Education Week - May 8, 2013 - 21

EDUCATION WEEK

MAY 8, 2013

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

By Christina A. Samuels
& Alyson Klein
The Obama administration’s
preschool-expansion proposal asks
states to take the lead in creating
high-quality pre-K programs ripe
for expansion to children from
low-income families.
But according to a recent report
from an organization that tracks
early-education spending, many
states have work to do if they plan
to get on board with that agenda.
Spending on state-funded preschool dropped by more than half a
billion dollars in the 2011-12 school
year compared with the year before, creating a hole that some

states are only now attempting to
fill, according to the report from the
National Institute for Early Education Research, based at Rutgers
University in New Brunswick, N.J.
The institute says the drop in
spending is due, in part, to lingering effects of the budget woes in
the states caused by the recession,
plus the expiration of federal economic-stimulus aid. State funding
for preschool stood at $3,481 per
child in the 2011-12 school year,
down from $4,824 the year before.
The organization says that perpupil spending is the lowest it
has been since it started tracking
spending in 2002. In inflationadjusted dollars, state preschool

spending in the 2001-02 school year
was $5,020 per child.
Over the past 10 years, statefunded preschool enrollment rose
by 650,000 children, to about 1.3
million in 2011-12.

Other Factors
But the enrollment increase alone
can’t explain the entire drop in perchild funding, said W. Steven Barnett, the early-childhood institute’s
director. He pointed out that enrollment of 4-year-olds in 2010-11 and
2011-12 was essentially stagnant,
but spending dropped in that time
period alone by $443 per child.
States appear to be favoring ex-

panding the numbers of children
enrolled in preschool over providing the money that the Rutgers
institute believes is necessary to
run a high-quality program, Mr.
Barnett said.
The organization, in addition to
tracking state spending on preschool, evaluates programs on
benchmarks such as teacher training, teacher-student ratio, and
provision of health services. Four
states plus one of Louisiana’s three
programs met all 10 of the organization’s benchmarks for state
pre-K quality standards. Another
16 states met eight or more.
“Parents can find cheap babysitting that’s bad for their kids on
their own. They don’t need government help with that,” Mr. Barnett
PAGE 24 >

La. Ends Data-Storage Arrangement With Nonprofit
By Andrew Ujifusa
The Louisiana state chief’s decision to remove student data from a
nonprofit group’s database is highlighting privacy concerns in an age
when a growing number of K-12
officials and companies are interested in using data about students
to change instruction.
Schools superintendent John
White decided last month to
withdraw student data from the
Atlanta-based nonprofit organization inBloom, which had been
storing it for the state, and to
have discussions with parents
about concerns for the confidentiality of data that included students’ age, sex, and grade level.
He did so not long after expressing support for the state’s work
with inBloom.
“We’re going to go to our families
and have a discussion about our
data-storage practices, not having
anything to do with inBloom,” Mr.
White said.
InBloom says it aims to improve
classroom instruction by providing
data on individual students to technology and content providers, allowing for more personalized learning.
It receives funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (Both philanthropies also help
support Education Week’s coverage
of business and K-12 innovation.)

Other Partners
School districts partnering with
inBloom include New York City,
two systems in Illinois, and one in
North Carolina. The group’s website indicates that its only statewide partner, until recently, was
Louisiana, with three other states
(Delaware, Georgia, and Kentucky) slated to conduct inBloom

pilot programs this year.
However, according to Reuters,
New York has also reached a deal
to work with inBloom on a statewide basis.

iterated his support for the state’s
arrangement with inBloom to the
state school board.
What prompted the change, Mr.
White said, were public concerns
about how student information
was and wasn’t being used in the
Verification Purposes
arrangement.
In Louisiana, Mr. White said,
InBloom has a “privacy comthe state had been storing student mitment” page intended to allay
data with inBloom so that vendors fears about violations of students’
in the state’s Course Choice pro- privacy. It says, for example, that
gram could verify basic informa- “neither inBloom nor any other
participating agency or vendor
may sell, assign, lease, or commercially exploit confidential student
data,” and that its financial backWe’re going
ers don’t have access to such data.

“

to go to our
families and
have a discussion
about our
data-storage
practices.”
JOHN WHITE
Louisiana Schools Superintendent

tion, such as name, sex, and birth
date, submitted by parents on applications. Course Choice allows
students to enroll in academic and
career education programs offered
by institutions around the state.
Beyond being used for verification, Louisiana student data with
inBloom didn’t migrate to any
Course Choice providers, Mr. White
said: “No data are shared with any
vendor.”
Despite his previous support,
Mr. White announced in April that
Louisiana was removing its student
data from inBloom. The decision
came just a day after Mr. White re-

Privacy Concerns Raised
But some groups remain concerned about student privacy.
For example, Class Size Matters,
a New York City-based group that
lobbies for small class sizes, said the
arrangements could compromise
privacy in spite of inBloom’s claims.
“The plan to share personally
identifiable and highly confidential student data in such an unrestricted manner, in an open-ended
time frame, without parental notification or consent,” the group
contends on its blog, “is unprecedented in U.S. history, and would
violate both [Federal Trade Commission] and [Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability
Act] protections if they had authority over student records.”
The privacy of student data was
also a concern mentioned in the
resolution adopted by the Republican National Committee in April
officially opposing the Common
Core State Standards. (InBloom
says the common core will require
new technology and data platforms
of the kind inBloom will support.)
The privacy and security section

www.edweek.org

POLICY
BRIEF

States Faulted on Preschool Spending Levels
Budget woes, recession hangover act as drag, research group says

of inBloom’s website states that
“inBloom Inc. cannot guarantee
the security of the information
stored in inBloom or that the information will not be intercepted
when it is being transmitted.”
Asked about that language, Mr.
White said: “I don’t know. I’m not a
lawyer, and I can’t speak for them.”

Response From inBloom
In a letter that inBloom ceo Iwan
Streichenberger sent last month to
districts it was working with, he
referred to Mr. White’s action as
a “pause” in the relationship, and
said that inBloom supported the
superintendent’s decision.
“The pause also supports Louisiana’s efforts to transition from
using Social Security numbers
(ssns) to randomized student ID
numbers, in keeping with inBloom’s
requirements and with industry
best practices,” Mr. Streichenberger
wrote.
Until recently, inBloom had allowed states and districts to apply
for a waiver of the group’s policy
in order to use student Social Security numbers for data purposes,
but inBloom said it never granted
such a waiver and will no longer
consider granting any.
The superintendent previously
had expressed confidence that no
student data would be misused
through Louisiana’s relationship
with inBloom. He said the decision
to withdraw data from inBloom
did not contradict his earlier statements in support of the arrangement. He didn’t specify whether
he’d be interested in re-establishing the prior relationship.
Mr. White noted that the federal
Family Educational Rights and
Privacy Act would cover arrangements Louisiana would have with
any vendor.

Buffalo Battle Rages
Over Evaluations
The Buffalo, N.Y., school system
says it will no longer honor a deal
it had made with its teachers’
union not to dismiss educators
based on new evaluations—but
the union is pledging to fight to
keep the deal alive.
In negotiations with the
Buffalo Federation of Teachers
about new teacher evaluations,
called “annual professional
performance reviews,” or apprs,
the Buffalo district agreed
in a Jan. 15 memorandum of
understanding that the reviews
from the 2011-12 and 2012-13
school years would not negatively
affect any teacher.
The state education
department approved the
district’s agreement with its
union on the nature of the
evaluations the same month—
unaware of the district’s decision
to hold teachers harmless from
evaluation results.
n

However, the state law
governing the reviews
requires that the results of
the evaluations from those
years “be a significant factor
for employment decisions
including but not limited to,
promotion, retention, tenure
determination, termination, and
supplemental compensation.”
In March, the state department
notified the district that its side
deal with the Buffalo union, an
affiliate of both the American
Federation of Teachers and the
National Education Association,
violated state law. Furthermore,
the state said, that agreement
could endanger millions of
dollars in district funding,
including an increase in state
K-12 aid.
Buffalo Superintendent
Pamela Brown has now said, in
an April 25 statement, that the
side deal with the 3,500-member
union is void.
The 600,000-member New
York State United Teachers
has defended the Buffalo
union, citing a memo from
the department saying that a
teacher with two consecutive
“ineffective” ratings on
the evaluations “may be ...
considered for termination,” but
doesn’t have to be dismissed.
In an interview, the Buffalo
union’s president, Philip
Rumore, said the union was
exploring “every possible legal
means” to fight the department’s
interpretation of the law. He
said he’s heard from the state
union that hundreds of other
New York districts have similar
side deals.
“They’re hiding, because they
don’t want to go through what
we’re going through,” he said.
—ANDREW UJIFUSA

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - May 8, 2013

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