Ferpa|Sherpa

This panel summary from the Workshop on Big Data in Education: Balancing the Benefits of Educational Research and Student Privacy focused on articulating the tensions between the potential for research using big data and the privacy of people whose information make up data sets. The discussions surfaced several major themes; while these themes were not […]

The primary purpose of this document is to help state and local education agencies and schools develop adequate policies and procedures to protect information about students and their families from improper release, while satisfying the need for school officials to make sound management, instructional, and service decisions. The document was developed under the direction of […]

While a great deal of attention has been paid recently to protecting the privacy of students’ personal information and education records, this resource argues that families and educators also need to be aware of the use and disclosure of students‘ personal information in research conducted by universities and other entities. This resource explores some potential […]

The Forum Guide to Education Data Privacy was developed as a resource for state and local education agencies (SEAs and LEAs) to use in assisting school staff in protecting the confidentiality of student data in instructional and administrative practices. SEAs and LEAs may also find this guide useful in developing privacy programs and related professional […]

This document recommends a set of core practices, operations, and templates that can be adopted and adapted by LEAs as they consider how to respond to requests for new and existing data about the education enterprise.

The primary audiences for this document are data policymakers and managers in SEAs who are generally responsible for managing and responding to requests for data. An additional important audience for this resource is the research community that submits data requests to SEAs. Data requests come from diverse sources, ranging from members of the research community […]

Administrators and data managers can help ensure the protection of personally identifiable information in the student records they maintain by developing and implementing a privacy and data protection program. The principles embodied in the Fair Information Practices adopted in the United States by the Federal Chief Information Officers Council and the Department of Homeland Security, […]

This report considers the following four layers of the ed tech ecosystem, each of which informs the others in myriad ways: Technological Infrastructure: What kind of technology can be considered “ed tech”? This layer encompasses cloud infrastructure, the Internet of Things, sensor networks, and other new technologies that facilitate connected learning environments (which transcend the traditional […]

Foundational changes at the intersection of technology, society, law, and behavior are disrupting and energizing large institutions, impacting the educational technologies and student privacy landscape at lightning speed. Greater levels of connectivity and participation are raising questions about how best to navigate new types of learning environments, how best to engage in data-driven decision-making, and […]

This report discusses the defining features of long-term longitudinal studies and the associated challenges for researchers tasked with collecting and analyzing such data while protecting the privacy of human subjects. It also describes the disclosure risks and common legal and technical approaches currently used to manage confidentiality in longitudinal data. Finally, it identifies urgent problems […]