The Weekly Ed Update at Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education

This Week in Ed 8.17.18: Alarming report on CPS sex abuse released this afternoon

This was a big week for ed news in Chicago and IL! We urge you to continue to read or carve out some time this weekend to sit back and catch up on all the news.

This afternoon, the draft report entitled “Preventing and Responding to Sexual Misconduct against Students in Chicago Public Schools” was released. It was authored by Maggie Hickey who was hired by CPS to review the handling of sexual abuse allegations and to make policy recommendations. You can find the full report in this Chalkbeat Chicago article: Leadership instability atop Chicago schools contributed to mishandling of student sex cases: report.

This Week in Ed 8.10.18: Parents Testify at Student Data Privacy Subject Matter Hearing

Thanks to all of you who came out to the student-data privacy hearing this past Tuesday in the IL House Cybersecurity Committee! There were quite a few parents in attendance and several who testified. RYH Action pushed for this hearing because they have been trying to get a simple data privacy bill passed and have come up against serious opposition from the ed tech lobby and school management groups. We believe parents have a right to know what data is being collected on our children, how it’s being used, and the ability to correct it if it’s wrong, and we don’t think tech companies should be able to profit by selling our kids’ data to entities for marketing purposes. We also think stronger protections are needed to secure our students’ data. These are just some of the data privacy issues that we’re trying to bring to light.

This Week in ed 8.2.18: Student data privacy hearing scheduled for Tuesday, August 7, in Chicago

In a big win for IL students that comes as a result of many parents speaking to their legislators about student data privacy concerns and as a result of Raise Your Hand Action being present in Springfield and meeting with several IL legislators on this issue, the IL House Cybersecurity, Data Analytics and IT Committee will hold a subject-matter hearing on student data privacy on Tues August 7th, 10am, at the Bilandic Building (160 N LaSalle), C-600, 6th floor.

This Week in Ed 7.21.18: Follow the money? CPS hearings on capital & operating budgets

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This Week in Ed 6.29.18: CPS to launch $3M “Office of Student Protection” an hour before the BOE meeting

CPS announced it would open a new 20-person, $3M department to respond to sexual abuse allegations right before the BOE meeting Wednesday. Unfortunately, this came as a surprise to the Inspector General who is supposed to be working in partnership with CPS on this issue. It’s also concerning that the legal department is in charge of launching this department, given the recent revelations that their department was routinely interrogating student victims of sexual abuse without a parent present.

This Week in Ed 6.8.18: CPS Scandal After CPS Scandal...

You have all likely seen the horrific reports out of the Chicago Tribune by now, documenting hundreds of cases of sexual assault and abuse that have been reported to CPS over a decade but have never been made public before. The Trib said they had to threaten to sue CPS to get them to reveal the data they possessed, and it turns out CPS lawyers have investigated over 430 cases of sexual assault or abuse by CPS employees since 2011. These are just incidents that have occured in CPS school buildings that have been reported. CPS acknowledged in the Tribune that they had no formal policies or procedures in place to deal with this, or to give schools firm direction on what they needed to do in the event that a student made a report.