Education Week - May 14, 2014 - 26

Safeguard Use of Student Data, White House Report Urges
Privacy issues cited,
few policy specifics
By Michele Molnar
The impact of a recent White
House report on "big data" on privacy
in K-12 education remains
to be seen, but observers agree it
has captured the issue accurately,
without necessarily charting a clear
course for resolving the challenges
surrounding the issue.
The "Big Data: Seizing Opportunities,
Preserving Values" report, released
by John Podesta, a counselor
to President Barack Obama, on May
1, includes a policy recommendation
to ensure that data collected on students
in school are used for educational
purposes. "Schools and districts
... must retain 'direct control' over
that information," the report says.
Such data in education encompass
information including students'
grades, standardized test scores, attendance,
demographics, and disciplinary
records.
Technological innovations, including
new online course platforms
that provide students with real-time
feedback-and generate more data-
"promise to transform education by
personalizing learning," the report
states. "At the same time, the federal
government must ensure educational
data linked to individual students
gathered in school [are] used for educational
purposes, and protect students
against their data being shared
or used inappropriately."
That finding garnered fairly universal
praise. But the route to getting
there is a murkier matter.
"It's going to take more than an
aspirational statement to make
that happen," said Joel R. Reidenberg,
a law professor at both Fordham
University, in New York, and
Princeton University. He worked
on the "Privacy and Cloud Computing"
study released in December by
the Fordham Law School's Center
on Law and Information Policy, an
analysis that uncovered "substantial
deficiencies" in policies governing
cloud-based technologies and their
protection of private student data.
Modernizing the Framework
The White House report, which
was produced after President Obama
asked earlier this year for a comprehensive
review of policy issues at the
intersection of big data and privacy,
recommends modernizing the privacy
regulatory framework that governs
how student data are handled, but
it's unclear how that updating would
be likely to occur.
The framework that protects students
includes the Family Educational
Rights and Privacy Act of 1974,
or ferpa, and the Children's Online
Privacy Protection Act of 1998, or
coppa. They have come under fire recently
from some privacy advocates
as being antiquated in this high-tech
age of data collection, cloud data storage,
and data-mining.
Ferpa, which was written before
the Internet was widely available to
the public, aims to protect disclosure
of the personally identifiable information
contained in children's education
records. And coppa, which requires
parental consent under certain conditions
for the online collection of
personal information from children
under age 13, was written before the
age of smartphones, tablets, apps, the
cloud, and big data itself.
Modernizing that technology
framework would protect students
from having their data shared or
used inappropriately, especially when
that information is gathered in an
educational context, the report indicates.
Secondly, it would "ensure that
innovation in educational technology,
including new approaches and business
models, have ample opportunity
to flourish," according to the report.
"When they say 'modernize,' we
say, 'build upon' because I don't want
to get away from the privacy protections
that current laws already afford,"
said Khaliah Barnes, a lawyer
for the Washington-based nonprofit
Electronic Privacy Information
Center, which filed 14 pages of comments
on big data for the White
House report before it was released.
The Software & Information InEducation
WEEk WEBINAR
dustry Association, a trade group
for technology businesses, concurred
about the value of big data to support
student learning. However, the group
said in a statement, "modernizing
privacy rules need not involve new
legislation," since ferpa and coppa
guidance was recently updated.
Legislative Proposals
Last November, Sen. Edward J.
Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat,
and Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican,
introduced the Do Not Track Kids
Act, which would extend online and
mobile coppa protection to children
up to age 15. Both pieces of legislation
have been referred to committee.
Sen. Markey has also announced
his plan to introduce legislation
that would update ferpa, prohibiting
student data from being used
for commercial purposes, and giving
parents the right to access their
children's personal information and
amend it if it's incorrect, among
other proposed provisions.
While federal lawmakers are still
deciding what moves to make, if any,
state legislatures have been virtually
hyperactive on the privacy-protection
front.
Ninety privacy-related bills in 33
states have been proposed this year,
said Kristin A. Yochum, the director
of federal policy at the Data Quality
Campaign, a Washington nonprofit
that advocates with state policymakers
and others for the improved use
of data.
Bills passed in Oklahoma last year
and in Maryland in 2010 are examples
of legislative initiatives that
have succeeded. "The contents were
slightly different, but both ultimately
ensured that data can be well safeguarded
and used to improve student
achievement," Ms. Yochum said.
To Keith R. Krueger, the ceo of the
Consortium for School Networking,
state policymakers' fast moves to address
privacy concerns are being handled
"sometimes wisely, sometimes
not," he wrote in an email. "From
that perspective, the report may be
too late. We expect that conversation
will increasingly move to the community
and school board level, so this is
a way to frame that discussion."
The next question, according to Ms.
Barnes at the electronic-privacy organization,
is how the U.S. Department
of Education is overseeing and enforcing
ferpa. The department is empowered
to investigate schools, either
in response to a complaint or at its
own behest, to monitor compliance.
With that issue in mind, Ms.
Barnes' organization has requested
information about the specific ferpa
complaints received since 2008 regulations
went into effect, the number
of investigations the department
has conducted in response to
them, and the results. She expects
to have a report on the outcome of
that inquiry later this year.
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Education Week - May 14, 2014

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