Dive Brief:
- As districts turn to a growing number of third-party vendors to handle a range of services, states are considering new laws the protect student data that may not be defined as an educational record under existing privacy laws.
- According to eSchool News, many states have focused on the advertising and marketing potential companies may see in this data but experts encourage legislators to consider the length of time data is being kept, whether there is a way to correct inaccurate data, and whether parents are notified about who is using their children’s data.
- Dozens of states have followed up on a California statute that keeps vendors from using student data for targeted ads, selling student information, or creating profiles of students for commercial use, and many have supported opt-in or opt-out provisions for parents to decide about their children’s data — but advocates worry parents don’t have enough context for the decision.
Dive Insight:
Vendors are often pressured to offer low-cost services to schools that perennially face budget constraints. One way they can make their business more profitable is to use all the data they are collecting to develop new products and services or improve their existing ones. While, financially, this makes sense, schools and districts are right to be preoccupied with how that data is used. Parents are increasingly paying attention to what data collection could mean for their children’s futures and schools have to facilitate their best decision-making.
Beyond the privacy challenges presented by data collection, this era of tracking and analyzing data has the power to improve services to students. The Data Quality Campaign is a leading advocate of collecting useful data and putting it to work for better student outcomes.
