OPINION: Student data has value
In the latest controversy seeming to arise from the state’s implementation of the Common Core Standards, some parents, educators and politicians are questioning the state’s affiliation with an Atlanta-based nonprofit that is collecting and organizing a lot of data on public and charter school students across the state.
Legitimate issues are being raised about InBloom, which recently drew the ire of some lawmakers after it declined to send a representative to an Assembly Education Committee hearing about the data-gathering effort. The data the state is providing InBloom includes student test scores, attendance records, discipline history, health and ethnicity.
New York was one of nine states to originally sign on with InBloom, and now is one of only three states participating in an effort to standardize educational data and offer educators ways to evaluate what is working and what isn’t in our nation’s classrooms.