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InBloom

Disclosed Personal Data Observed Personal Data Education

DESCRIPTION

Initiated in 2011 through $100 million in seed money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, inBloom was a nonprofit student data repository that made cleaned, standardized school and student data available to third parties. As envisioned, the service would help educators and their students by supporting the development of new softwares. However, the repository faced intense scrutiny almost immediately after launch. The inBloom database included more than 400 different data fields about students that school administrators could fill in, but many of these fields, such as family relationships and enrollment changes, stuck many observers as overly personal. Many parents, who had not been previously consulted, objected to information about their children being transferred to a third-party vendor. The platform became seen as a dangerous encroachment into students' education with [some reports](https://datasociety.net/pubs/ecl/InBloom_feb_2017.pdf) describing it as "another example of rich tech elites projecting their values onto their communities with no contextual understanding." This backlash over privacy concerns led many partner school districts to back out of their agreements with the organization. inBloom ultimately ended its services in April 2014.

Region: North America

includes kosovo