Guidance Offered on Guarding Student Privacy in School Data

Federal Officials Seek to Clear Up Confusion Over Legal Protections

The U.S. Department of Education has launched a campaign to help school officials channel the flood of student data generated in federal accountability reporting and state longitudinal databases without leaking students’ or teachers’ private information.

“With the emphasis on [the No Child Left Behind Act], we’ve seen a real expansion of the information on students that’s being released to the public,” said Marilyn M. Seastrom, the chief statistician and director of the statistical-standards program at the department’s National Center for Education Statistics. Both NCLB and the more recent fiscal-stimulus law required states to collect steadily more student data to monitor schools’ progress.

“At the same time,” Ms. Seastrom said, “we have laws at the federal level, individual states have their own laws, and we have just good data ethics on protecting the...