Take this short survey.
The Badass Teachers and the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy are working on a Teacher Privacy Toolkit and would like educators and other school or district staff to respond to a survey about data practices in their schools. This is important to ensure that the toolkit is as useful as possible and responds to educators’ concerns about their students’ privacy and their own.
The link is here: http://bit.ly/2oJNYgC
The survey will close on March 18 so please help them out!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
On the topic of privacy, I’d like to mention an under-reported aspect of the West Virginia teachers strike which has an important privacy angle, though for teachers.
As many readers know, one of the main issues behind the strike was the issue of health care financing. That has received substantial reporting, but what hasn’t been sufficiently mentioned is the outrageous attacks on the privacy and bodily autonomy of teachers, who were compelled to pay higher health premiums if they didn’t wear a Fitbit bracelet that reported their physical activity to the insurer, or if they didn’t walk enough in the course of the day, as part of a punitive and invasive “wellness” program.
This is an outrageous and coercive invasion of privacy, and something that workers can expect to see a lot more of in our dystopian world of big data.
Good on ya’, teachers of West Virginia, for also standing up for your personal privacy and physical autonomy.
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That is beyond outrageous, Michael. Remember the scene in Gandhi wherein they burned clothes made in England and dedicated themselves to wearing only homespun? I would encourage a Fitbit bracelet bonfire ceremony. Do not obey an unjust mandate. Disobey civilly. Disobey publicly. Disobey.
Privacy is one of the two fundamental issues at stake, the other being democratic control of public funds. Regaining our right to privacy would be the end of high stakes testing, annual testing, test-based evaluation, centralized curriculum control, blended “learning”, tech disruption in general, and a host of other corporate/billionaire control issues. Harriet Tubman, I believe, once said, “I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if they just knew they were slaves.” We could give Americans back their rights if they just knew they had them.
I teach my students to understand civics for very important reasons. Disobey.
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“I teach my students to understand civics for very important reasons. Disobey.” – What if they disobey you? It is a fine line, do you expect them to know who can be disobeyed and who cannot?
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If they disobey me for a reason, it is my responsibility to take an honest look in the mirror and change if I have been doing wrong. I wouldn’t force my students to surrender sensitive personal information with fines if they disobeyed, but if I did, their disobedience would force me, as someone who actually cares about them, to change my ways. By the way, you do realize the irony of the pic you posted, don’t you?
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“By the way, you do realize the irony of the pic you posted, don’t you?” – You think it is so hard to realize?
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Good lord.
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As it pertains to student privacy, there were Podesta emails showing high level meetings right before Obama’s student privacy update with a guy in the orbit of Jim Steyer and Tom Steyer, the billionaire funding Ann O’Leary’s think tanks. Always thought that needed some follow up research.
As I remember off hand, Obama allowed language that allowed contractors access to student data as long as it fell under the vague umbrella of “educational purposes”.
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The new invasion of privacy problem.
On April 3, 2017 Trump signed into law Senate Joint Resolution 34 (S.J. Res. 34), a measure that allows Internet service providers (ISPs) such as AT&T/Direct TV, Century Link, Comcast/Xfinity, Cox Communications, Frontier, Time Warner/Spectrum, Verizon and hundreds of others to operate with freedom from Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules first established in 1934 (with several changes intended to keep up with a changing telecommunications landscape).
Trump and his allies in Congress targeted a last minute change from the Obama Administration (December 2, 2016, Public Law No: 115-22). With little fanfare, Trump and Congress have nullified, abandoned, wiped out rules “Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunications Services.”
Trump and Congress nullified Internet neutrality rules.
Your ISP is now free to gather, analyze, and sell your browsing history without asking your permission.
The data can be gathered from multiple devices–your computer, tablet, phone, car, television, and other Internet connected of things you use.
You can be charged more for faster service, larger data allowance, ad blocking, access to search engines, websites and so on.
Major ISPs will be able to promote their own media companies. They are buying up news and entertainment companies so they can bundle these for sales with internet service.
They can prevent access to offerings of competitors or charge more for making those programs available.
Fifty-one percent of people in the US have access to only one ISP. It is not certain that setting up a Virtual Private Network (VPN ) will work to prevent data-gathering for commercial use.
I have tried without success to find out the end of net neutrality will influence e-rates (ISP discounts) for schools and libraries.
It is worth noting that the pushers of online education have been so irresponsible, or so eager to game federal laws privacy laws for students that 39 STATES have passed 106 privacy laws since 2013.
Some of these laws are actually designed to authorize vendors of educational software to gather students’ and teacher’s personal identity information (PII) in order to “improve” service. https://theintercept.com/2017/04/13/telecom-cash-isp/
All claims about “personalized learning” via online programs depend on having a personal identification (PII) for each student.
Last I hear, Congress was only a few votes short of restoring internet privacy. In the meantime, AT&T has already moved to tiers of speed and packaging of content, and other ISPs are rushing into to capitalize on the full commercialization of what has become a major public utility.
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“With little fanfare, Trump and Congress have nullified, abandoned, wiped out rules “Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunications Services.”” – do not kid yourself, this sort of privacy is impossible if you use any electronic device. Either accept that everything you browse, read, say, your every photo and video can and will be collected and analyzed, or do not use these services altogether.
Regarding computers and privacy at schools, when teachers stopped administering and grading tests of their own, and schools instead turned to businesses to provide computer-based testing like CAASPP or NWEA, privacy went out of the window. All you get back is a number, and you get it back half a year later. You cannot get the specific questions asked and the answers given. The testing company gets all the statistics.
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Teachers and students are being forced to use technology. We don’t have a choice. My school uploaded my social security number, for crying out loud. They didn’t ask for my permission.
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teachers don’t even write curriculum anymore. It’s “curriculum in a can” followed by a “test” …also NOT written by teachers. School systems bought into this, not the teachers.
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I wouldn’t call that a short survey.
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