STUDENT DATA AND ITS DISCONTENTS

How FUD undermined an education reform agenda

Patrick McCormickpaddy@post.harvard.edu@solutist

September 17, 2015 Databite No. 52Data & Society · New York, NY

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student data and its discontents

1. Ed reform and tech context

2. NY Education Data Portal

3. Rising opposition• FEAR of privacy and security breach

• UNCERTAINTY about business model

• DOUBT about positive impact on learning

4. the project of 1,000 case studies

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1. ED REFORM AND TECH CONTEXT

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Ed reform and tech contextThe $4 billion Race to the Top program asked States to advance reforms around four specific areas:1. Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to

succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy;

2. Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction;

3. Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most and

4. Turning around our lowest-achieving schools.

http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/index.html

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Ed reform and tech context

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Ed reform and tech context

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Ed reform and tech context

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2. NY EDUCATION DATA PORTAL

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NY Education Data Portal

to make student data available and useful, connecting student learning to

instructional resources by building a sustainable open technology that fosters innovation.

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NY Education Data Portal

(3) Data Dashboard Vendors

CMS/Portal and

Program Management

DataStore

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NY Education Data Portal

LearningMap

Diagnostics and Assessments

Student Records

Courses and Content

Alignment

Alignment

Alignment

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NY Education Data Portal

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1

School and District Student Management

Systems

Web Based Data Loading (Level 0)

Regional Data Systems (Level 1)

Statewide Data System (Level 2)

SIRS

Shared Learning Infrastructure (SLI)

Future 3rd

Party Apps

Course Catalog

Shared Learning Collaborative

New York State, RIC, or LEA Operated

Proposed TBD Vendor Contract(s)

Education Data Portal Key

Content Management and System Services

EngageNY.org and aligned Educator Collaboration App with

Common Core Content

Data Dashboard Services(multiple vendor awards)

Educator, Student, Parent Dashboards with Early Warning

and Transcript features

Common Core Learning Maps

Content Search & Tagging

NY Education Data Portal

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3. RISING OPPOSITION

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FEAR OF PRIVACY AND SECURITY BREACH

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Rising opposition• Credit card info of about 40 million Target customers hacked• Living Social, Evernote, and Adobe had major data breaches in which tens

of millions of accounts were compromised

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2082961/why-2013-was-the-year-of-the-personal-data-breach.html

• Snowden NSA leak

• Growth of mobile malware

• CryptoLocker ransomware crooks raked in $30 million in only 100 days

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Rising opposition

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Rising opposition

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Rising opposition

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Rising opposition

FERPA as insufficient and out of date• 19 new state laws passed in 2014, 10 more by June, 2015• FPF and SIIA create K12 school service providers Pledge to safeguard

student privacy with commitments on collection, maintenance, and use of student PII Oct 2014

• Obama highlights issue, cites possible federal legislation in Jan, 2015

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UNCERTAINTY ABOUT BUSINESS MODEL

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Rising opposition

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Rising opposition

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Rising opposition

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Rising opposition

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(3) Data Dashboard Vendors

CMS/Portal and

Program Management

DataStore

Rising opposition

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YR1: DevelopProgram funds work under 2 contracts and an agreement

YRS 2-3: Implement / OperateProgram funds ongoing development, operations, dashboards as selected by LEAs and possibly inBloom

YRS 4+: SustainLEAs pay for dashboards, inBloom and operating costs of shared platform

Rising opposition

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Rising oppositionFall 2012, Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters, writes letter calling on parents to challenge right of states and districts to use SLC/inBloom to facilitate sharing of student data with third party providers.These records are to be stored in a massive electronic data bank, being built by Wireless Generation, a subsidiary of News Corporation. News Corporation is owned by Rupert Murdoch and has been found to illegally violate the privacy of individuals in Great Britain and in the United States.

Over the next few months, the Gates Foundation plans to turn over all this personal data to another, as yet unnamed corporation, headed by Iwan Streichenberger, the former marketing director of a company called Promethean that sells whiteboards, based in Atlanta GA.

This new corporation intends to make this confidential student information available in turn to commercial enterprises to help them develop and market their “learning products.” This new corporation is supposed to be financially sustainable by 2016, which means either states, districts or vendors will have to pay for its upkeep and maintenance. All this is happening without parental knowledge or consent.

classsizematters.org

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Rising oppositionApril 1, 2013: inBloom's FAQ included the following language on SSNs:inBloom discourages storing social security numbers in its data service, but legally school districts and state may record student social security numbers. inBloom prohibits storage of social security numbers in the data store unless agreed to by both inBloom and the state/district on a case-by-case basis.

June 6th, 2013: inBloom's language had been changed to read:inBloom does not and will not accept social security numbers (SSNs) as unique student identifiers. No SSNs are currently in the data store. In the past, our policy has been to prohibit the use of SSNs as unique identifier unless the state or district applied for a waiver to that policy. No such waivers were ever issued, and going forward inBloom will prohibit the use of SSNs under any circumstances and will not offer waivers.

Feb 11, 2014: inBloom FAQ included no references to SSNs at all, and instead highlighted that inBloom operates under FERPA.

https://funnymonkey.com/2014/did-louisiana-leave-inbloom-or-did-inbloom-leave-louisiana-and

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Rising opposition

By Reuters’ reckoning, of the nine states originally listed as participating, only three are actively involved — New York, Illinois and Colorado. In New York, parents and educators are protesting the state’s involvement, and there has been legislation introduced in the to pull back.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/06/09/privacy-concerns-grow-over-gates-funded-student-database/

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Rising opposition

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Rising opposition

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Rising opposition

Rising opposition

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Rising opposition

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Rising opposition

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DOUBT ABOUT POSITIVE IMPACT ON LEARNING

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Rising opposition

Education Reform initiatives increasingly under fire and conflated as singular effort:1. Common Core academic standards seen as favoring certain

subjects over others, flawed implementation

2. Data driven instruction seen as substitute for teacher judgment, tied to privatization of education, and driven by corporate profits

3. Teacher evaluation seen as unfair and arbitrary

4. Standardized testing seen as burdensome, ineffective, and taking time away from other learning activities

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Rising opposition

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/08/12/nyregion/the-growing-strength-of-new-yorks-opt-out-movement-maps.html

Opt Out movement spreads across NY: refusals snowballed after 2013, the first year that Common Core standards became the basis for judging student performance.

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Rising opposition

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Rising opposition

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Rising opposition

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/new-yorks-secret-educatio_b_4368282.html

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Rising opposition

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4. THE PROJECT OF 1,000 CASE STUDIES

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the project of 1,000 case studies

Observations from the frontline:

1. Amidst noise of polarized debate, greater awareness of digital disruption, and underlying issues, facing education.

2. Clarity of public purpose, research, and benefits realization mapping may mitigate impact of technical issues, changing context.

3. Multi-year programs benefit from POCs, pilots, and iterative processes that welcome input and course corrections.

4. Where many large projects have fallen short, many small projects, operating under similar principles, are flourishing.

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the project of 1,000 case studies

*of more than 5,400 IT projects by McKinsey and the BT Centre for Major Programme Management at the University of Oxford

According to 2012 study* IT executives identify 4 groups of issues that cause most project failures.

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the project of 1,000 case studies

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the project of 1,000 case studies

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the project of 1,000 case studies

‘the cathedral and the bazaar’ – Eric Raymond

Ed tech shifting from large (top-down), enterprise programs of work to small (bottom-up), iterative prototyping and projects to improve learning outcomes through data driven instruction

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the project of 1,000 case studies

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-apps-for-education-anticipated-to-reach-110-million-users-by-2020-2015-07-01

the project of 1,000 case studies

PCG Google for Education Adoption Curve

Rebooting Classrooms from the Bottom Up Real World Case Studies: Best Practices and Key Considerations for Adopting Google for Educationhttp://www.publicconsultinggroup.com/education2/library/white_papers/Rebooting%20Classrooms%20from%20the%20Bottom%20up_Web.pdf

The promise of blended learning models is that they have the potential to integrate online instruction with face-to-face learning in ways that enable personalized learning for each student.

EdSurge, May 16, 2014

the project of 1,000 case studies

the project of 1,000 case studies

Blended Learning is an emerging education strategy that seeks to maximize student growth by creating the optimal balance of:

• digital and physical learning environments

• self-paced and group-based learning

• traditional and competency-based assessments

Competency-based learning is an approach to teaching and learning more often used in learning concrete skills than abstract learning. It differs from other non-related approaches in that the unit of learning is extremely fine grained. Rather than a course or a module every individual skill/learning outcome, known as a competency, is one single unit.

Personalized learning is the tailoring of pedagogy, curriculum and learning environments by learners or for learners in order to meet their different learning needs and aspirations. Typically technology is used to facilitate personalized learning environments.

Blended Learning Communities

the project of 1,000 case studies

Source: Wikipedia

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student data and its discontents: reading1. Bambrick-Santoyo, Paul, Driven by Data: A Practical Guide to Improve Instruction. Jossey-

Bass, 2010.

2. Bateman, Jessica, As Race To The Top ends, controversy continues. Politico, 2015. http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2015/07/8572178/race-top-ends-controversy-continues

3. Hodas, Steven, inBloom and the Failure of Innovation 1.0. 2014 http://www.crpe.org/thelens/inbloom-and-failure-innovation-10

4. Horn, Michael B. and Staker, Heather, Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools. Jossey-Bass, 2014.

5. Horn, Michael, inBloom's Collapse Offers Lessons For Innovation In Education. Forbes, 2014. http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhorn/2014/12/04/inblooms-collapse-offers-lessons-for-innovation-in-education/

6. Public Consulting Group, Rebooting Classrooms from the Bottom Up: Best Practices and Key Considerations for Adopting Google for Education (http://www.publicconsultinggroup.com/education2/library/white_papers/Rebooting%20Classrooms%20from%20the%20Bottom%20up_Web.pdf). 2014.

7. Putnam, Robert D., Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis. Simon & Schuster, 2015.

8. Schumpeter, Withered inBloom. The Economist, 2014. http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2014/04/big-data-and-education

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