FPF Survey Finds Parents Embracing School Collection, Use of Personal Data for Research
Parents "strongly support, and desire, the benefits of student data collection and use" the closer that such data use is tied to individual classrooms and to a child, found a Future of Privacy Forum survey released Thursday. FPF Policy Counsel…
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Amelia Vance said in a post that the findings parallel last year's study. She said parents increasingly are seeing value that school districts get from use of personal data such as grades, attendance, disciplinary records and participation in school lunch programs, plus traditionally sensitive data. Vance wrote, there's support for the collection and use of parents' marital status, family income, Social Security numbers and race and ethnicity, which is "critical for research that identifies potentially discriminatory policies and practices." She said the survey also found nearly all parents of school-age children want to be "informed with whom and for what purpose their child's record is being shared." One area that needs more awareness, she said, is helping parents better understand current laws and practices that protect student data, since "slightly fewer parents" this year than last felt confident about such requirements. Rates of technology use by students and parents in schools went up by 20 percent since last year.