It’s nine school days into a Chicago teacher and staff strike, the second day of fall veto session in Springfield, and a great time to call your state senator and ask why Chicago families are still waiting for an elected, representative school board. (Find your state senator’s phone number here!)

Update 1.29.2020:

HB256 would stop the IL State Board of Ed (ISBE) from requiring student teachers to videotape themselves and their students in order to get a teaching certificate in Illinois.

HB256 passed in the IL House last spring, but now it needs to be heard in committee in the Senate.

In this issue: 

1. Veto session — Call your legislators about HB256 & SB453; 
2. Standardized tests and student data privacy — College Board’s data sales and Pearson’s massive breach; 
3. #RedforEd — Teachers’ fight for resources around the state

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Ahead of next week’s administration of the PSAT exam in schools around the state, nine Illinois state legislators are asking Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul to investigate the business practices of a major state vendor, the College Board, the standardized test maker that sells the SAT, PSAT and Advanced Placement exams.  

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: