Articles

Protecting Privacy of School Directory Information December 2018 Amelia Vance Originally published by the National Association of State Boards of Education CC BY-NC 4.0 Students do not have the right to attend school anonymously, but they do have a right to have their information protected and used responsibly by local and state education agencies. State boards can help their states strike this balance. When the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) was first passed in 1974, schools realized that they had a problem: Without ongoing consent from parents (or an applicable FERPA exception), they were unable to ask students […]

West Virginia’s Steady Course on Student Data Privacy February 2016 Amelia Vance Republished courtesy of the National Association of State Boards of Education© State policymakers in 47 states introduced almost 300 education data privacy bills in 2014 and 2015, and 33 states passed new laws over the last three years. Before this flurry of legislation began, West Virginia’s Board of Education (WVBE) had already become a leader in ensuring that the privacy of student data was protected while allowing for the innovative use of data to help students succeed. Amid the earliest alarming headlines about data security breaches at major