The policy is designed to secure basic personal information such as names and birthdates, as well as, for students, data such as test scores. It is one in a wave of similar policies being drafted by school boards to comply with a mandate from the Alabama Department of Education.
Local school officials say the new policies are also needed because of the increased use of computers and devices in classrooms.
“We have an obligation to protect all of our employees’ data, but we certainly have an obligation to protect all of our student data,” Piedmont schools Superintendent Matt Akin said.
Names, addresses, and Social Security numbers are among the personal information public schools record electronically. Academic information is also stored on school computers, and, in some instances, can be recorded by educational apps, websites and software that students use, officials said.
Privacy advocates have pointed out that without controls, personal information recorded by schools and stored online or on internal computer networks is vulnerable to theft. They also point out that companies can use unprotected personal information for commercial reasons, such as marketing.
"Through online platforms, mobile applications, and cloud computing, schools and edtech providers collect massive amounts of sensitive information about students — information that needs to be kept out of the hands of non-educational, commercial interests and other third parties," states a release on Common Sense Media's website. Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization, helped craft a statewide student privacy law in California.
Schools are already required by federal law to protect the personal information they keep and to prevent students from being exploited by companies. Officials said the new policies help ensure those laws are being followed, and may fill in any gaps that could exist.
“We want to assure the public that we are protecting the children's digital information,” said Jacksonville schools Superintendent Jon Paul Campbell.
Jacksonville schools have yet to pass their data protection policy, but officials have been discussing it and plan to approve it before the next school year begins, he said.
Though schools and privacy advocates have been weighing students’ privacy concerns in light of the digital transition, it is not clear how much thought local parents have given to the issue.
One Piedmont parent, Stephanie Curvin, said she trusts the schools to protect digital data with the same vigilance they would data stored in file cabinets. Both of her children, a ninth-grader and a third-grader, use mobile devices and the Internet at school.
“I just had not given it much thought,” she said.
It remains unclear, even to those who manage technology in schools, what information websites, apps and software companies record on each student. Like Internet search engines, electronic education tools can track and store individual online activity.
Once recorded, that information can be sold to third parties and used to send targeted ads to users, officials said.
To guard against that, the policies being passed in Alabama include draft agreements through which the vendor can agree not to share information. Some schools already use such agreements with companies, but some educational technology companies may refuse the agreements, said Anthony Kingston, technology director for Jacksonville’s schools.
To protect student data some schools, including Jacksonville’s, limit the amount of information they give to companies. For example, Kingston said, the companies often receive only the student’s name and logon information.
In Piedmont, officials said the companies rarely need more than the students’ names and their identification numbers.
Piedmont High School Principal Adam Clemons welcomed the new policy, but said he already feels, as an educator, and as a parent of young students in the system, that the controls in place are adequate to protect students’ information.
“I feel confident with the system that is in place,” he said.
©2015 The Anniston Star (Anniston, Ala.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
