Infinite Campus and the ACLU

MCLU Issues Back-to-School Privacy Alert

August 20, 2009

The Maine Civil Liberties Union Foundation says students and parents do not have to provide social security numbers to public schools when asked.

A Maine law passed this spring, An Act To Improve the Ability of the Department of Education To Conduct Longitudinal Data Studies, allows the Maine Department of Education to collect and use students’ social security numbers for tracking performance before and after graduation. The database is intended to link student information between the Maine Department of Education and Maine Department of Labor.

An important provision of the law establishes an opt-in program. Under the opt-in program, parents are not required to provide social security numbers to schools, but rather they may choose to participate. In 1974, Congress passed the Privacy Act (Public Law 93-579), finding that the right to privacy is a personal and fundamental right protected by the US Constitution and when government agencies collect, use, and disseminate private information, privacy is put at risk. In accordance with these findings, LD 1356 specifies that school administrations must notify parents that providing private information, such as students’ social security numbers, is optional.

“The right to privacy is a fundamental right protected by the Constitution,” said Shenna Bellows, Executive Director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union Foundation. “In the interest of student privacy and to remain compliant with the law, schools must inform parents that this is an opt-in system. Parents do not have to provide private sensitive information about their children.”

The debate over LD 1356 was heated. Proponent Commissioner Susan Gendron said in her testimony that tracking data using social security numbers is “essential for evaluating the effectiveness of education programs and curriculum in impacting postsecondary and labor market outcomes.”

Opponents, including teachers, superintendents, parents and advocacy groups, highlighted the privacy risks with tracking student and worker data using social security numbers. Government agencies are not immune to security breaches. In 2006, the Veteran’s Affairs Administration was blamed for the theft of 26.5 million social security numbers when a disc containing sensitive information was stolen. Breach of information like the social security number would leave students vulnerable to identity theft or worse. Parents and students noted how tracking student data, including incidents of prohibited behavior, with a social security number could have a negative effect, as Congress noted, on students’ ability to obtain housing, employment, or credit. Noting these concerns, schools must ask parents to think long and hard before handing over children’s social security numbers.

“I work with students every day and support their right to succeed,” said Scott McFarland, principal at Mt. Desert Elementary School. “Attaching a 7-year-old’s achievement and discipline information to his social security number is an unfair and unjust violation of her privacy. We need to be advocates for children in a way that will protect their right to privacy and the unnecessary sharing of privileged information. I would encourage all administrators in Maine to let parents know they don’t have to put their children’s privacy at risk like this.”

“Every parent must know this is an opt-in program,” said Brianna Twofoot, Field Organizer for the Maine Civil Liberties Union Foundation. “The onus lies with the schools to disseminate accurate information about the program and ensure Maine students’ privacy is protected.”

LINK: http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/mclu-issues-back-school-privacy-alert

State-run Infinite Campus Project and Student Privacy

Students to Rally Statehouse in Support of Privacy

An Act to Protect Student Privacy while Complying with Federal Law

April 1, 2009

High School students and educators from across the state will be gathering in Augusta at 9:00am on Monday, April 6th to demand protection for their privacy. The group, which includes students, teachers, principals, superintendents, and parents, will be addressing the Joint Standing Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs in support of LD 725 An Act to Protect Student Privacy while Complying with Federal Law.

"Mainers care passionately about their constitutional right to privacy," said Shenna Bellows, Executive Director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, "we should not be surprised that Maine students are equally passionate about how, and why their personal data is being collected."

Current Maine Department of Education policy mandates that schools report all names of students involved in any of 39 incidences of prohibited behavior. The DOE claims that the policy is necessary to meet federal reporting requirements; however, the policy exceeds these requirements by collecting, and storing, personal student data.

LD 725, sponsored by Senator Alfond of Portland, would prevent state officials from gathering the unnecessary personal records of students while keeping Maine in compliance with federal laws.

"Our administration adamantly opposes requiring school districts to release personally identifiable information that may jeopardize student privacy," said Patricia Hopkins, superintendent of schools for MSAD 28 and Five Town CSD.

In 2008, Hopkins contacted the MCLU regarding the DOE reporting policies; primary among her concerns was that if data is not well protected, students may be discriminated against, or harmed in the future because of mistakes made in their youth.

LINK: http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/students-rally-statehouse-support-privacy

Infinite Campus and Flawed Data in South Dakota

S.D. data flawed in report on schools

Faulty figures distort rank for low poverty in public education

JOSH VERGES • JVERGES@ARGUSLEADER.COM • FEBRUARY 22, 2010

A new report saying South Dakota has the nation's third-highest percentage of students attending wealthy public schools relies on wildly inaccurate data from the Sioux Falls School District and probably at least three others.

According to the Fordham Institute, 16 percent of South Dakota public school students - four times the national average - attend schools where fewer than 5 percent of the students are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

But the report, "America's Private Public Schools," uses faulty figures South Dakota officials reported to the federal government. An Argus Leader analysis indicates the true number is less than one-tenth what the report says.

Sioux Falls public schools had 6,277 students on the school meal subsidy program in 2006-07, according the the National Center for Education Statistics.

The same source has the number dropping to 168 the following school year, which is the data set the Fordham Institute used for its report.

That meant even schools like Hawthorne Elementary, where four out of five students come from poor families, were counted in the report as schools for the elite.

"The numbers obviously do not match our numbers," school district spokeswoman DeeAnn Konrad said.

The apparent cause of the bad data is the school district's conversion in early 2008 to a new student information system, Infinite Campus, which is used by most of the schools in the state.

Mary Stadick-Smith, spokeswoman for the Department of Education, said state officials thought when they retrieved the Sioux Falls data that it had been fully converted. It had not, so what the state reported to the NCES was inaccurate.

"Basically, the information they gave us was incorrect," NCES statistician Patrick Keaton said.

Stadick-Smith said the mistake should not cost the school district any federal money because National School Lunch Program money is based on a different reporting system and other grants are determined by census data and actual enrollment. She said state officials are working with the school district and NCES to correct the inaccurate data.

The Argus Leader notified the Fordham Institute of the data problem on Thursday. Co-author Janie Scull acknowledged the data was illogical but no corrections have been made.

Keaton didn't know if any other schools' data was misreported, and Stadick-Smith said she thought the mistake was isolated to the Sioux Falls district.

But the newspaper on Sunday found questionable figures for three additional school districts: The NCES reported lunch program eligibility in the Newell School District fell from 164 in 2006-07 to just four in 2007-08 and in the Wall School District from 69 to one. The Edmunds Central School District's numbers fell from 58 in 2005-06 to zero and two in the subsequent years.

If the remainder of the data is correct, only seven South Dakota schools — including All City Elementary in Sioux Falls — would qualify as what the Fordham Institute calls "private public schools." Just 1,664 students attended those schools in 2007-08, or 1.4 percent of all the public school students in the state.

Reach Josh Verges at 331-2335.

Link: http://www.argusleader.com/article/20100222/NEWS/2220302/1001/news

Does Infinite Campus Track Your Entire Family?

Friday, November 14, 2008

Tracking Students Is One Thing – But Tracking Your Entire Household?

What is the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) really tracking? We have written before such ashere and here about the teething problems with the KDE’s new student tracking system – at least we thought it was a STUDENT tracking system.

Now, a news report hints that the KDE’s new “Infinite Campus” computer database system may be something more – a household tracking system!

Why is the department of education setting up a system that tracks students not as individuals, but only as members of households? Does the department of education have legitimate reasons to track anything organized by households?

Certainly, the Times Tribune article raises lots more questions than answers about a computerized tracking system so involved that some educators say it’s “scary” just to implement the thing. Could there be even more to be scared of than anyone in the public knows?

Kentucky To Charge Local Schools for Infinite Campus

Fayette schools short by $3.2 million

By Jim Warren - jwarren@herald-leader.com

Fayette County Public Schools expect revenues from various taxing and interest sources to decline by $3.2 million in the current school year's working budget as a result of the sagging economy.

Julane Mullins, the district's associate budget director, told the Fayette County school board Monday night that the school system will adjust its current operating budget to make up the bulk of the shortfall by using dollars previously budgeted for a proposed employee attendance incentive program.

Mullins stressed, however, that the schools "remain on solid financial footing" and that the staff is closely monitoring the financial situation.

According to Mullins, the district now expects to receive $800,000 less in motor vehicle tax revenues in the current budget; $900,000 less in revenue from Lexington's occupational license tax; and about $1.5 million less in interest earnings.

Several factors are involved in the projected declines, which are based on revenue collections over the past several months.

Mullins said the state is changing the way it figures motor vehicle taxes, switching from Blue Book valuations on vehicles to average trade-in values instead. According to Mullins, that's expected to result in about a 10 percent decline in motor vehicle values, translating into fewer motor vehicle tax dollars for the school system. Auto sales, which are declining across the country, also are contributing to the shortfall, Mullins said.

Lexington is running a 6.6 percent unemployment rate, which is sharply cutting into revenue the schools receive from the city occupational license tax, Mullins said. Interest earnings on the school system's funds are down because the schools are earning an interest rate "significantly less than 1 percent," she said.

To make up for the $3.2 million shortfall, the district proposes using $3 million it previously set aside for a program aimed at encouraging bus drivers and teachers to come to work.

An additional $800,000 will be taken from contingency funds.

Mullins indicated more adjustments might be necessary if funding from the state Department of Education is reduced as has been discussed, and the state carries through with plans to charge local schools for the cost of maintaining the Infinite Campus computerized student information system.

Reach Jim Warren at 1-800-950-6397, Ext. 3255, or (859) 231-3255.

Link: http://www.kentucky.com/181/story/655778.html

Kentucky DOE Passes Cost of IC to Districts

[January 14, 2009]

Budget faces $1 million cut: Shelton skeptical of cigarette tax's chances to pass

(Messenger-Inquirer (Owensboro, KY) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Jan. 14--Daviess County Public Schools is set to slice $1 million from its budget with a little more than five months left in the fiscal year.

The districtwide cuts will mean a freeze on extra time or overtime except for emergencies; job-required-only travel, limiting purchases and a moratorium on any field trips in which students are not competing except for those for which money for tickets already has been advanced.

roceeding now will give the district a leg up if the state mandates midyear cuts and will help prepare it for a projected leaner budget in 2009-10, Superintendent Tom Shelton said Tuesday.

Shelton and Financial Services Director Matt Robbins shared highlights of a draft plan during Tuesday's routine luncheon meeting held at the central office.



The plan, which includes many more spending cuts, was developed by the superintendent's top administrative staff with proposals from their respective department heads.

Shelton asked for the revisions Dec. 1 after Commissioner of Education Jon Draud told districts that Gov. Steve Beshear was considering a 4 percent cut from departments this year to balance a $456 million revenue shortfall.

Beshear has since asked lawmakers to raise the cigarette tax by 70 cents, but that plan's passage is doubtful, Shelton said.

"The current proposal is to take $7 million from K-12 and $1 million from KDE (Kentucky Department of Education) and $6 million from the textbook grant, but all of that is contingent on the governor's cigarette tax proposal," Shelton said. "... If that proposal doesn't take place -- and we won't find out until March -- it will be too late. We felt like we should go ahead."

A 4 percent cut would take $2 million from the current DCPS budget.

Shelton and staff started communicating the budget cuts this week.

Two goals for the district were to minimize the impact on instruction and not to eliminate jobs in the current fiscal year, Robbins said.

Other financial realities also are pointing to a need to tighten the district's belt, officials said.

"We're only getting 80 percent reimbursement for transportation costs, and we spend $7 million per year," Shelton said. "We also took a cut in state grants. ... We've already experienced two cuts this year; any additional will be a third cut."

Kentucky school districts also have been tagged with paying for the new student information system, Infinite Campus, Shelton said. That is a $60,000 to $70,000 unplanned cost for Daviess County.

In addition, the district is about $300,000 behind on investments and may not receive as high a collection rate on property taxes this year because of higher unemployment, Robbins said.

Shelton also told administrative staff that they will work on developing "zero-based" budgets for 2009-10. That means they will start from zero to build their spending plans.

Daviess County also is facing a $300,000 increase in the amount it matches for the classified employees' retirement fund and will be required to provide a 1 percent raise and step increases for years of service and education to all employees.

Other cuts include the gradual elimination of door-side pick-up and drop-off of students within subdivisions and reduction in the tuition reimbursement program and elimination of existing employee YMCA memberships.

Two board members praised the staff work that went into identifying the spending plan.

"The bad part is that you're forced into a corner to do things," Frank Riney said. "The good thing is that you looked at it all to find reductions. I appreciate the efforts you've gone to; it's probably been needed."

As the percentage of the state's budget has lessened for education, "that has caused us to come to you to approve tax increases," Shelton said. "I know that hasn't been easy. In the current economic times, I don't feel like we can do that this year. We're trying to prevent that."

Board member John Ed Dunn said he would be in favor of a resolution that supports the staff's budget revisions, but he also reminded Shelton that "it's a working plan that has to be executed."

"Billy Gillispie had a plan to win against Louisville, but the players had to execute the plan," Dunn said. "... We have until June 30; that's our 40 minutes."

He suggested that staff names should be attached to each of the department categories for accountability, and the progress should be monitored.

"You hear all the time people say that we have to live within our means. ... I assure you this will be appreciated," Riney said.

Shelton said district staff will begin implementing the plan Friday. That also is when letters will go out explaining the reductions.

The board is expected to adopt a resolution to support the plan at Thursday's 6 p.m. meeting. It is not required to approve it.

Link: http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2009/01/14/3913459.htm

Data Collection Sparks Privacy Concerns

Data Collection Sparks Privacy Concerns MT Public Schools

February 10, 2009 · 1 Comment

February 9, 2009
Data collection sparks privacy concerns

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090209/NEWS01/902090302&template=printart

By ERIC NEWHOUSE
Tribune Projects Editor

Montana’s Office of Public Instruction has begun collecting information – including medical data – on students with disabilities, raising some confidentiality concerns among school officials.

“I don’t have any problem submitting this data to the state, but it’s wrong to associate it with an individual student by name,” said Doug Sullivan, superintendent of schools in Sidney.

In addition to a list of the physical and emotional disabilities students have, Sullivan also is concerned that the state requires general income information by asking which students are eligible for a subsidized school lunch, Sullivan said.

“I asked the principal not to disclose some of that specific information about my son, but he told me that could jeopardize federal funding of school programs,” Sullivan said. “But that jeopardizes my right as a parent to control information about my own child.”

Madalyn Quinlan, chief of staff for OPI, said the data is required by the Achievement in Montana system, which is used to assess and track the educational progress of students.

“It’s an accountability requirement for the federal government to ensure we are providing services to the students they’re providing funding for,” said Great Falls Public Schools Superintendent Cheryl Crawley. She said the system’s current security provisions appear adequate to her and her staff.

The program, which collects 108 data sets on each child, is in the fourth year of a five-year contract with the software vendor, Infinite Campus Inc.

“The system for the special education program is just being rolled out this year,” said Bob Runkel, assistant superintendent of OPI.

Information in that system includes individual education programs, in which teachers devise strategies to educate students with a variety of physical, mental and emotional disabilities.

“My point is that that information doesn’t belong to the state, at least not on a personal identification basis, particularly in a state that has so strongly rejected the Real ID program (a national program of standardized identification),” Sullivan said.

Runkel said school officials are sensitive to those concerns.

“Of course we’re concerned,” he said. “We’ve developed a system, keeping privacy and confidentiality of student data in mind, and it has a lot of safeguards built into it.”

“The product itself is actually stored with the state (online) firewall,” Quinlan said. “Any information uploaded from the school districts comes across a secure site, and no information is exchanged via e-mail.”

Additionally, all OPI employees are trained on student confidentiality procedures, she said.

Those measures aren’t enough, according to Sullivan and the board of trustees of the Sidney Public Schools.

Sullivan said he wonders why OPI can’t generate a student identification number and send it to the district, which will then assign it to a student. Once that is done, the district and OPI could refer to that student by the number, with only the district having access to the name assigned to the ID number.

“The (software) product we purchased has the student name as an integral part of the program,” Quinlan said. “And the student name helps us when we deal with the local school district.”

Even if an ID number is created, the information could still be exposed at the district level, said Glynn Ligon of ESP Solutions Inc., a consulting firm in Austin, Texas, that bills itself as specialists in K-12 data systems.

“I personally think the ruse of getting only the ID number goes only so far in protecting the student’s identity, because it still creates a unique record that is linked back to a personally identifiable record at the local level – and possibly elsewhere,” he said. “Plus, within the record itself, there will be, at times, data or combinations of data that uniquely identify individuals.”

Barbara Clements of ESP Solutions added that system hackers tend to be more successful on a local level.

“Frankly, I haven’t heard of any hackers getting into student records at the state level. They are usually high-school students wanting to change a grade, and they are more likely to go after school district systems,” she said. “There is nothing, really, to gain from state records, which contain only a small portion of what is kept at the local level.”

Clements said that other states’ education departments have adopted different strategies to protect student privacy.

“In some states we have worked with, there was concern about collecting the student name,” Clements said. “Those states have generally either collected the student records without the student name or stripped the name of the record when the data are entered into a data warehouse.

“The name is important to ensure that the student identifier is correct,” she added. “Once that check is done, the name is not really needed at the state level. “

It can be a delicate balancing act to meet all the legal requirements and ensure security.

“Many states have collected records … over the years – without the student’s name,” Ligon said. “The real solution is to have a solid, legal, defensible data access and management policy that complies with FERPA (the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act), HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which provides for patient privacy), and your state laws, and allows local policies to be adopted that are consistent.”

OPI officials are beginning to revisit the issue as the current software contract, which calls for the state to pay $435,000 annually, nears the end of its terms.

“We’re doing some research now on what other states with a longer track record have been doing to keep student names separate from ID numbers and accompanying information,” Quinlan said. “There is some precedent for it nationally.”

Additional Facts
Hearing
The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Senate Bill 338, which would protect information and court records relating to children with disabilities, at 9 a.m. Tuesday in room 303 of the state Capitol in Helena.

Link: http://axiomamuse.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/data-collection-sparks-privacy-concerns-mt-public-schools/

"Infinite Campus Lies"

Software Company “Infinite Campus” Lies

Recently, there have been two comments on my blog about Infinite Campus, both of which praise the quality of Infinite Campus. They were both made within an hour and a half. Hmmm… I thought I’d better look into this one a little bit more.

They were a lot worse than I initially thought.

The emails were both fake, unless you believe “info4nancy@comcast.net” and “jeff@jeff.com” to be legit email addresses. The two comments said nothing but good things about this “amazing” company. They were both apparently from people with authority in large school districts; at least, they implied being from different school districts. The comments were written in different styles of writing, so one may think they were from different people.

I agree that one should not jump to conclusions. I won’t.

I thought I would check the IP addresses. What a surprise. They were the same. Why not look that one IP address up on an IP locator out of curiosity? Hmm… The IP was “207.225.137.8″, so the location is “Minneapolis, MN”. That’s interesting. That is where their headquarters is located. Oh! This is even more interesting! The ISP field says “Infinite Campus”. Do I need a screenshot to prove this? This commenter believes I need to “check my facts” before writing, so this screenshot will give the reader an opportunity to do so for his/herself.

One of two conclusions can be drawn by this.

1. Just recently, another school district opened in Minneapolis. Both this school district, and the existing school district in Minneapolis have broken into a single computer at the Infinite Campus HQ and tunneled through it to steal their bandwidth. The company Infinite Campus has no idea this is going on, because nothing has been done to stop it.
2. Infinite Campus, as a company, LIED to the general public to try to get more business.

I’ll assume the latter.

It is scary to me, though, to know that proprietary software companies as well known and widely used as Infinite Campus must LIE to retain their status. We trust these companies with so much, especially those who make a Student Information System. Every known piece of personal information about students and their families is put into this system, including a picture. How can we, in all honesty, know that they haven’t lied to us again? It is very possible that there is an intentional security hole in there so creepy employees can stalk random students. This would put more control into their hands than even MySpace or Facebook has. There is no way to find out, but I can tell you one thing: I don’t want my information in there! I don’t want my school to unintentionally exploit a creative way to bypass information privacy laws!

This all just goes to show that money comes first for greedy proprietary software companies like Infinite Campus. Money comes before education. Money comes before freedom. Money comes before morals. Shouldn’t education software companies in particular actually come so far as to think about the morals that educators are trying to instill in their students?

Hey, employees at Infinite Campus! Give some ethical software a try. You can take your first steps with one of my previous blog posts. Even if you never went to college, just like your CEO, you might just learn something!

Link: http://trombonechamp.wordpress.com/2009/02/23/software-company-infinite-campus-lies/

Student Privacy at Risk?

Student privacy bill spurs debate in Augusta

By Mal Leary
Capitol News Service

AUGUSTA, Maine — Students, parents and school administrators all told lawmakers the Department of Education should stop collecting the names of students disciplined by schools and keeping them in a database, but Commissioner Susan Gendron warned that could jeopardize all federal funds for education that come to the state.

“If we don’t comply with reporting requirements as the federal government specifies, we can in fact be required to return all and any federal dollars,” she told lawmakers. “IDEA [Individuals with Educational Disabilities Act] alone is $50 million a year.”

Gendron said that while the state is collecting the disciplinary information, it reports the information only as aggregate data without the students’ identification numbers. She said individual data are confidential by law and protected from release.

“The DOE has no compelling need to know this information that would override the rights of our students and their families,” said Patricia Hopkins, superintendent of Camden area schools. “The DOE has a data collection concern that it has chosen to solve at the expense of student privacy instead of protecting that privacy.”

She and other speakers argued there is no assurance that the department can keep the information confidential once it is collected. She said there have been frequent and well-publicized reports of data breaches at major corporations and at the federal government.

“They are trying to put a lot of security measures on this but even with the top security on this information it can still be accessed, it can still be breached,” said Jason Hamilton, a senior at Hampden Academy. “I just don’t think this is right.”

He said it does not seem fair that if he committed a crime as a juvenile, that record is not kept after he turns 18, but a record of a suspension for a playground fight in elementary school would be in a Department of Education database. He was one of several students testifying in support of banning the collection of names as part of the Department of Education database.

“The simplest terms I can put this in is when I had to set down and make a decision about putting students’ names in, it just felt dirty to me,” said Scott McFarland, principal of Mount Desert Elementary School in Northeast Harbor. “This just stinks, it is not right and it is not acceptable to me.”

The Maine School Management Association and the Maine School Boards Association also supported the measure.

Commissioner Gendron, the only opponent to the bill, defended the collection of the information as required by several federal laws, but her assertion was challenged by Jon Paterson, a Portland attorney representing the Maine Civil Liberties Union at the hearing.

“In my personal review of the federal laws that were cited by the department, there is no requirement in any of these federal laws that requires the Department of Education to collect that information,” he said.

In fact, Paterson said, some of the federal laws cited by department, such as the No Child Left Behind Act, specifically prohibit collection of information that names an individual.

“It says that reporting schools shall not identify victims of crimes or persons accused of crimes,” he said. “In the Individuals with Educational Disabilities Act, the state is prohibited from collecting information that would disclose personally identifiable information about individual children.”

The measure is sponsored by Sen. Justin Alfond, D-Portland, co-chair of the committee. The bill now will be considered at a workshop of the committee, scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. The bill then will go before the full Legislature with the recommendation of the panel whether it should be passed or needs to be amended.

Link: http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/103236.html

"Infinite Heartache"

Monday, July 21, 2008

“Infinite Campus” equals Infinite Heartache?

The latest slam on the Kentucky Department of Education’s (KDE) student tracking program called “Infinite Campus” was leveled in the Kentucky New Era on July 19.

Apparently, the user unfriendly computer program made for some long delays during student registration at Christian County High School.

Infinite Campus isn’t fully up and running in all school districts, but it certainly has had growing pains during the pilot stage.

The KDE says the student tracking program is to be up in all schools by the end of 2008. Given the number of complaints to date, that isn’t looking like much of a Christmas present for those schools that have yet to tangle with this tangle.
I last wrote about Infinite Campus’ woes only a few days ago in an article about new California dropout rates from that state’s new and much more accurate student tracking system. Infinite Campus is supposed to serve a similar function here. But, if students take hours just to get registered in the new system, it is highly likely that the data it produces won’t be worth much for a long time. Of course, given that we expect Kentucky will have to own up to much lower graduation rates and much higher dropout rates once Infinite Campus is working, maybe the confusion and delay was someone’s idea from the start.

Perhaps it’s time to call California to find out how they can do this job – now – with hundreds of thousand more kids, better than we can.

"Infinite Questions"

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Infinite Questions

We’ve been covering the teething problems with the Kentucky Department of Education’s new computer support program for schools (see here, here, here and here) for some time.

The first version, known as STI, failed some time ago.

The replacement, known as Infinite Campus, has just now become operational in all school districts – more or less. But, the start-up issues are far from over, as hearings before the Kentucky Board of Education today made clear.

One of the potentially good features of Infinite Campus is a parent portal which allows parents to check, daily if they want, on things like their child’s actual presence in class and grades. However, discussions in today’s meeting of the Kentucky Board of Education indicate a number of districts have yet to implement this feature, due in part to security concerns that the wrong parent might be coded against the wrong student.

One of the not good features of Infinite Campus is the vast increase in data entry requirements. During the board meeting, one member asked if adopting this new technology had improved efficiency and reduced labor needs. The presenter admitted that the opposite was happening, as districts were having to add staff to feed the voracious appetite of this data monster (which, among other things, collects a fair amount of information about whole families, not just the individual student).

One last observation came from a demonstration to the board of the features of Infinite Campus. The presenter had lots of problems logging in, first as a teacher, and in several other cases including as a state level administrator. We all know that computers can be cranky, but with at least three log-on “crumps,” I wonder if districts are having similar problems.

So, if you work with this system, let us know about problems you are having. We’ll fully understand if you log on anonymously so you don’t feel threatened.

Oh, one more point. The board heard that the annual costs for the state to operate Infinite Campus runs about $5.5 million, and that does not seem to include any district or school level support costs like those extra programmers. But, Infinite Campus isn’t ready to support longitudinal data tracking, which is needed under the new SB-1, so up that cost by another $1 million at least.

"INFINITE CAMPUS IS A FAILURE FOR ALL"

CITIZEN COLUMN: 'INFINITE CAMPUS" IS A FAILURE FOR ALL

BY Rebecca Hearn
Updated Friday, May 8, 2009

The Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) will be reviewing with the governor in the next few weeks the new state-mandated student information system called Infinite Campus.

What KDE will likely not tell him is that they did not do their homework prior to forcing this change. KDE has failed students, educators and taxpayers.

They have displayed a total lack of concern regarding the needs of parents who are actively involved in their children’s education.

As a parent of two school-age children, the governor needs to understand…

n KDE failed parents and their concerns in accessing the new system. Parents who once were able to check their child’s grades online were told that they would have to wait in some cases six to eight months for access. KDE did not think that parents would mind that an important monitoring service would be taken away for almost a year.

n KDE failed the taxpayers. Infinite Campus will cost $5.5 MILLION yearly for licensing and maintenance, approximately $3 million more than the previous system called STI. According to KDE, the previous system provided all the necessary reports required by the state and federal governments.

The STI contract was up for review, and it was determined that instead of trying to upgrade the STI system they would throw out the “baby out with the bath water.”

n KDE failed school districts. KDE did not account for the effect this transition would have on our districts’ already tight budgets. Currently, the state has not allocated any funding for the yearly licensing and maintenance costs.

Our cash-strapped school districts are now responsible for paying the $5.5 million fee. Many school districts will have to cut teachers, aides, school services and/or raise funds to pay for the increased cost.

Even if KDE finds money somewhere to help pay for the system, taxpayers’ money could have been better spent.

n KDE failed many graduating seniors. In school districts that had trouble implementing Infinite Campus, students had difficulty in getting current transcripts for college scholarship and applications, resulting in missed opportunities.

n KDE failed our teachers. This very labor-intensive program did not provide adequate training. This has resulted in teacher frustration, parent stress and student aggravation.

n KDE failed the governor. The Kentucky Department of Education is the gate-keeper for the governor on this school issue. KDE is responsible to oversee the education services in our state. With this program, KDE has led the governor down a path of folly.

It is important we don’t allow another mistake like Infinite Campus by not having an informed governor. So when KDE presents to the governor all the good things about Infinite Campus, let the governor know that not all aspects of Infinite Campus are positive.

No one looked ahead two years ago. Don’t allow this negligence to be repeated.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The writer is a parent, past PTA president and resident of Catlettsburg, Ky.

Link: http://m.courierpress.com/news/2009/may/08/citizen-column-infinite-campus-failure-all/