Comments of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy
to the
Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education

Privacy Act of 1974; System of Records—“Impact Evaluation of Data-Driven Instruction
Professional Development for Teachers” (#18-13-39)

[FR Doc. 2015-30526]

February 13, 2016

In response to the Institute of Education Sciences of the Department of Education’s published notice, dated December, 2, 2015, to create a new system of records for the “Impact Evaluation of Data-Driven Instruction Professional Development for Teachers” (#18-13-39) (“Study”), the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy (“PCSP”) respectfully submits the following comments objecting to the Department of Education’s (“Department”) proposed collection, use and disclosure of students’ personally identifiable information for purposes of this Study.

According to the System of Records Notice (“SORN”), the Study will facilitate the collection of “personally identifying information on approximately 12,000 students, 500 teachers, and 104 principals from 104 schools in 12 school districts…”

The SORN further states that records “[f]or students… will include, but will not necessarily be limited to, standardized math and English/Language Arts test scores, age, sex, race/ethnicity, grade, eligibility for free/reduced-price lunches, English Learner status, individualized education plan status, school enrollment dates, attendance records, and discipline records.”

We oppose the federal government collecting this highly sensitive personally identifying information from students, on the following grounds:

1. We agree with the Electronic Privacy Information Center that the Department could likely achieve its research goals by using aggregate data instead of students’ personally identifiable information.
This would also reduce the risk that the personal data of students might be misused or breached by the federal government or the private contractors to whom the agency proposes to share the data. If the Department or its contractors cannot achieve their goals by collecting and analyzing aggregate data, they should be obligated to explain why. The goal of data minimization is a requirement of the Fair Information Practice Principles as delineated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”).

2. The Department should be obligated to define specifically which student personally identifiable information (PII) it plans to collect and why.
The Department’s vague declaration that the student information it will collect “will include, but will not necessarily be limited to…” lacks the precision necessary to meet the Department’s own transparency guidance for local education agencies. According to the document entitled “Transparency Best Practices for Schools and Districts,” the Department’s Privacy Technical Assistance Center (“PTAC”) advises that schools and districts communicate the following information to parents:

What information are you collecting about students?
• Develop and publish a data inventory listing the information that you collect from or about your students. A best practice is to provide this information at the data element level.
Why are you collecting this information?
• Explain why you collect student information (e.g., for state or federal reporting, to provide educational services, to improve instruction, to administer cafeteria services, etc.). A best practice is to provide this information at the data element level.

Just as the PTAC advises local education agencies to develop and publish an inventory at the data element level, the federal government should be obligated to maintain at least the same level of transparency as it recommends that schools and districts display. Transparency is also one of the key Fair Information Practice Principles.

3. Notify the parents of children involved in this Study that their student’s personally identifiable information will be collected and disclosed to researchers.
While FERPA no longer requires parental notification and consent of student participation in a federal study, audit or evaluation since the regulations were re-written in 2011, best practices for transparency developed by the PTAC for local education agencies urge them to answer the following questions and communicate the answers to parents:

Do you share any personal information with third parties? If so, with whom, and for what purpose(s)?

The Department should adopt this practice for the unit record system developed for purposes of this Study. This is yet another Fair Information Practice Principle as articulated by NIST: “Organizations should be transparent and notify individuals regarding collection, use, dissemination, and maintenance of personally identifiable information.”

4. The Department should obtain informed consent from parents before children participate in the Study.
Approximately 50 million students are currently educated in the U.S. Of those 50 million, 12,000 children will be taking part in the Study, representing 0.024% of the entire student population. Obtaining consent from parents of this relatively small sampling of families would not be overly burdensome. The Department or participating districts should ask parents for their permission to participate before the Study begins, in accordance with the following Fair Information Practice Principle: “Organizations should involve the individual in the process of using PII and, to the extent practicable, seek individual consent for the collection, use, dissemination, and maintenance of PII.”

5. Improve the Department’s data security protocols before developing yet another unit record system.
Troubling findings from the U.S. Department of Education: Information Security Review Hearing (“Hearing”) by the Full House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on November 17, 2015, include:

1. The Department maintains 184 information systems.
• 120 are managed by outside contractors
• 29 are valued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as “high asset”
2. The Department scored NEGATIVE 14% on the OMB CyberSprint for total users using strong authentication
3. The Department received an “F” on the FITARA scorecard
4. The IG penetrated DoEd systems completely undetected by both the CIO or contractor
5. The Department needs significant improvement in four key security areas:
• Continuous monitoring
• Configuration management
• Incident response and reporting
• Remote access management

Until the Department markedly improves its information security practices for the data systems it currently maintains it should not be in the business of creating additional unit record systems. Security is yet another principle of Fair Information Practices that the federal government should be obligated to respect: “Organizations should protect PII (in all media) through appropriate security safeguards against risks such as loss, unauthorized access or use, destruction, modification, or unintended or inappropriate disclosure.” At the very least, the Department should be obligated to reveal what security protections will be used to safeguard this data, as in this PTAC recommendation: “Explain your institutions information technology (IT) security and data protection policies.”

5. Reveal when the data will be deleted or destroyed.
Another Fair Information Practice Principle refers to data deletion: any organization, including the Department should “only retain PII for as long as is necessary to fulfill the specified purpose(s)” for which it has been collected. Yet nowhere in the SORN does the Department disclose exactly when the data will be deleted. To the contrary, according to the General Records Schedule 4.1 referred to in the SORN, an unsatisfactorily vague statement is made that the personal information collected for this Study will be “Destroy[ed] when no longer needed.”

6. Explain why the Department must collect any personally identifiable data for the purpose of a study that other researchers are conducting.
Finally, we are unable to discern why the Department needs to acquire this information at all. If a study of Data-Driven Instruction Professional Development by contractors must involve the analysis of personally identifiable student information, why cannot these researchers obtain the data directly from participating districts, without the data being collected or maintained by the federal government?

Conclusion

For the preceding reasons, the Department should cease development of the “Impact Evaluation of Data-Driven Instruction Professional Development for Teachers” unit record system. The PCPS feels strongly that the Department should never collect personally identifiable student information for any reason.

However, if the Department is intent on moving forward with this study, it should be obligated to: (1) explain why aggregate information would not be sufficient for the purposes of the Study; (2) specifically define the personally identifiable data elements that will be collected and why each data element is needed; (3) notify parents of students who are involved in the Study, or at least reveal which districts are participating, and report the names of any other third parties to whom the personally identifiable information will be disclosed; (4) demand that districts obtain informed consent from parents whose children are participating in the Study; (5) demonstrate “significant improvement” in the four key security areas identified as a result of the Hearing, or at least report what security protections will be used to safeguard the data (6) disclose specifically when the data will be deleted; and (7) explain why the federal government has a need to collect or maintain any personally identifiable data when districts could provide it directly to the researchers for their analysis.

The PCSP awaits the Department’s responses to each of these questions and/or recommendations.

Respectfully submitted,

Rachael Stickland
Co-Chair

Leonie Haimson
Co-Chair

Parent Coalition for Student Privacy
124 Waverly Place
New York, New York 10011
[email protected]

Click here for a downloadable version of the comments with references.

We know you care about student privacy but are you aware this Thursday is Data Privacy Day? Data Privacy Day is an annual international effort held every January 28th to increase awareness and empower people to protect their personal information.

The Parent Coalition for Student Privacy will be celebrating Data Privacy Day this year by holding a Twitter chat on January 28th from 9:00-10:00 PM EST. We will be asking parents and teachers to weigh in on what questions they would like answered and resources they need to protect and advocate for student privacy in their own school communities. We will use feedback from the Twitter chat to help us design a student privacy toolkit which we will release in partnership with the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood this fall when kids go back-to-school. Stay tuned!

Please join us this Thursday, January 28th from 9:00-10:00 PM EST on Twitter at @parents4privacy and @commercialfree and use the hashtag #StudentPrivacy.

Thank you!

Leonie Haimson and Rachael Stickland

Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, co-chairs

www.studentprivacymatters.org

@parents4privacy

By Rachael Stickland and Leonie Haimson, co-chairs, Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

High schoolers hate waking up early on Saturday mornings, especially to take high-stakes tests like the College Board’s SAT or the ACT. Next Saturday, January 23, 2016 marks the last time that U.S. students are able to take the current SAT before the new test comes online on March 5.

Anxiety over the “new” test has left many families scrambling to get their kids registered for the older, well-established version to be administered in just a few days. Now that the day is almost near – training courses and practice tests completed – there’s one last thing parents must do to help their children prepare for Saturday: advise them not to answer the optional pre-test questions.

Just moments before administration of the exam officially begins, or upon registering online, students may be asked to answer questions on a student questionnaire and to check off a box agreeing to participate in the Student Search Service ™ program if they want to receive information from colleges or scholarship organizations. See below or here for more information:

According to POLITICO, “Depending on the exam, at least 65 percent — and as many as 85 percent — of test takers check that box, according to the College Board and ACT. Parents do not have to give their consent, as this is only required by federal law while collecting personal data from children under 13.”

Students will be asked their Social Security number; other questions may include their grade point average, religious affiliation, ethnicity, family income, interests, citizenship, disabilities, and more. Under immense pressure to perform well on the test, and often not aware that answering these questions is fully voluntary, students may be enticed to offer up this information, especially if they believe it will increase their opportunity to be recruited by elite colleges or offered scholarships. They may not even realize that this information may be used to help colleges decide who not to recruit or admit as well. As the College Board puts it,

As part of taking a College Board exam, students are asked to fill out a student data questionnaire…. Participating, eligible organizations can then search for groups of students who may be a good fit for their communities and programs, but only among those students who opt to participate in Student Search.

The search criteria can include any attribute you provide, except the following: disability, self-reported parental income, social security number, phone numbers and actual test scores. The most searched items are expected high school graduation date, cumulative GPA and intended college major.

And: By opting in, they give the College Board permission to share their names and limited information with colleges and scholarship programs looking for students like them.

In other words, colleges are looking not just for students to recruit but who to admit and/or reject; or as the College Board softly frames it, those “who may be a good fit for their communities and programs.”

What your weary-eyed, college-bound children may not also realize is that when they provide the College Board or ACT personal details, their “profiles” are not simply “sent” to interested parties, rather they are sold for as much as 40 cents apiece in the shadowy data market.

According to the College Board website: “During the registration process, we ask students for: name, address, date of birth, gender, Social Security Number or student ID, and address. We may also ask for phone numbers and email addresses, school name, grade level or expected graduation date, ethnicity, and a parent’s name, email address, and education level.”

And: “…we ask students for personal information to help them make choices about their future. To help students receive the most relevant and accurate information about their college options and scholarship opportunities through Student Search Service®, we also ask optional questions about academic and extracurricular interests, career and field of study interests, family income, and religious preferences. Students must opt in to participate in this service; the College Board does not include students without their consent. Students may also opt out at any time.

Note that link above, in case you or your child have already opted in upon registration that you still have the right now to opt out. The information requested varies by the exam they are taking, with the most intrusive data being asked of students when taking the SAT and PSAT, including religion, ethnicity and grades and citizenship, while less intrusive information is asked of students taking AP exams. See here for the differences.

Some parents may find this practice acceptable, especially if they perceive that their children “may” benefit when their information is passed along – or they may not. But what is also objectionable is that the College Board and ACT refuse to tell students (or parents for that matter) that they SELL the information. According to POLITICO, ACT’s profits generated from selling student profiles were approximately $15 million in 2012; the College Board wouldn’t disclose its revenue from its trademarked Student Search        Services ™ program but it surely was many millions as well.

At one place on its website, College Board falsely claims it doesn’t sell student data. On its “privacy policy” page, many parents will read the following: “The College Board does not sell student information. Students can voluntarily opt in to our Student Search Service. Qualified colleges, universities, nonprofit scholarship services, and educational organizations pay a license fee to use this information to recruit students and manage enrollment in connection with educational or scholarship programs.”

What the difference is between selling student data or selling “a license fee” to colleges and organizations to receive the data is a difference without a difference.

On another page, the company adjusts this claim by saying only that it doesn’t sell student data to test prep companies – not mentioning colleges or other organizations: “It is the College Board’s strict policy NOT to sell student information to test-preparation companies, nor are such companies affiliated with the College Board.”

On a yet a different page, meant for its institutional clients, the College Board makes clear that it does indeed sell student data, at 40 cents per name, and offers high priced subscription services for “enrollment planning”:

See the Pricing and Payment Policies here:

The Enrollment Planning Service, according to the College Board “precisely locates students — both within the United States and abroad — who meet admission criteria and are likely to succeed at a particular institution. Enrollment Planning Service also informs better and more-strategic recruitment activities based on a wide range of criteria including geography, demographics, academic preparation and educational aspirations.”

Its “Segment Analysis Service™ (formerly Descriptor PLUS™) is a powerful data enrichment service that allows admission professionals to identify promising prospective students by learning more about where they live and where they go to high school. Segment Analysis’ Educational Neighborhood and High School Cluster tags leverage data on millions of students and thousands of high schools to provide a more complete picture of various student segments and help you align your recruitment efforts to the characteristics of these segments.”

College Board adds that the Segment Analysis Service allows institutions to “achieve better yields from admission through graduation,” presumably in the effort to boost their four year graduation rates.

This is not to let off the ACT off the hook. ACT subjects parents and students to an even more detailed and intrusive survey on their website, with detailed questions about a student’s disabilities, preferences, religious practices, hobbies and more.

According to POLITICO, the ACT also lets customers filter student profiles by family income, parents’ education levels and student disabilities.

As first reported by an independent educational consultant Nancy Griesemer, the ACT even sells an algorithm to colleges based upon a student’s personal data points to help them decide whom to admit – without informing parents or students how this information may be used:

“… assessments [are] provided to approximately 450 institutional participants in ACT Research Services of “Overall GPA Chances of Success” in various general categories of majors including education, business administration, liberal arts, and engineering, as well as “Specific Course Chances of Success” in broad areas such as freshman English, college algebra, history, chemistry, psychology etc.

Chances of success are made in terms of those students likely to receive a “B” or better in these areas or those students likely to receive a “C” or better. And they are nowhere to be found on the ACT report provided to students and families.”

Why the secrecy? Why the deception? If you find this outrageous, you’re not alone. As far back as 2011, the data collection and storage practices, as well as the commercialization of student information, by College Board/ACT spurred Congressional inquiry.

A lawsuit was filed against the College Board and ACT in 2013 (Spector v. ACT, Inc. et al) and another in 2015 (Silha v. ACT, Inc. and the College Board), for deceptive practices, in that they never disclosed to students that their data was being sold as opposed to freely “shared.”

Unfortunately, the first lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiff in 2014, and the second lawsuit was recently dismissed when the Judge ruled that the plaintiffs failed to make their case showing any harm to the students from the sale of their data.

A Parent Coalition for Student Privacy researcher, Cheri Kiesecker, recently wrote the College Board to ask if students chose to NOT complete the survey, would their college admission chances be affected. See the reply from SAT / College Board here. Their representative responded that if a student does not opt in to Student Search Service ™, ”it will not impact their chances at being accepted into colleges or scholarship programs in any way.” What the representative did not say that if they opt in, it may negatively affect their application or scholarship opportunities.

So what should you say to your children if you’re a parent concerned with their privacy?

On its website, the College Board offers a “Test Day Checklist,” including what to bring (i.e. photo ID) and what to leave at home (i.e. cell phone) on test day. The same website links to the College Board’s Student Search Services ™ data-selling program where it reminds test takers to check the box to opt in when you take the SAT. (See the screenshot below.)

Use this information to educate your children. Explain to them why it’s important to never share personal information that is not absolutely necessary to register for or take the test. Advise them not to share their Social Security number or any other information that is not required. Show them the screenshot to see what the search consent checkbox may look like and how to answer. Then use our handy checklist to get yourself ready for the big test on Saturday.

And remember … once the test is complete, encourage your children to research colleges and scholarships on their own that might be a good fit for them. Their personal information doesn’t have to be sold– and should never be offered unknowingly in a manner that could limit their opportunities.

Parent Coalition for Student Privacy’s SAT Pre- Test Day Checklist:
1. On Thursday or Friday, talk to your children about the importance of providing only the personal information necessary to take the test, and show them the SAT’s Student Search Service ™ screenshot below so they know what it might look like and which box to select (No, thanks.);
2. Encourage them to go to bed early Friday night, get plenty of rest, and set the alarm (AM, not PM!);
3. Serve a nutritious breakfast Saturday morning to your children and remind them to bring a photo ID, the “admission ticket,” NO. 2 pencils and an acceptable calculator from the College Board’s Test Day checklist;
4. Remind them NOT to volunteer any personal information other than what is required like name, address, school, date of birth, etc., and that there is no reason to offer up their Social Security number, religious affiliation, family income, or other extraneous information. They should also CHECK the “No, thanks” box if there is one in the Student Search Service ™ section.
5. Reassure them to relax and just do their best on the exam itself.

In July 2014, after helping to defeat inBloom Inc., we launched the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy because we realized how widely personal student data was being disclosed by schools, districts, states and private corporations – without parent knowledge or consent.  Since then, our organization has become the go-to source for the parent point of view on student privacy and what must be done to strengthen parent rights to protect their children’s data from breaches and abuse.

Please help support our efforts, by clicking here at the Class Size Matters website, and specifying that you would like your tax-deductible donation to go to the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy.

Our Coalition continues to make waves. We have written op-eds and have been quoted widely on the need to protect sensitive, personally identifiable student information, most recently in relation to Mark Zuckerberg’s plans to expand online learning, and Google’s data-mining of students at school.  At the same time, we are working to inform parents about how to access their children’s personal data collected by state departments of education, as well as what they should demand in terms of privacy and security protections.

Next year offers great promise for our Coalition since we were able to secure some grant funding and are now able to dedicate more time to this work.  More specifically, we plan to collaborate with the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood to create and distribute a toolkit to educate parents, teachers and school officials about best practices to protect student information; and further grow our Coalition.  We will be hosting webinars and intensifying our parent outreach in the upcoming year.  More details to come soon.

In the meantime, we hope you will consider making a financial contribution to our Coalition’s efforts to help us strengthen our fight to protect student privacy.  You can make your tax-deductible donation here and specify the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy as the recipient.  Any amount helps!

By redoubling our efforts to improve school and district policies and practices, as well as improve legal protections, we are uniquely positioned to affect positive change for student privacy in the year ahead.

Again, thanks for all that you do to support student privacy. We  look forward to a wonderful New Year working with you!

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Rachael Stickland and Leonie Haimson

Co-chairs, Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

email: [email protected] | website: www.parentcoalitionforstudentprivacy.org | facebook: http://tinyurl.com/PCSPfbook | twitter: @parents4privacy

This is a repost from Tony Porterfield’s great blog, EdTechInfoSec; Tony is a public school parent and technology expert who has uncovered the shockingly weak security and privacy practices of many schools and software companies.