Benjamin Herold writes:
Seeking to help schools and districts better protect students’ privacy, the U.S. Department of Education released new guidance Tuesday on the proper use, storage, and security of the massive amounts of data being generated by new, online educational resources.
The guidelines, produced by the department’s privacy technical assistance center, highlight the rapidly evolving, often-murky world of educational technology and student data privacy: “It depends” is the department’s short answer to two major questions related to the laws governing the sharing of sensitive student information with third-party vendors.
[….]
The new federal guidelines are non-binding and contain no new regulations, reflecting a desire to encourage “self-policing” by industry and better policies and practices by school systems as first steps towards shoring up students’ privacy protections.
Read more on Education Week.
Pardon me while I yawn, but non-binding, non-enforceable “guidelines” have done basically nothing in the area of privacy protection. Unless we see regulations with teeth to protect student and parent privacy and data security, we’re just wasting time.