Putting Private Info on Government Database
Far more personal information on students than is necessary is being collected by public schools, according to the Fordham Law School Center on Law and Information Policy, which investigated education records in all 50 states. States are failing to safeguard students' privacy and protect them from data misuse.
Some states collect a lot of data that has nothing to do with student test scores, including Social Security numbers, disciplinary records, family wealth indicators, student pregnancies, student mental health, illness, and jail sentences. A couple of states record the date of a student's last medical exam and a student's weight.
The Fordham study reported that this collection of information is often not compliant with a 35-year-old law, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). The only punishment for a FERPA violation is for the Department of Education to withhold federal education funding, but the Department has never done that.
