The data mining company inBloom died, killed off by parent opposition, but the data mining industry is not dead. Far from it. It is growing and metastasizing as investors see new opportunities to profit from the data surreptitiously collected while children are using computers, taking tests online, chatting online, and practicing for state tests online.
According to this article in Model View Culture, investors have poured billions of dollars into new technologies to track students’ movements.
Designed for the “21st century” classroom, these tools promise to remedy the many, many societal ills facing public education with artificial intelligence, machine learning, data mining, and other technological advancements.
They are also being used to track and record every move students make in the classroom, grooming students for a lifetime of surveillance and turning education into one of the most data-intensive industries on the face of the earth. The NSA has nothing on the monitoring tools that education technologists have developed in to “personalize” and “adapt” learning for students in public school districts across the United States.
The federal government and the law called FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, passed in 1974) were supposed to prevent invasions of privacy, but the U.S. Department of Education loosened the FERPA regulations in 2011 to make it easier for vendors to data mine. Make no mistake, this is big business. It will not easily be stopped.
“Adaptive”, “personalized” learning platforms are one of the most heavily-funded verticals in education technology. By breaking down learning into a series of tasks, and further distilling those tasks down to a series of clicks that can be measured and analyzed, companies like Knewton (which has raised $105 million in venture capital), or the recently shuttered inBloom (which raised over $100 million from the Gates Foundation) gather immense amounts of information about students into a lengthy profile containing personal information, socioeconomic status and other data that is mined for patterns and insights to improve performance. For students, these clickstreams and data trails begin when they are 5 years old, barely able to read much less type in usernames and passwords required to access their online learning portals.
These developments are alarming. Why should commercial vendors have the right to monitor our every move? Why should the government? This must be stopped, and the successful fight against inBloom proved that it can be stopped. Parents will have to inform themselves and protect their children by demanding legislation that puts an end to the surveillance of their children at school and at home, whenever they are online.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
More and more I’m realizing that this is the poisoned root of the corporate ed reform agenda, that the public knows the least about it, and that it is the most insidious and potentially disastrous, even more than the Common Core and HST. I’ve been trying to keep up with the privacy aspects through the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy. Despite my best intentions, I can’t seem to get my head around all of the intricacies of this agenda–it’s huge. Are there privacy lawyers out there who could help us get actively involved in this and head it off before it’s too late? Thanks
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr7Z7ysDluQ
Warn your children that online courses and test prep may be “powered” by Knewton, a data mining company that partners with Pearson.
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Big Data is everything, everywhere. And it’s big business: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=big+data&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Abig+data
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My sis, an asst principal in a large hs, charged with the safety of her students, is delighted with big data. Last spring, one of her students posted an online message threatening to kill herself. Within 3 minutes, my sis was contacted by the FBI, and the school was able to immediately reach out to the student.
Personally I find the intrusion of gov, even to intervene in the suicide of a minor, an egregious breach of privacy. But it’s easy to see why school admin would buy into it with the best of intentions.
Our political efforts should I think be focused on repairing the FERPA law and putting teeth into it.
But the bigger picture, as outlined in the article & the book cited above by Dienne, will be advancing and worsening before law catches up. Perhaps I am naïve? My guess is that– as may be the case in NSA tapping of every American phone/ email message– technology advances so quickly that our monitors are likely to swamp themselves with far more info than they can use for anything. If I’m right, the answer would be: everybody! go online and blab tons daily, the more the merrier.
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Our kids live in a world where Google, Facebook, Instagram, and many more companies know an amazing number of details about them, for the sole purpose of selling them more stuff.
And yet we’re getting frantic because a few companies might learn a lesser number of details about kids with the purpose of getting them to learn math or science better. (Yes, the ultimate motive would be to sell more programs to school districts, but the way to do that is to show that kids are learning more).
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WT, you and I go back and forth a lot. I’ll agree with elements of your post. Helping kids learn better, etc.
I would, however, note that you are a champion of technology usage. This creates a bias that is visible in this post. You only point out the benefits of these systems in your post. My quibble would be that you should at least acknowledge that these data pieces are not especially likely to be used ONLY for productive purposes.
Your use of the adjective “frantic” may be melodramatic. My concern is not that technology can be a helpful tool but it also can be a means of intrusive behavior by third parties or the government.
One of my closest friends is in the Informatics program at the University of Michigan. He has noted that big data has a tipping point where invasions of privacy become regular and hard to fend off for the average citizen. Also, that big data can be gathered on citizens unknowingly. Therefore, data is often collected without the express permission of those being mined.
And that’s really my issue. I don’t mind that Google GPS’s me so I can avoid traffic. I do mind that some third party vendor, unknown to me and without my personal permission can monitor any personal records related to job, health or relationships. I don’t have a FB account because I don’t want to provide the personal information that FB collects. My choice. Your choice might be different. But it should still be a choice.
So again, if you feel that some system like TSDL can be helpful with your kid, go for it. But if it’s imposed without permission on the people involved, I would have a problem with that.
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Two collaborators in this data- mongering a surveillance, with states funded to do the work and free to let commercial venders exploit the data.
Bill Gates Vision. Between 2005 and early 2011, the Gates’ Foundation invested $75 million in a major advocacy campaign for data-gathering, aided by the National Governor’s Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, Achieve, and The Education Trust. Between 2005 and mid-May 2011 the Gates’ Foundation also awarded grants totaling $390,493,545 for projects to gather data and build systems for reporting on teacher effectiveness. This campaign envisions the link between teacher and student data serving eight purposes:
1. Determine which teachers help students become college-ready and successful, 2. Determine characteristics of effective educators, 3. Identify programs that prepare highly qualified and effective teachers, 4. Assess the value of non-traditional teacher preparation programs, 5. Evaluate professional development programs, 6. Determine variables that help or hinder student learning, 7. Plan effective assistance for teachers early in their career, and 8. Inform policy makers of best value practices, including compensation (TSDL, 2011, “Use and Purpose”).
The TSDL system monitors the work of teachers in a manner that ensures all courses are based on standards, and that all responsibilities for learning are assigned to one or more “teachers of record” in charge of a student or class or some proportion of time with a student on learning activities. Learning activities must be defined in terms of the performance measures for a particular standard, by subject and grade level.
The TSDL system requires period-by-period tracking of teachers and students every day; including “tests, quizzes, projects, homework, classroom participation, or other forms of day-to-day assessments and progress measures”—a level of surveillance that is said to be comparable to business practices (TSDL, 2011, “Key Components”).
The system will keep current and longitudinal data on the performance of teachers and individual students, as well schools, districts, states, and educators ranging from principals to higher education faculty. Why? Front story is this: Determine the “best value” investments to make in education and to monitor improvements in outcomes, taking into account as many demographic factors as possible, including health records for preschoolers. Battelle for Kids manages one of several TSDL data warehouses. Battelle for Kids received about $6.5 million from 2005 to mid-may 2011 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
USDE’s Vision. This Gates-funded TSDL campaign added significant resources to USDE’s initiative. Since 2006, USDE (on behalf of taxpayers) has invested over $700 million in the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) Grant Program. More than forty states have received multi-year grants to standardize data on education. The SLDS program is:
“designed to aid state education agencies in developing and implementing longitudinal data systems. These systems are intended to enhance the ability of States to efficiently and accurately manage, analyze, and use education data, including individual student records…to help States, districts, schools, and teachers make data-driven decisions to improve student learning, as well as facilitate research to increase student achievement and close achievement gaps.”
The TSDL data-gathering system determines how teachers are required to think about their work. For example, the tests and procedures for SLOs in Ohio are structured to fit the TSDL system of coding “baseline data,” “intervals of instruction,” “test scores,” calculations of gains in scores “pretest to posttest” versus “targets.” and so on. There is “you cannot change an approved SLO” rule that prevents any change in key data entries. Ohio’s TSDL system works in tandem with the federal longitudinal data system and another system for “Improving instructional Systems.”
The Orwellian graphic for the USDE surveillance system is here:
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/os/technology/plan/2004/edlite-xplan-sdm.html
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Are the Gateses’ children and their cohorts at private school part of the data warehouses?
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I read this post a few days ago and wrote a post describing how I was simultaneously disheartened by, in agreement with, and intrigued by it. Briefly: I was disheartened because technology as it is used today is dis-equalizing. I was in agreement with the overarching premise of the article that our current use of technology overemphasizes regulation and monitoring and, consequently IS conditioning students to accept surveillance and screening as a way of life. I was intrigued because it flagged several paradoxes involving the use of technology instances where policy makers need to determine boundaries between the data collected in school and the data shared with other agencies and vendors.
FERPA, written in 1974, never envisioned the kind of massive data collection that is possible today and technology advocates haven’t figured out how to purchase the tools that many students have at home and so are willing to enter into agreements where data is traded for hardware and software. FERPA needs to be reworked, a daunting task given the complex questions involved and the dysfunctional legislature.
Addressing these and other paradoxes will be crucial if we want to use technology to truly individualize instruction and to level the playing field. By dodging these questions we are increasing the digital divide and preparing our students for a world where they will be surveilled 24/7. The full context of these observations is included in this post:
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An 80 million dollar grant could have created significant and positive changes in the lives and wellbeing of so many children in our state of Indiana . Early Childhood Education is about brain development through strong emotional connections with another adult. The research reported by the American Family Association of Indianas Director Micah Clark is deeply incorrect. High quality preschool education provides for so many children of poverty, life changing experiences and opportunities that structurally and functionally change the brain! Children living in poverty and extreme poverty are living in family systems which are also emotionally, socially and physiologically compromised by chronic stress and ambient trauma. This type of everyday trauma, significantly affects the emotional attachments, the relational organ, our brain. We are neurobiologically wired for relationships. And when these relationships are under duress, we are at risk, physiologically, and vulnerable for compromised health, emotional regulation and emotional, physical and social maladies. When primary caregivers are experiencing distress through poverty, children and their development are intimately affected. The resiliency research is very clear. One secure emotional connection with an adult can change the trajectory of brain health, and therefore the future learning and positive emotional capacities of children who are not receiving these connections in their homes. Early childhood education for many children provides a safe environment where there is a secure attachment felt; planting the seeds of resilient repair into a childs brain, his or her social organ that has the potential for living with lasting well-being. Children who are exposed to safe environments that provide stimulation in the form of emotional attachments have the potential to do well throughout life. Early Childhood Education programs provide these attachments, the stimulation from safe environments, healthy food, and the flexible presence and compassion that a child living within an emotionally and physiologically impoverished environment would never experience. The research is clear and burgeoning. The early childhood years are critical developmental years where the brain is forming in a very use dependent way. When we are exposed to emotional and relational environments, we begin to move out of the fight flight freeze response, building a capacity to trust and thrive even when our home environments are oppressed with chronic stress and developmental everyday trauma. Young children who present with very angry and oppositional behaviors are so misunderstood. Fear is masked as anger. When we are exposed to an extended family through early childhood education, we develop the brain capacity to emotionally regulate, to self-soothe and to trust in ways that will enhance our learning in future years. We cannot afford to turn down large federal grants that provide so much more than meets the eye through a political educational reform lens!
In Indiana, we have the following:
Child Poverty
Nearly 1 in 4 (22.4 percent) of Indianas children were poor in 2012, a total of 349,524 children.1
Indiana ranked 28th in child poverty among states.2
More than 1 in 10 children lived in extreme poverty at less than half the poverty level.
The youngest children were the poorest age group. More than 1 in 4 children under age 6 were poor; nearly half of these poor children were extremely poor.
Children of color in Indiana are disproportionately poor.
Nearly 1 in 2 Black children, nearly 2 in 5 Hispanic children, and nearly 3 in 10 American Indian/Native Alaskan children were poor in 2012, compared to nearly 1 in 6 White children.
Childrens Defense Fund
Lori L Desautels, Ph.D.
School of Education
Marian University
________________________________
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The Philly school district has a budget shortfall of $108 million….that $80 million would have certainly helped them out…
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Murphy’s law of data collection:
“If data can be misused and/or abused, it will be”
Bank on it. Others will be.
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Reblogged this on NYCDOEPARENT and commented:
So sad, I might as well keep him home!
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….and folks wonder why more and more folks homeschool. My cousins family
has seven kids…NONE went to a public school. Folks above need to stop the
“magical thinking” thinking that public education has anything to do with
educating…its about monitoring and enforcing conformity. it is sad and amusing
to see the pro-tech trolls present but…if your kids are sitting in public school
right now you are abusing them and its time you removed them. So it today…
do it…..NOW….
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Reblogged this on Dolphin and commented:
….and speaking of violations of privacy….
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Why would anyone desire to be tracked? Where is the outrage about any tracking devices from cars to cell phones to grocery store loyalty cards to common core?
I bet all of the commenters and the author have a cell phone. Guess what they track your movements. Throw them away and life slows a bit. Children do not need cell phones or the internet. Childhood is special because of imagination and play. Adults do not use playgrounds. I would prefer to prepare my child for a lifetime of learning and happiness than for a lifetime of surveillance. The first step is throw away the biggest surveillance device -cell phones. I as a 49 year old am the only person I know without a cell phone. I am wondering why you care about children being tracked but yet you carry around a device that tracks everything you do.
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