LDOE Lays an Egg: Violates FERPA and Their Own MOU Providing Data to CREDO
I know its reaching, but I thought I’d give everyone a little Easter reference with this surprise post. 
Before I left LDOE 3 years ago I was asked to help assemble some de-identified data for a research outfit named CREDO. At the time most of my colleagues didn’t know who CREDO was or what they were all about. (It turns out they are a pro-charter funded propaganda machine masquerading as legitimate researchers.) We had a standing policy not to provide this type of data to anyone. . . except a few local research universities like ULL we had established contracts with – to provide analysis services to LODE for specific grants.
Then came John White and CREDO. We’d been telling CREDO “No” for years because the amount of data they wanted was excessive and the time involved with compiling it was also going to be pretty steep. John White was not the State Superintendent when he started giving orders through Erin Bendilly, a Jindal appointee. This request was one of those, and it was coordinated, reviewed, and delivered by Kim Nesmith, the “Data Quality Director” and department’s FERPA enforcer. (The fact that this request was being forced through quickly on John White’s behalf was confirmed by both Kim and Devora Davis, head CREDO researcher, in a conference call.)
FERPA tidbit:
US DOE requires State agencies to select a number between 1 and 10 to mask all their student level data to conform to FERPA. Kim actually required the department go one step further. She insisted we mask by using less than (<) and greater than (>) symbols in the ones digits in most numbers reported. (We can still derive the specific numbers from the LDOE Lays an Egg: Violates FERPA and Their Own MOU Providing Data to CREDO | Crazy Crawfish's Blog:
