Slashdot Mirror
$100 Million Student Database Worries Parents
asjk writes "The controversial database includes millions of children and documents their names, addresses, disabilities other statistics and demographics. Federal law allows for the files to be shared with private companies. From the article: 'In operation just three months, the database already holds files on millions of children identified by name, address and sometimes social security number. Learning disabilities are documented, test scores recorded, attendance noted. In some cases, the database tracks student hobbies, career goals, attitudes toward school - even homework completion. Local education officials retain legal control over their students' information. But federal law allows them to share files in their portion of the database with private companies selling educational products and services."
Is this just CT babble, or a real thing? Seems a bit far.
permanent record. I thought it was a bluff!
I, for one, will be naming my future son Robert'); DROP TABLE Students;-- .
Local school administrators are worthless pieces of shiat, that are looking to scam as much money as possible for themselves and their cronies.
I expect that nearly EVERY district is already in talks with various marketing firms about how much this data is worth.
Apparently none of these parents have heard of Facebook.
... don't build a database of ruin.
So yes, those parents are right to be worried.
The two parties need to know who and where the retarded are. They need to keep tabs on their voting bases.
This is a fantastic way for the company to make money for the schools... Oh, wait, scratch that. I meant to say for the administrators and the company to make money for them selves at the risk of future generations. We all know how well these benign corporations have done at protecting the private, in this case very private and potentially damaging, information of people. The things these kids are going to have to deal with, identity theft being the prime one, when they grown older is going to be sad to see. The scum bags behind this sort of thing should be strung up for their greed and lack of forethought of the ramifications for their "business model" on this most vulnerable segment of our population.
Let me see, shows antisocial tendencies by thinking there is anything wrong with recording every bit of life and using it to judge.
Unless they have an insanely awesome security team and very rigorous employee screening, this will not end well.
The smarter way to handle it would be to replace personal information with UIDs. School districts alone can map UIDs to actual students. It'd be relatively trivial to implement, on either side. Sure, if someone crouched the numbers hard enough, they might be able to use analysis to collate the data to individuals. But that'd be enough to keep random stalkers, pedos, abusive parent with a restraining order against them, etc at bay.
If I was the non-profit running the DB, I'd be strongly pushing for something like that to absolve me of the liability and risk. Less persistent threats if the data is only useful to the student, school and statistics folks. The data, especially anonymized, would be VERY useful for curriculum research and development.
What kind of country allows this kind of information to be tracked "en masse", much less sells it to private companies? It reminds me of the credit-rating agencies:P private companies that somehow are magically authorized to suck up all of your financial information and sell it. At least the US finally added the ability for you to "freeze" your credit data. That's the wrong way around - they ought to have to actively ask for permission, but it's better than nothing.
Now your kids need to be able to "freeze" their school data. Worse, the US is continually trying to force its lack of privacy on the rest of the world, most recently with FATCA.
It's a crying shame that the US Constitution forgot to list privacy as a basic right to be guaranteed by the government, right next to life and liberty. Failing that, you guys really need to get some privacy laws on the books!
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I'd suggest we look back on the track record of such databases.
I won't go and track down the links (There's a link somewhere to the famous HBR "Database of Ruin" article, and that has a number of good links).
However, when you have potential for profit and money, you have almost certain abuses.
When you have people (humans), administering these types of databases, you have certain (100%) abuses. There are a number of documented cases of cops abusing DMV and arrest report DBs for purposes of harassment, stalking and revenge.
There are "grey" private detectives that are called "skip tracers." If you want to find out more, check out this book, called "How to Disappear."
This database WILL be misused. It may come back to haunt folks in thirty years.
I was able to rack up a pretty significant juvenile record, way back in the "paper era." I'm real glad that was never tracked, although I'll bet it would bubble to the surface if I ever wanted to work for the NSA.
The database is a joint project of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which provided most of the funding, the Carnegie Corporation of New York and school officials from several states.
All it looks like to me is a $100M SQL Server project for Microsoft, secured by the former CEO for his friends back at the home office.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
attitudes toward school - even homework completion
I'm confused on what this point has to do with the student. I never liked school growing up, I didn't like my teachers and I didn't like doing homework, yet I just graduated with my SECOND engineering degree. I'm pointing this out because what is going to happen from this database is private company's will see that Billy doesn't like going to school and assume incorrectly that Billy wont be a good employee when he grows up.
This database is effectively a big profiling system that is designed to trap kids who don't feel that achieving is the most important thing in the world. How a kid feels about school really doesn't place any bearing on how they do in life overall, a kid that hates school can become an engineer well kids that love school end up drug addicts ( The "school lovers" I knew ). This database will not help kids in the long run, it will be used as a tool to track, record and hinder kids into adult hood, all because this database will track what Billy thinks of school and his teachers.
There's no longer such a thing as a childhood. Anything you do or say practically from birth will be recorded and used against you. Have a bad year in grade school and some one will bring it up in your thirties when you apply for a job. A childhood prank and suddenly you are seen as a risky hire. It's already happening with social media as others are pointing out but imagine your whole school record available to employers and credit agencies? Even your criminal record is sealed when you turn 18 for a reason. One childhood mistake shouldn't ruin a life but they seem to have found a way. Perfect people will succeed, the rich as well since money can hide many sins, but the rest of us need to start worrying.
This sounds like a card game.
"Money and status trump children's privacy, but Children trump adult privacy in legal filesharing". Or something.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Isn't it neat when other people get to decide if they want to share YOUR personal data?
bickerdyke
{shrug} depends on your definition of "win". For us, rampant drug use, chronic bullying, and overemphasis on sports at the expense of academics were all important reasons to homeschool our hatchlings. So from my point of view, this news is indeed *another* win.
Also that gets into Gattaca grade problems because data "wants to be abused!" (To abuse a phrase!) So what's stopping insurance companies from playing games with it as well as employers?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Database will be stolen in 5...4...3...
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
On its face, the proposal to share student data with private companies seems to clearly violate FERPA, the federal law covering privacy of educational data. According to the article linked, the schools are claiming that it's OK, because when FERPA says it's OK for student data to be accessed by "School officials with legitimate educational interest", that really also means third-party contractors working for the schools. Apparently, the Department of Education has signed off on this. WTF? How can this possibly fit the legislative intent? It says "school officials", not "school vendors" or "school contractors". And there's a reason for that: actual school officials are subject to some level of public control and accountability, while private contractors are not.
This plan should be challenged in court as a violation of federal law.
So, apparently you're allowed to collect and share all this information about your children, but God forbid they collect a single detail about your guns! Or maybe you just need a private marketing company to do it since Congress made laws that prevents the government from doing it themselves.
That said, we tried gun registration in Canada and it failed miserably due to the cost.
Children don't have a choice of where they go to school. The parents send them. If your parents insisted you go to government funded school, would you want a database like that tracking your every move and broadcasting it to anyone and everyone? What if you had learning disabilities? Still no problem?
It has to be unconditional except being a legal citizen or resident.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee
New Economic Perspectives
For anyone wanting to read it.
https://inbloom.org/sites/default/files/inBloom-and-ferpa.pdf
Children are affected by parental decisions outside of their control all the time. Parents should know well ahead of time that the consequence of taking a government job, or taking government benefits or entitlements, means an accountability to the taxpayer. Learning disabilities or no, the public has a right to the data generated by its financial largess.
Is it okay for government funded research to remain private? Is it okay for sex offenders to remain private?
Government is an extension of the taxpayer - if I'm paying the bill, I deserve a look at the data. The only issue I'd have with this database is that it should be 100% publicly accessible.
http://blogs.ajc.com/bob-barr-blog/2010/02/01/americans-say-%E2%80%9Cno%E2%80%9D-to-medical-database/
Obama wants to do the same thing with medical records.
I'm also a bit conflicted on the security aspect of the matter, what would any non-pedo's motive be for stealing / compromising this data? The only thing is it becomes a true permanent record in the sense that it can be easily retrieved 20 years down the line. But, another interesting aspect is, nobody that I know of that employees people actually looks up grades and kinda just take your word for it, could that change?
And yet another interesting aspect is how we separate the privacy of 18. Could this erode that line?
California is a red state?
From the linked Reuters article:
> The database is a joint project of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which provided most of the
> funding, the Carnegie Corporation of New York and school officials from several states. Amplify
> Education, a division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, built the infrastructure over the past 18
> months. When it was ready, the Gates Foundation turned the database over to a newly created
> nonprofit, inBloom Inc, which will run it.
I thought the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was trying to *help* children, not *sell* them.
We can't assume a company will be good just because it's non-profit. If access is "limited", how much will it cost to become unlimited? If it's limited, someone is limiting it, and everyone has a price. Don't kid yourself.
Governments are supposed to be non-profit, and look what has happened throughout world history.
When it comes to governments, or any institution that has unrestricted access to all of the information about a population, no amount of suspicion is too much.
Guess what jobs you kid won't be hired for once they look at his school records.
Sharing this information is going to far, corporations should not know these things.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
FTFA: The database is a joint project of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
They label it as "personalized learning" but it could just as easily be used for "personalized hiring". Typical M$ spin applies easily here.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
How can this be legal? The schools are sharing student records with an outside organization. It's also not supposed to be legal to share SSNs in this way. WTF is wrong with people, they think they can just do whatever they feel like.
I'm so glad my Permanent Record, a bundle of IBM cards and a rotting rubber-band, is packed away in a box somewhere, gathering dust. These kids nowadays, they'll never escape theirs.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
As far as I'm concerned, as soon as someone gets on the government dole, either because they're employed by the government, or are being supported by the government using taxpayer money, *every* taxpayer has a right to inspect the data. The person paying the bills has a right to know what they're paying for.
I want a copy of your criminal record, as well as your financial records...
You get police protection in your city, yes? You also have money in a bank with FDIC insurance?
That's all paid for by the government.
Also, I want access to your travel records....you drive on public roads...also, you are protected by the US Military....
Where do we stop?
Studying individual student records, including hobbies, likes/dislikes, etc. won't help judge school progress...
-merlyn
Criminal records should be public data.
Police reports should be public data.
FDIC insured accounts should be public data (particularly with payouts).
Government cameras and other traffic observations on public roads should be public data.
Individual student records for students in government schools should be public data.
Employment records of all government employees (including salaries, evaluations, etc), should be public data.
If I'm paying for it as a taxpayer, I deserve the data.
No. I paid for it, I deserve the raw data. If you don't want your child's school records public, then don't send them to government school on my dime.
If you have a psychological or medical problem that is being paid for by the taxpayer, the taxpayer deserves the data. Period.
If you're driving on a government funded road, i want to know where you are. Just so that i know you aren't speeding or being dangerous on roads i helped pay for : )
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
There's a difference between able-bodied people living in generational welfare and children going to government funded schools. Our country was set up such that the states had a duty to provide education to the nation's children. I agree with the broader point you're making, but not this specific instance. Regardless of whatever the parents are up to, there should be no interference or surrender of rights by having a child attend one school versus another. This database doesn't get you any accountability. Test scores, attendance and such are recorded by the same system you wish to monitor. It's not useful and comes at a significant sacrifice of privacy rights.
Government funded research should be public, other than for research that would significantly affect our national security. Sex offenders should be private if they are no longer on parole/probation. If the system says they have completed their sentence, that's it. Personally, I'd rather see most of them executed, but that's not likely to happen. I don't agree with the courts letting them free if they're still a risk to society. This public registry thing they're doing does not protect the public. You can't escape them, nor should anyone feel obligated to.
I see the moderator nazis nuked your first comment. Pity. This is a valid avenue of discussion related to the OP.
-1 disagree!
-1 disagree!
I don't disagree with you, but taking what you say straight is a setup an us vs them kind of society. Those who are rich and can afford not to be tracked publicly will have an advantage over those who are helped by the public. Knowledge is power. One person who has knowledge while the other doesn't is a bad setup. Indeed, that is what we see today in a lot of ways. What you propose will further that widen the crack. I think we need to pull back more than what we have today or go further than what you propose.
Interesting point - arguably already a reality, since the rich already can pay for additional privacy today :)
However, at the very least, this will make pause for the rich who would be political - that is to say, those rich who wish to be government employees, or take government largess, will have to give up their privacy. I'd even go so far as to assert that any private company that has a government contract must make the terms and performance of that contract public.
As it stands right now, the grand disconnect between the taxpayers and information on the things they pay for seems like an evil enough to be remedied. Whether or not an upper class that can hide its children's test scores and school records provides any sort of problem to be addressed I think is an open question.
It's not a surrender of rights - it's a protection of rights. If taxpayer dollars are used for a function, the taxpayer has a right to the data thus derived.
Now, one may argue that the arbitrary use of government funds to run schools is an improper one - and that would solve the moral conflict quite nicely.
I suppose if you're arguing, as say the military might, that while the public funds the military, the exposure of say, secret special ops identities would breach national security and so should be protected, I'm not sure if I can see such a clear harm from the public consumption of government school data. Yes, I can imagine some far fetched scenario where a serial killer who hunts people who get B+ on every third test for a year might do some data mining that would end up targeting some unfortunate souls, but as a general rule, I think I'd prefer a 100% publicly accessible database rather than one shared only with private companies and those politically connected.
Yup, if the taxpayer funded the road, they should have access to the cameras installed on it. I should also be able to look up the driver history of any license plate, and see if the asshole in front of me has a drunk driving conviction, or a speeding conviction.
Here's the thing - the government is already using this data, so imagining that it's "private" is an illusion - the only reasonable response is to make sure *everyone* has the information, so that they can be fully aware of what data is out there on themselves, and make decisions, say, to only drive on private roads if they are concerned with surveillance.
Sheila Kaplan has been on this since federal child provacy laws were relaxed to permit it in 2011. She launched Education New York's National Opt-out Campaign to alert parents to their rights under FERPA to restrict third-party access to their children's information and encourage them to review their school's annual FERPA notification at the beginning of the
school year. Here's her website:
http://www.educationnewyork.com/about.html
and a parent information page
http://educationnewyork.com/optoutnow
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
You can't see harm? If a student is tagged as learning disabled and it's published to that database, it could have irreparable harm to their future. What employer would choose that person as a new hire over one that hasn't been tagged? Even if it later turns out to be false, that's as permanent as a glitch on a person's credit report. Heck, we had people wanting President Obama's college transcripts. Well, they can't get that.. but they'd be able to get any public school records (assuming he went to a public school). It's pointless data, but parts of the public would run wild with it regardless.
This data should not be accessible to the federal government at all. It should not be accessible to anyone other than the school system, the student, and the parents. It should also be destroyed by the student's request upon reaching the age of eighteen.
There is no accountability to be had from this data. It's entered by the same people in the same system that you wish to hold accountable. That'd be like having a tax cheat perform their own audit. As for surrender of rights, this is an all-out assault on the right to privacy. Would you like to barcode the nation's children as well? It'd make it that much easier to pull up their data.
Isn't it better to know that a student was learning disabled? I mean, say you've got that student out of school, and they're looking for a job. Employer doesn't know anything about the kid, and during the interview, sees terribly poor performance because of dyslexia - but because he doesn't *know* he's looking at a dyslexic, he just figures the kid is stupid, lazy or being disrespectful, and *bam* - no job offer. While certainly there are some people who will take a look at some tag on some file and jump to an unfortunate conclusion, there seems little reason to hide information like that.
As for being accessible to "the school system", that *is* the federal government. And knowing the school district employees that I do, that means it really isn't secure at all. Furthermore, if a student's performance isn't public to the taxpayer, how are they supposed to know their tax dollars are being spent well? Without the raw data, school systems (under the "sorry, it's just us, the student and parents") can make up any story they want.
As for being "entered by the same people in the same system", make no mistake, I don't just want to hold the educators accountable, the *students* and even the *parents* should be held accountable, neither of whom actually enter in test scores or other entries into the school record.
As for the right to privacy, just like a person walking on a public street has no right to prohibit people from photographing or listening to them, a student in a public school should have no right to prohibit the taxpayer from observing them.
Now the bar codes - that's an interesting idea. Imagine, for example, if instead of a right to privacy, we asserted a right to *identity* - that is, you could arbitrarily change your identity at any time, to something unattached to your previous identities. Of course, this is morally suspect in say, cases of a fraud or criminal changing identity to avoid accountability for their crimes, but in essence, that's what a strong right to privacy would be - "sorry sir, but I have no past record for you to examine". I haven't thought through all the benefits and disadvantages such a "right to identity" would have, but I think that as a parallel to the "right to privacy", it can be somewhat informative.
While I value my privacy, and certainly enjoy poisoning the well of data collectors to avoid targeting, I'm not sure if I'd embrace it as a civil right, since it requires the effective suppression of other people's speech. Back in the day where you lived your whole life in the same village, effectively, you had no privacy - the school marm and all the other socialites were certainly privy to who was bright in school, and who was a bit slow. Going to a village shopkeep looking for a job included dealing with whatever reputation you had garnered during your life, however fair or unfair it was earned. It might be that society is arguably better off when people know everything about everyone else, and it might be that society is arguably better off when we're all effectively strangers - I've yet to see any particularly convincing evidence either way.
Isn't it better to know that a student was learning disabled?
That's not for us to decide on behalf of someone else. If they want to bring it up with the potential employer, that's their business.
As for being accessible to "the school system", that *is* the federal government.
No, that's typically the town with some state oversight. The feds are overstepping their boundaries by interfering with them.
As for the right to privacy, just like a person walking on a public street has no right to prohibit people from photographing or listening to them, a student in a public school should have no right to prohibit the taxpayer from observing them.
What? Are you going to stick cameras in the stalls of public restrooms too? I mean.. they're paid for by taxpayer money, right? How do we know what's going on there if there's no video record?
Now the bar codes - that's an interesting idea.
Is this your gimmick account?
Imagine, for example, if instead of a right to privacy, we asserted a right to *identity* - that is, you could arbitrarily change your identity at any time, to something unattached to your previous identities.
You already have a right to your identity.. ever hear of "identity theft"? You can also change your name if you like. Heck, you can even post as anonymous coward.. which might be advisable in your case.
You're suggesting with your village parable that there can be only two types of information. Information that is public, and that which is private. Student records are in between. Those with an actual purpose get to see them. Parents, for example. They can also be shared by the student with colleges. The taxpayers of a town and state have a right to a statistical summary of certain data to gauge the school's performance, but they have no business accessing data of individual students, not if it can be matched to a particular student.
What next? Do I have to post my performance reviews from work? I don't work for the government, but I do pay taxes. I might be slacking off or something. Off to the gulag! And no, that's not interesting and it's not something we should do. Good grief.
It becomes our decision when we're paying for the education. Imagine that potential employer effectively paid for 100% of that student's education - don't they have a right to the data regarding that education?
I firmly agree, and have personally observed the effects of "No Child Left Behind" as a federal lever to impose national will on state schools. If we actually had real state control, then maybe we could try out the effect of 100% public public school records in one state and observe the consequences compared to another.
That's actually a very good point - publicly funded restrooms (say, those at a park or rest stop), should certainly be open to public scrutiny. But I'd assert the data wouldn't have to include full-on video of people doing their business (though, lord knows, it's not like the consumer technology doesn't exist to setup your own pinhole camera). My real problem with government surveillance isn't that it exists in the first place, but that the data it brings isn't made public. If government wanted to install video systems that recorded every person entering and exiting a public restroom, the entire public should have access to that feed - as it is, the disparity of information between citizen and government is troublesome. I guess I'm arguing that expanding the information to the citizen is easier than restricting the capabilities of government.
I mean something different - I mean, literally, the ability to change your name without anyone, including the government, being able to track that change. This isn't about anonymity, this is about having the right to effectively destroy your history and start from zero reputation. It was something one could do in older days, simply by walking far enough away from where people knew you...but was it a *right*? Was it a *good* thing on the whole?
As a taxpayer, you deserve access to the performance reviews of every single government employee.
I disagree - taxpayers of a town and state deserve the raw data. If a student doesn't want to have their school performance public, they shouldn't go to a taxpayer funded school.
For all the theoretical harm of knowing that Johnny is learning disabled (or hell, gifted), I simply don't see any overwhelming evidence that the harm would outweigh the benefit. I'd be open to actual experiments on it though :)
Interesting point - arguably already a reality, since the rich already can pay for additional privacy today :)
Not really. Ever heard of "paparazzi"? This maybe true for non-celebrity rich people, if there is actually such a thing.