inBloom bombs out in Chicago
CPS made it official yesterday – they will not participate in inBloom.Their announcement came at the end of a week of action by PURE and More Than a Score challenging this private company’s threat to Chicago students’ privacy. We had meetings with the Sun-Times and Tribune editorial boards, held a forum with special guest speaker Leonie Haimson from New York City, and testified at the Illinois State Board of Education meeting. A couple of weeks earlier, Cassie Cresswell and I met with Chicago Board vice-president Jesse Ruiz and key staff to share our concerns about potential problems with the inBloom program.
Good decision by CPS.
But there is much more to be concerned about. There are 34 other districts in Illinois where the inBloom threat still looms.
And, as MTAS member Chris Ball has pointed out, on p. 41 of the CPS student code of conduct, CPS assumes the right to share student data without parent notification or consent with “school officials” which “can include contractors, consultants, volunteers or other parties under the Board’s direct control with whom the Board has agreed to