Education Week - December 11, 2013 - 13

lies more say in whether and
how their children's information
is being shared.
"To me, it sounds like [the
bill is intended] to assuage
the fears of parents who
want there to be something
done to protect their children's
data, but who aren't
really informed about the issues,"
Ms. Haimson said.
Bills that contain more
specifics but don't take as
comprehensive an approach
have gained some traction in
other states. In New York, for
example, Ms. Haimson and
her nonprofit organization,
Class Size Matters, have
helped push more-targeted
bills crafted to stop the release
of sensitive student information
without parental
consent and to allow parents
the opportunity to opt out of
data-sharing efforts involving
third-party vendors.
Both bills passed in the state
Assembly last spring, but have
yet to move in the state Senate.
Legal Action in New York
Class Size Matters also
played a leading role in a recent
filing for a court injunction
to stop the New York
education department from
moving forward with a partnership
with inBloom Inc., an
independent nonprofit based
in Atlanta that has met stiff
opposition to its efforts to cre-
ate a cloud-based educationdata
repository for states.
"This is the most bipartisan
education issue that anyone
in the state of New York has
ever seen," Ms. Haimson said
of data privacy. "Parents are
wildly angry."
For his part, Mr. Brumbaugh,
the Oklahoma lawmaker,
said his state's efforts
should be construed as a first
step.
"We want to shore [stu-
dents' privacy] up even more,"
he said, pointing to parentalconsent
provisions as one area
where the state could see further
action. "This is all new
territory."
Ms. Russell of ALEC said
that in the coming weeks, she
expects much conversation
in other states regarding the
group's model bill, which its
members are likely to bring to
their legislatures in the coming
months. She said the ALEC
template could be changed to
accommodate local concerns.
"As January comes and
people start to craft their legislative
agendas," Ms. Russell
said, "we'll have a better sense
of which states are going after
this aggressively and which are
still in the discussion phase."
Scan this tag with your
smartphone for a link
to the Oklahoma
Student DATA Act.
www.edweek.org/links
Privacy Issues Prompt State Measures
Issues surrounding the privacy of
student information are taking on new
significance as policy and technology
combine to produce a mass of detailed
data, both academic and nonacademic,
on individual students. Some states
have recently enacted laws to beef up
data privacy; similar measures are developing
in other states. Here is a sampling
of that legislative activity.
ARIZONA
Gov. Janice K. Brewer, a Republican,
signed into law in June a bill designed
to strengthen parental-consent procedures
around the release of student
"directory information"-including
name, address, and phone number-
to third-party vendors. The measure
provides a pathway for reporting suspected
violations of the federal Family
Educational Rights and Privacy
Act, or FERPA. "The bill maintains the
privacy of students on campuses from
outside vendors who want to obtain
[directory] lists to increase their client
bases," said state Sen. Kimberly Yee,
the Phoenix Republican who sponsored
the legislation.
NEBRASKA
Gov. Dave Heineman, a Republi-
can, signed into law in April a measure
guaranteeing students access
to school files and records concerning
themselves. Students' parents or
guardians, teachers, counselors, and
school administrators are granted
the same access. Some broad limits
are placed on the transfer of such
data to other parties without parental
consent, although the legislation
is explicit that "the sharing of student
data, records, and information
among school districts, educational
service units, learning communities,
and the state department of education,
to the fullest extent practicable
and permitted by law, is vital to enhancing
education in this state."
NEW YORK
No fewer than six bills related to student-data
privacy are currently pending
in the New York state legislature,
including proposals that would give
parents greater say in how their children's
education data may be used and
limit third-party providers of cloudcomputing
services to noncommercial
uses of student data. Most of the bills
have received bipartisan backing in
the Assembly, the lower house. None
has yet been enacted.
David K. Albert, the director of communications
and research for the New
York State School Boards Association,
said the state's data-sharing partnership
with Atlanta-based nonprofit inBloom
Inc. has taken concerns about
student privacy in the state "to a different
level."
"We want to protect student privacy,
and at the same time make it so that
schools can continue their regular dayto-day
operations without putting too
many roadblocks in place," he said. He
cited routine functions ranging from
student transportation to yearbook
creation that require some degree of
student-level data-sharing with outside
vendors.
MASSACHUSETTS
A bill proposed by state Rep. Carlo
P. Basile, a Boston Democrat, would
prohibit "service providers who offer
cloud-computing services to K-12
educational institutions from processing
student data for commercial
purposes," including targeted advertising
to children. "I felt something
had to be done to protect the integrity
of our children's business," Mr. Basile
said. "Now that [lawmakers] have
become educated on [cloud computing],
there's definitely an appetite to
do something." The bill is currently in
committee.
OKLAHOMA
The Student Data Accessibility,
Transparency, and Accountability Act,
passed in June and signed into law
by Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican, is
poised to become a national model for
how state lawmakers propose to comprehensively
address student dataprivacy
issues. The law mandates
creation of a data-security plan, publication
of an inventory of all studentlevel
data being collected by the state,
data-privacy and security provisions
in contracts with outside vendors, and
compliance with federal privacy laws.
-BENJAMIN HEROLD
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Education Week - December 11, 2013

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