Dive Brief:

• Brenda Leong and Jules Polonetsky of the Future of Privacy Forum wrote in an EdSurge column why opting out of data collection is not the answer.
• The duo explain that opting out should be an option for families to say no to data that is truly unnecessary or secondary, but that opting out over privacy fears hurts the chance of a "resolution of education policy issues that affect all students."
• They argue that data collection is necessary to get an accurate picture of how well a district is educating its youth.

Dive Insight:

In recent years, schools and the federal government have pushed for more streamlined approaches to collecting and harnessing student data. While this data — which includes everything from student grades and assessment scores to addresses, birth dates, and attendance records — was once maintained as hardcopy records, advances in technology have taken it to a new place: the cloud.

A lack of understanding of the cloud, as well as apprehension around some of the companies offering cloud-based data services, has caused a pervasive fear of data and privacy abuse. The most common concerns revolve around breaches, both by hackers and marketers.

This pushback has resulted in some drastic measures. Last year, for example, the Gates-funded nonprofit InBloom closed its doors following months of parental protest regarding the collection of data by third-party vendors, as well as many states, including New York, backing out of contracts. In some cases, states even created new laws to prohibit or restrict the sharing of student data with such companies.