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Archives for the year of: 2014
In this era of Big Data, many organizations want to collect and use personal student data for their own ends. In recent years, the U.S Department of Education has weakened the privacy protections embedded in FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act). Parent activists wants Congress to take action to protect their children’s privacy rights.
PRESS RELEASE
July 23, 2014
For more information contact:
Leonie Haimson: leonie@classsizematters.org; 401-466-2262; 917-435-9329
Rachael Stickland: info@studentprivacymatters.org; 303-204-1272
New Coalition Urges Congress to Listen to Parents and Strengthen Student Privacy Protections
A new coalition called the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy released a letter today to the leaders of the committees of the House and Senate Education Committees, urging Congress to strengthen FERPA and involve parents in the decision-making process to ensure that their children’s privacy is protected.
Many of the groups and individuals in the Coalition were involved in the battle over inBloom, which closed its doors last spring. They were shocked to learn during this struggle how federal privacy protections and parental rights to protect their children’s safety through the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) had eroded over the last decade.
The letter is posted here, and calls for Congress to hold hearings and enact new privacy protections that would minimize the sharing of highly sensitive student data with vendors and among state agencies and would maximize the right of parents to notification and consent. The letter also asks for strict security requirements, that the law be enforceable through fines, and that parents have the right to sue if their children’s privacy is violated.
Rachael Stickland, a leader in the fight for student privacy in Colorado and co-chair of the Coalition to Protect Student Privacy points out, “inBloom’s egregious attempt to siphon off massive amounts of sensitive student information and to share it with for-profit vendors took parents by surprise. Once we learned that recent changes to FERPA allowed non-consensual disclosure of highly personal data, parents became fierce advocates for their children’s privacy. We’re now prepared to organize nationally to promote strong, ethical privacy protections at the state and federal levels.”
Diane Ravitch, President of the Network for Public Education said: “Since the passage of FERPA in 1974, parents expected that Congress was protecting the confidentiality of information about their children. However, in recent years, the US Department of Education has rewritten the regulations governing FERPA, eviscerating its purpose and allowing outside parties to gain access to data about children that should not be divulged to vendors and other third parties. The Network for Public Education calls on Congress to strengthen FERPA and restore the protection of families’ right to privacy.”
“The
uprising against inBloom demonstrated the extent to which parents are will not tolerate the misuse of their children’s sensitive personal information,” said Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood’s Associate Director Josh Golin. “But parents cannot be expected to mobilize against each and every threat to their children’s privacy, particularly if they’re not even aware of which vendors have access to student data. It is critical that Congress take real steps to protect schoolchildren from those who see student data as a commodity to be exploited for profit.”
“Parents Across America, a national network of public school parents, emphatically supports this call for hearings as a first step toward reversing federal actions that have eroded parental authority over student data, and including even stronger privacy protections for our children,” said Julie Woestehoff, a Chicago parent activist and PAA secretary. She added: “PAA recommends restoring parental authority over student data that was removed from FERPA by the US Department of Education, enacting state laws that include parental opt out provisions in any statewide data sharing program, strictly regulating in-school use of electronic hardware and software that collect student information, and including significant parent representation on any advisory committees overseeing student data collection.”
Lisa Guisbond, executive director of Citizens for Public Schools, a Massachusetts public education advocacy group, said, “Citizens for Public Schools members, including many parents, are deeply concerned about threats to the privacy of student information. We support hearings and strong legislation to protect the privacy of this data. Parents are increasingly left out of important education policy discussions. In this, as in all crucial school policy discussions, they must have a voice.”
“Parents will accept nothing less than parental consent, when it comes to their child’s personally identifiable sensitive information. As a parent of a child with special needs, I understand the devastation that confidential information used without my consent could have on my child’s future. As a long-time advocate for people with autism and other developmental disabilities, I implore the U.S. House and Senate to put the necessary language back into FERPA to protect students and uphold the right of their families to control their personally identifiable data,” said Lisa Rudley, Director of Education Policy, Autism Action Network and Co-Founder of NYS Allies for Public Education.
Emmett McGroarty of the American Principles Project said, “Regardless of intention, the collection of an individual’s personal information is a source of discomfort and intimidation. Government’s broad collection of such information threatens to undermine America’s founding structure: if government intimidates the people, government cannot be by and for the people.”
Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters and co-chair of the Coalition, concluded, “Since inBloom’s demise, many of the post-mortems have centered around the failure of elected officials and organizations who support more data sharing to include parents in the conversation around student privacy. We are no longer waiting to be invited to this debate. It is up to parents to see that we are heard , not only in statehouses but also in the nation’s capital when it comes to the critical need to safeguard our children’s most sensitive data – which if breached or misused could harm their prospects for life. We are urging Congress to listen to our concerns, and act now.”
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Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Education and dequacy writes:
The Ohio Department of Education will limit investigation to one Gulen Horizon Science Academy charter school.
After four former teachers in a Dayton Horizon Science Academy charter school testified on July 15 regarding serious irregularities in that school setting, some state board of education members called on the Department of Education (ODE) to investigate the whole chain of Gulen charter schools that operate in Ohio. ODE, however, has announced that only the Dayton charter school will be investigated.
Perhaps ODE officials are not aware:
that the FBI recently raided three Ohio Gulen charter schools and a total of 19 in various states.
that Los Angeles United School District is investigating the network of eight Gulen charter school authorized by that District. The investigation involves charter school funds being used for immigration costs, loans to the management company, some of which were not repaid.
of the FBI raid on the Des Plaines, IL headquarters of Concept Schools, the management company for Horizon Science Academies (Search and Seizure warrant, Case No. 14MZ87, dated June 17, 2014).
that some Horizon Science Academy board members refuse to respond to questions about their citizenship
that Concept schools have attempted to import nearly 400 Turkish teachers, arguing that Ohio’s workforce lacks high quality educators to fill positions.
The issues surrounding the Concept charter school chain, (Horizon Science Academies and Noble Science Academies) are systemic. ODE should be investigating the entire chain. The members of the State Board of Education, by virtue of their constitutional oath, are duty bound to force ODE to investigate, not only the Gulen chain, but all of charterland.
The lack of transparency and accountability inherent in Ohio charter school law should prompt the State Board of Education to fill the void by aggressively pursuing the misdeeds of charters.
William Phillis
Ohio E & A
Ohio E & A | 100 S. 3rd Street | Columbus | OH | 43215
Jersey Jazzman reacts to Andy Smarick’s call for civil conversations about charter schools. Those conversations won’t happen, JJ says, until reformers tell the truth about charter schools. Where they seem to succeed, they don’t enroll the same students. Or they have high attrition rates. Or they have scads of money. Why not say so.
He quotes Peter Greene on the same subject, in Peter’s inimitable style:
“If charters are tired of press about how they get sweetheart deals with politicians to strip resources from public schools in order to enrich themselves, if they’re tired of stories about how some charter operator got caught in crooked deals, if they’re tired of being raked over the coals for using politics to grease some moneyed wheels– well, their best move would be to stop doing those things.
“If charters are tired of being attacked, they could stop attacking public education, as in the recent charter gathering in which the recurring theme was “Charters are great because public schools suck.” I’m not a fan of “they started it” as an argument, but it’s also specious to declare “all I did was keep calling him names and stealing his lunch, and then he just hit me for no reason!”
It would be good to have that civil conversation that Smarick says he longs for, but it won’t happen unless “reformers” tell the truth about how they stack the deck by excludingthe kids they don’t want and how the big money that gets dropped into their coffers by Walton, Broad, Gates, Arnold, Dell, and even Arne Duncan makes for very unfair comparisons.
And too there must be some discussion about the end game. Where will we be a decade from now if charters cherry pick the students they want, and public schools are left with the students rejected by the charters? Would this not be a dual school system? Can anyone think of another nation with this approach to publicly-funded education?
Peter Greene continues the debate about reform, civility, and honesty.
Have critics of the reformers corrupted the debate by being snarky?
Or have reformers corrupted the debate by calling themselves reformers as they seek to strip teachers of job rights and taking money from public schools for religious and private schools?
Greene writes:
.
“We play a lot of games with defining what qualifies as a lie (it depends one what the meaning of “is” is). I say, any time you shade or misrepresent the truth in order to influence, shape or control the behavior of other people, that’s a lie. For me, that also explains what’s wrong with lying– it’s an attempt to take away another person’s ability to make their own informed decision. Lying is destructive because it breaks relationships. It’s wrong because it’s about stealing another person’s freedom to choose.
“How do we react to being lied to?
“Well, when someone lies to you, they are sending some of the following messages:
* I don’t care about you enough to actually show up for this conversation
* I think you’re stupid
* We both know I’m lying, but you’re powerless to do anything about it, so neener neener
* You don’t matter; I’m in charge here
* This is not a real conversation
“Lies, depending on how much power you have in the situation, are somewhere between angering and funny. Depending on how much power you have and your temperament and the history of the relationship involved, you will choose something somewhere between playing along and fighting back. Playing along can either be about resignation or the hope that playing along will eventually lead to real dialogue. Fighting back can be about open aggression, or about snark and sass and sarcasm.
But here’s the most important thing I know about lying.
Lying closes the door to real dialogue. Closes it absolutely and completely.
So maybe snark and sass are a way of breaking that down. Maybe, for me, it’s a way of saying, “Look. I want you to know that I don’t believe that bullshit at all and you can stop shoveling it so we can move on to something else.”
In the education debates, sorting out the players is hard as hell. There are reformsters who I believe are being honest– they just don’t know what they’re talking about. I believe there are others who are looking for good faith ways to improve education. And I believe that there are some who haven’t had an honest word to say about education in years.
“They are not always easy to sort out. New NEA president Lily Eskelson Garcia seems to believe that Arne Duncan is sincere but just wrong. I’m not so sure, but she’s met him face to face, and I have not. like the majority of teachers, I’ve got to make these judgments from home, from words on a screen. And not everyone is so obviously full of it as She Who Will Not Be Named or the various lying hucksters pushing charters to make a buck…..
“Sometimes a lie is so outlandish that the truth sounds like mockery, and I think many parts of the conversation have sailed way past that point. There’s no way to respond to something like “We will get better teachers in classrooms by removing job security for the profession” that doesn’t sound like snark. There’s no way to inject honesty and truth into a discussion of using testing to measure teacher effectiveness without making proponents of VAM sound foolish. If the emperor has no clothes on, there’s no way to have an honest conversation of his wardrobe that doesn’t leave him feeling naked.
“To move forward, we need honesty more than we need niceness. The people who have injected large lies into the conversation have raised the bar for how tough honesty is going to be (which is often the point of making the big lie), but we can’t be afraid to go there. We can’t make the mistake of matching lies with lies; reformsters are not brain-damaged fiends who drink the blood of children under a full moon. But if pointing out the truth is going to feel ugly and snarky and sassy, we can’t be afraid to do it. Honesty is an essential navigating tool for finding our way out of this sea of strife and confusion.
A civil conversation requires honesty. And the conversation these days about charter schools — and, indeed, about tenure and test-based teacher evaluation and seniority and vouchers and standards and just about every other education policy on the table today — is anything but honest.”.
Andy Smarick, a partner at Bellweather Associates, a senior fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a former deputy commissioner of education in New Jersey for Governor Christie, and a man with a long list of other affiliations with conservative groups and politicians, loves charter schools. he sees them as the wave of the future, replacing “failing” public schools in urban and suburban areas and bringing everyone the excellence that thus far has been elusive.
Smarick sees two conversations going on today about charter schools. To one side are those like himself who are trying to figure out the new paradigm of schooling, in which privately-managed charter schools are a permanent part of the landscape. This conversation deals with finance, governance, how to get it right. It assumes that charter schools are a permanent part of the landscape and the question to be solved is one of tinkering.
On the other side are people who worry about whether charter schools are a blight that damages public education and should be closely scrutinized for their finances, their boasts, and their policies governing admissions and suspensions. This side refers to hedge fund managers, privateers, and exorbitant executive salaries, and makes big headlines out of what Smarick considers the extraordinary miscreant.
One could match anecdote with anecdote, but more important are questions about deregulation, about exclusion of students with disabilities and English language learners, lack of transparency, and lack of accountability by charter schools that refuse to tell the state or even their own boards how public money is spent. Will American education improve if more public money is shifted to non-educators who hire uncertified teachers and whose use of public money is not disclosed?
One of the most corrupt states in the nation, in relation to charter schools, is Ohio, where the Thomas B. Fordham Institute is legally headquartered and authorizes charter schools (none of its charter schools have been implicated in the major scandals.) the governor and the legislature receive handsome contributions from the charter industry. A recent article in the Columbus Dispatch written by Denis Smith, former overseer of charter schools for the Ohio State Department of Education, makes a valuable counterpoint to Smarick’s complaint about charter critics. Denis Smith writes about 19 Gulen-associated schools now under investigation.
Smith writes:
“At a State Board of Education meeting this week, four former charter-school teachers testified on alleged unlawful conduct at Horizon Science Academy Dayton High School, including what The Dispatch described as “test cheating, attendance tampering, sexual misconduct and other misdeeds…….”
What the State Board heard from the teachers helped to shed light on a chain of 19 schools in Ohio managed by an out-of-state operation that staffs these buildings in part by employing Turkish citizens holding H-1B visas.
But what the board didn’t hear is that these same schools are governed by a group of individuals, nearly all men, who may not be “qualified voters” — in other words, American citizens. Or that some of the schools were raided by the FBI last month. Or that the inspiration for these schools is a mysterious exiled Turkish cleric named Fethullah Gulen, who lives in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania and leads a religious and political movement that seeks to destabilize the government of his native land.
As bizarre as this situation is, the very idea that the Gulen chain are public schools is illustrative of what ails the charter-school industry in Ohio.
Consider these glaring legal loopholes:
• Charter-school administrators are not required to hold any professional licenses or meet even minimal educational requirements.
• Charter-school board members aren’t elected by or responsible to the voters. Some are hand-picked by for-profit management companies runing schools.
• Charter-school board members do not have to be “qualified voters” (citizens) who are registered with the secretary of state’s office in recognition of their status as members of a public board.
• With hand-picked, unelected boards, charter-school administrators can pay themselves exorbitant salaries that can match those of local superintendents responsible for the education of thousands of students in multiple locations.
• Many charter schools employ highly paid administrators but compensate their teachers well below those in other public schools, leading to constant staff turnover.
• The for-profit management companies that operate many charter schools think that their mission and vision (read: profit) supersede the legitimate interests and aspirations of the public.
• Charter schools are exempt from more than 150 provisions of state law that otherwise are applicable to school districts, including a requirement to annually report the names, salaries and credentials of licensed employees to the State Board.
• There are no restrictions on the payment of public funds for recruitment of students, advertising or payment for celebrity endorsements; there is no ban on using public funds earmarked for charter schools for political campaign donations.
The issue confronting this state is not about any individual charter-school chain. It’s that the legislature has created an unregulated, incoherent nightmare that allows for-profit management companies, entrepreneurs, national charter-school chains and ill-prepared developers to operate in a murky industry that ill-serves young people.
If we are to have charter schools in Ohio, their legal basis must be that they exist in similar fashion with public schools, be subject to the same requirements and not be favored by so many questionable exemptions. Chapter 3314 of the Ohio Revised Code that governs the creation and operation of these schools must be scrapped in its entirety.
For these “schools of choice,” we have no other choice.”
In addition to Mr. Smith’s concerns, Ohio and other states should investigate the extraordinary salaries paid to charter CEOs, some of whom are not educators, yet are paid $400,000 or more. And inquire about the lobbyists hired by charter chains to obtain special privileges, or to obtain exemption from accountability. They might ask why charter boards in states like Ohio must sue the charter operator to get financial information. They might be vigilant about the for-profit entrepreneurs who have become multi-millionaires with money intended by taxpayers for schools, not investors. They might ask sharper questions about community public schools that lose resources to shady entrepreneurs and ultimately close.
So long as the charter industry buys favoritism from state legislatures, as long as amateurs win public dollars to run inferior schools, as long as virtual charter schools get rich while supplying poor results, there will continue to be critics–and should be.
This reader commented on a post called “Is the Charter Movement Imploding?” That post reviewed some recent egregious charter school scandals.
He wrote:
“One purpose of school privatization is to bring about “deregulation” of the education system. wherever and whenever deregulation has been permitted to proceed, the result, for public goods and services, has been disastrous. The financial collapse of 2008 was the direct outcome of deregulation. Deregulation was supposed to lead to greater efficiency in the provision of housing and in financial services. Instead it wiped out trillions in individual and social wealth; it nearly destroyed the American economy; and it created a deep, deep well of misery and suffering. The high priests of neoliberalism who called for deregulation should have been made to eat their hats. Their bogus theorizing did not lead to the paradise they promised; instead it put many people in hell. All deregulation of finance achieved was the enrichment of predators and parasites, who preyed on the vulnerable and the desperate by scams, deception and outright criminal acts.
“The deregulation of public education, by leave of privatization, is creating similar opportunities for the unscrupulous and untrustworthy. Because there are no hard and fast criteria for opening a charter school (except a religious commitment to corporate education reform), it’s obvious that this wide open “wild west” frontier where public money is there for the taking was bound to attract venal and criminal types, who have no business at all being around children. Connecticut is notable, because the gap between rich and poor communities is extremely stark, and the State is under legal pressure to make school funding more equitable. But the powers that be in Connecticut are closely connected to the Wall St Hedge Fund Crowd (some of the very people who brought about the 2008 economic collapse), and it is this power which is strongly pushing school privatization. The Hedge Fund Predators don’t care who gets a charter school, just so long as charter schools are created. And the Democratic Governor Malloy is all too willing to oblige his patrons. Malloy is a low character with high ambitions. He would sell his mother to advance his career. But seeing as no one is interested in buying his mother, Malloy has decided to sell out minority children in Connecticut’s poorest cities.
“Deregulation of financial services led to the destruction of many poor neighborhoods, as people were given mortgages they could not manage. The mortgages were given because they were ultimately insured by the Federal government. Private investors got stinking rich by fraud and deception. Homeowners got foreclosed. And the general public picked up the tab for unethical and criminal profiteering. As the Charter school movement continues to grow, you can see the same sorry pattern. Charters are given to crooks, incompetents and charlatans. Some of them make out like bandits. Children in the charters are often given a dreadful education. Neighborhood schools are ruined. Profiteering is at the public expense, as hardly any charter school could survive without public funding. I would not say that the Charter school movement is imploding, but this prospect can’t be ruled out in the future, as deregulation is just another name for ongoing and deepening chaos.”
The University of Arkansas issued a study claiming that charter schools get a higher “return on investment” than public schools, yet are underfunded especially given their great “productivity” and “ROI.” (I admit I stumble over the idea of applying ROI when we are talking about education and children, but that’s just me.)
Bruce Baker of Rutgers University analyzes the University of Arkansas study and takes it apart.
Baker shows that the Arkansas study “shamelessly” and “knowingly” uses bogus data. The Arkansas study is meant to refute an earlier critique of their work by Baker.
Here is what Baker concludes:
“The acknowledgement of my critique, highly selective misrepresentation of my critique, and complete failure to respond to the major substantive points of that critique display a baffling degree of arrogance and complete disregard for legitimate research.
“Yes – that’s right – either this is an egregious display of complete ignorance and methodological ineptitude, or this new report is a blatant and intentional misrepresentation of data. So which is it? I’m inclined to believe the latter, but I guess either is possible.
“Oh… and separately, in this earlier report, Kevin Welner and I discuss appropriate methods for evaluating relative efficiency (the appropriate framework for such comparisons)…. And to no surprise the methods in this new UARK report regarding relative efficiency are also complete junk. Put simply, and perhaps I’ll get to more detail at a later point, a simple “dollars per NAEP score” comparison, or the silly ROI method used in their report are entirely insufficient (especially as some state aggregate endeavor???).
“And it doesn’t take too much of a literature search to turn up the rather large body of literature on relative efficiency analysis in education – and the methodological difficulties in estimating relative efficiency. So, even setting aside the fact that the spending measures in this study are complete junk, the cost effectiveness and ROI approaches used are intellectually flaccid and methodologically ham-fisted.
“But if the measures of inputs suck to begin with, then the methods applied to those measures really don’t matter so much.
“To say this new UARK charter productivity study is built on a foundation of sand would be offensive… to sand.
“And I like sand.”
Valarie Wilson won the runoff election to be the Democratic candidate for Georgia’s State Superintendent of Education.
The Republican primary was too close to call.
Valarie Wilson was endorsed by the Network for Public Education as a true friend of public schools. Her opponent, Alisha Thomas Morgan, was supported by the hedge fund group Democrats for Education Reform, Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst, and the pro-voucher American Federation for Children.
Jon Pelto speculates that the charter industry has lost its magic in Connecticut with the downfall of Michael Sharpe of Jumoke Academy and FUSE. Investigations multiply, and there’s the pesky fact that test scores tanked at one of the FUSE schools.
And Pelto reports that the “reformer” selected to head the schools of New London is in more trouble. The vote by the board on whether to appoint him has been delayed.
Diane Ravitch's blog 