Last chance in 2013 to support our work for student privacy and smaller classes!

Dear folks:

I hope you all had a lovely holiday.  As you know, Class Size Matters is an organization with a large impact but a small budget.  We count on donations from individuals like you to keep going. To continue our efforts on behalf of children’s right to small classes, we urge you to make a tax-deductible contribution by clicking here (http://www.nycharities.org/donate/c_donate.asp?CharityCode=1757 ) or by sending a check to the address below.

This year along with the need for small classes, we have focused on the urgent issue of student privacy and stopping the behemoth called inBloom Inc.  We were the first advocacy group to sound the alarm about inBloom’s plan to create a multi-state database with thousands of data points from millions of students, with the explicit goal of packaging this information and offering it up to data-mining for-profit vendors without parental consent.  The information was to be stored on a vulnerable cloud run by Amazon.com with an operating system built by Rupert Murdoch’s Amplify.

Less than a year ago, when inBloom formally launched as a separate corporation, nine states were listed as “partners.”  We worked to get the word out through blogging, personal outreach and the mainstream media.  After parent protests erupted throughout the country, one by one of inBloom’s states pulled out.  Now, eight out of these nine states have severed ties with inBloom or put their student data sharing plans on indefinite hold.

Sadly here in New York, despite the opposition of elected leaders of both parties, the vast majority of school board members and most superintendents, Commissioner King is still intent on providing inBloom with a complete set of personal data for all public school students in the state– including children’s names, addresses, phone numbers, test scores and grades, disabilities, health conditions, disciplinary records and more.  We helped to organize a lawsuit on behalf of NYC parents which will be heard in state court on January 10, asking for an immediate injunction to block the state’s plan.

No matter what happens in court or in the legislature this year, our campaign to stop inBloom and protect student privacy will continue.  We will also work to ensure that parental consent is required before sensitive data is shared with any third-party vendors.  Because as we have painfully learned, inBloom is just the tip of the iceberg – the most visible evidence of the insatiable appetite of companies to collect and use children’s personal data for private gain.

In addition, we will continue our efforts on the critical issue of class size.  As a result of our reports, testimonies and outreach, we have been able to shine a bright light on what many consider to be the most shameful aspect of Mayor Bloomberg’s education legacy: the fact that class sizes in NYC have increased sharply over the last six years and are now the largest in the early grades since 1998.

Class sizes have grown every year, despite the fact that the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case was supposedly “settled” by a 2007 state law that ordered NYC to shrink class sizes in all grades.  Because of the mayor’s refusal to do so, 86% of NYC principals say they are unable to provide a quality education because classes are too large.  According to the Dept. of Education’s surveys, parents agree that smaller classes are their top priority.  Indeed, there is no more critical need if the city’s children are to have an equitable chance to learn.

But class size is not just a problem in NYC public schools.  Because of budget cuts, class sizes have risen sharply throughout the state and the nation as a whole.

At the same time, more and more money is spent by billionaires and venture philanthropists on bogus “studies” to try to convince states and districts that class size doesn’t matter and public funds should be spent instead on outsourcing education into private hands – despite much rigorous research showing the opposite to be true.

With vendors trying to grab your child’s data in the name of providing “personalized” instruction – a euphemism that really means instruction delivered via computers and data-mining software in place of real-life teachers giving meaningful feedback in a class small enough to make this possible — our efforts are more crucial than ever before.

Please make a donation so that our work can continue and be even more effective in 2014.

Thanks so much for your support, and a Happy New Year,

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
212-674-7320

Categories Uncategorized | Tags: | Posted on December 28, 2013

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