Chicago Parents: Beware of inBloom
BY MORE THAN A SCORE | 11/14/2013
Don’t let CPS send your child’s “permanent record” out into cyberspace!
Demand your right to protect your child’s confidential school information!
Say NO to private vendors making money with your child’s data!
Next year, CPS plans to join a state database of private student information created by inBloom. This program was partly built by a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation which was involved in the phone-hacking scandal and illegal violations of privacy in Britain.
The database will include as many as 400 pieces of information about your child including name, address, grades, test scores, detailed disciplinary and health records, race, ethnicity, economic status, disabilities &other highly sensitive personal and family details.
InBloom refuses to guarantee the security of this data. Once that information is on the internet, no one can be sure where it will end up – colleges? future employers?
In the past, your child’s private information could not be shared outside of school agencies without parents’ permission, but the federal government recently rewrote the regulations protecting student privacy to allow student data to be shared with for-profit companies involved in “educational programing.” This can be any company CPS or the state board of education chooses.
What can you do?
- Call Illinois State Superintendent Christopher Koch ( 866-262-6663) and Illinois State Board of Education members (866-262-6663).
- Call Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett (773-553-1500) and Chicago Board of Education members (773-553-1600).
They have the power to save your children from having their most private information shared with for-profit vendors and to protect them from data security breaches that could permanently damage their future. Tell them to stop inBloom in Chicago and Illinois!
Read the letters MTAS and 8 other organizations sent to the Illinois state school superintendent (here) and CPS CEO (here) asking for more information about the inBloom program.
Read our detailed background piece on inBloom and student data privacy here.
Download this fact sheet in a pdf format and en espanol.
