Chalkbeat also reported on Sen. Hoylman’s letter today.
NY State Senator Brad Hoylman sent a letter yesterday to the Chancellor, asking questions about whether the personal student data that is being collected and processed by the many online programs acquired by the DOE is sufficiently protected from breach or abuse.
According to the UFT, “The DOE has informed schools that for SY 2020-21, they must have a shared, inclusive and digital curriculum in all core subject areas” in order to implement remote learning. We have now amassed a list of about one hundred of these digital programs, many of which were hurriedly acquired by DOE, along with links to their privacy grades from Commonsense Media, if available, along with some clarifying comments. These grades are based upon their publicly available privacy policies, some of which do not appear to comply with the state law because they use data for commercial or marketing purposes and/or have weak security provisions.
We gathered the list from the DOE and UFT websites, as well as our parent/teacher survey.
Here’s a summary of what the NY State student privacy law and regulations require; more information is available on the NYSED website here. Though the law was originally passed in March of 2014, it took CONTINUE READING: Questions raised as to whether NYC DOE is protecting student privacy | Class Size Matters | A clearinghouse for information on class size & the proven benefits of smaller classes