Six Student Data Privacy Practices for Success

This month, California’s Attorney General Kamala Harris released a report entitled Ready for School: Recommendations for the Ed Tech Industry to Protect the Privacy of Student Data. 

Access to student data is essential for school officials, including teachers, in order to adjust instruction and school improvement planning to match the needs of students. However, student data must be treated with respect in order for it to be protected. Additionally, its use must be focused on educational purposes.

In this report, six best practices are shared that should be expected of any provider of technology solutions to schools that involves student data:

• Data Collection and Retention: Minimization is the goal. Collect only the student information required to accomplish the services provided to the school district. 
• Data Use: Keep it educational. Be sure that the provider doesn’t use data to target any advertising to anyone.
• Data Disclosure: Make protections stick. Check if the provider has a student data privacy policy available that outlines any data disclosure processes.
• Individual Control: Respect users’ rights. Provide a means for parents, legal guardians or eligible students to review and correct student data. This typically occurs through and with the support of the school district.
• Data Security: Implement reasonable and appropriate safeguards. Not only should the provider be protecting the student data, they should have ongoing training internally to keep student data privacy at the forefront.
• Transparency: Provide a meaningful privacy policy. Make sure it is readily available, such as Illuminate Education’s Privacy Policy located on our main public website at the bottom, and from within our product’s login page.

Illuminate Education is proud to have joined over 300 companies who are committed to student data privacy by joining the Student Privacy Pledge to safeguard student data. The Pledge complements the six best practices outline and can be found here:

https://studentprivacypledge.org/privacy-pledge/

*****

Illuminate Education is a provider of educational technology and services offering innovative data, assessment and student information solutions. Serving K-12 schools, our cloud-based software and services currently assist more than 1,600 school districts in promoting student achievement and success.

Ready to discover your one-stop shop for your district’s educational needs? Let’s talk.