Transparency in Public Schools: A Public Policy Problem?

Note: Transparency is how the public holds public entities accountable. By law (the Freedom of Information Law), many documents produced by public entities, like schools, must be provided to the public when requested. Citizens in the US are given the right of oversight of their governmental agencies.

Do public schools have a public policy problem?  Dr. Joel Reidenberg, of Fordham Law School, thinks they do.

When Fordham Law School released its recent report on Privacy and Cloud Computing in Public Schools, problems with transparency in public schools were discovered. According to an article in The New York Times, 54 school districts across the US were asked for public information about how districts were handling the outsourcing of private student information. "...only 20 of 54 districts provided full documentation by the deadline... and "researchers said they encountered 'significant difficulty reaching any district personnel who were familiar with the district's outsourcing practices.'"

If district personnel are not familiar with their own outsourcing practices, how can they effectively protect student privacy in an era when so much private student information is being collected, shared, and stored? Well, the is answer is they can't. This problem exists across the country. NCPR recently aired an OnPoint segment on privacy. Potsdam resident and former Board of Education member Susie Rice called in to discuss the topic. She stated that data is the new currency. Data is valuable and data-mining is rampant. Thus, students must have their interests protected by the concerted efforts of parents, school officials, and lawmakers. 

The NY Times article noted that the South Orangetown Central School District in Blauvelt, NY "is conducting an audit to examine how its contracts cover the sharing and reuse of student data." Parents should ask their Board of Education to have such an audit conducted.

Transparency, by school districts, the State Education Dept., and vendors, about the use, reuse, and sharing of student data is vital if this public policy problem is to be addressed and students are to be protected.  

Student Privacy: Questions for Parents

What student privacy protection questions should parents (and interested community members) be asking of school officials? The Fordham Law Study (on cloud computing in K-12 public schools) and pending legislation in NYS provide a wake up call for parents and prompt the following observations and questions:

Questions for Parents to Pose to School Districts About Student Privacy and Parental Rights

• Which school official(s) is highly knowledgeable about the contracts entered into by the school district (with third-party vendors) that pertain to the sharing of private student data? Many (possibly most) school officials have no employees who are knowledgeable about the contracts.
•  Do the contractual provisions protect students and respect parental oversight rights? Two bills introduced in the NYS Assembly last year  (A07872A & A06059A) contain language to the effect that a form should be made available to allow parents (or eligible students 18 yrs. or older) to opt-out of the disclosure of personally identifiable student information and biometric records to a third party [unless such release is permissible under current law without permission]. Among other provisions: 1. student data must be under the direct control of the school district 2. security audits must be conducted annually by third-party vendors and the results must released to boards of education along with remediation plans 3. security breaches must be reported to school districts and the costs associated with security breaches must be paid by the third-party vendor 4. Finally,"The Department and District Boards of Education shall publicly and conspicuously disclose on their website and through annual electronic notification...the existence and character of any personally identifiable information from education records that they, directly or through contracts with outside parties, maintain. 5. Are there explicit prohibitions on the nonacademic use of student data that is being outsourced?

• Is the school district transparent about student privacy protection and documents related to such? According to the Fordham Study, most school districts are opaque on the topic of student privacy, student data outsourcing, and the provisions of their contracts with outside vendors. 

• What information has been outsourced on my child and us (the parents)? How do we see this data to verify accuracy and examine the scope of the data collection? Parents, for the most part, are being left out of the data collection and sharing practices of school districts.

• Does the school district negotiate contract provisions (with third-party vendors) such that parental consent rights and student privacy rights are protected? Most school districts sign boilerplate contracts with vendors instead of negotiating contracts that protect student privacy and parental consent rights. For instance, do the contracts contain provisions....requiring parental consent for the sharing of their child's private data? permit parents to view the information about their child that is in the possession of third-party vendors?  require/permit the auditing of the vendor by the school district to ensure the student data is being used properly and deleted when appropriate? prohibit the re-selling or release of private student data to other vendors? 

• Is student privacy protection a high priority for school officials? The Fordham Study reveals that private student data is not well-protected by school districts.

Parents should know school districts' privacy policies and practices

According to the recently published Fordham Law School study, "Privacy and Cloud Computing in Public Schools," parents are concerned about the sharing of private student information. Why?

• Student data will be sourced in data centers operated by third-party vendors.
• ...parents worry about the extensive quantity of student data being collected and the access being granted to that data.
• Is the data being held for an indefinite period of time? 
• Is the duration of storage outside the control of the school system?
• What access is being given to third-party vendors for marketing purposes?
• Services such as email and document sharing that are offered to educational institutions for no financial payment also flag privacy and data security concerns.
• Re. inBloom, Inc., one parent group has stated, "the plan to share personally identifiable and highly confidential student data in such an unrestricted manner, in an open-ended time frame, without parental notification or consent, is unprecedented in US history, and would violate both FTC and HIPAA protections..."

 The study notes that schools' actual policies and practices overseeing student privacy "remain largely unknown."  
~ Do you, as parents and community members, know your school district's actual privacy policies and practices?
~ Are Board members reporting to the public about such policies/practices/contractual provisions and making the answers "conspicuous"  on the school district's website?
~  Who is representing and protecting your child's privacy? Since parents have been cut out of the picture to a startling level - with no parental notification or consent required for so much data sharing - who is left to protect the sharing, storage, and disclosure of private information about your children?

If ever there was a time for parents to organize and make their voices heard, it is now.

More Student Privacy Concerns: What's P-20?

For all who are worried about the risks to student privacy facing students in NYS, it is worth reading this article:

http://www.lohud.com/article/20140125/NEWS02/301250047/N-Y-plans-share-data-from-pre-K-workforce-aims-unlock-keys-student-success

It certainly prompts us to learn about P-20 -  which is a NYSED plan to collect and share student data with other agencies. The data gathering begins in Pre-K and ends when students enter the workforce.

One superintendent is quoted as saying, "Why are we doing this? What's the purpose? Why do they need students' names? Why do we need to share information about 5-year-olds with colleges? Unbelievable."

Years ago, Alvin Toffler and other futurists correctly predicted that technology would move ahead of our capacity to predict its negative implications. The P-20 plan to gather so much information about students is alarming. Just how closely should Big Brother be watching citizens?

At this point, what type of student data is being collected and poised to be shared with the likes of inBloom, Inc.?

• Names
• Addresses
• Sometimes Social Security Numbers
• Records of Learning Disabilities
• Test Scores
• Attendance Records
• Hobbies
• Career Goals
• Attitudes Toward School

Student Privacy and Cloud Computing

Last month The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History (FLASH) released a lengthy study entitled "Privacy and Cloud Computing in Public Schools."  Many parents believe their right to be consulted about and to give permission for the release of personally identifiable information about their children have been trod upon by NYS public schools in their agreements with 3rd-party vendors who are gathering vast amounts of student information.

The Fordham legal team presents their goals as follows:

1. To provide a national picture of cloud computing in public school
2. To assess how public schools address their statutory obligations
3. To make recommendations based on the findings to improve the protection of student privacy in the context of cloud computing. 

Some of their key findings, noted below, are alarming.

• 95% of school districts rely on cloud services
• Cloud services are poorly understood, non-transparent, and weakly governed.
• Districts frequently surrender control of student information when using cloud services. For instance, fewer than 7% of the contracts restrict the sale or marketing of student information by vendors.
• An overwhelming majority of cloud service contracts DO NOT address parental notice, consent, or access to student information.
• School district cloud service agreements generally do not provide for data security and even allow vendors to retain student information in perpetuity...

More valuable information from the study will in be included in future postings.

PCSD: Why take a financial risk?

The Potsdam Village Board took action this week to write off the remaining $220,426 on a loan given to the Building Blocks Daycare 20 years ago. In 2009, the Village Board wrote off approximately $170,000 in interest payments on this loan. Thus, close to $400,000 in revolving grant monies have been lost because the funds were granted to a business that was highly unlikely to be able to repay its obligations.

Those who do not study history are destined to repeat it. Therefore, it is important for school and village officials ensure that the monies they oversee are used properly.

PCSD officials are now planning to engage in a $350K renovation project on the former daycare center building (now owned by the PCSD). The public has been told that BOCES wants to rent the building for special needs students. Legally, once the building is declared unneeded by the PCS BOE, the district is free to engage in a ten-year lease with BOCES. State Ed. permits a future BOE to agree to a second ten-year lease if it is requested by BOCES. However, the PCSD wants to bond over 15 years. Thus, risk would be taken on by the PCSD should BOCES decide, in ten years, that a second lease is not wanted.

The public should be told why officials are willing to take this risk so they can either support the risk or express opposition to it.

Homework & Grading & Mastery

The theme of the December 2013 edition of EL (Educational Leadership) is student mastery of subject matter. What is not surprising is how often the educational experts contributing to the issue referred to grading and homework in their writings about mastery.

Among the comments:

• "Teachers need to allow students to work on tasks repeatedly, without penalties, until they achieve mastery." [The takeaway? Evaluate homework with students and reteach when necessary but do NOT grade practice homework.]

• "...I have found that most teachers merely come up with an algorithm for calculating grades rather than ensuring that their grades link to larger, defensible standards. The fact that such norm-referenced, individualistic grading is a time-honored education custom fails to justify it." [The takeaway? How to best grade students should be studied by teachers and should be examined in-depth in schools of education.]

• "To see the harm in the current approach to grading, imagine a teacher who, like most teachers, gives As or Bs to her better students. But suppose that the school is one of the weakest schools regionally. She is thus giving grades determined by familiar local norms and low expectations, not measured against standards. Although, the teacher is well-intentioned, she is unwittingly setting up her students for heartbreak." [The takeaway? Rigorous statewide standards are needed so students can see how they compare to a standard that is much wider than their local schools.]

• "...remediation rates in college average 40 percent of incoming students (Wiggins, 2010) .  As a result, it's hard to feel confident about local performance standards." [The takeaway? College and university officials have been complaining for some time about too many incoming students not being college ready. The grade inflation that goes on at many, possibly most, high schools keeps students and parents content and quiet but masks truth and sets students up for failure.]

• "We owe each student the facts as to where he or she fits in in terms of wider-world standards."

• "Education has a long-standing practice of turning worthy learning goals into lists of bits." 

• "A march through facts and sub-skills, dotted with numerous quizzes, is not a path to true mastery."

• "The practice of reducing mastery to accurate recall of discrete facts and skills is tempting, common, and harmful. [The takeaway? Students should be taught how to think deeply. American educational content has often been characterized as being a mile wide and a millimeter deep.]

• "Too often we opt for uniformity over individuality because it's easier to manage." [The takeaway? Compliance, conformity, uniformity are prized in too many classrooms and school districts. The recent insult to student privacy, via data collection and sharing,  illustrates the extent to which these traits are expected of parents as well as their children. Going along to get along can come at a great price.]