We have such problems in the education system; the generalized tests, the large class sizes, and the fact that the students are left on the sidelines because they cannot get the personalized instruction they need. So what if a program was constructed that would help get your child the personalized education he or she needs? That would be great right? Well what if by getting the personalized programs you had to serve up all of your child's personal information on a virtual cloud managed by Amazon.com. Your child's grades, test scores, disciplinary and attendance records, ethnicity, economic status, disabilities, health conditions, and in some cases their social security number, hobbies, homework records, and pictures as well. Is it worth it then?
New York State's Department of Education along with 8 other states (MA, LA, CO, IL, NC, GA, DE, KY) have agreed to start using a Gates Funded corporation called inBloom Inc to share this confidential student and teacher data to help better our children's future-only without the parents' say. What is even better is the inBloom holds no responsibility if this information is stolen. As stated in Section E of the inBloom privacy and security policy “inBloom, Inc and inBloom, Inc Contractors strive to keep inBloom and PII secure, and inBloom, Inc uses reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to do so, however, inBloom, Inc cannot guarantee the security of the information stored in inBloom or that the information will not be intercepted when it is being transmitted.”
In reality inBloom is just a storage source, as they will not access any of the files except when asked or for maintenance. Accessing this information is still the school district and state educational legal responsibility as stated in the Introduction Section of the privacy and security policy. Basically it will be up to the schools who they give this information to, and where it is going is right in the hands of school program and materials entrepreneurs who can now make money building customized school related programs to our schools.
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Of course there are many predictions of positive projective outcomes with the release of this information, like digital dashboards recording the development of students, personalized programs for children with learning disabilities, and other unproven amazing outcomes. But what of the downfalls? Our child's lives in the educational world are going to be out there vulnerable to attack, and no one will be liable for it. We all have seen what happens to our information when in the wrong hands, heard the horror stories. Why set our kids up for this kind of virtual danger? Why oh why do parents not have a say as well or at least be able to be notified that this is something that will be happening in the future? I was given this information from a friend who does not want to be named so of course I had to find other sources to verify that this was actually happening, and I did. I found three articles. THREE, this has been unveiled in a conference in Texas, has already been implemented in some states for beta testing (I do NOT know if NY is one of them) and all I can find is three articles. To me that is a sign that this is NOT
