Amelia Vance has an important piece on NASBE about FERPA and directory information. Her piece includes some research conducted last year: In 2017, data analyst Leah Figueroa sent email requests to 10 institutions of higher education asking for “a listing of student directory information.” Three schools requested that she fill out a Freedom of Information…
Category: Youth & Schools
Inspector General Blasts U.S. Ed. Department’s Handling of FERPA Complaints
Benjamin Herold reports: The U.S. Education Department failed to conduct timely, effective investigations of potential violations of the nation’s main student-data-privacy law, allowing a years-long backlog of unresolved cases to pile up without any mechanism for effectively tracking the number or status of the complaints it received. That’s according to a scathing new audit from the department’s…
Directory information battle continues between school district, guardians
Amy Alonzo reports: Lyon County School District will continue to release “directory information” about students to groups and agencies that request it unless parents specifically choose to opt out. After an hour of discussion with no resolution on how to address a guardian’s concern that his grandchildren’s information was being released to various groups, the…
Girard threatened with legal action over student privacy issue
Carol Robidoux reports on an interesting FERPA privacy case out of Manchester, New Hampshire: A school board member who used social media and his public access TV show, “Girard at Large,” to expound on a student privacy issue that arose during a Nov. 13 school committee meeting has been threatened with legal action. A letter…