relationship with state ed departments. To understand how bad inBloom was, read the contract between NYS and inBloom. This gave all the risk for everything to the State, and all the benefit to inBloom’s third-party partners, without stating any clear public purpose for the engagement.
Questions of what humans intended to achieve with the product, whether it met a legitimate pedagogic need, conflicts of interest, honesty of the proponents, and monetization of children’s activities and lives trump any questions of whether or not the technology was sufficiently secure. It could have been made as secure as the most secure systems hosting the most sensitive secrets in the world, but still would have been an awful idea.
To illustrate, consider John King’s response to privacy concerns. He went around for months saying that we didn’t have to worry because inBloom wouldn’t collect SSN’s. But that was never a real issue. The issue was that the contract allowed inBloom to transfer all kinds of personally identifiable information to for-profit third parties that were directed and/or funded by the same people who ran inBloom, and there were no controls on how the third parties stored or used the data. When confronted with this, his response was essentially “mumble mumble, https, encryption, mumble mumble.”
The lesson we should all draw from this (both in this specific case and more broadly) is always be alert for red herrings and don’t accept tech answers to human questions. No babies were thrown out here. There was only bathwater (that was intended to drown babies).
Reblogged this on Schools of Thought Hudson Valley, NY and commented:
RIP InBloom.
Thank goodness that we have leaders like Leonie Haimson who are fighting for the good of our future leaders, our children!
Aimee Guidera, Data Quality Campaign cheerleader, uses Arne’s talking points about data as a “game changer” in the article below.
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Data-gatherer-inBloom-to-fold-5419390.php
“Proper use of such information can be a “game-changer,” said Aimee Rogstad Guidera, executive director of the Data Quality Campaign, which supports the use of data studies to inform education decisions. That demand for information isn’t going to go away,” she said.”
Gates, Guidera, Duncan, King, Murdoch and other corporate pirates can’t understand why parents don’t want the snake-oil they are selling.
Thank you Leonie. A win for the good guys!
this is a response to 2old2teach – re: testing in grades 5, 8, 10
First – yes – that is what I would propose because it could be useful information and because after 2002 there’s no going back on some version of testing so let’s make the best of a bad system.
test scores have become meaningless. All they really tell us is patterns of poverty. Outliers are helpful – who is breaking the mold. There are dozens of versions in each state with which means hundreds of versions of high-stakes standardized tests with cut scores for proficient that are: a) established with a dart board, b) established to make schools look bad; c) established to make schools look really bad.
the only benefit of a standardized test that I see is are kids learning what we are teaching and/or expect them to know and be able to do? Forever, districts have administered home grown assessments in writing, mathematical problem solving, etc. to get a picture of the entire district and to see what is working and no in the written curriculum. I guess if I were a state doling out billions of dollars each year, I’d want to be sure the money was getting results and that there was equity so a standardized test to assess the entire state against some standard make sense.
But NOT annually and NOT 7 hours a year per subject. And, NOT tying a teacher’s evaluation to a single score.
So yes, benchmark “how is the curriculum working?” “are there gaps in alignment?” “do we need more emphasis on x and less on y?’ and do it at the transition years (end of elementary, end of middle school, end of 10th grade) so the next entire group of teachers inheriting that class knows where extra emphasis might be needed and building on strengths. As for INDIVIDUAL kids – that should all be local assessments.
Again, everyone is focusing on the privacy issue with these databases, and that is very important and should concern people, but people also really need to start paying attention to the educational materials market access issue as well. This is a VERY IMPORTANT issue with these databases and how they are used that is ALMOST NEVER UNDERSTOOD or discussed. If the insistence is that the program must link to a particular databases and provide information to and reporting from that database, then whoever controls the database controls what materials can and cannot be sold in a given market. If you like the idea of monopoly control of educational materials, of innovative, new competitors who are not connected to or part of a monopolist network, being able to create alternatives to the crappy pablum from the big box publishers, then you need to fight this, to watch very carefully who is setting up the curriculum portals, who controls access to them, who gets in and who doesn’t.
Ideally, there would be 100 companies, all competing, all forced to create materials more engaging, more innovative, more valuable that the other stuff. But what we have seen in the educational materials market is an enormous consolidation. Often, that consolidation is hidden from view because companies are owned by the same folks or are involved in joint ventures or partnerships. Scratch the surface, and there are a few big players, all doing their best to secure and hold onto monopolistic control.
That’s a VERY bad thing for teachers, kids, parents, the country,.
Watch very carefully when your state or district sets up an online curriculum portal. Ask, who owns this? Who decides what flows through it? By what rules that effectively limit access to the big players? What backroom deals are involved?
Or when your district purchases tablets. Again, ask who controls what is accessible via these and who holds the keys and what deals those folks have made regarding the keys.