On Wednesday September 25th, Chicago Public Schools Chief Information Officer Phil DiBartolo confirmed that Illinois' largest school district, Chicago Public Schools, was also part of the Pearson AIMSweb data breach that Pearson first announced in July.

Governor Pritzker signed a slew of bills into law this past Friday—including two of our very own initiatives, student data privacy and class size goals, and three more important laws that we’ve been working on with coalitions! 

These bills' passage are the outcome of years of hard work and would not have been possible without the collective action of parents and public school supporters across Illinois!

For Immediate Release, Monday Aug 26, 2019

Contact: Cassie Creswell, 773-916-7794

On Friday Governor Pritzker signed PA 101-0516 (HB3606), an update to Illinois’ Student Online Personal Protection Act (SOPPA) into law. The legislation, one of the most far-reaching student data protection laws in the country, will provide much greater transparency and control to parents on how schools, vendors and the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) are collecting and using data from public school students from preschool through 12th grade.

Last month, assessment giant Pearson began notifying 13,000 schools and universities of a massive data breach involving their AIMSweb product.

We now know that at least ten Illinois school districts including tens of thousands of IL students data were affected by this breach. (We're keeping a running list of reports here.)

In July Pearson began notifying 13,000 school districts and universities that its AIMSweb product was breached in November 2018. Pearson discovered the breach in March. We're keeping a running list of Illinois school districts known to be affected by the breach below.

Read a joint statement from Raise Your Hand and Raise Your Hand Action on our orgs' next steps after the jump:

Two RYH Action initiatives pass both chambers!

After many rounds of negotiations, trips to Springfield, hundreds of calls and witness slips filed and a subject matter hearing in the House last summer, our student data privacy bill HB3606 passed in both chambers! Parents will now have a right to know what data is being collected in school, how it’s being used, the ability to inspect, correct and delete it, and there will be mandatory policies about data breaches. (More on what this bill does here.) Thanks to our chief sponsors Rep Rob Martwick and Sen Omar Aquino, and all of you who put in the work to achieve this!

Please put in calls to your state senator about two Raise Your Hand Actions initiatives, HB3606, the student data privacy bill, and the HB254, the class size goals and transparency bill. Both bills are scheduled for a hearing tomorrow---Tuesday, May 14th.

Progress in Springfield - Pat yourself on the back! Thanks to all your phone calls, witness slips and support, the following bills passed this week and will now move to the other chamber!

An elected representative school board bill will be heard in the House Executive Committee tomorrow morning, Wed. March 27, 8:30am. Fill out a witness slip as a PROPONENT here. Update on the amendments below.