Seattle Schools Community Forum

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.

From Education Week's Digital Education blog and the Sacramento Bee.  I'm going to print some excerpts from the article below but the entire article follows those excerpts. But Cuban, the Cyber Dust founder, sees a different problem. "Should [school officials] be able to discuss business at lunch? What about over the phone?" he said. "There is a place for public disclosure and transparency. But there is a place for privacy as well." James Mayer, the CEO of good-government group California Forward , agreed. The group has not taken a formal stance on the use of ephemeral-messaging apps, but Mayer said it would be a mistake to automatically attribute nefarious motives to public officials who seek to use such a tool. "If you really want good public services, with fewer mistakes, you have to allow managers to think out loud and consult with their peers and talk through issues with their teams," he said. "Not all communication is ...

Sorry to be blunt but NOW is the time to pay attention to what is coming. There's a front-page story in the NY Times today on this issue.  I, along with several other activists, have several irons in the fire on this issue. I tell you - as parents - this should be the SINGLE issue to most concern you.    Why? There is NO ONE but you to protect your child's data.   Truly. Your child cannot just be another data point (or a brick in the wall) for any number of "researchers" or data collectors.  Where is the proof that more data makes better academic outcomes?  If you have been a parent for longer than a minute, you know that children and learning is a complex issue.  You, as a parent, know your child better than anyone and yet can you say, with complete accuracy, what is the best way for your child to learn?  In 3rd grade?  7th grade?  10 grade? Well, having 100 data points and throwing it at the wall and seeing what sticks is...

Here's what inBloom - the "cloud" student data system that the Gates Foundation is setting up says about students: Every student is an individual, with unique knowledge, abilities and learning needs. But the technology used in most K-12 schools today can make providing personalized instruction time-consuming and cumbersome for teachers. Meanwhile, states, districts and educators implementing the Common Core State Standards have set new goals for student learning, and they need effective tools and resources to ensure students meet those goals. Better, more integrated technology and data analytics can help by painting a more complete picture of student learning and making it easier to find learning materials that match each student’s learning needs. Unfortunately, creating the technology infrastructure to do this is often too expensive for most states and school districts. That’s where inBloom comes in. I feel like many parents are out there shrugging....

From Ed Week, a report on international tests (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) and how the US fared. Florida came up a big winner on PIRLS, in terms of average scores (more on that in a bit). On TIMSS, Massachusetts, mirroring its strong performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, did very well in both science and math, compared with the United States and other high-performing countries and education systems. However, the good news largely evaporates when you look at the percentages of students that scored "advanced," "high," "intermediate," or "low" on the tests, the formal benchmark names for performance levels. In terms of the share of students scoring at the top level, or advanced, other high-performing countries leave many U.S. states eating dust. Also, of interest, a report on digital education and devices used by children from Ed Week.  ...