CHEPTER The Internet and ClientServer, Intranet & Cloud Computin.docx

CHEPTER: The Internet and Client/Server, Intranet & Cloud
Computing
Requirements
Please read Case Study 1 and write a paper to address ALL of
the following discussion points:
1. Do your own research, define cloud computing and its use in
American public education system.
2. List and comment on some of the uses of cloud solutions at
New York State Education Department. Explain the aim of
using cloud solutions in those use cases.
3. Describe and analyze the problems encountered by the New
York State Education Department when implementing the cloud
solution to centralize students' personally identifiable
information (PII).
4. Identify the lesson learned from this case study for the
educational institution and the cloud computing industry.
5. Provide TWO suggestions based on your own research,
experience and understanding to address some of the
challenges/issues related to the adoption of cloud solutions in
education.
Format your paper
1. Be sure to reference all resources cited
2. Use APA formatting (see a guide
here: http://www.bibme.org/citation-guide/apa/)
3. State the discussion point (1-5) clearly in your answer.
Do not plagiarize
1. This assignment is monitored by Turnitin, a software to
check of a work is similar to internet resources and other
students' works.
2. You can view Turnitin report a while after submitting your
paper. If the similarity index is too high, consider rewrite your
paper. The best is you write in your own words because we want
to understand your own view.
3. All plagiarism cases will be penalized heavily without any

excuse.
Submission:
· Deadline: Friday, July 21, 23:59PM (mid-night)
Late submission: -20% per day.
Page 2 of 19
Bennett and Weber. QScience Connect 2015:2
Page 21 of 22
Bennett and Weber. QScience Connect 2015:2
Cloud computing in New York State education: Case study of
failed technology adoption of a statewide longitudinal database
for student data
Educational institutions are turning to private cloud computing
solutions to lower costs, efficiently deliver educational content
and analyze student data, ranging from grades and school
activities to behavior, health status, and basic demographic
variables. This case study of New York State Education
Department’s failed adoption of cloud computing for its student
data and administrative needs demonstrates the potential
benefits of creating detailed longitudinal student databases and
large datasets. However, it also highlights several serious
concerns about privacy, trust, and security in relation to student
personally identifiable information (PII). Opposition from
parents and educational and privacy advocacy groups–primarily
due to fears of commercialization and ubiquitous,
nontransparent, and unregulated sharing of student data–led to
the closure of a private, cloud-based longitudinal database built
by inBloom; and to new New York state legislation regulating
student data. This case study analyzes educational governance
in New York State, in particular the notion of flexian relations–
the powerful web of actors and networks that influence New
York State’s technology adoption behavior. Student PII, similar
to personal health information (PHI), is a particularly sensitive

category of data. Data breach and loss of confidentiality by the
private cloud vendors could have caused real, quantifiable
harms to students. This study provides valuable lessons learnt
about cloud platform adoption, for educational institutions and
the cloud computing industry.
Keywords: student personally identifiable information (PII),
student data privacy, longitudinal student databases and
datasets, virtual platform student privacy, security and trust
relationships, Common Core
Cite this article as: Bennett E, Weber AS. Cloud computing in
New York State education: Case study of failed technology
adoption of a statewide longitudinal database for student data,
QScience
Connect 2015:2 http://dx.doi.org/10.5339/connect.2015.2
ACRONYMS
ARIS:
Achievement and Reporting and Innovation System
CCS:
Common Core Standards
COPPA:
Child Online Privacy Protection Act
DDO:
Data Dashboard Operator
EDP:
Education Data Portal
FERPA:
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act
ICT:
Information and Communication Technologies
LEA(s):
Local Educational Agencies
LMS:
Learning Management System
NAEP:
National Assessment of Educational Progress
NCLB:

No Child Left Behind Act
NGOs:
Non-Governmental Organizations
NIST:
National Institute of Standards and Technology
NYSED:
New York State Education Department
NYSSIS:
New York State Student Information Repository System
OBE:
Outcomes-Based Education
P12:
Office of P-12 Education
PK-16:
Pre-Kindergarten through college
PII:
Personally Identifiable Information
PPRA:
Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment
RTTT:
Race to The Top Funding
SBE:
Standards-Based Education
SEA(s):
State Educational Agencies
SIRS:
Student Information Repository System
SLC:
Shared Learning Collaborative
SLIPS:
Shared Learning Infrastructure Service Providers
SXSWEDU: South by Southwest Education Conference
USNY: University of the State of New York
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Introduction and aims
Cloud computing will profoundly impact how we compute,

communicate, collaborate, and access future information. Public
and private sector cloud computing was an estimated $47.4
billion industry in 2013 and is expected to more than double to
$107 billion by 2017, according to research firm International
Data Corporation (IDC).1 The American public education
system is migrating to the cloud[footnoteRef:1], due to the
benefits of data centralization, network infrastructure
scalability, and overall reduction of ownership and service costs
not easily offered by traditional “in house” computing
platforms. A recent study notes that “95% of districts rely on
cloud services for a diverse range of functions, including data
mining related to student performance, support for classroom
activities, student guidance, data hosting, as well as special
services, such as cafeteria payments and transportation
planning.”2 [1: Throughout this paper, the terms “cloud,” “the
cloud” and “cloud computing” are used interchangeably.
This terminology is defined in more detail in section 3.1.]
This paper traces the recent unsuccessful implementation of a
privately hosted cloud solution, contracted by the New York
State Education Department (NYSED), to centralize students’
personally identifiable information (PII), which raised certain
legal and ethical questions with regards to student privacy. This
case study introduces the notion of flexian relations–
individuals, organizations and social circles who influenced the
NYSED’s decision to choose Wireless Generation. Wireless
Generation is a non-profit corporation supported by the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation among
others, who won the contract over other vendors through a no-
bid contract awarding process. Due to the obvious advantages of
cloud services to educational institutions, the New York State
case study discussed below will become an increasingly
common phenomenon in the U.S. and internationally, and this
analysis will be valuable to governments and education
administrators who wish to adopt cloud platforms for
educational purposes.3

A partially built, custom cloud-based database solution
provided by the private vendor inBloom, Inc. for New York and
other states, would have facilitated centralization and granular
control of student data. The aim was to improve data-driven
decision-making possibilities, and potential curriculum and
instructional improvements to enhance personalized learning,
while assisting state and local educational agencies to meet
state-mandated learning outcomes, as detailed by the Common
Core Standards (CCS). Cloud-based centralization of student
data provides seamless and ubiquitous integration of Learning
Management Systems (LMS) and the devices used by educators
and students in an attempt to enhance student outcomes.
However, the dissemination of student data to private vendors
in the United States raises certain legal and ethical questions in
regard to student privacy. Of particular concern is the misuse of
student data by private vendors, an increased possibility of
student PII theft and the chance that student data is used to
enhance student online profiles compiled by corporations for
targeted online marketing.4 In addition, student records often
have embedded within them psychological, behavioral and
health data, another highly sensitive data category (Personal
Health Information, or PHI). A troubling report by the Federal
Trade Commission (FTC) in 2014 on data brokers who
aggregate PII and PHI on consumers and students (and
educational cloud services engage in very similar practices)
recently called for greater transparency and accountability in
that industry.5 The issues and implications discussed in this
paper highlight the increasingly “blurred” lines that skirt
current U.S. state and federal policies, including the Family
Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), Child Online
Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the Protection of Pupil
Rights Amendment (PPRA) in conjunction with local school-
district policy and directives. The weakening of FERPA and the
rise of for-profit companies seeking to data mine all forms of
student educational data, prompted the State of California on
September 29, 2014, to pass a strict student data privacy law

called the Student Online Personal Information Protection Act.
This act prevented websites designed for K-12 educational
purposes from: 1) selling or disclosing student information, 2)
amassing a profile and 3) engaging in targeted advertising on
the operator’s site.6 Based on the California statute, President
Barack Obama announced on January 12, 2015 forthcoming
legislation entitled the Student Digital Privacy Act to ensure
“that data collected in the educational context is used only for
educational purposes.”7
2. METHODOLOGY
An analysis of how the New York State cloud computing
adoption process unfolded provides insight into the complex
issues of new technology application. This analysis draws on a
survey of peer reviewed literature defining cloud computing in
the context of the United States public education sector, while
examining the reasons why public schools migrate to cloud-
based platforms, as well as looking at the associated benefits
and potential pitfalls. Evidence from international media outlets
with correspondents who report on cloud computing in
education issues–including the Associated Press, Reuters News
Agency, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New
York Times – has been included to chronicle New York State’s
adoption of a cloud platform and issues and concerns voiced by
stakeholders. The media played a key role in New York State’s
cloud platform development, as details of the potential negative
implications of student data migration and centralization were
revealed in news articles. These were subsequently used as
evidence by parent and educational watchdog groups to mount
oppositional campaigns against NYSED’s proposed plans.
Consulted in this study were well established educators’ blogs,
websites and New York-based education advocacy/watchdog
group websites, including parental “grassroots” organizations,
many of which challenged the state educational agencies’
(SEAs’) rationales for choosing a private vendor for their state-
wide student databases. Additional resources include state and
local educational agencies and cloud computing vendors’ white

papers. Finally, a relationship mapping or “flexian mapping”
provides an overview of individuals, corporations, non-profit
foundations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
connected to inBloom, highlighting the intersecting interests
and relations of stakeholders. These not only drove the
implementation of cloud technologies for NYSED, but also for
other SEAs and the federal U.S. Department of Education.
3. CLOUD COMPUTING IN AMERICAN PUBLIC
EDUCATION, OUTCOMES-BASED EDUCATION,
DATA CENTRALIZATION AND STUDENT PRIVACY
3.1. Defining cloud computing in the education sector
Although cloud computing has grown increasingly
commonplace amongst consumers and in the private sector,
there were no universal set of standards or definitions until
recently.8,9,10,11,12 In 2011 in a widely quoted definition, the
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defined
cloud computing as “a model for enabling ubiquitous,
convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of
configurable computing resources (e.g. networks, servers,
storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly
provisioned and released with minimal management effort or
service provider interaction.”13 Gupta has provided a concise
and practical definition of cloud computing as “the use of
common software, functionality or business applications from a
remote server that is accessed via the Internet”14 as shown in
Fig. 1.
Figure 1. Universal overview of cloud computing.50
Educational institutions are under increasing pressure to deliver
more for less, and so they need to find ways to offer rich,
affordable services and tools.14 Four significant factors have
motivated American public schools to increasingly implement
cloud-based solutions: the need to reduce costs; the scalability
the cloud offers as a virtual computing platform; state and local
education agencies’ need to share and analyze student data to
facilitate data-driven decision-making; and the realization that

many students are already immersed in the technology.9,15,16
Cloud computing affords students and teachers alike a plethora
of online applications that extend the classroom and laboratory
experience in ways that cannot be afforded in a non-virtual
environment. These applications are usually web-based and
accessible anywhere/anytime over the Internet, thus extending
the exposure time of learning to students.17
3.2. Relationship between outcomes-based education and the
centralization ofstudent databases
Historically, primary and secondary education (K-12) in the
United States has been the responsibility of both state
educational agencies (SEAs) and local educational agencies
(LEAs). This changed in 1983, when President Ronald Reagan’s
National Commission on Excellence in Education released the
scathing report, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for
Educational Reform, highlighting a “substantial drop in SAT
scores since the mid-1960s, low literacy levels on the National
Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), declines in K–12
norm-referenced test scores, and weak standing of the United
States in international assessments.”18 This report led to the
development of the outcomes-based education (OBE) reform
movement popular in the 1980s and early 1990s. By the late
1990s this reform movement evolved into the standards-based
education (SBE) reform characterized by the federally mandated
No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001. The NCLB
established the notion of mandated student testing and success
on these tests for SEAs to receive federal funding and
reapportionment of these funds to LEAs by individual states.
The evolution of SBE has its origin in the centralization of
student data, on a large scale by individual states, facilitated by
continual development and enhancements of ICT and, in
particular, the implementation of cloud-based computing in the
K-12 public education sector. Cloud-based platforms facilitate
LEA and SEA student data dissemination and analysis; this
allows for extremely efficient data-driven decision-making on
state and federal levels. In order for a state to compete for

federally disbursed and highly competitive Race to The Top
Funds (RTTT), discussed in more detail in the next section, the
state is given points to centralize student assessment data
collected from LEAs into a statewide longitudinal database.
This data is shared with the federal department of education and
aims towards adopting recently legislated Common Core
Standards (CCS). At the time of this writing, “Forty-three
states, the District of Columbia, four territories and the
Department of Defense Education Activity have adopted the
Common Core State Standards.”19
4. NEW YORK STATE’S ADOPTION OF CLOUD
SOLUTIONS: A CASE STUDY
4.1. Race to the top funding and development of the education
data portal
New York State is one of a number of states that, by 2010,
aggressively sought a centralized student database to comply
with the requirements for the adoption of Common Core
Standards (CSS), which in turn, allows the state to apply for
RTTT funding. Race to the top funding was part of the 2009
federal economic stimulus package entitled the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Although the thrust of RTTT
was to improve educational outcomes, teacher performance,
building “data systems that measure[ed] student growth and
success and inform teachers and principals about how they can
improve instruction,” there was a strong financial aspect to the
program. The financial aspect was “designed to stimulate the
economy, support job creation and invest in critical sectors,
including education.”20 For example, testing materials, teacher
evaluation programs and tests, textbooks benchmarked to
Common Core Standards and longitudinal database development
will generate billions of dollars in private sector business
activity.
New York State was announced as a Phase 1 finalist in April
2010, receiving $700M in RTTT funding of which $50M of the
award was allocated for the development of a robust, scalable
and seamless “single sign-on” Education Data Portal (EDP).

The goal of NYSED, as well as the 13 other Phase-1 finalist
states, was to have a contract in place for an EDP that complied
with the requirements for RTTT funding. The criteria set for
RTTT funding includes:
. Data systems to support instruction
· Fully implementing a statewide longitudinal data system
· Accessing and using State data
· Using data to improve instruction.20
Two offices in NYSED–the Office of Curriculum, Assessment,
and Educational Technology (OCAET) and the Office of
Information & Reporting Service (IRS)–were central to cloud-
based technology adoption. These offices act as a conduit
between the SEA, LEA and federal Department of Education by
facilitating data-driven decision-making and longitudinal data
analysis allowing compliance with Common Core Standards and
continued eligibility for RTTT funding.
4.2. Evolution of the New York State student information
repository system
The NYSED uses a “data warehouse” approach, maintaining
student data in the Student Information Repository System
(SIRS) to improve data quality and transmission between the
State and LEAs.
To ensure consistent student identification, the State developed
the New York State Student
Identification System (NYSSIS) “to assign a stable, unique
student identifier to every pre-kindergarten through grade 12
student in New York State”. The intention was that these
“unique identifiers [would] enhance student data reporting,
improve data quality and ensure students can be tracked
longitudinally as they transfer between LEAs.”21 This
systematic approach to data collection, while lacking
centralization and a single method of processing data, had
multiple data-collection points that allowed the warehousing of
student data as shown in Fig. 2.
Figure 2. NYSSIS user guide, V. 6.2.51

The goal of NYSED, when initially applying for RTTT funding
in January 2010, was to incorporate the existing SIRS with a
new EDP. This would allow for the seamless integration of
various state and LEA student databases and information portals
to create an all-encompassing database and information
dissemination gateway.
4.3. Unveiling the EngageNY Portal
Contract negotiations between the NYSED and Wireless
Generation, Inc. began in late 2011 through to August 2012, to
develop and deploy software statewide allowing teachers,
parents and school administrators to upload and share student
data. After several contract negotiations, including the
preliminary selection of a “no-bid”, then voided contract with
Wireless Generation, discussed later in this paper, NYSED
announced in December 2011 the award of the database
infrastructure to the Shared Learning Collaborative (SLC), a
“not-for-profit, state-led effort created to help states, districts,
schools and teachers more easily and effectively personalize
education for students through open and nonproprietary
standards and services.”22 NYSED noted a number of goals to
be accomplished with the launch of the EngageNY Portal
including:
. Make student data available to New York’s educators and
families to support improved instruction and student learning
outcomes;
. Provide curriculum and instructional resources to New York’s
educators and families to support improved instruction and
student learning outcomes; Make curriculum and instructional
resources available to students and their families to support
improved learning outcomes;
. Create sustainable and open technology that promotes
innovation, flexibility and choice, enabling districts, schools,
and regional organizations to develop or procure technology
more rapidly and at reduced cost; and Create a secure
environment with stringent data security and privacy protections
under guidelines consistent with FERPA; and

. Create a secure environment with stringent data security and
privacy protections under guidelines consistent with FERPA.23
The EngageNY Portal is a significant part of the comprehensive
engageNY.org information platform providing resources for all
constituents. New York Education Commissioner John B. King,
Jr. noted that “the Education Data Portal is an integral element
of the Regents reform agenda and was an essential component
of New York’s Race to the Top application.”22 In order to
ensure a tailored user experience, the EngageNY Portal was to
be built allowing users a choice between three data dashboards
customized for their specific needs. As noted in a June 2013
memo from Ken Wagner, Associate Commissioner of the Office
of Curriculum, Assessment, and Educational Technology, the
EngageNY Portal “will include data dashboards that provide
educators, parents, and students with secure access to
educational data along with access to Common Core curriculum
and instructional resources.”24 While tailored dashboards
provide many benefits to stakeholders, it also opens doors to a
multitude of ways data and information can be interpreted. The
three EngageNY Portal dashboards have been built and
deployed by DataCation (a subsidiary of Compass Learning),
Schoolnet (a NCS Pearson subsidiary), and eScholar. Each
vendor was specifically chosen by the State Education
Department to provide a dashboard for a specific stakeholder.
4.4. Presentation of the EngageNY Portal, initial concerns by
educators and advocacy groups
The EngagedNY Portal was initially presented to the public in
August, 2012 and again in March, 2013 through a limited series
of public announcements, internal memos from the State
Education Department to LEAs and through the unveiling of “an
influential new product [which] may be the least flashy: a $100
million database, built to chart the academic paths of public
school students from kindergarten through high school”25, at
the South by Southwest Education (SXSWEDU) technologies
conference. Although the EngageNY Portal may not have been
specifically referenced at SXSWEDU, the database unveiled by

inBloom, originally The Shared Learning Collaborative,
represented the core of the EngagedNY Portal. One of the first
media references to this database was through a Reuters
distributed article titled “K-12 student database jazzes tech
startups, spooks parents”. The piece pointed out that the
software was “In operation just three months, the database
already holds files on millions of children identified by name,
address and sometimes social security number. Learning
disabilities are documented, test scores recorded, attendance
noted. In some cases, the database tracks student hobbies,
career goals, attitudes toward school - even homework
completion.”25 The Reuters article drew attention to a number
of issues that concerned parents and some educators alike,
including the dissemination of students’ personally identifiable
information (PII) to private vendors without knowing future
consequences.
Parents and watchdog groups, such as Class Size Matters, a New
York City based education advocacy group, raised serious
concerns about what type of student information was contained
within the inBloom database, how it was to be shared, for what
reasons and with whom. These are very legitimate concerns,
especially with consideration of two significant factors–
transparency by the state concerning what specific PII is being
uploaded to the database and who has access to it and secondly;
trust relations with vendors chosen by NYSED for the building
and maintenance of the EngageNY Portal, especially
considering the earlier, illegal no-bid contract, its cancellation
and the integrity of current vendors, discussed in the next
section.
4.5. Privacy, security and trust concerns
Privacy concerns have recently arisen in the use of free, hosted
services, educational and noneducational, on cloud platforms
built by companies such as Facebook and Google. These
platforms have collected vast amounts of personally identifiable
information for creating personalized advertisements based on
user-tracked behaviors online. For example, Google admitted in

2014 in documents filed in a wire-tapping suit that it was
scanning student and teacher emails in its Google Apps for
Education suite used by many educational institutions. The
plaintiffs claimed that interception of Gmail content via
keyword scanning technology, a process explicitly described to
consumers in its Terms of Service, was tantamount to illegal
wire-tapping. Educational institutions had been told, however,
that their emails were not being scanned if they elected not to
participate in Google’s advertizing programs. However, Google
revealed that this was untrue; emails were still being scanned
and data from them retained, but advertisements based on the
scanning were not returned to individual computers. Since
teachers sometimes send student record information, such as
test scores via Gmail, use of the service may have violated the
FERPA law in some cases. As a result of the controversy,
Google’s Director of Education, Bram Bout, announced in April
2104 that Google would be turning off its automated keyword
scanning in its Gmail for Apps for Education product.26
Centralization of sensitive data is also a security risk per se
from a malicious insider (data theft or leak from employee) or
from a data breach through hacking. Although cloud vendors
insist that cloud platforms are inherently more secure than in-
house data systems, this point has been debated by security
researchers. Leaked personal data can cause a variety of harm to
students, such as cyberbullying, financial loss, discrimination,
psychological trauma and difficulty finding employment.3
Soon after the announcement of the inBloom student database,
newspapers like the New York Daily News on March 14, 2013
voiced privacy and security concerns, noting: “The most
sensitive confidential data is being shared, including children’s
names, emails, phone numbers, photos, which will be stored
along with grades, test scores, health conditions, disabilities
and detailed disciplinary records.”27 Additionally, newspapers
such as The Washington Post reported “Schools are required to
upload student attendance, along with attendance codes, which
indicate far more than whether or not the student was absent or

present ... Codes indicate whether a student is ill, truant, late to
school or suspended ... Details about the lives of students are
moving beyond the school walls to reside in the inBloom
cloud.”28 In September 2013, the New York City Department of
Education released a
Frequently Asked Questions Fact Sheet entitled Privacy and
Security of Student Data in the EngageNY Portal, noting
additional details of student PII uploaded to the database
including “student demographic information; parent contact
information (necessary for data security and authorization
purposes); student enrollment; program participation; dates of
absences, out-of-school suspensions, and course outcomes
(necessary for early warning determinations); and State
assessment scores.”29 NYSED has published online an
EngageNY Portal Data Dictionary, last updated on November 3,
2013, that defines approximately 400 data elements that can be
uploaded, including ‘Disability,’ ‘EconomicDisadvantaged,’
‘LimitedEnglishProficiency,’ ‘SchoolFoodServicesEligibility,’
‘SpecialAccommodations,’ ‘PerformanceLevelDescriptors’ and
numerous other elements that can be used to further define
students.30 These data fields obviously reveal detailed and
intimate information about every aspect of a student’s life and
go far beyond the educational records that schools have
traditionally kept. Disabilities, English proficiency and
economic disadvantages are extremely complex and contested
concepts in education and sociology. Each criterion can be
measured using a wide range of indicators and indices, and the
reductionism in assigning values to these complicated areas of
human development carries a variety of risks. A simple example
would be labeling a student as disabled without further
elaboration as to the number of conditions described by this
label, which can range from physical and emotional to cognitive
challenges.
Many cognitive differences among students such as dyslexia,
depression, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders and Attention
Deficit Disorders are episodic or classified as spectrum

disorders, i.e. varying in severity and impact. Compiling data
without additional elaboration from teachers, counselors,
psychologists or other medical professionals risks branding and
labeling a student. This could have negative impacts on
employment if records were obtained by potential employers.
This recognized problem of taking information out of its
original context (a danger with unregulated data sharing) can
distort the meaning of the decontextualized information. One
could argue the databases should simply collect more fine-
grained data elements to create a holistic picture of the student:
however, at this point, data collecting may become highly
intrusive and overly burdensome from a time and financial
perspective. Since many of the data elements themselves
represent subjective, human-determined judgments, the data
itself might be subject to a range of misinterpretations and
inaccuracies.
4.6. Benefits and potential pitfalls of New York State’s
adoption of a cloud-based student data system
The benefits to each major stakeholder in the educational
enterprise of the proposed inBloom database were obvious.
Students would have better functioning and more reliable
anytime/anywhere access to online educational resources that
are geared to their level of learning and specific educational
challenges at any point in time. This matching of learning
objects to learning needs can be accomplished through Big Data
analytics, to give one simple example, the compiling and
analysis of previous test scores and test performance. As
Ambient Intelligence and smart devices mature, both automated
and teacher-assisted tailored content delivery and educational
feedback will occur.
Additionally, parents could track student progress online by
accessing scores, test grades and communications between the
school, counselors, administrators, and parents could facilitate
through social-media style tools. Teachers, as well as smart-
databases themselves, could suggest types of parental
involvement to facilitate student learning, particularly on

upcoming assignments and tests (i.e. an alert sent to parents of
an upcoming physics exam along with an analysis of their
child’s specific weaknesses in physics and a suggested plan of
study along with exercises to do at home) based on tracked
student performance.
Individual schools and administrative districts would have ready
access to a wealth of statistics and data to more efficiently
manage students, personnel, facilities, planning and
maintenance. The data could foster more collaboration between
successful and weaker schools (sharing of best practices) and
provide an evidence base for researchers to better understand
complex educational variables. Finally, as with earlier in-house
databases (as was the original intent of data gathering on
students), cloudbased student data platforms will allow schools
to easily and efficiently report and store state and federally
mandated statistics. As previously mentioned, cloud computing
offers reduced cost and scalability in achieving the functionality
described above, which represents one of its major attractions to
educational institutions, especially in low income countries.
4.7. Transparency, accountability, vendor lock-in: Who benefits
from large student databases (Big Data)?
To better understand the evolution of NYSED’s new Education
Data Portal and who benefits from its implementation, it is
important to trace its evolution with regards to stakeholders
with vested interests in the education sector. For NYSED to
meet RTTT funding requirements, NYSED was required by the
federal government to have the new EDP launched by the fall of
2012. Since programmatic improvements must occur within a
four-year period, it was necessary to build and launch the EDP
by the fall of 2012 - little over two years following the RTTT
award.31
Educational service contracts in New York State are governed
by a regulated and competitive bidding process. According to
The New York State Division of Local Government and School
Accountability, “purchase contracts involving expenditures in
excess of $20,000 and contracts for public work involving

expenditures in excess of $35,000 are generally subject to
competitive bidding under the law.”32 Despite these rules, a
$27 million no-bid contract was offered to Wireless Generation,
acquired in November 2010 by media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s
News Corporation. Wireless Generation has
“helped to develop and run [New York] city’s $80 million
student data system, known as ARIS”33 and demonstrates some
familiarity with EDPs, especially as used in New York State.
Correspondence dated May 5, 2011, between NYSED and the
Office of the State Comptroller requested an “exemption of the
advertising requirement in the New York State Contract
Reporter for the vendor and the purpose stated above [Single
Source Provider - Wireless Generation, Inc.] is being forwarded
for your review.”31 Removing the advertizing ban would have
opened the student data accessed by the EDP to various forms
of commercialization, probably to behavioral targeted
marketing, a common revenue stream for cloud computing and
free hosted services such as Google and Facebook, and many
mobile Apps.
Why would the state education department request a no-bid
contract, considering the formal solicitation for proposals would
allow competition and a possible reduction in costs? A
preliminary approval was given by State Comptroller Thomas P.
DiNapoli to pursue the contract when The New York Daily
News reported “part of the state’s $700 million in Race to the
Top winnings - will go to Wireless Generation, owned by
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., to develop software to track
student test scores, among other things.”34 The article also
noted a possible conflict of interest for former New York City
Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who had resigned from his post
having been hired by News Corp. to become “an executive vice
president with News Corporation, charged with pursuing
business opportunities in the education marketplace.”35 The
contract was quickly voided in August 2011 allowing other
vendors to approach NYSED. Part of the reason cited by New
York State Comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, for withdrawing

the bid was that another company owned and subsequently
closed by Murdoch, News of the World, was involved in a large
scale data misuse scandal involving the British Royal family in
which voicemail systems were hacked to illegally obtain
personal information for news stories.
4.8. New York State loss of confidence in inBloom and closure
of the database
With very little public fanfare, The Shared Learning
Collaborative (SLC) signed a contract with NYSED in
December 2011 to build the state’s EDP. In February 2013, the
Shared Learning Collaborative was renamed inBloom, a non-
profit corporation with plans to pilot a cloud database service in
public schools in nine states: Colorado, Delaware, Georgia,
Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, and
North Carolina.2 By early November 2013 only two states–New
York and Illinois–remained “partnered” with inBloom, while in
less than 10 months the other seven states voided their
contractual agreements citing various reasons centering around
the protection of student data. By the end of March 2014, New
York State Assembly approved the 2014 – 2015 State Bill
A08556 that states: “An educational agency may opt out of
providing personally identifiable information to a
SLISP[footnoteRef:2] or Data Dashboard Operator (DDO) for
the purpose of creating data dashboards.” [this quote is taken
directly from the New York State law,
http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=&bn=A085
56&term=2013&Summary=Y&Text=Y].36 In more simple
terms, NYSED changed its policy from initially allowing the
sharing of PII and non-PII with implicit consent by both the
LEAs and student’s legal guardians to that of explicit consent
by both parties, the LEAs and the legal guardians of the
students of that particular LEA. The bill also required the
deletion of student records already uploaded to inBloom. [2:
3rd party vendors are referred to as Shared Learning
Infrastructure Service Providers (SLISP) which “shall not
include

Boards of Cooperative Educational Services or regional
information centers operated by Boards of Cooperative
Educational Services or other public entities.” This includes
DDO. See [36] State Assembly Budget Bill 2014 - 2015, S.
Subpart K- protects student privacy and ensures data security,
New York State Assembly. 2014.]
The state of Illinois ended its relationship with inBloom and
introduced on February 1, 2014 State Bill 3092 intending to
amend the P-20 Longitudinal Education Data System Act. This
amendment sets forth “provisions prohibiting the State Board of
Education from disclosing personally identifiable information to
a party for a commercial use without written consent, removes
language requiring the consent (i) to be signed and dated, (ii)
not to have been signed more than 6 months prior to the
disclosure, (iii) to identify the recipient and the purpose of the
disclosure, and (iv) to state that the information will be used
only for that purpose and will not be used or disclosed for any
other purpose.”37 Both the New York State and Illinois
legislative changes were partially in response to definitional
changes to the federal student privacy statute FERPA in 2008
and 2011 by the U.S. Department of Education. The 2008 and
2011 FERPA changes, which allowed companies contracted
with educational institutions to access student data more freely,
were never adequately justified by the Department of Education.
The result was they allowed for more sharing of student PII
without the data owner’s consent; the original intent of the 1974
FERPA statute was to give parents and students more control
over the information in their educational records. The approved
New York State law and proposed Illinois State law essentially
restored some of the data protection provisions for students in
the original FERPA statute.
On April 21, 2014, less than 14 months after rebranding the
company from SLC to inBloom, CEO Iwan Streichenberger
announced that the student database management system
inBloom would cease operations. The most significant setback

that led to inBloom’s demise was the growing concern over
privacy and security issues of data centralization. This concern
was further heightened with the consideration that inBloom was
a private corporation. While inBloom had maintained that all
PII would be “processed, stored, transmitted and protected in
accordance with all applicable federal data privacy and security
laws (including FERPA)”38, parent advocate and educational
watchdog groups vehemently voiced their concerns that PII
could be subject to data mining, potential hacking and
intentional misuse by a private vendor or subcontractor. A
closing letter authored by CEO Iwan Streichenberger confirmed
that privacy concerns were the major reason for the closure of
inBloom:
It is a shame that the progress of this important innovation has
been stalled because of generalized public concerns about data
misuse, even though inBloom has world-class security and
privacy protections that have raised the bar for school districts
and the industry as a whole.39
4.9. Flexian relationships that shape the decision making
process in educational cloud technology adoption
It is interesting to look further into the interpersonal
relationships that drive decision-making processes of the
NYSED. More specifically, what are the underlying forces in
terms of individuals, organizations and social circles that
influenced the NYSED’s decision to choose inBloom over other,
private cloud vendor solutions? To better understand this
question, it is important to define the term Flexian as coined by
anthropologist and professor of Public Policy, Janine R. Wedel.
A flexian, as Wedel defines in Shadow Elite: How the World’s
New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and
the Free Market, is “a creature peculiar to our moment in
history: a mover and shaker who serves at one and at the same
time as a business consultant, think-tanker, TV pundit, and
government adviser [who] glides in and around the
organizations that enlist his services.”40 Wedel further
elaborates on the ‘flexian’ stating: “It is not just his time that is

divided. His loyalties, too, are often flexible. Even the short-
term consultant doing one project at a time cannot afford to owe
too much allegiance to the company or government agency.
Such individuals are in these organizations (some of the time
anyway), but they are seldom of them.”40 The key to
establishing effective flexian relationships is interconnectedness
and overarching stewardship on various corporate, non-profit
and civic boards. This allows the flexian “degrees of freedom”
to promote a particular cause and perhaps profit from it.
New York State’s past and present cloud computing climate is
shaped by a powerful web of individuals, corporations, non-
profits and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) influenced
by flexians who have intersecting interests and motives. In this
analysis, the intersecting interests and motives are focused on
the education sector, in particular to improve curriculum,
instruction and educational outcomes through student data
centralization made possible by the migration to a cloudbased
platform. Intersecting interests and motives include personal
and stakeholders’ organizational interests for monetary
incentives and elevated social status.
Influential flexians are increasingly finding the U.S. education
sector an emerging profitable market readily available for
investment. The last decade is witness to an era of education
reform based on “data” and “accountability”, which is
increasingly drawing on aggregated data centralized from LEAs
and SEAs. News Corporation’s Chairman and CEO, Rupert
Murdoch, speaking of his subsidiary Wireless Generation, was
quoted in the Fall of 2010 as saying “When it comes to K
through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S.
alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big
breakthroughs that extend the reach of great teaching ... .
Wireless Generation is at the forefront of individualized,
technology-based learning that is poised to revolutionize public
education for a new generation of students.”41,42
Bill Gates, philanthropist and co-founder of the Gates
Foundation and Microsoft Corporation, shares a similar interest

in the education sector. Bill and Melinda Gates founded the
non-profit, Gates Foundation in 2000 supporting “philanthropic
initiatives in the areas of global health and learning, with the
hope that in the 21st century, advances in these critical areas
will be available for all people.43 The Gates Foundation by
2002 had invested “more than US $250 million in grants to
create new small schools, reduce student-to-teacher ratios, and
to divide up large high schools through the schools-within-a-
school model”.44 In the fall of 2011 the Gates Foundation
“awarded $76.5 million ... to be spent over seven months, with
$44 million of this funding going to Wireless Generation.”45
While Rupert Murdoch’s subsidiary Wireless Generation may
have a genuine interest in revolutionizing education to improve
learning outcomes through cloud-based data centralization,
there is profit to be made. While the Gates Foundation is a non-
profit corporation and continues to provide financial support to
many areas of the education sector, a number of stakeholders
with vested interests in the Gates Foundation, including Gates
himself, have present or past vested interests in various related
for-profit corporations. Stacey Childress, who had served on the
Board of Trustees (appointed 2008) for Wireless Generation, is
presently a Deputy Director of Innovation on the K-12
Education Team at the Gates Foundationc. Similarly, Sharren
Bates, the Chief Product Officer at inBloom from February 2013
until inBloom’s closure, had a previous role as Senior Program
Officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as noted on
her LinkedIn profile and online CV.46 Prior to employment
with the Gates
Foundation, Sharren Bates had been employed as the program
director for ARIS, New York City
Department of Education’s data portal (EDP).46,47
Many of these stakeholders are flexian by nature, as noted by
Wedel, and play significant roles in the complex and dynamic
interconnected web of flexians that drive the American
education sector. They were involved with the initial unveiling
of a centralized cloud-based student database, more formally

known as the SLC, which resides at the center of the flexian
web, described further in the next section.
In addition, other technology giants such as Google and
Facebook have demonstrated the immense profitability of
gathering, analyzing, packaging and selling (or using for in-
house product development) large datasets of web behaviors,
geolocation, friend networks, consumer habits and preferences.
Educational activities generate a large amount of data, much of
it potentially highly profitable to
c
Stacey Childress was reported to have sold her stock in
Wireless Generation prior to affiliation with The Gates
Foundation. See
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/education/30wireless.html.
for-profit corporations. Whoever can control or monopolize this
data could influence and directly profit from it, by being able to
offer or subcontract the best educational services and products
at the right time as predicted by data analytics, including: food
service provision, human resources services, buildings and other
infrastructure, sports programs, clubs and school events,
instructional materials, tests and professional development and
training courses. The drive towards ‘evidence-based’
educational management and policy making will undoubtedly
favor decision-making based on database information, rather
than the traditional mechanisms of educational institutions, such
as committees, parent-teacher associations, councils, public
forums and reports.
More data for decision-making is a positive development;
however, precautions must be taken that data is not
monopolized and is used transparently, since unregulated
capitalist market forces tend towards excluding competitors by
any available means. For example, a company with sufficient
control over a longitudinal database (such as the company that
built and maintains it) could, based on their internal data
analysis, influence educators to purchase textbooks from an

association in which the company has a financial interest. Or
similarly, the company controlling the database could
preferentially supply data to its affiliate or subsidiary textbook
associations for textbook development, reducing competition
and dampening diversity in the textbook provision marketplace.
In short, anyone with preferential access to institutional student
data is in a position to considerably influence the kinds of
learning that goes on in that institution. This influence could
extend to the curriculum itself.
4.10. Wireless Generation, the shared learning collaborative
(inBloom) and vested interests
The most practical way to show the flexian web that has
evolved within the last decade is through two relationship
diagrams, shown in Figs. 3 and 4 in Appendix I. At the center of
these relationship diagrams is the Shared Learning
Collaborative (SLC), later re-named inBloom. There are a
number of flexians who are interconnected through both
business and non-profit relationships, with overlapping interests
in the education sector, who could potentially profit from the
launch of a private vendor cloud partnership (such as SLC) with
state educational agencies.
The Shared Learning Collaborative was founded in part by the
Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the
Alliance for Excellence in Education (AEE), as a partnership of
states, districts and foundations that provide technologies to
align with the Common Core Standards. The SLC, later
rebranded as inBloom, shared a number of influential
stakeholders with the CCSSO, AEE, the Carnegie Foundation
and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Notable
stakeholders (flexians) include Bob
Wise, former West Virginia Governor and the current president
of the Alliance for Excellence in Education; Gene Wilhoit,
former inBloom CEO and board member and an executive with
the CCSSO until retirement in 2012. Additional inBloom
stakeholders include Michele Cahill who is presently (February,
2015) with the Carnegie Corporation of New York as the Vice

President, National Program and Program Director, Urban
Education. “Prior to rejoining Carnegie Corporation in 2007,
she held the position of senior counselor to the chancellor for
education policy in the New York City Department of Education
under Chancellor Joel Klein.”48
In February, 2014 inBloom’s Leadership Team (Board of
Directors and Leadership Officers) included five
stakeholders[footnoteRef:3] who are currently with the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation. The concerns by parents, advisory
groups and some school administrators about contract
negotiations, vendor lock-ins and the lack of transparency were
formidable considering the stakeholders personal interests.
While the SLC is a limited liability corporation, it received
funding from the Carnegie Foundation and the Gates
Foundation. Gates’s Microsoft Corporation is a major
international supplier of cloud services (Microsoft Azure),
which runs on a proprietary operating system. In addition,
Microsoft’s proprietary operating systems for desktop, laptop
and notebook computers command 91.68% of the total market
share, as well as virtual monopolies on other categories of
commonly used software. For that reason almost any increased
use of computer technology in schools–which will be driven by
devices integrated with cloud educational services facilitated by
inBloom-type data analytics–will translate into greater profits
for Microsoft Corporation.49 [3: The SLC, later rebranded as
inBloom, had on their Board or in a leadership capability Stacey
Childress, Gene Wilhoit, Sharren Bates, Stephen Coller and
Henry Hipps.]
In summary, although the flexian relationships detailed above,
in some sense arise naturally from the professional experience
of the individuals who have worked in the fields of educational
leadership and technology, the small and interconnected nature
of the group of major actors should be scrutinized carefully to
determine if educational goals are the priority of their activity,
and that state ethics laws have not been violated (conflicts of

interest and “revolving door” policies). The numerous links
revealed during this analysis of the development and adoption
of statewide student databases to Microsoft Corporation, the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and inBloom, Inc. raise the
question of whether these organizations are exerting undue
influence in the for-profit educational data sector and
attempting to develop future monopolies on student data.
Additionally are potential competitors blocked through insider
knowledge and flexian relationships?
5. CONCLUSION
The rapidity with which New York State attempted to adopt a
cloud-based solution for its student data needs is astonishing
(driven partially by federal financial incentives). The immediate
concerns raised by educators, advocacy groups and parents
when details emerged in national media about technology
contractors Wireless Generation and inBloom, indicate that full
public discussion and public disclosure were not carried out
concerning the pros and cons of this momentous change in
educational administration. Educational researchers,
institutions, governments and private for-profit companies (in
particular, technology giants such as Google, Apple, Microsoft
and Facebook) have all realized the immense value of Big Data
sets, such as state or federal-level student records databases
containing detailed and comprehensive student PII. The desired
uses of this data by so many diverse stakeholders, however, will
eventually lead to serious legal, social and ethical conflicts,
since stakeholders have different goals for using student data:
educational, administrative, commercial and scientific. The only
sensible solution is these stakeholders hold transparent and
honest meetings about their needs and goals and establish
adequate checks and balances about student data use. Current
U.S. student data privacy laws are unfortunately contradictory,
inadequate, non-uniform from state to state and too out of date
to offer the privacy protections that parents and students expect.
The potential commercial uses of student PII, in which data
value increases in relation to the amount of intimate and precise

detail it contains about an individual student, may inherently be
in conflict with students’ and parents’ ethical and legal rights to
control information collected and retained about them. These
rights were traditionally protected under the FERPA law, but
recent, controversial amendments to FERPA have allowed for
the greater sharing of student PII with private third parties and
weakened privacy protections for students. The lack of public
discussion surrounding these statutory changes points to the
influence of technology lobbyists who, along with national
governments, would like to access more student PII for
commercial purposes or for national security reasons
(surveillance). The ultimate failure of inBloom to address
stakeholder concerns about privacy, security and trust, related
to its cloud-based statewide longitudinal student databases
(which eventually led to inBloom’s closure) is a powerful
lesson for the cloud computing industry in the educational
sector. Hosted services business models based on data-mining
and commercialization of student PII may inherently be in
direct conflict with U.S. federal law (FERPA, COPPA, PPRA,
etc.) and educational institutions’ ethical responsibility to
maintain the privacy of sensitive student information.
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APPENDIX. FLEXIAN RELATIONSHIPS OF INBLOOM, INC.
Flexian relationships: Individuals involved with inBloom
Figure 3. Flexian relationships: Individuals involved with
inBloom.Key for Figure 3
An individual who has a vested interest in support of a cause,
non-profit, for-profit or organization, foundation or coalition.
Grey
Oval
Blue Octagon
For-profit, non-profit organization, foundation or corporation.
RELATIONSHIPS:
. All Board Members and founders of organizations (past &
present) relationships are represented by a Solid Black (SB) line
();
. All individuals in leadership roles/level (past & present) are
represented by Dashed Black (DB) lines
();
. The contractual agreement between inBloom and New York
State is denoted by a Solid Gray line
();
. Blue Dashed Lines () denote the relation of the holding
company News Corp to Wireless Generation to Amplify to
inBloom, previously known as the Shared Learning

Collaborative (SLC).
Bates, Sharren – Joined inBloom/SLC (February 2013 – April
2014) as a Chief Product Officer (DB).e
Previously led the New York City Department of Education’s
Achievement Reporting and Innovation System (ARIS) team
(DB)e as the Executive Director of Product Development
(December 2007 – August 2009) (DB)e and appointed as a
Senior Program Officer (July 2010 – February 2013) on the
Next Generation Models team at the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation (DB).e Earlier employment with McGraw-Hill (May
2005 –
December 2007) as the Director of Product Implementation
(DB).e
Berger, Larry – President of Amplify (DB), Chief Executive
Officer and co-founder of Wireless Generation (SB).f Berger
“along with Chief Operating Officer, Josh Reibel and Product
Chief, Laurence Holt will retained 10% of Wireless
Generation”g once purchased by News Corp. Also linked to the
Carnegie Corporation of New York, Institute for Advanced
Study Commission on Mathematics and Science Education
(DB)h and furthermore, named on the Board of Trustees for The
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (SB)i in
November 2008.
Bush, Jeb – Present Board of Trustees Chairman of the
Foundation for Excellence in Education (SB).j
Cahill, Michele – Vice-President for the National Program and
Director of Urban Education at Carnegie Corporation of New
York (DB).k Prior to joining Carnegie (2007), Cahill was the
senior counselor to the chancellor for education policy in the
New York City Department of Education, under Chancellor Joel
Klein (DB).k Cahill was a Board Member of inBloom until early
2014 upon inBloom’s ceasing of operations (SB)l and was
previously a Board Member of The Shared Learning
Collaborative (SB).
Childress, Stacey – Deputy Director of Education at the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation from May 2010 through June 2014

(DB).)m)n Joined Wireless Generation’s Board of Directors in
2008 (SB)o and later, appointed to the Board of Directors for
the Shared Learning Collaborative (SB).l
Gates, Bill – Co-Chair and Trustee of the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, which has provided a total of $30.1 billion
grant payments from inception through to March 31, 2014
(SB).p
Kane, Kristen – Previous Chief Operating Officer of Amplify
(August 2011 – December 2014) (DB)q and previously served as
the Chief Operating Officer of the New York City DoE (DB).r
Klein, Joel – Chief Executive Officer of Amplify and former
chancellor of the New York DoE (DB).s Klein resigned as
chancellor of the NY DoE as announced by then Mayor
Bloomberg on November 9, 2010 (DB)t and was appointed to
the Board of Trustees of News Corp and named Executive Vice
President in charge of Education Technology by Rupert
Murdoch, the same month as his resignation from NYDoE
(SB).u Currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the
Foundation for Excellence in Education (SB).v
Murdoch, Rupert – Owner of News Corporation, purchased 90%
of Wireless Generation for $360
million in 2010 (SB).g,t
e https://www.linkedin.com/profile/, Sharren Bates, accessed
March 9, 2015.
f http://www.amplify.com/leadership, Larry Berger, accessed
March 6, 2015.
g http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-23/news-corp-
acquires-wireless-for-360-million-to-expand-into-education.
html, accessed March 11, 2015.
h http://www.amplify.com/pdf/press-
releases/WG_Larry_Berger_Carnegie_Press_Release_01.pdf
accessed March 11, 2015.
i http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/who-we-are/board-of-
trustees/larry-berger/, accessed March 11, 2015.
j http://excelined.org/news/condoleeza-rice-named-new-

exelined-chair/ accessed March 11, 2015.
k http://carnegie.org/about-us/staff/view/single/person/mc/,
l http://stopcommoncorenc.org/inbloom-common-core-nc-and-
your-childs-data/, accessed March 9, 2015. m
http://www.amplify.com/pdf/press-
releases/WG_Stacey_Childress_Board_Press_Release_01.pdf,
n http://www.linkedin/profile/, Stacey Childress, accessed
March 8, 2015. o http://www.amplify.com/pdf/press-
releases/WG_Stacey_Childress_Board_Press_Release_01.pdf,
p http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/General-
Information/Foundation-Factsheet, accessed March 6, 2015. q
https://www.linkedin.com/profile/, Kristen Kane, accessed
March 8, 2015.
r
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-06-08/news-
corp-hires-kristen-kane-peter-gorm
an-to-help-run-education-division, accessed March 9, 2015.
s http://www.amplify.com/leadership, accessed March 9, 2015.
t
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/nyregion/24newscorp.html
?_r¼0, accessed March 6, 2015. u
http://www.wnyc.org/story/147182-blog-why-ex-nyc-schools-
chancellor-joel-klein-murdochs-fixer/, accessed March 6, 2015.
v http://excelined.org/team/joel-i-klein/, accessed March 6,
2015.
Spellings, Margaret – Former United States Secretary of
Education (2005 – 2009) and inBloom Board of Trustees
member (SB).w
Streichenberg, Iwan – Chief Executive Officer of inBloom/SLC
(November 2012 – 2014) (SB).x Former president of Edusoft
and corporate Vice President of Edusoft’s parent company
Houghton Mifflin (DB).y Edusoft is a web-based student
assessment program.

Wilhoit, Gene – Executive Director of CCSSO until retirement
in 2012 (DB)z and previous appointment to the Board of
Directors of inBloom/SLC (SB).l
Wise, Bob – President of the Alliance for Excellent Education,
former governor of West Virginia (2001 –
2005) (DB)aa and co-Chair of inBloom (SB).aa
*The Shared Learning Collaborative founded in
2011(https://www.inbloom.org/) becomes inBloom Inc. in Feb.
2013.
Flexian relationships: Funding sources of inBloom
Figure 4. Flexian relationships: Funding sources of inBloom.
w http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2013/03/my-
response-to-inblooms-attorney.html, accessed March 6, 2015.
x https://www.linkedin.com/profile/, Iwan Streichenberger,
accessed June 4, 2014.
y https://edusoft.com/corporate/_oldabout_mgmt.html, accessed
March 6, 2015.
z
http://www.ccsso.org/News_and_Events/Press_Releases/Gene_
Wilhoit_CCSSO_Executive_Director_Announces_Reti
rement.html, accessed March 6, 2015.
aa http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-wise/listening-to-
education-technology_b_5000547.html, accessed March 6,
2015.
Key for Fig. 4
Blue Octagon Blue Octagon: A for-profit, non-profit
organization, foundation or corporation.
Solid Red Line ( ) denotes
organizations/identities/individuals who engage in a
partnership, fund or donate to a particular foundation or cause,
denoted as (SR).
Dashed Blue Line ( ) denotes the relation of the holding
company News Corp to Wireless Generation to Amplify to
inBloom, previously known as the Shared Learning

Collaborative (SLC).
Solid Green Line ( ) denotes the support (monetary or
alliance/partnership) by a for-profit, nonprofit organization,
foundation or corporation for furthering the adaptation of the
Common Core Standards.
Funding:
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:
. Provided $20,283,334 in October 2012 to fund inBloom as part
of the Foundation’s “College Ready” initiative (SR);bb
. Provided between $50,001 and $1,000,000 to the Foundation
for Excellence in Education in 2012 and greater than $1,000,000
in 2013 (SR);cc
. The foundation has disbursed 21 grants between 2009 and
2013 to the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO)
with an estimated allocation of $90, 738,761 as classified issues
of College-Ready, Postsecondary Success, Global Policy &
Advocacy and Research & Development supporting initiatives,
including and not necessarily limited to; the implementation of
the Common Core State Standards, reform efforts in teacher
effectiveness, high speed broadband connectivity and digital
learning initiatives (SR);dd
. The $44 million project, awarded to Wireless Generation in
June, was directed by Stacey Childress, a former board member
at Wireless Generation (SR);ee
. The foundation has disbursed 8 grants between 2009 and 2013
to the Alliance for Excellent Education Inc. with an estimated
allocation of $12,502,880 as classified issues of College-Ready,
Postsecondary Success and Global Policy & Advocacy (SR).ff
Additional awarding of grants to the New
York State Education Department and the New York City
Department of Education (not included in
Fig. 4).gg
Carnegie Foundation:
. Provided the Foundation for Excellence in Education with 3
grants totaling $1,250,000 between 2012 and 2013 to assist with
state Common Core Standards, enhanced digital learning and

next generation learning (SR).hh The Carnegie Corporation
endows various philanthropic organizations as part of the
Carnegie Foundation, including that for the Advancement of
Teaching;
. Provided inBloom with $3,000,000 in funding, awarded on
June 6, 2013 (SR).hh
Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) – Note
themselves as a Partner with inBloom on their Corporate
Partners page (SR).ii
Pearson Education – Funds the Foundation for Excellence in
Education (SR)jj and the Council of Chief
State School Officers (SR).jj,kk
Houghton Mifflin – Funds the Foundation for Excellence in
Education (SR).jj
Educational Testing Service (ETS) – Provided funding for the
Foundation for Excellence in Education for 2012 and 2013,
between $5,000 - $25,000 per year (SR).jj
McGraw-Hill – Provides the Foundation for Excellence in
Education with between $25,001 - $50,000 in funding (SR).jj
ab http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-
Links/Grants-Database/Grants/2012/10/OPP1070519,
ac http://excelined.org/about-us/meet-our-donors/, accessed
March 6, 2015. dd http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-
Work/Quick-Links/Grants-
Database#q/k¼council%20of%20chief%20s
tate%20school%20officers, accessed March 9, 2015.
ee
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/education/30wireless.html?
_r¼0, accessed March 6, 2015.
ff
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-
Links/Grants-Database#q/k¼alliance%20for%20excellent%
20education, accessed March 6, 2015.
ag http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-

Links/Grants-Database#q/k¼new%20york%20city%
20department%20of%20education, accessed March 6, 2015.
ah http://carnegie.org/grants/grants-database/, accessed March
6, 2015.
ii
http://www.ccsso.org/Who_We_Are/Business_and_Industry_Par
tnerships/Corporate_Partners.html, accessed March 6, 2015.
aj http://excelined.org/about-us/meet-our-donors/, accessed
March 6, 2015.
ak http://www.rocklandtimes.com/2013/12/27/following-the-
money-trail-who-profits-from-the–implementation-ofcommon-
core-state-standards/, accessed March 6, 2015.
Microsoft – Provided between $100,001 – $250,000 to the
Foundation for Excellence in Education in
2013 (SR).jj
In Support of a particular cause:
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – Actively supports the
Common Core Standards. as noted throughout the website and
literature (SG).ll
Alliance for Excellent Education – Proactively committed to
supporting statewide adaption of the Common Core Standards.
Foundation for Excellence in Education – Outlines a strong
commitment to state adaptation of the
Common Core Standards (SG).mm
Carnegie Foundation – Outlines a strong commitment to state
adaptation of the Common Core
Standards (SG).nn
Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) – Outlines a
strong commitment to state adaptation of the Common Core
Standards (SG).oo
*The Shared Learning Collaborative Founded in 2011
(https://www.inbloom.org/) becomes inBloom Inc. in Feb. 2013.
al https://docs.gatesfoundation.org/Documents/fewer-clearer-
higher-standards.pdf, accessed March 6, 2015.
am http://excelined.org/common-core-toolkit/, accessed March

6, 2015. nn http://carnegie.org/news/press-releases/story/news-
action/single/view/final-common-core-standards-s
upport-opportunity-equations-recommendations-for-fewer-
higher-clea/, Accessed March 6, 2015. oo
http://www.ccsso.org/Resources/Programs/The_Common_Core_
State_Standards_Initiative.html, accessed March 6, 2015.

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