Privacy, big data and education: more about the inBloom databases
A new national database of personal student information understandably has parents and privacy advocates alarmed. As reported elsewhere, the new inBloom database houses information on millions of school children from nine states and includes names, addresses, telephone numbers, disciplinary records and learning disabilities. One of the states is New York. Naturally, the mommy listservs in Brooklyn, where I live, are going wild with “opt-out” letters. My first reaction was surprise. Could it really be true that inBloom was going to release this private information to any ap developer who asked? (Disclosure: inBloom, a non-profit organization, is funded by the Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which are also among the funders of The Hechinger Report). inBloom explained to me that there are two separate data stores. One is the real data that belongs to the states and school districts. The other is a sandbox of fake data for developers. With the real data,