NATIONAL NEWS ‘mdash; A new database that tracks the progress of high-school students could pay dividends in determining the efficacy of academic programs ‘mdash; though it may also put student privacy at risk.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded a $2.9 million grant to the National Student Clearinghouse in February to create a national database tracking the performance of high-school students.
The grant is designed to help close a critical data gap in understanding student performance and strengthening the links between secondary and postsecondary education, according to Vicki L. Phillips, director of education at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Essentially, the database would allow high schools to understand how well they’ve prepared their students for collegiate success.
The National Center for Education Statistics (part of the Department of Education) currently uses the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. This program is comprised of over 10,000 institutions that provide data on enrollment, program completion, graduation rates and financial aid. But the system can’t track every school.
Attempts to rectify IPEDS’s shortcomings were suggested in a 2005 report by NCES. Proposed changes included linking a student’s Social Security number with date of birth, ethnicity and gender as well as keeping tabs on any financial aid received from federal, state and institutional sources.
More troubling was how the report addressed privacy concerns. Though it acknowledged the sensitive nature of the tracking system, the report insisted that NCES had never improperly disclosed a case; it would be in full compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which maintains what information can and cannot be disclosed without the permission of the student. This simplistic rationale for why students should not be worried is no iron-clad guarantee that data theft will not happen, and does not explain what measures would be taken to alert students that their data may have been stolen.
If our federal government created a database at the national level, it would provide educators with helpful interstate comparisons. Assessments could measure SAT prep course efficiency or alert them if a significant number of students in a certain college are struggling with advanced coursework. Presently, educators must use databases that don’t have a standard set of data and are poorly connected across state lines ‘mdash; making nationwide educational assessments difficult.
For the 2008-09 academic year, portions of the changes proposed in 2007 are mandatory, though the collection of Social Security numbers was deferred. A significant change would require colleges to include how well their students score on internal tests used to evaluate performance. This is an acceptable first step. But these numbers will
only have meaning for specific colleges. This process must be standardized in some way to understand performance across different institutions.
Both National Student Clearinghouse and the NCES say they are in full compliance with education privacy laws, but the specific language of the law itself may remain off-putting to many privacy advocates.
Current regulations allow third-party organizations to access student records without consent. Maintaining this policy is acceptable in the interest of efficiency, though students must know that their information could be shared ‘mdash; and they must be able to opt out of the tracking program. It’s also critical that all personally identifiable information be purged within five years of a student’s graduation. There’s no need to maintain personal data after the student has left college, and exposing students to the possibility of identity theft is unfair given the data that they are providing for researchers.
Though the benefits of an expanded IPEDS are clear, the use of Social Security numbers or student IDs cannot be allowed, as identity theft is a serious concern in the digital age. Any national database must use alternate IDs that have no connection to a student outside of their educational records. They should be protected as rigorously as Social Security numbers are under the law.
The impasse between educators and privacy advocates must be resolved in the interest of better understanding the successes and failures of our education system. Educators need better tools to track and develop programs that allow more students to succeed in higher education, but the privacy concerns are equally valid. Having a complete record of every class taken by every student could potentially be used to evaluate students in ways not originally intended for research, illustrating the importance of who gets access to the data and for what purposes it is used. But if administrators can protect and restrict access to sensitive data, an expanded database should be provided at the federal level.
Readers can contact Omair Qazi at [email protected].