From InBloom to Bust

• In Event: The Law and K–12 Education

Abstract

This paper complicates the conventional narrative about the rise and fall of inBloom – a defining moment at the intersection of technology, privacy, and public-private partnerships. We pull together scholarship from policy studies on issue framing and legal studies on privacy to examine how the debates around inBloom evolved. By studying this case in detail we provide insight into how the policymaking process framed a set of complex ‘new-school’ issues, issues that may require creating new policy solutions, into a traditional policy issue with a long history of ‘old-school’ policy solutions. Our findings underscore the need to rethink our frameworks for dealing with student privacy in a way that addresses the concerns evident by all sides in this case.

Authors

• Theodore R Hartman, University of Maryland - College Park

• Ethan L Hutt, University of Maryland - College Park