<p>"Parents and privacy experts are blasting a new national database that compiles personal student information for educational companies that contract with public schools." ...</p>
<p>How do you parents feel about this?</p>
<p>Parents</a>, Experts Blast New State Database of Private Student Info | NBC New York</p>
<p>I’m at a loss … how does this database benefit the students?</p>
<p>How do I feel about this? Grateful we don’t live in NY and furious on behalf of everyone who does. This screams privacy violation.</p>
<p>Shocking, isnt it?
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1468958-sharing-student-information-without-parent-permission-notification.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1468958-sharing-student-information-without-parent-permission-notification.html</a></p>
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<p>If you want to figure out how best to educate children, if you want to figure out which educational techniques work, and for whom, and deliver those techniques to the children who need them and will benefit them, if you want to identify effective teachers and administrators, reward them, and help less effective leaders learn from them, then you absolutely, positively, need databases like these.</p>
<p>How does this database benefit the students? Do you think they deserve an effective education? Do you think schools could use improvement? Would you support doing a better job for the class of 2028 than we have done for the class of 2013?</p>
<p>Sure, there are privacy concerns. They need to be handled (and they probably are being handled, although some skepticism is always in order on that). But I’d bet dollars to donuts that the source of this spontaneous parent outrage is some coalition of those whose bread is buttered on the side of not actually doing anything to the educational status quo.</p>
<p>I usually find myself with JHS on the same side of philosophical divides. But in this case we aren’t. If one sees the “divide” as Professionalism on one side and Institutionalism on the other, my money’s down on the side of Professionalism. To side with Institutionalism is to argue in favor of population statistics as the measure of education. Or, in more personal terms “No I haven’t met your Administrators or your Teachers or your Students, but I can tell from the data that you’re doing a poor job.” Oh really?</p>
<p>“New York State officials, working with the city, have already uploaded students’ names, addresses, test scores, learning disabilities, attendance and disciplinary records into the inBloom database, according to the Daily News.”</p>
<p>Just a lovely database waiting to be hacked.</p>
<p>Why do they need students names and addresses? How does that help the companies develop curricula? I see no use for that whatsoever. I think it would spook people a lot less if the individual students were not identified. They could do it like Naviance, where the names are not published.</p>
<p>NewHope, I see it the other way around. We have reams of useless data at the population level, and I agree with you that it’s completely wrong to rely on that as the measure for education. That’s why things have to get much more granular, down to the individual level. Teachers don’t teach the average child for their school district, they teach the actual children in front of them. A teacher who takes a 6th grader from reading at a 2nd grade level to reading at a 5th grade level isn’t a failing teacher, she may be a great teacher, but we can’t know that unless we know that is what she has done, not just that her pupil can’t read at grade level. A teacher whose students test as proficient may be killing their interest in education, but we can’t know that unless we know what those specific kids looked like last year. And, even more importantly, when Billy’s family moves from District A to District B, or he simply changes schools, sure, his paper records will eventually follow, someday, but it is going to be way more useful to know in real time exactly what he has been doing and what his needs are.</p>
<p>All of those things require paying attention to what happens to individuals, not populations. That’s why the data systems should be tracking students, not averages.</p>
<p>FERPA violation?</p>
<p>There is no violation as long as there is sufficient control around the data. They are not selling the data, they are just using inbloom for hosting their data, no different than if they were keeping it in house. I am sure under privacy law, inbloom needs to limit who has access to the data and a lot of audit trail to track who has access. This is not the case of anyone could get an inbloom acct and look up someone’s information. Credit bureaus have our private information. They may keep the data in house or they could have a third party host it, but it really doesn’t matter because access is restricted.</p>
<p>Hadn’t heard about this. Very disturbing. Just sent an e-mail to my district’s superintendent asking whether our district will be contributing data or not.</p>
<p>The article says the district is compiling
</p>
<p>What companies?</p>
<p>Disturbing that disabilities will be included, as a specific point, along with broader alarm. Will psych. disabilities be included and then be used in background checks, for instance? For students with learning disabilities, health problems etc. etc. will this info somehow end up affecting employment and hiring? I know there are controls set up, but in this day and age, what info is really safe?</p>
<p>It is a brave new world on personal information protection. The technology is moving ahead of law (control). Good area of legal to get into?</p>
<p>The “educational companies” that get the data are probably providing kickbacks to officials somewhere. NY (particularly NYC) = Corruption, after all.</p>
<p>Too bad NYS can’t use their own data to stop the ongoing Medicaid fraud that’s occurring in school systems! </p>
<p>[United</a> States Intervenes in New York Public Schools Medicaid Fraud Case](<a href=“http://falseclaimsactattorney.com/2012/10/united-states-intervenes-york-public-schools-medicaid-fraud-case/]United”>http://falseclaimsactattorney.com/2012/10/united-states-intervenes-york-public-schools-medicaid-fraud-case/)</p>
<p>As someone fascinated by what can be learned from statistical analysis, I can see huge benefits to students if companies can mine this type of data. But why does it have to be personally identifiable? De-identify the data and I’m all for it.</p>
<p>I would be interested to know the names of these “educational companies.” Sounds like a marketing scam.</p>
<p>It bothers me that they are collecting data on discipline records, with names attached. So a kid who makes a mistake in high school is now on file, along with name and address in a data bank that can be accessed by government as well as private companies.<br>
My kids haven’t had any discipline issues, but I’d sure be ticked if they had and I thought it could possibly be part of some vast permanent record. What does this factor have to do with building curricula? The same with learning disabilities and psych evaluations. And the people whose records are being kept have no access to them to check for accuracy? At least the credit bureaus let you see if there are mistakes. And there often are, in my experience.</p>
<p>Exactly, Moonchild. God forbid a kid makes a stupid mistake, as teens often do. It’s bad enough that every idiotic move is plastered on FB, Twitter or Instagram. But then to have it recorded on a database for a private company? No.</p>