Digital Smarts - Is There a Danger of Overregulation of Student Data?

Parents and educators alike have been diligently working to protect student information, and a number of relevant bills on regulating student data are up before state and federal legislators. But could these regulations actually harm students who need help the most? Susan Dynarski, a professor at the University of Michigan, seems to think so. In a recent blog entry for  The New York Times' The Upshot, Dynarski points out that it already violates existing laws for companies to use student data for their own profit. She gives examples of successful studies that would have been prohibited under the stricter proposed legislation, including several that used student data to document the benefit of smaller classes and charter school performance. She also argues against the focus on stringent student data security regulations, reasoning that there hasn’t been a large-scale theft of student data because test scores just don’t have the same market value as something like consumer credit card numbers. Dynarski proposes that instead of more restrictive legislation, Congress should authorize the Education Department to penalize schools and states when they violate existing privacy regulations, to avoid “unintentionally chok[ing] off the use of student data for its original purpose: assessing and improving education.”