Benjamin Herold reports: Privacy advocates say the increased collection, storage, and sharing of educational data pose real threats to children and families, from identify theft to nuisance advertising, misguided profiling to increased surveillance of everyday activities. There is even the potential for physical harm to students, alleges one Arizona legislator who authored a recently passed privacy…
Category: Youth & Schools
U.S. Education Department responds to Senator Markey’s concerns
USED has replied to a letter sent by Senator Markey concerning the privacy of student information. You can read their response here (pdf). I’m still working my way through it, but it’s obvious that a lot of their response is that they have issued “guidance.” But “guidance” does not have the force of regulation and…
Respecting Student Privacy in the Cloud: The Need for an Industry Commitment
Margo Day, Vice-President, U.S. Education at Microsoft, writes: We have been working diligently with our customers in the K12 community to help them understand and meet data privacy obligations as schools increasingly move to innovative cloud-based services. A recently published study by the Fordham Center for Law and Information Policy makes it clear that there is still…
OR: Hillsboro School District to tweak search and seizure policy after Brown Middle School incident
Luke Hammill reports: It’s been almost two months since controversy erupted at Hillsboro’s R.A. Brown Middle School over staff reviewing and deleting video on students’ cell phones. In its first work session since the holiday break, the Hillsboro School Board reacted Tuesday evening by examining its search and seizure policies. […] Hungerford said the relevant court cases have…