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Parents Fighting to Protect Privacy Cause inBloom Data Mining Scheme to Fold in Failure
April, 2014It has been a bad week for the corporate education overlords that seek to impose the academically inferior, developmentally inappropriate, and psychologically manipulative Common Core standards on our children, psychologically profile them via the tests and gather data on them from womb to tomb. We have already reported on the huge win by genuine anti-Common Core outsider candidate Curt Clawson over the candidate described by Time Magazine and Slate as the Jeb Bush and or GOP establishment candidate.
These corporate marauders are also having to deal with the huge setback that their for-profit data mining scheme, inBloom, has been forced to shut down. This data collection instrument for supposedly "personalized learning" was going to collect 400 different kinds of student, family, and teacher data all without consent. inBloom was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, and Rupert Murdoch's Wireless Generation. Parents, teachers, and attorneys from all over the nation have revolted against the unconscionably invasive efforts of these entities to grab their their children's and families' data without their consent to use for profiling and career tracking purposes.
Here is an excerpt from Education Week's technology blog:
"I have made the decision to wind down the organization over the coming months," inBloom CEO Iwan Streichenberger wrote in an email to the organization's supporters. "The unavailability of this technology is a real missed opportunity for teachers and school districts seeking to improve student learning." (Full statement from inBloom included below.)
The announcement comes on the heels of the New York state legislature's recent enactment of legislation that effectively pulled the plug on inBloom's last remaining large partner.
Founded in 2011, inBloom aimed to store, clean, and aggregate a wide range of student information for states and districts, then make the data available to district-approved third parties to develop tools and dashboards so the data could more easily be used by classroom educators.
Over the past year, however, the organization became a lightning rod for those concerned about the increased collection, use, and sharing of sensitive student information. The backlash prompted a string of withdrawals by planned partners in Colorado, Louisiana, and elsewhere.
The inBloom CEO, Iwan Streichenberger, like Jeb Bush, Don Gaetz, and many others in and outside of Florida, blamed "misunderstanding" and conspiracy mongering parents who are apparently too stupid to see the glories of having their children's sensitive, private data available to corporations and the federal government and then having their tax dollars used to pay these unaccountable private entities to put it together in different streams for "personalized learning:"
Jeb Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education is a partner in the Data Quality Campaign, a private corporate and foundation run organization, which also belittled the concerns of parents:
No, Mr. Streichenberger, we are not misinformed. FSCCC has joined with parents and groups across the nation and the political spectrum to sound the alarm about the data mining aspects of Common Core, inBloom, FERPA, and dangerous state legislation like last session's SB 878 that was written and heavily promoted by Jeb Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future. New York parent Leonie Haimson summed it up quite well when she said in a statement: