5 Things School Officials Must Know About Privacy

I have produced a new short video for the newly-launched education privacy website of SafeGov. The site is called edu.SafeGov.org, and it contains a wonderful array of resources for parents, school officials, and policymakers regarding education privacy issues.

My video, 5 Things School Officials Must Know About Privacy, addresses the most important broad points that school officials should know when it comes to privacy. These points are:

1. Protecting privacy involves much more than following FERPA.
2. Just because software and services can do something does not make it legal.
3. Someone must wear the privacy hat.
4. Protecting personal data is your responsibility – and it remains your responsibility when third parties are using data you shared with them.
5. Members of your school community should be educated about how to protect their data.

I elaborate upon these points in the video. I hope you check it out.

More broadly, I am pleased to see that there has recently been significantly more attention to the issue of education privacy. For far too long, the education sector, especially K-12 schools, has lagged far behind other industries in their efforts to protect privacy. Schools face an enormous array of privacy issues and are gathering and sharing a mammoth amount of personal data, yet they lack the knowledge, resources, and appropriate infrastructure to address these privacy issues. As this data is shared and used more widely, the appropriate infrastructure must be put into place, or else the data will remain at grave risk.