MCPS selects another "parent portal, student portal, and gradebook into one big system"

..."We had over 900 people participate in the selection process, including parents, students, and all of our union partners," said Dr. Kara Trenkamp, Director of Technology Integration and Learning Management Systems. "Our teachers were wowed by Synergy. For the first time they had a vision of a student information system that could truly serve them by connecting the parent portal, student portal, and gradebook into one big system in which all of the parts communicate, giving users a complete profile of what they're looking for."..

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/montgomery-county-public-schools-md-120000547.html

Blair Students Dismiss Role of Student Member of Board of Education

MCPS students have a full voting student member on the the Montgomery County Board of Education. Students vote on their representative. Why is it that Blair's students now say the decision to drop Edline was a surprise for them? Their student Board of Education member was at the Board of Education table for all of the discussion and votes on this change. Students were fully represented during the entire years long process. 

Oct. 26, 2017

MyMCPS: A decision we had no say in

MCPS faces major problems due to implementation issues in a decision without student input

From middle school to high school, many students had a best friend named Edline, who knew everything about them from their daily attendance, to the grades they received on assignments. But when school started this year, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) told them that Edline was no longer being used. With no recollection of giving input into the decision, students found themselves crashing head-first into a new system with almost no warning.

http://silverchips.mbhs.edu/story/13623

Tonight: BCC Parents Meeting to Discuss MCPS & Pearson Product Privacy Concerns

Privacy

Informal meeting on Chromebook and Student Privacy

Thursday, February 19, 2015 at 7:00 pm in the Conference room of Jane E. Lawton Community Recreation Center,

4301 Willow Lane, Chevy Chase, MD 20815. 

We are following up on the Chromebook concerns about our students’ personal information, and also responding to those who emailed us back with similar concerns. 

 

While waiting for a response from CCES or MCPS, we ran into another, potentially more serious privacy issue: the newly implemented self-registration system for students and patents to sign up for classes online - see the attached file. 

 

As of Jan. 2015, class selection at Westland Middle School, B-CC High School and throughout MCPS is to be done online by students and parents via a website branded as myMCPS, which is in fact a Pearson’s Student Information System (SIS) PowerSchool. The new registration process was the topic of the recent Westland info sessions at CCES.   We are given till February 14 to register our children for classes for 2015/16 academic year: https://scheduler.mcpsmd.org/public/home.html

 

By registering the students, unbeknownst to us, we parents, consent to Pearson’s Privacy Policy. Pearson collects and data-mines students’ and parents’ personal information including names, home addresses, social security numbers, phone numbers and student grades, health and disciplinary records. To see these capabilities, visit the Pearson’s Features page and scroll down to Family management, Health Screening, Immunization Screening: http://www.pearsonschoolsystems.com/products/powerschool/features/

 

Pearson and Google are companies that refused to sign the voluntary pledge not to collect and sell students’ data proposed by President Obama. Pearson is the company that pioneered the “stealth assessment”- the technology of continuous, secret monitoring and evaluation of student achievement and behavior.

 

Other school districts that use these providers (Google, Pearson) have been a lot more forthcoming about their practices and have informed the parents proactively:

http://www.smusd.us/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=29914&type=d&pREC_ID=590648

Student database gives rise to student worries | Washington Examiner

Student database gives rise to student worries Washington Examiner

All posts on the new MyMCPS database & social networking system for teachers here.

Whitman Black & White: MyMCPS should not be unrestricted for teachers

In an online Black & White opinion piece dated December 11, 2009, Walt Whitman High School (Bethesda) student Alana Neuman asserts that the new MyMCPS system allows broader access to student data than necessary.

From Ms. Neuman's article:

Any MCPS teacher can view a student’s data if that student attends or previously attended the school that they teach at; a teacher needn’t have taught that student themselves.

[...]

Even if the majority of teachers don’t monitor myMCPS, the mere fact that teachers have unrestricted access to this information demonstrates MCPS officials’ disregard for students’ privacy. Even if MCPS intends to facilitate students’ academic success with this program, SAT and ACT scores aren’t public information that should be distributed among MCPS employees. School administrators and teachers need to obtain consent from students before planning to make use of their standardized test scores.

Back in October 2009, BCC High School The Tattler reporter Tena Thau wrote about MyMCPS in her article titled myMCPS: Facebook for Teachers?.

From Ms. Thau's article:

Students, on the other hand, are not as enthused.  MyMCPS allows teachers and administrators unrestricted access to students’ report cards, transcripts, accommodations, disciplinary history, attendance records, and even SAT and ACT scores. As a result, many students feel that their teachers have formed judgments about them, before they have even stepped into class.

“I don’t like the idea of teachers being able to know everything about their students’ past with the click of a button,” junior Zoë Thorpe explains.  “I feel like students should be able to go into a new class with a clean slate.”

But thanks to myMCPS, no such tabula rasa will exist for students anymore.  Of course, not all students are objecting.  Unsurprisingly, one senior class valedictorian says that she does not mind teachers’ easy access to her flawless four-year record.

The student privacy issues brought forth by Ms. Neuman and Ms. Thau affect students throughout MCPS and would seem to be a topic that could be addressed by the Student Member of the Board (SMOB).

Student record privacy is governed at the federal level by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).