States are concerned about "inBloom" creating a national spy database on millions of students
A $100 million database inBloom, Inc. set up to store extensive records on millions of public school students has stumbled badly since its launch this spring, with officials in several states backing away from the project amid protests from irate parents.
The school database, funded mostly by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is intended to track students from kindergarten through high school by storing myriad data points: test scores, learning disabilities, discipline records – even teacher assessments of a child’s character. The idea is that consolidated records make it easier for teachers to use software that mines data to identify academic weaknesses. Games, videos or lesson plans would then be precisely targeted to engage specific children or promote specific skills.
The system is set up to identify millions of children by name, race, economic status and other metrics and is constructed in a way that makes it easy for school districts to share some or all of that information with private companies developing education software.
The nonprofit organization that runs the database, inBloom Inc, introduced the project in March with a presentation at an education technology conference, complete with a list of nine states that it said were committed “partners.
Parents and civil liberties groups concerned about potential privacy breaches quickly began to sound the alarm and rallied opposition in social media.
In response to an outcry in his state, Louisiana Superintendent of Education John White withdrew student data from inBloom in April. He’s planning to hold public hearings on data storage and security this summer but said in an interview that he is no longer sure there’s a need for inBloom.
Kentucky, Georgia and Delaware – all initially listed as partners on the inBloom website – told Reuters that they never made a commitment and have no intention of participating. Georgia specifically asked for its name to be removed.
Officials in two other states on the list, Massachusetts and North Carolina, said they are still evaluating the project and may never upload student data.
“The single biggest issue is, Can we satisfy not only ourselves but everyone that the data is as secure stored there as it would be anywhere?” said Jeff Wulfson, deputy commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Education. “From our perspective, this is still in the research and development phase.”
http://www.voxxi.com/inbloom-school-database-privacy-breach/
inBloom Architecture :
https://www.inbloom.org/sites/default/files/docs-developer-1.0.68-20130118/doc-2b03fc2a-19c2-4ebd-a0a0-b660a34b7384.html