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Monday, June 3, 2013

Parents United for Responsible Education » Blog Archive » Illinois still in student data mining program

Parents United for Responsible Education » Blog Archive » Illinois still in student data mining program:

Illinois still in student data mining program

spybloom
Yesterday the Tribune printed a Reuters story about the InBloom  (formerly Wireless Generation) program funded by Bill Gates that is currently collecting student confidential records it plans to share with private software companies. In Bloom says it cannot guarantee the safety of this data.
The story reported that several states or districts which InBloom claimed were past of “Phase 1″ of their project have either disavowed that or pulled out.
The only remaining clients at this point are Illinois, Colorado and New York. Currently only Bloomington and Normal school districts are involved in our state, but Illinois plans to add Chicago and 34 other districts in 2014.
I’ve written about this before, and tip my hat to the tireless work of my PAA colleague Leonie Haimson to expose this enormous threat to family privacy. I’ll share more on this tomorrow for Public Schools Action Tuesday, but meanwhile, here’s the letter I just sent to the Tribune:

Thank you for publishing the excellent Stephanie Simon piece about states choosing not to share confidential student and teacher data with the Gates-funded corporation called inBloom Inc. Most parents are unaware of this threatened encroachment on family privacy which is already underway in the Bloomington and