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Where inBloom Wilted
Lessons from inBloom’s difficult first year
Judging by this recent headline in the Washington Post, inBloom is anything but in bloom.
Back in March 2013, inBloom had a big coming-out party at SXSWedu, with a posh room filled with suede white couches and promises of a game-changing data warehousing tool for U.S. school districts. The nonprofit had lined up nine state partners and was expected to spend the subsequent year building secure data services while wooing customers and edtech application providers. Optimism for the program was squelched, however, when Stephanie Simons of Reuters dropped an article that raised questions--and stirred concerns--about the non-profit, aptly titled “K-12 student database jazzes tech startups, spooks parents.”
“Spook” turned out to be a gentle way of putting it. InBloom wound up spending much of the past 12 months battling a bonafide mediastorm. Education reform critic Diane Ravitch suggested that the non-profit is engaged in identity theft. Leonie Haimson, a parent advocate of 20+ years and founder of Class Size Matters, spearheaded efforts to get districts to cut ties with inBloom.
The bad press has proven costly. Six of those original nine state partners have cut official ties. Massachusetts is still deliberating over whether to use