In a late Friday news dump, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) announced a massive breach of the personal data of almost half a million students and more than 56,000 teachers. Parents and guardians were sent individual notices if their child’s data was included in the breach. The data, which spanned four schools years, 2015-16 through 2018-19, was part of a ransomware attack on a non-profit ed tech vendor Battelle for Kids, which has had a contract with CPS since 2012.

Despite the fact that the federal government does not require standardized math and reading tests for students in grades K-2, the IL State Board of Ed is considering a proposal that would expand the state testing system to include those grades. They will be voting soon on this proposal, which would also increase 3-8th grade state math and reading testing to three times a year instead of once, in addition to paying for districts to give these tests to our youngest learners—when there’s absolutely no federal requirement to do so!

Illinois Families for Public Schools and the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy sent a letter to US Senator Dick Durbin on Thursday in response to recent reporting in the Big Tech watchdog publication The Markup about the implications for student data privacy of ed tech companies with products including Powerschool and Naviance that a private equity firm, Vista Equity, has recently been buying up:

Illinois Families for Public Schools, along with the Computer Science Teachers Association - Chicago Chapter, CS4IL, Chicago Teachers Union, and the editorial boards of two student newspapers, the Lane Tech Champion and the Jones Blueprint, sent the Chicago Board of Education and CPS CEO Pedro Martinez a letter today calling on Chicago Public Schools to revise their policy for the Student Online Personal Protection Act and join a statewide consortium in order to make educational software in use around the state available to CPS students. The letter states: "Providing access to technology and protecting student data are not inherently in opposition, and we firmly believe that school districts can do both well." Full letter text below.

New research shared in Ed Week recently confirms what ed experts have been saying for years, which is that tying teacher and admin evaluations to student test scores is deeply unfair in inequitable school systems, harmful to school culture, and not beneficial to student achievement. Researchers from Brown, Michigan State, University of Connecticut and UNC Chapel Hill analyzed a multitude of data from 2009 to 2018 and found no evidence that this policy had even a small positive effect on student achievement. 

IL-FPS has been in the news a lot lately! Check out some of what we’ve been up to below. This coverage is from this past week alone!

Two major changes in the IL School Code went into effect this summer: the Right to Play recess law and a major amendment to the Student Online Personal Protection Act. IL Families for Public Schools was instrumental in drafting and passing these two pieces of legislation.

What do these two new laws mean for students, families and public schools? You can watch the IL Families for Public Schools webinar we held on October 20th to learn what you need to know.

The changes to IL's Student Online Personal Protection Act (SOPPA) that passed in spring 2019 went into effect on July 1, 2021. We've been in conversation with CPS since fall of 2020 about how CPS would comply with the amendments via policy and guidelines.

In 2019, the IL General Assembly passed Public Act 101-516, an update to the Student Online Personal Protection Act (SOPPA). It will go into effect on July 1, 2021. When a law is passed, often a state agency adopts new rules or regulations to help implement the law. In this case, the IL State Board of Ed (ISBE) proposed a new rule for SOPPA. We submitted a comment about the rule which you can read here.

The Chicago Public Schools are preparing for compliance with the changes to IL's Student Online Personal Protection Act (SOPPA), passed in spring 2019 and going into effect on July 1, 2021. Their new policy on SOPPA was passed at the January board meeting, and we were encouraged to see that some of the input we had provided was incorporated into an improved final version. Now CPS is developing more detailed guidelines on how the policy will be implemented.