On Thursday, February 20, New York State Department of Education officials announced plans to launch the EngageNY data portal in July, despite the recent and highly-publicized objections of parents, educators, school leaders, and some legislators.  This will be the first ever attempt to capture such a wide swath of personal information on every public school child and house it in one location.

The data, expected to be handled with care by the Gates-funded inBloom Inc., is allegedly going to help teachers tailor instruction to meet their students’ individual needs.  Nonsense.  It’ll end up being about as useful as a saddle on a hog.

Teachers didn't suddenly forget how to teach overnight.  Any teacher worth his or her salt could tell you exactly what any given student needs to improve, can show you exactly what’s been done at school to help, and can advise you, the parent, on strategies to try at home to support your child.

Seriously, what more do we ask of our teachers and schools?

All this in-depth data collecting and analyzing is worthless for the most part and will be ignored by most practicing teachers because there will be too much data to process and make sense of.  You don't need elaborate diagnostics to show that a kid can't decode long vowel words, or doesn't know when the Revolutionary War began.

The cost isn’t worth it, either.  In 2015, inBloom will start charging fees for their services, which individual districts will be expected to contribute to.  Given our cash-strapped local school budgets, will taxpayers foot the bill to house this extraneous student data? 

Moreover, the technological applications for inBloom were built in part by Wireless Generation, a subsidiary of NewsCorp, a company investigated for privacy violations in Great Britain and America.

Rupert Murdoch … enough said, right?

For those looking for a magic bullet solution to what ails public education, this isn’t it.  But there is something we can try: Build better collaborations between teachers and families, and use research in a relevant way to get to the bottom of what needs fixing. 

Teaching is an art, and as such cannot always be quantified.  And that’s how it should be.