CPS accidentally leaks massive gifted student personal data

If your child has applied to a CPS selective enrollment school, you should be aware that there was a large data breach on June 15th, 2018. A simple mistake by an employee resulted in a mass email of a database file containing student names, application numbers, and contact info to over 3700 families. This is a violation of the trust parents put in CPS, as well as a security liability for those families. If you've sought enrollment in a CPS SEES school, you should double check their announcement to see if your data was compromised. You can check your inbox for an email sent on June 15, 2018, titled "CPS - OAE - Supplemental Application Opportunity". If you received this email, chances are, your child's data was in it. We believe the families who were impacted by this breach were those whose child had high enough scores for a SEES (Regional gifted or classical selective enrollment) seat but did not yet select one.

This is not a first time that sensitive student data was leaked by CPS.  Since this affects the Chicago gifted population specifically, we thought it would be newsworthy for us to share with our audience in case they are impacted. CPS promised to punish the employee accidentally causing the leak, and they said they will investigate. We hope that this new leak finally results in changes to the storage and sharing protocols of student data in CPS, not just an elimination of one employee.

At MAGE, we take privacy and data security very seriously and have policy in place to prevent a similar event from occurring. We are also still accepting fall applications.

Here is the CPS email following the leak:

Good evening,

Earlier today, in an unacceptable breach of both student information and your trust, we mistakenly included your private student and family information in an email to you and more than 3700 other families who were invited to submit supplemental applications to selective enrollment schools.

We sincerely apologize for this unintended disclosure and ask that you please delete the information in question.

We are taking this matter very seriously, and a review of this incident is underway to determine how this breach occurred and ensure a similar matter does not occur again. Additionally, we will be removing the responsible employee from their position because violating your privacy is unacceptable to the district.

If you would like to speak with someone regarding this matter, please contact (773) 553-2060.

Sincerely,

Tony Howard

Executive Director

CPS Office of Access and Enrollment

Four Year Old Program

We have received a lot of interest in a four-year-olds program from the gifted community. While we always planned on adding this age group next year, we are now considering adding this option for the Fall of 2018. The Executive Board has formed a committee to make this determination in the next few weeks. Please drop us a note or stay tuned to this space if interested in this age group. 

Midwest Academy for Gifted Education issues first Press Release, 4.10.18

Chicago is missing something. Of the top five cities in the U.S., Chicago is the only one without a private school option for gifted students. Several exist in the suburbs, but there is no option for families who want to stay in the city. 

That changes this fall with MAGE, the Midwest Academy for Gifted Education. Parents and educators are launching the not-for-profit for elementary through high school. It meets a need for greater flexibility and individuality than Chicago Public Schools currently offer with their gifted programs. And parents whose children have already tested into those CPS programs can easily apply to MAGE.

How is MAGE different? Because we are new and independent, we can apply the best advances in teaching gifted learners.

·     Students are grouped by ability, not age, but still with plenty of age-appropriate social peer interaction.

·     There are no grades received for classes, and homework is rare. 

·     Teaching is centered around student inquiries, heavy on project work, collaboration, and real life experience instead of worksheets.

·     At every grade level, this includes immersive studies in STEAM (adding Arts to the now-standard blend of Science, Technology and Math) as well as civics, global citizenship, design, and exposure to trades and handcrafts

·     Social and emotional education is built into the school day.

·     And of course, low teacher - student ratios of 1:8 or 2:20.

The Chicago Public Schools gifted and classical program students usually find themselves in classes at least 28 to one teacher, from kindergarten on. CPS aims to accommodate children who are 1-1.5 years ahead of grade level. But there is little support for those who are farther ahead, or not uniformly at this level. MAGE is designed to be a more flexible alternative for the highly gifted and the asynchronous learner. 

Here’s an important addition: MAGE also accepts siblings of gifted students even if they do not meet the same criteria, in order to help families with quality of life. Right now, many parents spend hours driving to multiple schools, or have to move across town, if one child is accepted to a CPS gifted school and others are not. With MAGE, parents can focus on education rather than transportation.

MAGE has worked hard to make admissions easy for many Chicago families. If their children have taken an NWEA (MAP) or CPS selective enrollment test in the last 3 years and scored in the top 2%, they may already have the documentation required in order to submit an application for consideration. MAGE has a part time program at every grade level, supporting young children that need to go home and nap, homeschoolers, and many other diverse needs. Chicago is full of wonderful schools, accommodating diverse needs - and now, even more so, because of MAGE.

For more information or to schedule an interview, please contact Irene Gottlieb at info@mage.education or (312) 600-5571. Additional information about MAGE can also be found on the web at http://www.mage.education/.