Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Politicians Working to Protect Student Privacy

Kudos to U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch (R - Utah) and Edward Markey (D- Mass.) who are proposing changes to FERPA - the federal law that protects student privacy. A blog in The New York Times explained the details. See:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/14/senators-intend-to-amend-federal-student-privacy-law/?emc=edit_tnt_20140514&nlid=66679958&tntemail0=y

According to the blog:

The senators today made public draft legislation to amend the educational privacy law. It would:
— Require schools to maintain and make available a list of all outside companies that have access to their students’ information.
— Give parents the right to review and correct personal information collected about their children by educational apps, online homework software or any other school vendors.
— Minimize the amount of students’ personal details that schools could transfer to companies.
— Prohibit the use of students’ personal information to market products or services to them.
— Require data security safeguards to protect sensitive student data collected by companies.
FERPA had been weakened in recent years and, according to one NYS official, FERPA is not taken very seriously in the K-12 setting. Thus,  it is all the more important that political leaders from different parties are willing to work together to take action to protect students. 

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