Privacy Worries Shutter Gates-Funded Education-Data Nonprofit

A foundation-funded nonprofit software company that collected and stored information about public-school students announced Monday that it was closing over parental concerns about privacy, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times report.

InBloom, financed with $100-million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York, aimed to help school districts use data on student activities such as homework and test-taking to develop personalized instruction for pupils.

Atlanta-based inBloom initially lined up nine states to work with its database, but parents in some states raised concerns about the types of information to be collected and rallied lawmakers to their cause. Announcing the closure in a company blog post, CEO Iwan Streichenberger said inBloom’s tech-based effort to tailor instruction to individuals “has never been seen before” and thus became “a lightning rod for misdirected criticism.”