Seattle Schools Community Forum

Update: it appears that the Legislature is doing even more.  This from a story in the Puget Sound Business Journal. A bipartisan group of Washington state lawmakers on Wednesday introduced companion measures, House Bill 2200 and Senate Bill 5919, to update the state’s consumer protection act and require internet service providers operating in the state to obtain a customer’s permission before selling data. Internet service providers including Comcast, Verizon and AT&T released statements since Congress appealed the FCC rules, claiming they don’t intend to sell customers’ browsing histories. end of update The Times had an op-ed today from State Rep. North Smith, R-Clinton, who serves as the ranking Republican member on the House Technology and Economic Development Committee about a bill - HB 1904 - that she is sponsoring. In her op-ed she says, The protection of your personal data and privacy is crucila, which is why I want to make one thing very clear; whi...

I've been saving up articles on ESSA (Every Child Succeeds Act, the next No Child Left Behind).   Congress may have given more power back to the states but there appear to be some truly troubling issues around increased data collection, opting out, and what "indicators" they will be collecting on each and every child.

Reminder of the boundary meeting at JAMS tomorrow night at 6:30 pm.  Please email stories, information and questions to 2017boundaryadvocates@gmail.com Audit and Finance committee meeting agenda for Thursday's meeting from 4:30-6:30 pm.  The documentation is 383 pages but a number of pages are part of the EEU contract.

 An op-ed from school board members from the Orange County Register on Common Core and data mining: The California Department of Education last week informed school parents of a federal judge’s decision to release up to 10 million student records to a plaintiff’s attorney. The case, Morgan Hill Parents Association v. California Department of Education, could allow student records to be released that contain “names, addresses, phone numbers and Social Security numbers, as well as sensitive information on behavior, academic performance and health.” The future of this legal case remains unclear What is generally unknown by parents, and far more egregious than the data release requested in the Morgan Hill lawsuit, are similar data-mining requirements by federally and state-authorized Common Core programs. Parents want their children to learn academic material without the psychological conditioning, data mining, tracking and analyzing of behavioral patterns. These fed...

Wednesday, March 9th Work Session from 4:30-7:45 pm.  Agenda Three different operations of the district will be discussed. First is Internal Audit, second is Technology Services (about 5:15 pm) and third is Assessments (about 6:15 pm.)

Great story at KUOW about Highland Park and their "yoga breaths and mustang money."   Kudos to Principal Chris Cronas and his staff for their work.  "Do you know what grit is?" Cronas asks the students. "It's when you work really, really hard on something and you never give up on it." Next, the deep breathing. Cronas squeezes a rainbow-colored ball as he speaks quietly. “Let’s all practice our breathing with the ball and my voice. Ready? Go. In. Hold … one, two, three, four, five, six.” "This is not rocket science. This is Education 101. Kids need to feel safe. They need to feel respected," Cronas said. “They need to know that the people at their school love them and will give them the structure they need to succeed." For the School Board meeting tonight, the public testimony list is nearly full.  Most of them, including me, will be speaking to the Seattle Preschool Program Service Agreement.  Others are speaking on disci...

The Department of Education is seeking comment on a new student database.  From Student Privacy Matters: The U.S. Department of Education intends to create a new student database to house the personally identifiable information of 12,000 students, 500 teachers and 104 principals from 104 unidentified schools in 12 school districts across the country.

OSPI has two  job openings of interest. - Special Education, Dispute Resolution Program Supervisor - Privacy and Records Governance Manager Yikes! the Schools First! group (the group that manages the district's levy elections) has "Mayor" Mike McGinn as honorary co-chair.  Wonder if anyone told them about Ed Murray. They have Lauren McGuire as BOTH an honorary co-chair AND a Board member. Both. She's busy. From the Wait, What? blog, Jonathan Pelto reports this: The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium has provided its member states with most of the results from the spring’s Common Core SBAC testing. Unlike Connecticut, where the Malloy administration is apparently keeping the information secret as long as possible, the State of Washington has been updating the public about the results as they came in. As of two weeks ago, Washington State had already received the results for more than 90% of its students.

In what can only be termed "disgraceful," Tewksbury Public Schools accidentally released private student info about the out-of-district placements for 83 Special Ed students and rated parents by their "cooperativeness."  The document had been online for almost a week.  From the Tewksbury Town Crier: In December the district blamed a projected $2 million shortfall for FY2016 on ‘skyrocketing’ out of district costs, and said that it could not implement a proposed free full-day kindergarten program as a result. That action generated distrust and backlash by the special education community, and this most recent release of data has parents ready to file complaints at the state and federal levels. The seven-page memo from Rick Pelletier, Director of Student Services, to the Superintendent was included in the School Committee packet as part of its budget justification package last week. The memo includes a spreadsheet that listed all the students with out of di...

From Politico, a great number of stories.  The first being that the SXSWedu is going on this week:  Education entrepreneurs from across the globe are flocking to Austin this week for SXSWedu. They’ll unveil the latest in education software and talk about how to innovate and disrupt their way toward better teaching and learning. And, of course, they’ll network. The conference is always known for showcasing new ed tech products, but this year, there’s another emerging theme: student data privacy . There are absolutely a large number of student data privacy events as well as Special Ed (I didn't see any on ELL) and computer science.   And look who has "lounges" at this event: McGraw-Hill, Microsoft, Pearson and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.   (Apparently, there is also a "playground" and it actually looks like it's for kids. )

Several troubling things have happened over the last several months that relate to data privacy and the Technology Department. The first is, of course, the huge data breach by Sped/Legal (no one will take responsibility here so I don't know who to name) in releasing student data about every Sped student in the district (as well as some Gen Ed students at Roosevelt High School). I am dismayed by both the district and Board reactions.  I get why they want to believe this is just some isolated incident and wasn't a "true" data breach (meaning, some outside hacker got the data).  The problem is that it IS the district's job to protect that data, in both big and small ways. Then there is the issue of a data breach at Ballard High School in late December.  Principal Keven Wyncoop sent home a letter to parents that said it happened on Dec. 8th 2014 with student transcripts from the senior class being sent by a counselor via e-mail to a Ballard high parent AND the ...

Preschool - another education growth industry in our country. Did you think this push for preschool came from the brains of Burgess and Murray?  Please. Duncan and Obama have been pushing this.  They have a RttT (not affectionately called Race to the Tots).  Education Week had this article , "Growth in States' Early Childhood Spending Opens Business Opportunities" from December 2013.

I am absolutely amazed that people believe (a) there's nothing that can be done about privacy and (b) it's all for the good so why worry. We're adults and that's okay.  But kids?  How do they defend their privacy?  Right.  That's our job. I want to say in advance, people can take any kind of photo they want on their phone.  (But you might want to warn teenagers of the devastating outcomes if they do this. And trusting a friend/boyfriend/girlfriend is playing with fire in the teen years.) But understand, there are smart people who want data - of any kind - to use for their own purposes.  You are not wrong for taking a photo; you are wrong to believe there is security in any kind of devise that you have apps or data that uploads to any data cloud.   Here's the story of multiple celebs and their nude photos - taken on iPhones - and hacked out of the Apple"cloud."   Experts are looking at whether a flaw in Apple’s iPhone operating system...

There will be a Work Session today from 4-5:30 pm that could be of some interest as it covers a variety of topics.  It's the Oversight Work Session on Coordinated Health, Safety & Security  (Coordinated Health and Safety & Security are two different presentations).  This is Pegi McEvoy's area and she tends to be fairly straight-forward so at least there's a fighting chance of understanding the presentation. I do have to wonder, though,  at the ability of staff to cover such large presentations AND allow for questions from the Board. As usual the S.W.O.T. page has the most intriguing information  (that would be Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats/Risks).  From the Coordinated Health presentation:

Please go to this White House site and give the President your opinion on data privacy.  There is a message from John Podesta, who is aide and counselor to the President, in a short video where he states that he is the Chair of the "Big Data and Privacy Working Group" at the White House. Here are the two big questions that are being asked by the White House: 1) Which technologies or use of data is most transforming in your day-to-day life? 2) Which technologies or use of data gives you pause? (Oddly, Mr. Podesta asks both questions but the survey doesn't.  Let them know what gives you pause.)  I'll simply say - again - that I believe over the next 10 years, the new coin of the realm in our country, for both government and business, will be personal data.   (My other coin of the realm over the next 20+years? Water, not oil.) We , the people, should be directing where this line is, not Bill Gates or Arne Duncan (for public school children) and not ...

A reader let me know that his/her home got a call from Universal Survey (according to their phone message they do "marketing and political opinion" surveys.  The caller said they were doing a survey for SPS.  The reader did not continue the call.  Anyone else?  As well, the APP blog had a comment that one person had not received their scores and e-mailed AL.  They received a prompt reply that a letter had been mailed Feb. 15(!) but it never reached the family.  What was worse is that they received a PDF with the scores for their child but ALSO names, IDs, addresses and test scores for 60 other students.   Did anyone else get this in their letter? I also note that I believe something of a similar nature happened to some Sped students (to an even larger degree).   I find this all quite interesting given that tomorrow's Work Session is on ....data privacy and how SPS has great polices and procedures in place.  I will inquire to the di...

I am urging you to speak out - either via e-mail or via public testimony - to the Board about two subjects. One, student data privacy.  We see from the agenda the RTTT item, some of which is about helping PreK-3rd grade students.  It's a fine idea but again, that's exactly the starting age that many entities want to start data tracking.  Will their parents be told this is happening (or asked if they consent)? Two, later start times for high school.  As I reported, staff is not saying no but basically, we have enough work and the Board didn't make it priority.  President Peaslee said that they could not include everything into the Strategic Plan but that the Board has been talking about this and asking for feasibility information for quite a few years.  Help the Board get there to that nuts and bolts discussion. Write to them at schoolboard@seattleschools.org.   Tell them you want a student data privacy policy with real teeth and protections and/o...

I learned of this yesterday but was waiting.  KUOW has done a good job showing the issues around student data privacy. To note: - To be clear, SPS did NOT know this was happening and was not asked. - No data has been released as of today. - OSPI said the data it planned to give the Times is not available through a public records request. From the KUOW story: KUOW obtained a copy of the two-year agreement between the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and The Seattle Times, signed last month, which authorizes eight Times journalists to work with, but not publish, confidential student and staff information, including names and Social Security numbers.   "Wow," said Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Jose Banda. "I wasn't aware of [this agreement], and I don’t think any of my staff was aware that this was being considered and approved." "This is really disconcerting for us, because we've been assuring families ...