Questions To Ask Your School Or District About Privacy
3 min read
These questions are a starting point in getting a sense of how your school or district understands and responds to issues of student privacy.
Also, in looking at privacy and data storage, it will likely become necessary to differentiate between data that is considered an "educational record" and data that is not considered an educational record. The definition of educational records is part of FERPA. Under FERPA, parents also have rights to review and challenge data that is collected and stored as part of an educational record.
Other data will likely be covered under district policy and/or a vendor terms of service.
With that said, here are some questions to jumpstart the conversation:
- Ask for a list of vendors who get educational records covered under FERPA.
- Ask for a list of vendors who get student data that is not considered an educational record.
- Ask to see executed legally binding contracts between the school (or district) and the vendor. These agreements should include terms of service and privacy policies. The terms of service and/or privacy policies should specify parental rights to review and/or delete records on vendor systems. Needless to say, if the district can't produce a contract, that's a bad sign.
- Ask how a parent can opt out of having student data that is not an educational record stored on a vendor's system.
- Ask to descriptions of the datasets collected by and stored in services used by the school. This should include the schoolwide student information system, to learning apps used in your child's classroom.
- Ask the school or district to verify that any list of services storing student data includes any apps used as part of an iPad or Chromebook program.
It's also worth noting that teachers should ask these same questions, and include questions about what apps store information on teachers.
In fairness, these questions should probably be directed to the district, as getting answers to these questions will require a significant amount of time, and it's probably better for kids in school to have district staff time used to gather this information than teacher or school staff time. And, while I hesitate to descend into cynicism, do not be surprised if districts stonewall, or have no idea how to answer these questions. This should be the beginning of a conversation where they begin to understand the need for them to become more organized and focused on how they manage student privacy needs, and parent outreach.
