Who Should Have Access to Student Records?
Education data can be useful, but privacy experts are concerned about data misuse.
By JASON KOEBLER January 19, 2012
Since "No Child Left Behind" was passed 10 years ago, states have been required to ramp up the amount of data they collect about individual students, teachers, and schools. Personal information, including test scores, economic status, grades, and even disciplinary problems and student pregnancies, are tracked and stored in a kind of virtual "permanent record" for each student.
But parents and students have very little access to that data, according to a report released Wednesday by the Data Quality Campaign, an organization that advocates for expanded data use.
All 50 states and Washington, D.C. collect long term, individualized data on students performance, but just eight states allow parents to access their child's permanent record. Forty allow principals to access the data and 28 provide student-level info to teachers.
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