Dangers of sharing student data explored

One reason people who oppose Common Core Standards have cited is the mining of data about their children.

That danger has been shrugged off by Common Core proponents, but as an article in today's New York Times notes, the danger is real, even though this particular article is not about Common Core:

Many school districts, however, are using student assessment software and other services without placing sufficient restrictions on the use of children’s personal details by companies, experts in education privacy law say. Parents may not be aware of the security and privacy risks to their children, these experts say, because schools are not required to notify parents or obtain their consent before sharing student’s details with vendors who perform institutional functions.

New research on how school districts handle the transfer of student data to companies, for instance, has found that administrators have signed contracts without clauses to protect personal details like children’s contact information, age ranges or where they wait for school buses every morning. Researchers at Fordham University School of Law in New York are reporting, for example, that certain school districts’ contracts for cafeteria service payment features on student ID cards would allow companies to collect, store, share and sell information on everything a student buys and eats at school. That could have implications for students’ families.

“Companies could sell that information to advertisers or insurance companies,” said Joel R. Reidenberg, a law professor at Fordham and the lead researcher on the report, whose findings his team plans to publish next month. “Because a kid drinks a lot of soda, a family might have to pay higher insurance premiums or have trouble getting dental insurance.”

Schools are sharing student data with more educational technology providers and with other companies, he said, partly to keep up with mounting student testing and reporting requirements and partly to keep down internal technology costs. That outsourcing has been made easier because of changes to federal regulation under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

That law requires schools to obtain a parent’s permission before sharing information in their children’s records. But the Education Department updated its rules in 2008, allowing schools to disclose student information to contractors and other outside parties to whom they outsource school functions — without notifying parents.