Sheila Kaplan’s organization “Education New York & Information Policy Watch” is zealously devoted to protecting the privacy rights of students.
In response to a post about whether the U.S. Department of Education was overreaching with the latest expansion of its regulatory power, she sent the following comment:
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What is this about? The U.S. Department of Education unilaterally rewrote the regulations governing the release of information about individual students. Their right to privacy was eroded, the lawsuit says, without Congressional hearings or legislation or oversight.
As Kaplan writes on her website, “EPIC has filed a lawsuit under the Administrative Procedure Act against the Department of Education. EPIC’s lawsuit argues that the agency’s December 2011 regulations amending the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act exceed the agency’s statutory authority, and are contrary to law. The agency issued the revised regulations despite the fact that ‘numerous commenters . . . believe the Department lacks the statutory authority to promulgate the proposed regulations.'”
What’s with this administration? What’s their goal? How does it improve education if student information is made available to marketers and snoopers? Why the obsession with data? Why doesn’t Congress rein in this out-of-control federal agency?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
To answer your question. They’re as bought and paid for as Obama and Duncan. Certainly not beholden to us average Janes and Joes.
Thanks for calling attention to this missed (ignored?) by MSM privacy risk, Diane.
You ask, “Why doesn’t Congress rein in this out of control federal agency?”
Possibly because they are not aware of the situation? Maybe they don’t understand the potential consequences of how US ED, schools & vendors use student data?
Maybe the involved vendors make large contributions to Congressional campaigns?
Maybe Congress is blinded by philanthrocapitalism?
Keep your eye on the Learning Registry & the student data trail:
http://www.learningregistry.org/
See page 5 regarding Common Core
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_uZnuv2HuPWT2pmNnQ0XzlKZk0/edit?pli=1
What’s with US ED’s obsession with the Khan Academy website?
Bizarre that Gates is behind SLC, Khan & the education data sharing machine.
Why doesn’t Congress rein in this out of control agency?
Perhaps because the economy is being stimulated by the use of student data. Very unfortunate for children.
Really Duane?? Maybe because Obama is ruling like a King instead of a servant? Where do they begin??
I suppose there is …Impeachment!
Did you call for Georgie Bush’s impeachment for all of his unconstitutional practices?
I’ve discovered a privacy issue here in Wisconsin as well. This summer the state signed a contract with some agency in Virginia to buy the PALS test, which is an early literacy screener. In the contract, the agency is defined as a “School Official” and is granted access to student records. Later in the contract it is written that the agency will comply with all federal, state and local laws with respect to criminal background checks, but it is also explicitly written that the agency will not be required to provide those records to the state of Wisconsin. So, this agency gets access to all of our kids’ records, but we don’t get theirs? Is there some sort of course of action anyone might suggest?
I suggest you contact Sheila Kaplan at EDNY, website is on the post. She is an expert on privacy rights and issues.
Here are links to letters that were sent by organizations (incuding EPIC) that expressed concerns over the change to FERPA. I’m sure there were many others.
1) American Assoc. of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers
Click to access FERPA_AACRAOLetterMay2011.pdf
2) ACLU
Click to access ACLU_Comments_on_Changes_to_the_Family_Educational_Rights_and_Privacy_Act_FERPA.pdf
3) Electronic Privacy Information Center
Click to access EPIC_FERPA_Comments.pdf
4) National School Boards Association
Click to access FERPA-Comments.pdf
5) American Council on Education
http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=LettersGovt&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=41324
6) National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities
Click to access FERPA_NAICULetterMay2011.pdf
Why all the data? Seems like the Administration is hooked on “learning analytics”. All you get from analyzing this data is correlation (not causation) and is based on proxy measures. Doing this on a huge database in an uncontrolled environment seems like junk science to me. I found this publication on the US Dept of Ed website.
“Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Education Data Mining and Learning Analytics”
Click to access EDM-LA-Brief-Draft_4_10_12c.pdf
You can get to it from here: http://www.ed.gov/edblogs/technology/research/
Who cares about privacy rights? We all care! Thank you for highlighting a troubling and underreported story.
The student longitudinal database, one of the three elements of RT3, is designed to store data on the nation’s students from preschool until the first year out of high school. Making a regulatory change effective January 2012, some of the data collected can be shared with government agencies and research organizations WITHOUT parent consent. The US DOE made a regulatory change to FERPA, existing legislation and the U.S. Congress did nothing. There are both privacy and security concerns. A recent event in OK reveals state level education staff have no idea what FERPA means. Student data was published on the internet:
http://t.co/lqys7zh
Then there are the hackers who steal data everyday. There is no reason to believe state or local systems can protect kids data. Here’s but one example:
http://www.phiprivacy.net/?p=9907
Once student data is published, the parent/student have no legal recourse. The agency who broke the rules might get sanctioned by the government, but that is where it ends. Student privacy is lost, information is published…end of story.
Many thanks to Sheila for her many years of hard work and perseverance. We must stop common core which allows for the data gathering which leads to this invasion of privacy. Did you see what the reason for “early learning” education is in Missouri? If this doesn’t spur you onto action to stop these educational reform policies, I suppose nothing will.
“At a recent DESE conference, this presentation was made on the state’s Early Learning Campaign. Page 2 of the presentation said bluntly,
We must EDUCATE, GRADUATE, TRAIN every potential child born in Missouri to ensure the workforce needed in Missouri to attract companies.
Our own state has referred repeatedly to our children as human capital. Here they come right out and say something that could be in the Chinese Project 119 mission statement. The goal is to train children to be the capital needed to attract business to the state. Your child is bait.
Where are the pro-lifers on this issue? The statement refers to every “potential” child born in MO. They are looking at the unborn and they are making a claim on them before they are born. Once they are born they will be tool of the state, not a spiritual being or a sacred life. You cannot be pro-life AND accept this view of children entering the world.
Page three might well have been written by Karl Marx.
High-quality early childhood programs allow parents to go to work confident their children are in safe, nurturing environments.
Your job, parents, is to go to work. The state will provide daycare. You provide the raw materials for its needs.”
http://www.missourieducationwatchdog.com/2012/08/chinese-olympians-father-could-be.html
How is the state to know what kind of “human capital” you are unless it gathers your data via common core assessment data?
It is very, very hard to frame this complex topic. But I think the way to do it is to recognize this. Corporations guard trade secrets with everything they’ve got.
What are our trade secrets?
Confidential information. Or in legal language: personally identifiable information= PII.
My Swiftian testimony for the induction of Rudy Crew as Oregon’s “CEdO” (not to be confused with a C.E.O.) could not be given because of the “special”meeting that day.
Mr. Crew may have gained lots of points because all the other candidates were not public school advocates. But why did Oregon appoint a CEdO who leads an appointed “Education Investment Board” to calculate education Return On Investment?
Do all those hedge fund and private equity managers see a good leveraged buy-out of education?
Diane, I have been quoting your left-right (or is it right-left?) strategy to explain the formidable political challenge we face. So consider the opening paragraphs of my testimony and help me understand why this data system sub-goal is so important!
http://www2.ed.gov/about/reports/strat/index.html
p. 51
SUB-GOAL 5.1: DATA SYSTEMS. FACILITATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTEROPERABLE LONGITUDINAL DATA SYSTEMS FROM EARLY LEARNING THROUGH THE WORKFORCE TO ENABLE DATA-DRIVEN DECISION-MAKING BY INCREASING ACCESS TO TIMELY, RELIABLE, AND HIGH-VALUE DATA.
What could hold us back? What’s beyond our control? (External Risk Factors)
Efforts to ensure the development of robust, integrated data systems will be constrained by the amount of time, financial resources, and support available to states to carry out this work. State and local funding for data systems may be reduced due to the fiscal crisis. Moreover, wide variations in state and district data systems present unique challenges for each state. Some district data systems, for example, far surpass their own state’s data system. This inequity could create hurdles for states to gain “buy in” from their more advanced districts. Efforts to ensure data systems lead to data-driven decision-making may also encounter unforeseen obstacles necessary to address privacy concerns.
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Click to access jjalman530.pdf
May 30, 2012
Members of the Oregon Education Investment Board,
Oregonians anxiously await the new C.E.O. Since Oregon’s Department of Education(1) and public schools are facing a “funding cliff,” we need someone like Rudy Crew(2) who has “been there and tried it” in the poorest school districts in the nation!
Advice from this 2005 Lumina funded report(3) is applicable today. “(T)ake advantage of opportunities budget crises sometimes bring. In an era of deregulation and accountability (performance oriented budgeting) boards can gain control by ‘replacing rigid line-item budgets with block funds… and carryover budget authority…”
All taxpayers know that education budgets are bloated.(4) The Beaverton School District is a model for appropriate action. Trim labor costs.(5) Just do it! 344 jobs.6 Woosh!(7)
But the BSD is not just eliminating jobs. They are innovating and creating efficiencies. With 5 years of Nike coaching “two critical leadership projects(8)” in Beaverton, the Nike Innovation Fund website boasts “more stories like this” including Confession of a cheating teacher and Is the classroom obsolete?
An excerpt from the latter(9):
Each student “constructs” knowledge based on his or her own past experiences. Because of this, the research demands a personalized education model to maximize individual student achievement. Classrooms, on the other hand, are based on the erroneous assumption that efficient delivery of content is the same as effective learning.
1 http://tinyurl.com/7taxbsy p.3
2 http://susanohanian.org/atrocity_fetch.php?id=2427
3 Recession, Retrenchment and Recovery: State Higher Education Funding & Student Financial Aid http://tinyurl.com/8ya259j p.18
4 Beaverton’s 2012-13 budget totals $465,196,582 for all funds; the general fund budget totals $302,580,062. http://www.beaverton.k12.or.us/pdf/bus_off/bus_off_2012-13%20Proposed%20Budget%20Document.pdf
5 Examples: schedule counselors into a teaching rotation; reduce high school Campus Monitors; increase caseload for speech pathologists, school psychologists, Autism Spectrum Disorder specialists, Adaptive Physical Education teachers. P.E. on alternating days in elementary school.
6 http://www.oregonlive.com/beaverton/index.ssf/2012/05/beaverton_school_district_budg_5.html
7 Not to be confused with the trademarked Nike swoosh; Used to denote when a comment has gone over someone’s head. Onomatopoetic to the sound of an object moving past you at an accelerated pace. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woosh
8 Aspiring Administrator Program and Standards-Based Learning System for Grades 6-12. In 2012, the BSD contributed $849,386 to the $674,389 contribution by Nike. http://nikeschoolinnovationfund.org/2012/02/beaverton-school-district-receives-support-for-leadership-programs/
9 http://nikeschoolinnovationfund.org/2011/08/is-the-classroom-obsolete/
8 Aspiring Administrator Program and Standards-Based Learning System for Grades 6-12. In 2012, the BSD contributed $849,386 to the $674,389 contribution by Nike. http://nikeschoolinnovationfund.org/2012/02/beaverton-school-district-receives-support-for-leadership-programs/