Subject: FW: Dept. of Ed to track students individually; unclear how this will affect published information Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 18:16:28 -0600 Message-ID: <BDD0A3EABE40F04A8C7200805EDE5A6A01D82E7E@PEPSI.uwec.edu> From: "Richmond, Elizabeth B." <RICHMOEB@uwec.edu>
This article:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/11/30/us_eyes_collection
_of_college_student_data/
talks about the desire by the Dept. of Ed to track college students
individually to generate new statistics on graduation rates, etc.
They'll ask for names, addresses, SSNs, race, birthdate, sex, field of
student, dropout/transfer/graduation, tuition paid, financial aid and
credits. The impetus is from the No Child Left Behind Act - if federal
funds go to colleges, then they should be accountable. The way to
measure accountability, the proponents say, is to fix some data gaps
that result from the current collection methods which summarize student
information.
There are immediate privacy issues here, and apparently some existing
laws will have to change in order for this to go ahead. What's
interesting is that in response to the immediate objections about
collecting personally identifiable information, the Dept. says that
they'll never share the info. with other agencies...
Forwarded by Betsy Richmond from colleague
Amy West
University of Minnesota
Government Publications Library