Bill Gates a sad clown; bizarre
$100 million student data project failed
-
InBloom,
Inc Student Data Collection, to Shut Down
9:19 AM 04/22/2014
Eric Owens; Education Editor
Common Core-loving billionaire
Bill Gates has suffered a stinging defeat in his ambitious quest to reform
every cranny of the American K-12 public education
system.
The nonprofit
educational-software company InBloom Inc., which the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation and the Carnegie Corp. of New York financed to the tune of $100
million, announced on Monday that it will shut down
permanently.
The
reason for the shutdown is a steady cascade of parental and legislative
anxiety about student privacy,
reports The Wall Street Journal.
The strategy driving inBloom
had been to create a huge database connecting local school districts and state
education bureaucracies with behemoth education
companies.
To accomplish this goal, the
nonprofit had hoped to provide a smorgasbord of data about students. What
homework are they doing? What tests are they assigned? What are their test
scores? Their specific learning
disabilities? Their disciplinary records? Their skin colors? Their names?
Their addresses?
The
Atlanta-based company had originally signed up nine states for the database.
It planned to charge school districts between $2 and $5 per student for the
privilege of participating in the student data collection
scheme.
Many
parents across the country - particularly in the otherwise fairly disparate
states of New York and Louisiana - hated the bizarrely intrusive idea from the
start and rallied key state legislators to their causes.
The
final blow came earlier this year when the New York state legislature forced
its state education bureaucrats to abandon the invasive Gates-funded
project.
"Hopefully, today's
announcement that inBloom is closing its doors will make government officials,
corporations and foundations more aware that parental concerns cannot be
ignored," Leonie Haimson, a former New York City public-schools parent who
successfully lobbied lawmakers against inBloom, told the
Journal.
In a message on inBloom's
website, Chief
Executive Officer Iwan Streichenberger swore that the firm "has
world-class security and privacy protections" and accused the meddling
database's grassroots critics of "mischaracterizations," notes The Washington Post.
"Over the last year, the
incredibly talented team at inBloom has developed and launched a technical
solution that addresses the complex challenges that teachers, educators and
parents face when trying to best utilize the student data available to them,"
Streichenberger wrote.
"The use of technology to
tailor instruction for individual students is still an emerging concept and
inBloom provides a technical solution that has never been seen before. As a
result, it has been the subject of mischaracterizations and a lightning rod
for misdirected criticism," he also proclaimed.
Interestingly,
though Gates has funded the effort to collect data about America's public
school kids, he has sent his own kids to a ritzy Seattle private
school. (RELATED:
Bill Gates loves Common Core for your kids, BUT NOT
HIS)
It
does not appear that any of the Gates children would have been part of the
amazing new student information database.
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