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March 14, 2013

Officials join anti-data push, but Sheldon Silver sides with state

by Geoff Decker, at 10:36 pm
Class Size Matters' Leonie Haimson with City Councilwoman Letitia James and mayoral candidate Tom Allon.

Class Size Matters’ Leonie Haimson with City Councilwoman Letitia James and mayoral candidate Tom Allon.

Parents concerned that a new student database could break privacy laws are getting the support from a new high-profile set of allies: elected officials.

Several City Council members joined parents and privacy advocates outside the Department of Education today to protest the state’s involvement with a nonprofit organization called inBloom. The state is pouring detailed student information into inBloom’s database, which grew out of a Gates Foundation-funded project called the Shared Learning Collaborative that was meant to help states use data to improve student achievement without individually underwriting data system.

The state will retain control of the data, but critics of the project say the state is putting students at risk by handing information about them over to a third party. Their protest has the support of Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, a leading candidate in the Democratic mayoral primary, and another candidate for mayor, Republican longshot Tom Allon, appeared at the Tweed Courthouse rally today. Allon compared the database to “child pornography.” Meanwhile, an Albany lawmaker, Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell, this week introduced legislation to allow parents to opt their children out of the database altogether.

But Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver threw cold water on O’Donnell’s proposed bill tonight, telling concerned parents that he supported the state’s data initiative and that there was little to worry about.

“The data system is to provide information to teachers to improve instruction, as well as provide access to students and parents to facilitate instruction and learning,” Silver wrote in his letter. “However, SED does not intend to allow personally identifiable student records to be used for commercial purposes.”

Some parents said they remained unconvinced that officials could guarantee that their student’s information, which is protected by federal privacy laws, would remain private and secure. Lea Mansour said she feared her childrens’ data could be leaked and end up being used against them later on in life.

“I don’t want colleges to know,” said Lea Mansour, a parent whose son attends P.S. 75. “I don’t want his future employer to know.”

Local critics have allies elsewhere, too. Michelle Malkin, the right-wing pundit, has said the data project represents “yet another encroachment of centralized education bureaucrats on local control and parental rights.”

State education officials have begun transferring student data, which they said is already being collected at the district level, into the database. Spokesman Dennis Tompkins said that teachers would begin to have access to the new database during the 2013-2014 school year.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Leonie-Haimson/1094324158 Leonie Haimson

    This entire project is designed to hand over personally identifiable confidential data to third party for profit vendors without parental notification or consent. Just a little detail Geoff you left out of the story. Parents and others interested in learning about this risky project should check out the far more accurate and revealing reporting by Stephanie Simon in Reuters or Ben Chapman and Corinne Lestch at the Daily News.

  • flerp

    What’s the basis of the assertion that the project is “designed to hand over personally identifiable confidential data to third party for profit vendors without parental notification or consent”? Is this just a general fear? Is it based on inBloom not having expressly denied that it would not de-couple personally identifiable information from the other data? Is it based on inBloom expressly stating that it won’t de-couple the personally identifiable information from the other data? I’m serious. This is totally unclear to me, and the answer to this question probably would be the difference between me being generally ill-at-ease about this project (as I am about all big data aggregation) and me being 100% opposed to it.

  • http://twitter.com/EducationNY Sheila Kaplan

    There is a paragraph in the Speaker’s letter than doesn’t appear to me to be correct. I called his offices to point this out but they never called me back:

    Speaker Silver’s letter says:

    [The SED has taken steps, required by Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to ensure that there are adequate privacy protections. Information will not be used or re-disclosed for financial gain or private use by the SLC or any of its vendors.]

    I don’t think his statement is accurate. Information (data) WILL be used for financial gain. The ‘information’ will be used by VENDORS (not the SLC) to develop the apps that will be sold. I believe that’s financial gain.

  • flerp

    Shiela — maybe you can answer the question I posed below to Leonie?

  • http://twitter.com/EducationNY Sheila Kaplan

    Breaches are inevitable. All of the security in the world can’t protect against unlawful access & inappropriate sharing of information, in this case children’s. Human error is going to play an even greater role if ‘personalized learning’ becomes a reality. Massive amounts of data will live on children’s, parents, teacher’s, administrators — in fact — anyone designated as a school official or authorized representative’s mobile devices.

    FERPA allows what concerns Leonie & others, myself included. InBloom can legally (FERPA OK’s) give vendors student data & use it to make money even though parents do not think it should be shared without their consent for profit. And parents are concerned about the cloud, as are privacy advocates & even the cloud providers, themselves.

    InBoom vendors aren’t being given PII & using it for profit. They are being given aggregated data to use for profit.

    It may be aggregated now but de-anonyization of data can be done.

    RTTT money is stimulus money. The inBloom vendors’s INNOVATIVE, PERSONALIZED LEARNING & Common Core State Standards (CCSS) aligned products can’t make money without student data.

    Our stimulated economy can’t survive without children’s academic & non-academic data.

    My concerns about personally identifiable information being disclosed are strong. I don’t think it should be disclosed for-profit or for profiling. Not even with parental consent. Schools shouldn’t be in the data broker business, although that’s essentially what RTTT has created. Schools have agreed to exchange student (and teacher) data for dollars.

    I have data concerns separate from the SLI data.

    Student directory information (name, address, phone #, email address, DOB, place of birth, height weight picture & more) can be disclosed without parents consent. Sometimes it’s sold. Indiscriminate disclosure of PII, given anyone can get the info & give it to anyone who can give it anyone. Anyone could be people who want to harm children.

    Or domestic abusers.

    Are NYC parents’ concerns about the misuse of their children’s aggregated & personal information legitimate. Absolutely.

    Is the SLC legal? YES. FERPA enables it. Do I think it was carefully planned? Absolutely.

    If EPIC wins the lawsuit against the US DEPT of Education the SLC/inBloom may be illegal. However the sharing of kids’ PII (contact information including pictures) via student directory information without parental consent? That will remain legal until states start protecting their children.

  • http://twitter.com/EducationNY Sheila Kaplan

    I misspoke. It looks at though inBloom can in fact give vendors PII & districts allow to opt-out unless I am reading this wrong:

    https://www.inbloom.org/privacy-security-policy

    ["Personally Identifiable Information" (or "PII") means any information defined as
    personally identifiable information under FERPA. The personally
    identifiable information of teachers and other educators will also be treated
    as PII under this Policy. Some identifying information of teachers and other
    educators (such as name, role, subjects taught, and similar publicly available
    school-related information) may be made available through inBloom to Customers
    and Third Party Application Providers solely for the educational purposes of
    inBloom.}

    [Re Parent Rights to Approve Disclosures of PII to Third Party Application
    Providers. School District and State Educational Agency Customers are
    responsible, as appropriate, for determining and notifying parents of policies
    regarding the extent to which parents (or students 18 and over) are given
    advance notice of, and the opportunity to decline, the provision of PII for
    their children (or themselves) to a Third Party Application Provider that uses
    the PII to provide educational services to schools or students. Each
    School District and State Educational Agency shall be responsible for handling
    any complaints from parents (or students 18 and over) regarding the disclosure
    of their student information to a Third Party Application Provider.]

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