Valerie Strauss writes that the U.S. Department of Education plans a new student data base that will collect personally identifiable information on 12,000 students, 500 teachers, and 104 principals, and and make the data available to private contractors.
EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center), the nation’s premier organization defending privacy, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education and said that its plans violate federal privacy laws.
The project is small today, only 12,000 students. But the precedent would allow larger and larger invasions of student privacy in the future.
The U.S. Department of Education worked closely with the Gates Foundation to try to establish inBloom, a data-collecting project that was halted by parent opposition. That data would have been available to private vendors too.
There is a federal law protecting student privacy. Clearly, the law should be strengthened so that the Department of Education is clearly barred from gathering personally identifiable information about any student. Under this administration, the ED has been a willing handmaiden of commercial interests, not children. This must stop.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why is the federal government doing the bidding of private interests such as those of Bill Gates? The privacy laws should be enforced, and it may take a lawsuit to get the government to do its job. Government should not be a conduit of information to private corporations.
If the federal government is interested in conducting a study, it should conduct a rigorous study of the effectiveness of providing privatized education on students, public schools, neighborhoods and families. However, this study is not of interest to private corporations so the feds have little interest in pursuing this research. Instead, they keep tossing more funds into the black hole of privatization while they ignore the majority of students. They dare not provide much oversight or accountability; in contrast, in public schools, they want to bury teachers in paperwork, data and micro-manage every aspect of their day.
Here is the greatest part of your answer, dear colleague.
Article published today at Nation of Change.
“They consist of 16,000 individuals, about the size of a crowd at a professional basketball game. The inequality horror they’ve fomented is reaching far beyond the half of America that is in or near poverty, for it now impacts those of us well above the median, those of us in the second highest of four wealth quartiles.
1. The .01% Have as Much Wealth as 80% of America
The combined net worth of the 16,000 richest Americans is approximately the same as the total wealth of 256,000,000 people. Details for this statistic and other facts to follow are at You Deserve Facts.
2. Americans with up to a Quarter-Million Dollars are Part of the Nearly 80% of Americans with Less Wealth Than the .01%
The 80% includes all Americans with a net worth up to about $277,000.
3. The .01% Own about as Much as 75% of the Entire World
The world’s poorest 75% own roughly 4 percent of total global wealth, approximately the same percentage of wealth owned by the .01% in the United States. Again, calculations are shown here.
4. The .01% – Who Are They?
It starts with the billionaires, the Forbes 400 and 136 more, for a total of 536 individuals with a total net worth of $2.6 trillion at the end of 2015.
It continues with more Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (UHNWIs). These loftily-named people, over 15,000 of them, are worth hundreds of millions of dollars apiece, bringing the total .01% wealth to about $6.2 trillion, based on 2013-14 data. But U.S. wealth has grown by about 30 percent in three years, and the Forbes 400 has grown by 38 percent, and thus the total wealth of the .01% has grown to over $9 trillion.
In contrast, a recent Institute for Policy Studies report calculated that the bottom half of America has about $732 billion in total wealth, and further calculations on the same data show that the bottom 75% of America owned about $6.2 trillion in 2013.
5. The Unique Brand of .01% Terror: Making a Game of Tax Avoidance While 2,500,000 Children Experience Homelessness
Wealth ownership is not contemptible if the owners of that wealth accept their responsibility to the society that makes their great fortunes possible. But instead of paying taxes, the wealthiest Americans have formed an “income defense industry” to shelter their riches, with, according to the New York Times, “a high-priced phalanx of lawyers, estate planners, lobbyists and anti-tax activists who exploit and defend a dizzying array of tax maneuvers, virtually none of them available to taxpayers of more modest means.”
On the corporate end, over half of U.S. corporate foreign profits are now being held in tax havens, double the share of just twenty years ago. Yet for some of our largest corporations, according to the Wall Street Journal, over 75 percent of the cash owned by their foreign subsidiaries remains in U.S. banks, “held in U.S. dollars or parked in U.S. government and corporate securities.” Thus they get the benefit of our national security while they eagerly avoid taxes.
The .01% go about their self-serving tax avoidance while 2.5 million children experience homelessness every year. The corporations of the .01% hoard hundreds of billions overseas while nearly two-thirds of American families don’t have enough money to replace a broken furnace.
This is real terror, facing life without shelter and warmth and sustenance, without a semblance of security for even one day in the future. It is terror caused in good part by the 16,000 people who don’t feel it’s necessary to pay for the benefits heaped upon them by a perversely unequal society.”
Bio of Author: Paul Buchheit is a college teacher with formal training in language development and cognitive science. He is the founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, RappingHistory.org, PayUpNow.org), and the editor and main author of “American Wars: Illusions and Realities” (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.
Charters are another form of corporate welfare that permits the wealthy to gain tax credits, loopholes while they play another game of “hiding the assets” from the IRS.
Yes…and the commercial aspects of using this data build up to focus sales of products to every single person in the world including children…is mind-boggling. All advertisers have this tech ability and use it right now…that is why I refuse to be on anything to do with Google…including Diane’s education writers site where I only comment, but do not post articles at Google Base Camp. If you even look at an ad online, you are a target for pop ups…and Amazon is a major user of this tech.
The is far from the Brave New World I had hoped for…but it is the world foisted on us by corporate America and its hired-gun geniuses.
Reblogged this on stopcommoncorenys.
This nightmarish scenario is being promoted as an actual benefit:
“Imagine classrooms outfitted with cameras that run constantly, capturing each child’s every facial expression, fidget, and social interaction, every day, all year long.
Then imagine on the ceilings of those rooms infrared cameras, documenting the objects that every student touches throughout the day, and microphones, recording every word that each person utters.
Picture now the children themselves wearing Fitbit-like devices that track everything from their heart rates to their time between meals. For about a quarter of the day, the students use Chromebooks and learning software that track their …”
If only we had a functioning public sector to limit some of the worst and most completely insane excesses of the private sector….just a pipedream, I know.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/01/13/the-future-of-big-data-and-analytics.html
What I would like to see Chiara is cameras attached to Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Scott Walker, etc “that run constantly capturing each reformer’s every facial expression, fidget, and social interaction, every day, all year long.”
How can anyone think that this scenerio is a “benefit?” It’s gross.
This whole piece is amazing:
“In 1898, a writing exam at Berkeley found that 30 to 40 percent of entering freshman were not proficient in English. A Harvard report found only 4 percent of applicants “could write an essay, spell, or properly punctuate a sentence.” But that didn’t stop editorialists from complaining about how things were better in the old days. Back when they went to school, complained the editors of the New York Sun in 1902, children “had to do a little work. … Spelling, writing and arithmetic were not electives, and you had to learn.” Now schooling was just “a vaudeville show. The child must be kept amused and learns what he pleases.” In 1909, the Atlantic Monthly complained that basic skills had been replaced by “every fad and fancy.”
That same year, the dean of Stanford’s school of education warned that in a global economy, “whether we like it or not, we are beginning to see that we are pitted against the world in a gigantic battle of brains and skill.” Because of their failing schools, of course, Americans were coming up short.”
I’m going to send it to my father. He’s almost 90, went to public schools in Scranton PA, and he insists he had head this his entire life. He’s right! 🙂
https://newrepublic.com/article/127317/school
Thanks for the link. It seems public schools have always been a whipping boy for society. In reality, our nation would not have accomplished all it has without strong public schools. Our current scapegoating of public schools is different in that rather than enhance or improve public schools for the greater good, wealthy investors want to see their demise, and they are rigging the system to do just that. These are dangerous times for public education!
This is ALL based on the exalted, Ayn Randian, ‘free market’ philosophy which is claimed by the ultra rich to be the only way to enriching, by trickle down, the entire populace.
In reality the free market is far from free and has killed off the Middle Class with burying anti-Trust laws, creating off shore banks to stash and hide profits, Buying legislators, and all the other undue influence of ‘payoffs for profit’ that this self-serving class of ultra wealthy has stolen for itself. (Think Blankfein and Dimon…supported by Obama and Holder,for collusion between crooked banks and subsumed politicians). It is only those without a conscience who rise to the economic top by poisoning our air and water, by pricing our medications beyond a fair profit, by usury and fraud,
Look for more of this hedging on FERPA privacy protection on student data before ESSA kicks in. And note the very weak, wonderlandy ESSA language on privacy: pp. 318-19. ‘
‘SEC. 8545. SENSE OF CONGRESS ON PROTECTING STUDENT PRIVACY.
‘‘(a) FINDINGS.—The Congress finds as follows:
‘‘(1) Students’ personally identifiable information is important to protect.
‘‘(2) Students’ information should not be shared with individuals other than school officials in charge of educating those students without clear notice to parents.
‘‘(3) With the use of more technology, and more research about student learning, the responsibility to protect students’ personally identifiable information is more important than ever.
‘'(4) Regulations allowing more access to students’ personal information could allow that information to be shared or sold by individuals who do not have the best interest of the students in mind.
‘‘(5) The Secretary has the responsibility to ensure every entity that receives funding under this Act holds any personally identifiable information in strict confidence.
‘‘(b) SENSE OF CONGRESS.—It is the sense of the Congress that the Secretary should review all regulations addressing issues of student privacy, including those under this Act, and ensure that students’ personally identifiable information is protected.’’
Elsewhere in ESSA, the responsibility for privacy in data use is largely assigned to teachers who are supposed to receive a lot of “professional development” on this matter.
ESSA’s faith in the efficacy of “data-driven decisions” is unbridled and unwarranted.
You will find 136 mentions of data in the law, with some of these attached to phrases such as “prohibited uses,” but with more references to data as if it MUST be evidence for policy and practice. Of course, ESSA also requires the use of test scores and related information for federal “accountability.”
There are slippery slope definitions in ESSA of “eligible entities” for grants. Among these are collaborations with “private entities,” “businesses” (and not just for career prep), and eight specific references to “partnerships” with for-profits. So commercialism is allowed in the law, and for activities that do involve student data. I hope some legal watchdogs have found those openings for commercial exploitation of data (always to improve this or that).
The Secretary is prohibited from adding any new data gathering to state responsibilities and prohibited from specifying any uses for data beyond those already in place. This seems to mean that existing state data-gathering activities are untouched, including those attached to state laws and regulations (as in Ohio) that cannot be rescinded without legislative action or the action of some other entity, such a state school board with members who are elected or appointed (or mix of both).
The issue of data privacy is further complicated by the number of states with obligations to the longstanding national data-gathering operations that USDE set up and Gates “co-funded.” For example, almost all of Ohio’s accountability data, including test scores and measures of student performance, is collected in a form that fits the federally funded program of Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems and the Data Quality Campaign, the latter substantially funded by Bill Gates but also framed by the “Founding Partners” in that campaign.
The Data Quality Campaign launched in 2005 included 10 “Founding Partners” many of them also responsible for pushing the Common Core into existence. Also present at the table was Standard & Poor’s School Evaluation Services (SES)–a data analysis service providing information on the relative performance of school systems and how to get the most bang for the buck. SES was a little known project incubated at the “National Education Data Partnership” (also not well-known but managed by the Council of Chief State School Officers with one-year funding from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Broad Foundation through summer 2006.
Data privacy is a thorn in the side a lot of people who think it is perfectly ok to use students, teachers, and public schools as guinea pigs with not even a glance at the ethical principles for research on “human subjects.”
If you are an adult and think HIPPA protects your medical information from being exploited, you are as mistaken as any parent who thinks the FERPA law will protect the privacy of your child’s information. Every health insurer is considered a legitimate “medical service provider” free to use your health information when you sign the form (over and over and over). The insurers get included as legitimate users by stretching a definition of medical provider wide enough to permit data exploitation for profit.
A similar process began with Arne Duncan’s “hedging” of how student data could be used under FERPA, changing the “rules” on who had to sign off on the use of student data, and whether the use required informed from parents or guardians. As long as there is a document trail on who got the data almost any deal could be sealed.
As usual, Laura, great post!
Diane, I read the overall description of this program. This issue has also come up in my case against the Virginia Dept of Education (what data constitutes identification of a student in aggregate) and at the local level.
Can someone please explain what info they believe identifies the student? They are not releasing names or student id’s.
Virginia, the data collected is personally identifiable. (PII). Name of student, address, social security number, grades, scores, discipline records, IEP status, etc. 400 data points.
I understand why they want the entire data set from a given population, but that it’s rather disturbing that 1) you cannot opt out and 2) you must ask them to even find out if you are included.
They should publicly detail how they are keeping the data safe. Encryption history has taught us the only foolproof way to guarantee privacy is to publish the standards that are used. Contrary to popular belief, it does not harm security to publish the methods (not the keys but the methods of encryption/hashing) it enhances security. Why do you think the NSA is so upset at Apple and others using foolproof methods that are basically open source.
It appears they wrote the permission to do this into the law. Is Congress aware that they gave permission for this collection without allowing students to opt out? It is rather concerning. I was one of the names in the gov’t OPM database whose records were stolen (they hit the goldmine). And my district misconfigured their grading system initially this year allowing open access to the entire grading history of high school population. Let’s just say it’s virtually impossible to protect the data if the public (and hackers) are not checking the methods every step of the way.
Virginia, there are organizations fighting this abuse of students’ personal data.
EPIC is the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Google them.