Sign our Petition: Stop disclosing confidential student information to corporations without parental consent!
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| The letter Norman sent Friday to the Attorney General and the Regents on behalf of Class Size Matters and other parent groups is posted here. A background memo on these issues is here. I don’t think it is an overstatement to say this whole project represents perhaps the most serious erosion of privacy in our nation’s history. |
New York State, along with Colorado, Illinois and Massachusetts, intends to provide confidential student information to a private corporation called the Shared Learning Collaborative, funded by the Gates Foundation, which in turn will make this data available to for-profit companies to develop and market their commercial learning products.
This confidential data will include student names, addresses, test scores, grades, attendance, economic and special education status, IEPs, and disciplinary records. All this is being done without parents’ knowledge or consent, and represents a shocking violation of our children’s right to privacy.
Four more states have said they will soon follow in phase II: Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky and Louisiana, and the Gates Foundation is soliciting even more states to join in. ( For more on this, seehere and here.)
Please sign our petition below, asking the NY State Attorney General and the Board of Regents to prevent these unprecedented disclosures from occurring, until public hearings are held and parents are given the right to withhold their children’s confidential data.
Feel free to add your comments or edit the words in the petition; and be sure to click the box below if you want updates on this critical threat to our children’s privacy.
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