Several programs that teachers and students use every day have been blocked from authorization by Chicago Public Schools, including Code.org, M.I.T. Scratch, Discovery Education, Kahoot!, Scholastic, Zearn, and hundreds of others.
These tools — most of which are offered by nonprofits at no cost to schools or parents — play a crucial role in educating our students.
But Chicago classrooms are no longer allowed to use the most popular classroom tools for teaching math, computer science, art, design, engineering, or even journalism (read the Axios story).
Chicago Public Schools claims that this is necessary to comply with Illinois privacy laws, but this is not true. These software tools comply with both national and local privacy laws, and are used legally by classrooms in over 200 other school districts in Illinois.
Chicago kids deserve the best available resources. Chicago Public Schools has handcuffed our teachers with little or no warning, and our students will bear the brunt of the impact while their suburban counterparts retain access to these valuable learning tools.
We call on the new Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez to immediately approve the most popular tools used by students, and to change the CPS process for privacy approval to better align with the Illinois Student Privacy Alliance recommendations, as other districts across Illinois have done.
