For Immediate Release: November 9, 2015

Contact: Renee Rybak Lang, renee.lang@nasbe.org, 703-740-4841

NASBE Urges Congress to Keep Student Data Privacy Language in ESEA Reauthorization

Alexandria, Va. – NASBE joined several national education groups in urging Congress to keep language that creates a committee on student data privacy in its final ESEA reauthorization bill.  The statement is excerpted below:

“Our organizations share a deep commitment to effective and equitable educational data use, while steadfastly protecting all students’ privacy and confidentiality. Federal investments over the past decade in state longitudinal data systems, statewide data coordination, and related professional development helped state and local leaders dramatically improve data access and use. This data infrastructure and capacity building have meaningfully improved teaching, learning, and decisionmaking by school, district, and state leaders.

Further work is needed, however, to expand and enhance the nation’s education data capacity, including improving school systems’ disparate privacy policies and practices. Promoting digital equity in our schools must necessarily include a focus on ensuring privacy protections for all learners, not just students attending schools with the professional development and other resources required to implement leading-edge data privacy and security requirements. Achieving this vision will require well-designed federal supports and targeted requirements that fully recognize – and do not ignore – the existing and rapidly evolving state and local privacy landscape.

As you finalize negotiations about the future of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), we strongly urge you to maintain language embedded in the Every Child Achieves Act (S.1177) that proposes to establish a privacy committee to examine student data privacy issues. … ”

Read the full letter here.

The National Association of State Boards of Education represents America’s state and territorial boards of education. Our principal objectives are to strengthen state leadership in education policymaking, advocate equality of access to educational opportunity, promote excellence in the education of all students, and ensure responsible lay governance of education. Learn more at www.nasbe.org.

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