Privacy-minded parents are clashing with the New York State Education Department (NYSED) over the development of a data cloud that will contain the personal information of millions of New York public school students - including their names, birth dates, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, discipline and attendance records, and test scores.
Parents and identity protection and privacy advocates are raising concerns that this sensitive information can be shared outside the school system, and that parents have no recourse for opting their children out of the database. The NYSED says the database, dubbed the New York State Education Data Portal (EDP), will only contain information that schools have been gathering for years, and will function as a tool for teachers, parents and students to track progress, set individual goals and facilitate the electronic transfer of high school transcripts to colleges and universities.
Tom Dunn, a spokesman for NYSED, told the Village Voice that the data housed in EDP will be "regular student information that, when parents register a child for school, they give up."
Opponents of the project say they fear that personal student information could be shared with outside companies who could then use that information for targeted marketing to children.
During a rally against the EDP earlier in March, New York City Councilman Steve Levin spoke out, according to the Village voice. "Our children are not commodities," Levin said. "They are not something to be bought and sold on the market place. Their achievement and their data is not something that's negotiable or something that should be for sale."
And, at least one education advocacy group has raised concerns over the security of the data cloud. Data breaches can lead to identity theft.
"Many technology professionals do not trust clouds for their more sensitive data," Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, a New York education advocacy group, wrote on the New York Daily News website.
The Federal Trade Commission cites child identity theft as a growing problem. In testimony before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Ways and Means, FTC representatives said "... a child's identity is a blank slate that can be used to obtain goods and services over a long time period because parents typically do not monitor their children's credit, often having no reason to suspect any problem."
inBloom, the company developing the EDP, says it operates in compliance with federal laws governing privacy in education.
"Student data privacy is a top priority for inBloom, and protections for student privacy have been addressed throughout the design and ongoing operations of our solution, in compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)," the company says on its website. The EDP is expected to be complete and operational in fall of 2013.
Parents and identity protection and privacy advocates are raising concerns that this sensitive information can be shared outside the school system, and that parents have no recourse for opting their children out of the database. The NYSED says the database, dubbed the New York State Education Data Portal (EDP), will only contain information that schools have been gathering for years, and will function as a tool for teachers, parents and students to track progress, set individual goals and facilitate the electronic transfer of high school transcripts to colleges and universities.
Tom Dunn, a spokesman for NYSED, told the Village Voice that the data housed in EDP will be "regular student information that, when parents register a child for school, they give up."
Opponents of the project say they fear that personal student information could be shared with outside companies who could then use that information for targeted marketing to children.
During a rally against the EDP earlier in March, New York City Councilman Steve Levin spoke out, according to the Village voice. "Our children are not commodities," Levin said. "They are not something to be bought and sold on the market place. Their achievement and their data is not something that's negotiable or something that should be for sale."
And, at least one education advocacy group has raised concerns over the security of the data cloud. Data breaches can lead to identity theft.
"Many technology professionals do not trust clouds for their more sensitive data," Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, a New York education advocacy group, wrote on the New York Daily News website.
The Federal Trade Commission cites child identity theft as a growing problem. In testimony before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Ways and Means, FTC representatives said "... a child's identity is a blank slate that can be used to obtain goods and services over a long time period because parents typically do not monitor their children's credit, often having no reason to suspect any problem."
inBloom, the company developing the EDP, says it operates in compliance with federal laws governing privacy in education.
"Student data privacy is a top priority for inBloom, and protections for student privacy have been addressed throughout the design and ongoing operations of our solution, in compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)," the company says on its website. The EDP is expected to be complete and operational in fall of 2013.
