◼ Common Core-loving billionaire Bill Gates has suffered a stinging defeat in his ambitious quest to reform every cranny of the American K-12 public education system. - Eric Owens/Daily Caller
The nonprofit educational-software company InBloom Inc., which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corp. of New York financed to the tune of $100 million, announced on Monday that it will shut down permanently.
The reason for the shutdown is a steady cascade of parental and legislative anxiety about student privacy, reports The Wall Street Journal.
The strategy driving inBloom had been to create a huge database connecting local school districts and state education bureaucracies with behemoth education companies.
To accomplish this goal, the nonprofit had hoped to provide a smorgasbord of data about students. What homework are they doing? What tests are they assigned? What are their test scores? Their specific learning disabilities? Their disciplinary records? Their skin colors? Their names? Their addresses?
The Atlanta-based company had originally signed up nine states for the database. It planned to charge school districts between $2 and $5 per student for the privilege of participating in the student data collection scheme.
Many parents across the country – particularly in the otherwise fairly disparate states of New York and Louisiana – hated the bizarrely intrusive idea from the start and rallied key state legislators to their causes.
The final blow came earlier this year when the New York state legislature forced its state education bureaucrats to abandon the invasive Gates-funded project.
“Hopefully, today’s announcement that inBloom is closing its doors will make government officials, corporations and foundations more aware that parental concerns cannot be ignored,” Leonie Haimson, a former New York City public-schools parent who successfully lobbied lawmakers against inBloom, told the Journal....
