Posted on 06/02/2013 9:32:36 AM PDT by opentalk
100 million database 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 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.
… New York plans to upload data on nearly all its 2.6 million students statewide. Illinois is testing inBloom in two districts and plans to expand to 35 districts serving half a million students, officials said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
No parent in their right mind would want their child to be tracked by some government outfit, especially if their child was less preforming than other students.
It’s almost impossible to “anonymize” data of this sort - given pattern recognition, etc. an individual’s data could be ferreted out pretty directly.
Sounds like profiling to me.
It is so hard to watch what is happenning with our school system these days. Heck look it gave us the current regime.
Good point
the Gates have been throwing their money around and people, including the Ursuline School in Dallas, have taken it, pretending the Gates are wonderful They are not. They just have a lot of money from talent in the computer industry.
It’s not the same, of course. But Americans are funny. We tell the government and the takers that money is separate from virtue, yet we are so pleased when someone like these weirdos give money and tell us how to spend it.
A woman in Africa wrote to Pop Benedict XVI, rejecting the Gates’ birth control deal with Satan money and she made a huge impact.
Be ware of these two do gooders. Melinda Gates is a Catholic school girl educated at duke and liberalized and immune to Catholic teaching. That’s the thinking that has invaded the institution of the family in the NE and with this woman’s greedily taken money, we could head for more trouble.
From, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/buildingcathedrals/2012/08/an-african-womans-plea-to-melinda-gates/
While philanthropists like Melinda Gates might be well-intentioned, they are missing the mark. What the women of Africa really need, says Ekeocha, is proper medical care during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period; in other words, women “are not dying because they are having ‘too many’ babies but because they are not getting even the most basic postpartum care.” Furthermore, Ekeocha believes that the introduction of contraceptives will do great harm to African society.
"Other metrics", such as parents political affiliations, associations and contributions, medical information, gun ownership, etc.
What could go wrong?
More importantly, what would Michael Collins do?
Common Core=Commie Core.
You know what else can identify academic weaknesses? Tests. The kind that they gave weekly in every course when I was in school.
A couple months back, my sister was bragging about her g/daughter being in this program. Her g/d makes great grades and is starting high school next term. I didn't tell sis but I attributed some of her success in school to the fact that she has been in Catholic school for the first 8 grades and will be starting public high school next term a nd I expect nothing good will come of that.
I don’t think the liberals will want this either once they discover that there will be terrabits of hard data about the performance of their favorite subcultures.
The dichotomy between inBloom’s website, featuring photos of smiling elementary-age children seated beside young teachers, tablets in hand, and its seven-page Privacy and Security Policy, full of legalese, could not be more stark.Public relations executives seeking to paint a picture of educational nirvana clearly crafted the website, while corporate attorneys looking to avoid lawsuits wrote the verbose, mind-numbingly dry privacy policy.
… The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York are backing the $100 million effort. Nine states –– representing 11 million students –– are taking part in a pilot program to develop inBloom, including New York, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts and North Carolina.
Nerdware. I'm sure the developers of atomic energy thought it would always be a boon to mankind, also.
Pray for her, because there are wolves out there just waiting for a chance to deprive her of her faith.
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