Digital Smarts - Where Do Parents Stand with Technology during the Pandemic?

A recent survey from the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) reports that the the majority of parents feel the technology provides key benefits to education, including communication and learning support. The survey, conducted this summer, found that data privacy was a "mid- to low-level" concern among parents, outweighed by the quality of their children's education. Yet many parents surveyed said they are not aware of the legal rights for protecting their child’s data privacy, nor of the technology plans in place in their child’s school or district. 

“Parents see themselves as responsible for children’s privacy, even though they report feeling ill-equipped to manage it,” says Elizabeth Laird, senior fellow of student privacy for the Washington, D.C.-based CDT. However, Laird notes, the legal framework in education does not allow for any control or input from parents. Schools are the ones legally responsible for protecting student data.  Further, the more parents learn about student data privacy, the more concerned they become, the survey found. And parents of elementary school-aged children, African-American parents, Hispanic parents and those with higher incomes report higher overall concern for this issue than other parents. Interested in finding out more about what responsibility schools have for preserving students’ data privacy? Check out this primer on the key points of the Family Educational Rights And Privacy Act (FERPA).