Bill Gates has had an enduring fixation on the need to expand the collection and sharing of personal student data. In 2005, the Gates Foundation organized a “data summit” among its grantees, at which launched the Data Quality Campaign, “to Improve the collection, availability and use of high-quality education data, and Implement state longitudinal data systems to improve student achievement.”

The Data Quality Campaign has received more than $13 million since 2013 from the Foundation, which they have used to advocate for the US Department of Education to weaken student privacy protections and to allow for the sharing of personal student information among state agencies, between states, and with researchers, test companies, and technology vendors.

In 2008 and 2011, The Data Quality Campaign, along with its “partners” among other Gates grantees, successfully lobbied the US Ed Dept. to relax FERPA, to allow for the creation of state longitudinal databases to link student data from preK through the workforce and beyond, and the disclosure and redisclosure of personal student data with a wide variety of third parties without parental knowledge or consent.

According to a participant in a webinar hosted by the Data Quality Campaign on April 14, 2011, Steve Winnick, a prominent DC attorney working for DQC emphasized the need to deny parents the right to consent or opt out of their children’s data being disclosed, saying, “we don’t want parents to get in the way.” You can see the 2011 fact sheet released by Steve Winnick and the Data Quality Campaign about the many ways the US Department of Education weakened this “outdated” privacy law in response to their advocacy here.

Earlier in 2009, the Foundation granted $22 million to schools, districts, and states for them to expand their data collection and disclosure efforts, and in 2011, spent $87 million to form the Shared Learning Collaborative, which in 2014 would morph into a separate corporation called inBloom Inc.

inBloom Inc. which would receive more than $100M in Gates funds before closing its doors due to parent protests in 2014, was a hydra-headed effort to collect the personal data from nine states and districts, store it on an Amazon cloud, with an operating system built by Amplify, and make it more easily accessible to ed tech vendors and other third parties without parental knowledge or consent. Here is more background on inBloom; here are a timeline and news clips.

Gates incentivized districts and states to participate in this project of data collection and sharing, with promises of big grants.  The Foundation also offered cash awards to vendors who would build their instructional products around this data, through  “interoperable” software.

inBloom was designed to help achieve Bill Gates vision of education: to mechanize instruction by plugging every child into a common curriculum, standards and tests, delivered by computers, with software that can data-mine their responses and through machine-driven algorithms, deliver “customized” lessons and adaptive learning.  By siphoning off the data into state and multi-state databases and then tracking children through life, educrats can better evaluate which teachers and software programs are effective, and also steer students towards appropriate college and careers, all in the name of improved “efficiency”. Gates has also funded multi-state student databases, which were illegal before FERPA was relaxed, including granting WICHE with more than $13 million, to enable the transfer of personal student information between fifteen Western states.

Since the demise of inBloom, the Gates Foundation has not given up their attempt to supplant real personalized learning with learning through software and machines. Recently, with the Future of Privacy, an ed tech industry group, they funded a survey that was pitched as showing that parents support schools sharing the personal data of their children, but upon further digging really showed the opposite.

Gates has also funded a new effort, in which 27 school districts along with The Consortium for School Networking, will create a “Trusted Learning Environment Seal” to reassure parents that their children’s data is safe. In this way, they appear intent on controlling the student privacy debate , and co-opting the intense parent concerns about rampant data disclosure that led to inBloom’s downfall.

Since Cheri Kiesecker and I wrote an article in the Washington Post Answer Sheet about all the data that the state is collecting on children, parents in CO, NJ, RI, and many other states have asked us for a sample letter they can use to demand to see the data that states hold for their children in their longitudinal student databases. So we have drafted one below.

In most states, this request will be made via a Freedom of Information request to your State Education Department FOIA officer, and/or the Department’s privacy officer, if there is one. Parents should also copy the State Education Chief Information Officer and/or the State Commissioner, if their contact information is available.

FYI, the state cannot force you to come to their office to see your child’s data if that would be a hardship – as it would for most parents. And while they can charge a minimal fee to make copies, they cannot charge you for the search and retrieval of these records. If they try to charge you more than a minimal fee, you can appeal that decision. If the state is being obstructive in any way, please contact us at info@studentprivacymatters; we can strategize and/or help you write a FERPA complaint. And please keep us in the loop in any case!

For more information, see the US Ed Dept. letter to the state of Nevada, referred to below.

Thanks, Leonie Haimson, co-chair, Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

To whom it may concern:

I am the parent and legal guardian of (full name of child), currently (x) years of age.

My child attended x school in grades K-x (during what years); x school in grades x-y, (during what years) and x high school (during what years) in [what] school district.

Please provide me with whatever personally identifiable information (PII) that the State Education Department has collected on my child and which of this information is included in the state’s student longitudinal database, including any and all information in the database that has been contributed by other state agencies.

To access this information, and challenge it if it is incorrect is every parent’s right under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99), and the state cannot charge me a fee for accessing it.

This was confirmed by Dale King, Director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Family Policy Compliance Office, in a letter he wrote to the Nevada Education Department on July 28, 2014:

“….educational agencies and institutions, as well as SEAs [State educational agencies] may not charge a fee for search and retrieval of education records. See § 99.ll(b)”

According to the US Department of Education, you are obligated to provide me with my child’s data within 45 days of this request.

I also demand a list of any and all third parties, and/or governmental agencies, that have been provided with any of my child’s PII, which elements of PII they have received, and under what privacy and security agreements these disclosures were made.

Finally, I would like to know what governmental, citizen or advisory board exists to oversee the collection, use, distribution and eventual destruction of my child’s PII data, and their members.

Thank you for your cooperation in this matter and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,
(Your name)
(Address)
(Email address)
(Phone number)

Check out the interview with Leonie Haimson, co-chair  of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, and Cheri Kiesecker, researcher for the coalition.  This interview aired on Sirius radio on November 18, 2015.

On Friday, Rob McKenna, board chair of the Gates-funded Data Quality Campaign, wrote an oped for the Seattle Times that appeared to be a response to the article Cheri Kiesecker and I wrote for the Washington Post Answer Sheet on Thursday.

In our piece, we explained how the Gates Foundation and the federal government, with the encouragement of the Data Quality Campaign, has spent millions of dollars to fund student longitudinal databases (SLDS), designed to track children from birth or preK onwards, amassing a huge amount of their personal information to be shared among state agencies, between states, and with third parties, all without parental knowledge or consent.

Before heading DQC’s board, Mr. McKenna was the Washington Attorney General from 2005 to 2012, before leaving to run for Governor, unsuccessfully.  It was Mr. McKenna who apparently told the Gates Foundation that the multi-state student database it was planning, and that Washington belongs to called WICHE, was illegal under federal privacy law, and that FERPA would have to be amended to allow this – which Arne Duncan promptly did in 2012.  As one of the founders of WICHE explained,

….based on a subsequent [to October 2010] conversation with a member of the Washington State Attorney General’s office, our plans to actually exchange personally identifiable data among the states would be impermissible under the FERPA guidance in effect at that time. …Changes in the federal government’s guidance on FERPA that went into effect in January, 2012 resolved this problem.

Not surprisingly, Mr. McKenna does not mention this fact.  Nor does he focus on the main topic of our article, student longitudinal databases, but instead, on the need for the state to remain committed to the Common Core, which he argues “has no impact on how states and schools collect and use student data. If a state were to repeal Common Core tomorrow, no changes would be made to schools’ data-privacy protocols. What’s more, four federal laws prohibit the creation of a federal database with students’ personally identifiable information.”

While this is narrowly true, the creation of multi-state databases will mirror what the federal government has wanted to achieve, but has been legally prevented from doing.  In addition, sharing and comparing student data among states is far less useful if they have different standards and different tests, which is presumably why Mr. McKenna is so insistent that Washington not abandon the Common Core standards, and their aligned exams, produced by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.

If the member states agree, SBAC will also be able to pool personal student data, and disclose it to vendors and other third parties without parental consent.  Most worrisome is how SBAC has refused to provide parents with its privacy policy, even after being repeatedly asked to do so.  I would urge Washington parents and those in other SBAC states to request its privacy policy, and if they do not receive it, opt their children out of these exams.

The state of Washington has just received a new $7 million federal grant to further expand its student database, to analyze and share with third parties the “data explosion” they have amassed, in their words.  Here is an excerpt from their proposal abstract (emphasis below is mine):

“… significant resources are devoted to increased data access, more and more effective data visualization, the expansion of online reporting, and to increasing the understanding of the use of P20W data not only for analysis but also for decision-making. Just as important will be new ground that will be broken by the project through analyzing and researching outcomes for student populations receiving social services, students involved in the state’s juvenile justice system, and students receiving state financial assistance. ..The project would provide resources to ERDC and its partners to more quickly exploit the massive amounts of data available as well as create new research partnerships and cement old ones.”

All parents, including those who live in Washington, should demand to see what personal data your state is collecting for your children,  amend it if it is incorrect, and find out what third parties may have been given access to it –which is still your right under federal law.

See also the response to McKenna’s oped by WA privacy activist, Melissa Westbrook.