Andrew Ujifusa of McClatchy News confirms my impression that 2014 will be remembered as the year state legislatures started to address student data privacy:
As the appetite for educational data on students has grown across the K-12 sector, so has the stated desire among many state lawmakers to try to protect the privacy and security of sensitive student information.
Spurred by concerns that the rise of education technology and the increasing prevalence of new assessments will place student data in unreliable hands or be put to nefarious uses, lawmakers in dozens of states have acted this year to clarify who has what access to student data and to specify the best practices for shielding that data.
In total, for the 2014 legislative sessions, 83 bills in 32 states have addressed student-data protection issues, according to the Data Quality Campaign, a Washington-based group that seeks to promote the use of educational data to inform classroom and policy decisions.
Read more on Government Technology.