Student Data Privacy Consortium launched to support ‘front line’ education stakeholders

WASHINGTON - Dec. 9, 2015 - PRLog -- The consortium, formed through a year long engagement and request from schools, government agencies and vendors, will provide a collaborative place for members to create a suite of solutions and resources to operationalize student data privacy best practices.

Student data privacy and security is among the biggest issues facing contemporary education and impacting stakeholders at every level. With the proliferation of education technology companies and the desire to use data to drive instruction, the needs in accessing student data are at the center of an international debate. Often data and information security are not under firm management control and governance and there is no comprehensive, best-practice approach to securing student data. Learning organizations, governmental agencies, and vendors and providers are faced with a litany of complex local, state, and federal regulations and policies.

The Student Data Privacy Consortium facilitated by the A4L Community in collaboration with representatives from a diverse set learning organizations, governmental agencies, as well as vendors and providers, focuses on operationalizing the complex and high-profile privacy and security issues surrounding safeguarding student data. This consortium is focused on providing tangible solutions to address operational issues schools and vendors experience every day. This work will leverage other work going on by the cadre of organizations working in the student data privacy space but, unlike that policy work, this work is tactical and focused on implementation.

“Districts that have put into practice the recommended procedures to ensure student data privacy realize that this requires a great deal of time and resources. Not all schools have the required resources to implement these procedures effectively” states Steve Smith, Cambridge Public Schools CIO and Chair of the Student Data Privacy Consortium.  “Many of these best practices can be replicated across LEAs and Vendors through agreed upon procedures, contract terms and common expectations. The Student Data Privacy Consortium has great potential to bring together LEAs, SEAs, and Vendors to create a more seamless process for ensuring student data privacy such that all districts can meet expected best practices.”

The Student Data Privacy Consortium is meeting virtually to organize and prioritize the work but will be holding their first face-to-face meeting during the A4L Community Annual Meeting on February 9-11, 2016 in Washington.  The agreed upon first item is the expansion of the Massachusetts Student Privacy Alliance (MSPA) work around a “shared vendor contract” currently in use by 30 districts.

For more information, or to join this initiative, please visit https://www.a4l.org/Secure/Pages/Student-Data-Privacy-Consortium.aspx

For more information about the A4L Community 2016 Annual Meeting, please visit: https://www.a4l.org/Events/Pages/2016AnnualMeeting.aspx

About the Access 4 Learning Community

There is no other global community made up of educational policymakers, marketplace product and service providers and the customers they serve, collaborating daily to address real word learning information and resource issues.

The Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community, previously the SIF Association, is a unique, non-profit collaboration composed of schools, districts, local authorities, states, US and International Ministries of Education, software vendors and consultants who collectively address all aspects of learning information management and access to support learning.  The A4L Community is “Powered by SIF” Specifications as its major technical tool to allow for this management and access simply, securely and in a scalable, standard way regardless of the platform hosting those applications. The Access 4 Learning Community has united these education technology end users and providers in an unprecedented effort to give teachers more time to do what they do best: teach. For further information, visit http://www.A4L.org