CURMUDGUCATION: What Is Your State's Grade For Data Privacy Protection?
If data is the new oil, then schools are the new Ghawar field. Nearly every single person in a generation passes through a school, and virtually all of them encounter computer-based technology. And everything that a computer assesses, measures, and facilitates, it can also record and store.
You may think that such data is fiercely protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act(FERPA). As originally passed, FERPA did not even allow schools to share student data with other government agencies. But in 2008 and 2011 the law was weakened, allowing student data to be shared with just about any agency or company authorized by the school district, or authorized by a company authorized by the school district--and this sharing can occur without parental permission or notification.
Teachers must now be aware that every use of technology in the classroom represents a possible exposure of student data. Google has been hugely successful in getting its apps into classrooms--but Google has also admitted to mining student data with those apps. School districts have had their data banks hacked and taken hostage. Companies are anxious to gather up all the data about each child; Knewton once bragged that given the access to data, they could tell children what to eat for breakfast on the day of a math test. Some people look with admiration at the Chinese system which stores data from cradle to grave to be used by government and employers to decide a citizen's fate.
Schools are where one thorny modern issue--data privacy--meets our most vulnerable population--students. As a parent, you may carefully monitor your child's phone, her social media use, and all her other online activities. But how well-protected is your child at school?
A new report from The Parent Coalition for Student Privacy and the Network for Public Education (of which I am a member) takes a state by state look at that protection. The 2019 State Student Privacy Report Card takes a look at seven categories and scores each state, then averages those scores for an overall grade. The picture is not pretty; no state earned an A, and 28 states failed with either a D or an F. The report card looks primarily at 99 laws passed in the last five years, considering their thoroughness and quality. Those covered a wide range, from those based on California's landmark CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: What Is Your State's Grade For Data Privacy Protection?
