Prominent Ed-Tech Players’ Data-Privacy Policies Attract Scrutiny
Graphic; Prominent Ed-Tech Players’ | Credit AngertAesthetics By Benjamin Herold | Originally Published at Education Week. April 22, 2014 Growing public concern about student-data privacy is prompting fresh scrutiny of the ways technology vendors handle children’s educational information—and opening the gates for a flood of new questions […]
State Lawmakers Ramp Up Attention to Data Privacy
By Andrew Ujifusa | Education Week. April 16, 2014
As the appetite for educational data on students has grown across the K-12 sector, so has the stated desire among many state lawmakers to try to protect the privacy and security of sensitive student information.
Spurred by concerns that the rise of education technology and the increasing prevalence of new assessments will place student data in unreliable hands or be put to nefarious uses, lawmakers in dozens of states have acted this year to clarify who has what access to student data and to specify the best practices for shielding that data.
In total, for the 2014 legislative sessions, 83 bills in 32 states have addressed student-data protection issues, according to the Data Quality Campaign, a Washington-based group that seeks to promote the use of educational data to inform classroom and policy decisions.
New York has created a chief privacy officer at the state level to coordinate the protection of personally identifiable student data, a move that Arizona, Tennessee, and West Virginia have also considered.
An Idaho law adopted this year requires districts to adopt model policies governing the sharing of data.
And nine states have considered bills based in part on a new law approved last year in Oklahoma that requires the state education department to publish the inventory describing the data it collects on individual students, and also limits the conditions allowing student data to be shared.
The American Legislative Exchange Council, a Washington-based, conservative policy group, has also written empathyeducates – State Lawmakers Ramp Up Attention to Data Privacy:
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