Mark Zuckerberg says he’s learned from his school reform mistakes. Has he really?
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, recently announced to the world, on the occasion of the birth of their daughter Max, that would, over time, donate 99 percent of their Facebook stock they own — worth many billions of dollars — to “advance human potential and promote equality for all children. Education will play a big role in their philanthropy, they said, sparking concerns among some school activists about how they plan to invest. Here’s a piece raising these issues, from Leonie Haimson, a leader in national efforts among advocates to protect student data as well as founder of the group Class Size Matters.
By Leonie Haimson
It’s been a startling time for parents concerned about children’s data privacy and the outsourcing of instruction to education technology companies. First was the recent news that the V-tech breach had exposed the personal data of more than 6.3 million children – rather than the 200,000 that was first described. The Hill reported:
The information exposed for children includes names, gender and birthdates. Security experts who have reviewed the data say that it is possible to link children’s information with their parents’ data, thereby revealing the kids’ full addresses and other information.Stolen data for the parents includes mailing and email addresses, security questions used for password resets, IP addresses, passwords and download histories…Chat logs between parents and children were also inappropriately accessed, as well as photos of children.
Then the Electronic Frontier Federation filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against Google for violating the student privacy pledge the company signed the year before. The complaint alleges that Google is collecting and data-mining the information of students while logged into their Google Apps for Education accounts at school:
While Google does not use student data for targeted advertisingMark Zuckerberg says he’s learned from his school reform mistakes. Has he really? - The Washington Post: