National Student Privacy Symposium Tries To Paint Rosy Picture About Student Data Collection
On Monday, the Future of Privacy Forum, with money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, held a Student Privacy Forum in Washington DC. In attendance were representatives from public advocacy groups, research organizations and policy makers. Panelists included representatives from national research organizations, parents, bloggers, USDoED and Microsoft. The main message was that everyone is concerned about student data privacy, there is much activity in this area, but there is no clear path forward to address everyone’s concerns. The symposium was just a discussion with no specific answers provided.
The National Association of State Boards of Education Policy Update (Vol. 22, No. 1) reports that last year state legislatures introduced over 180 student privacy bills. Sixteen were enacted into law.
Representatives from Standford’s CREDO ( Center for Research on Education Outcomes) and CALDER (National Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research) and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (which focuses primarily on postsecondary education) detailed the extreme lengths that they go through to protect the privacy of the data they collect from school districts all across the country. They described how “extremely painful” it is for them to have to destroy the data sets they spend hours de-identifying once their studies are complete.
Jane Hanaway from CALDER claimed in the panel on Student Data and Research that in the 10-15 years that such research has been going on there has never been a problem with student data privacy. She also claimed that such research was vital to schools and produced such insights as, low SES (socio-economic status) schools “are a dumping ground” for poor quality teachers.
Statements like these showed how much in a bubble the researchers live. While talking about the data they get and their professionalism in National Student Privacy Symposium Tries To Paint Rosy Picture About Student Data Collection » Missouri Education Watchdog:
