7 ms·

It doesn't seem entirely unreasonable that if a school system gives a researcher access to data that isn't shared with the public, the researcher agrees not to

by troupe 3y ago

It doesn't seem entirely unreasonable that if a school system gives a researcher access to data that isn't shared with the public, the researcher agrees not to use that information to sue the school system. Such agreements would allow the school system to be more free to share information. The issue here seems to be that the school system is saying that the researchers aren't allowed to be a witness in any lawsuit against the school system regardless of whether it has to do with the data that was shared with the researchers. I think a bigger issue is whether the school system should be allowed to keep any information private in the first place. If the information can safely be shared with a particular researcher then it seems like there is minimal benefit to society in letting the school system pick and choose who gets access and who doesn't.

heliodor 3y ago
What information does a school system possibly need to keep away from the public? This smells.
- amalcon 3y ago
  Most obviously, personal information about students.
- troupe 3y ago
  There might be some information that could be combined with other data in ways that would violate the privacy of students and their families. Obviously discipline records with student names shouldn't be public, but what about records without names where the students name could be found by linking it with other data. AOL released a bunch of search queries in 2006 with they idea that they were anonymous, but it turned out you could get quite a bit of personal information from them by linking searches together.
- nend 3y ago
  If you're curious, read up on FERPA.
- nonameiguess 3y ago
  Presumably all data about student educational outcomes, which are protected by FERPA. The school system doesn't have the option to just ignore the law and make this information public.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
darth_avocado 3y ago
If the institution is public, data should be public as long as individual PII is removed. No exceptions. And FOIA requests should be able to make this data available to anyone filing for an access within a reasonable amount of time. Period.
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  Not when there is an existing law limiting it. FERPA specifically protects student records.
  - galangalalgol 3y ago
    Even anonymous records? That would seem to preclude studying the effectiveness of the education system. And if they weren't anonymous, what possible conclusions could you draw compared to anonymous records that would warrant that access?
  - rovr138 3y ago
    > as long as individual PII is removed https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html, "The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99) is a Federal law that protects the privacy of student education records" Now the question is if aggregated data with no PII is protected.
    - jasonlotito 3y ago
      Data aggregation does not guarantee privacy.
      - prepend 3y ago
        Of course not, but there are tests that can be applied to determine if privacy is protected. It’s not possible to just aggregate and be done. But it is possible to set some privacy threshold and then insure that all records conform to that acceptable risk level.
next_xibalba 3y ago
> The issue here seems to be that the school system is saying that the researchers aren't allowed to be a witness in any lawsuit against the school system Exactly. With this bit being particularly outrageous: > “Also, be aware,” wrote Cindy Kazanis, the director of CDE’s Analysis, Measurement, and Accountability Reporting Division, “that your actions have adversely impacted your working relationship with CDE, and your response to this letter is critically important to existing and future collaborations between us.”
asdajksah2123 3y ago
I think you've described the salient issues here very well.
chaps 3y ago
I think a bigger issue is whether the school system should be allowed to keep any information private in the first place. Are you genuinely suggesting that the public should have access to all attendance records, grades, test scores, etc etc of all students everywhere? That's the sort of information these researchers have.
- nvy 3y ago
  So long as the data cannot identify specific students (i.e. it's sufficiently anonymized) what's the issue?
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > So long as the data cannot identify specific students It almost certainly can, even if it does not explicitly do so.
  - chaps 3y ago
    .....do you genuinely think that the data can be sufficiently anonymized to protect the privacy of minors?
    - eimrine 3y ago
      I believe that the data can be sufficiently faked to be anonymized.
      - pjc50 3y ago
        That also renders it useless!
        IX-103 3y ago
        That's not strictly true. There's some recent work (as fascinating as it is incomprehensible) on generating datasets that share most aggregate properties with the actual dataset (measured through joint probability distributions), but do not reveal more than some epsilon of information about any individual contained in the original data set. These have the potential to revolutionize private computation and analysis, as they provide provable hard (theoretical) limits on the amount of information you can learn about individuals regardless of the type of analysis performed on the proxy dataset.
jrochkind1 3y ago
While not _as_ "entirely unreasonable" as what the state is actually doing -- and I think we should be clear, that, as you say, the state is doing way worse and trying to prevent researchers from testifying on any matters at all... I'm not totally sure it's actually reasonable for a government to withhold data from researchers because they think it might be used against them in a lawsuit either. Is that a valid reason for a government institution to withhold data? Perhaps a court case will end up establishing that the broader thing is in fact unreasonable under the first ammendment too, perhaps this is a good "test case" being even so much more egregious, you always want an especially egregious case.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> The issue here seems to be that the school system is saying that the researchers aren't allowed to be a witness in any lawsuit against the school system regardless of whether it has to do with the data that was shared with the researchers I think the issue isn't being a witness in the general sense, but an expert witness which is either a paid gig or one which payment is waived because of other alignment of interests. Being an expert witness against someone you are in any kind of working relationship with is a clear and obvious conflict on interest. > If the information can safely be shared with a particular researcher then it seems like there is minimal benefit to society in letting the school system pick and choose who gets access and who doesn't. So HIPAA-protected data that meets the standards for research sharing should instead be made public? (And if you say, “well, its different, this is the government”—government holds lots of data protected by HIPAA.
- lowbloodsugar 3y ago
  >expert witness against someone The state is not a "someone". The state is in an extremely privileged position legally, and as such is bound by the First Amendment which you and I are not.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    Sure, the State is bound by the First Amendment, and there is a fair debate as to whether the clear conflict of interest involved in being an expert witness against the state must be tolerated alongside research data sharing for that reason, either in general (unlikely, IMO) or at least in the specific case where there is no nexus with the shared data (more likely). But it is a clear conflict of interest.
    - lowbloodsugar 3y ago
      The problem is your claim of conflict. Measurement of the government by the people can never be considered a conflict. If the data shows that the government, the CDE, failed to improve outcomes, that is just data. It is the opposite of a conflict. The CDE is required to improve outcomes: suppressing information that it failed to do so is antithetical to that outcome. The CDE needs this information to do its job, regardless of claims by PHBs to the contrary.
nickff 3y ago
Wouldn't a more reasonable position be a prohibition on researchers acting as paid expert witnesses in cases against the school system? I can imagine that might disincentivize 'gold-digging' behavior by researchers. The complete ban on researchers engaging in any litigation seems over-broad, and designed to keep potential litigants from having access to anyone 'in-the-know'.
jjk166 3y ago
> The issue here seems to be that the school system is saying that the researchers aren't allowed to be a witness in any lawsuit against the school system regardless of whether it has to do with the data that was shared with the researchers. While that does seem overbroad, if the restriction were only on cases related to the data shared by the researchers, then for many cases there would need to be a demonstration that it did or didn't relate to the data, and there isn't really a way to do that without disclosing the data.
BenGuz 3y ago
What data do you want to see? Most of it exists publicly but is very messy. You can get basic financial information here,[1] but data on student outcomes and school climate is very siloed - if there's a specific school/state you're interested in, I could help you find information. Even if you're a researcher, good quality data rarely exists. In NYC, which collects more data than any other school district, you're mostly relying on a (publicly available) 100 question survey sent to every student. The survey author must have never talked to a child because the questions are worded like a clinical psychology paper. At low income schools the survey has a 20-30% response rate.[2] [1] https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/index.asp?ID=251275002087 https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/index.asp?ID=2512750020... [2] https://tools.nycenet.edu/snapshot/2022/ https://tools.nycenet.edu/snapshot/2022/
prepend 3y ago
It seems unreasonable to me. Public institutions have a duty to the public that should be above any “self preservation” to protect itself. I expect that they actually owe more to people actively suing them to prevent any shenanigans. I think this is different from private instructions who have no, or very different, duty to private citizens.
- polygamous_bat 3y ago
  > Public institutions have a duty to the public that should be above any “self preservation” to protect itself. Do you hold the same beliefs for publicly traded companies? Or do you just have unreasonable bars for government institutions only?
  - fluoridation 3y ago
    How is that relevant? Because both have the word "public" in their descriptions? (Incidentally, I think a lot of ills in the modern world exist because of companies that exist only to increase their value in stock exchanges, rather than to be useful.)
  - prepend 3y ago
    The state exists for the people. They serve me (and you). Publicly traded corporations are very different. My tax dollars pay for the government to operate and collect data. Not so much for publicly traded companies. That being said, for publicly traded corporations there are regulations on what data they must release, but I think it’s mainly about financial performance. So a private education system would not need to release anonymized data on its students. But a public education system has a legal duty.
indymike 3y ago
> It doesn't seem entirely unreasonable that if a school system gives a researcher access to data that isn't shared with the public, the researcher agrees not to use that information to sue the school system. Such agreements would allow the school system to be more free to share information. That is not what is going on here. The research is being asked to testify against the school system by someone who is suing them.
bluGill 3y ago
If you discover evidence of wrongdoing, then you are ethically obliged to act on it regardless of any other contract. We have whistle blower laws for this reason. Even if the wrongdoing is not a criminal matter, if you discover a reason that someone can be sued, then you have an obligation to inform those who could sue and act as a witness for them in court. The only exception to this is if you are the lawyer for the party you discover the data - and then you have an obligation to inform them they can be sued so here is how to fix the problem in good faith (good faith meaning if it is discovered you as a lawyer will argue that when the problem was discovered they fixed it, and thus court should dismiss the problem as an honest mistake that was corrected - the courts should in turn if not dismiss the case at least award minimal damages) The above needs to take precedence over all contracts.

by troupe 3y ago

heliodor 3y ago

What information does a school system possibly need to keep away from the public? This smells.

amalcon 3y ago
Most obviously, personal information about students.
troupe 3y ago
There might be some information that could be combined with other data in ways that would violate the privacy of students and their families. Obviously discipline records with student names shouldn't be public, but what about records without names where the students name could be found by linking it with other data. AOL released a bunch of search queries in 2006 with they idea that they were anonymous, but it turned out you could get quite a bit of personal information from them by linking searches together.
nend 3y ago
If you're curious, read up on FERPA.
nonameiguess 3y ago
Presumably all data about student educational outcomes, which are protected by FERPA. The school system doesn't have the option to just ignore the law and make this information public.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

darth_avocado 3y ago

If the institution is public, data should be public as long as individual PII is removed. No exceptions. And FOIA requests should be able to make this data available to anyone filing for an access within a reasonable amount of time. Period.

kayodelycaon 3y ago
Not when there is an existing law limiting it. FERPA specifically protects student records.
- galangalalgol 3y ago
  Even anonymous records? That would seem to preclude studying the effectiveness of the education system. And if they weren't anonymous, what possible conclusions could you draw compared to anonymous records that would warrant that access?
- rovr138 3y ago
  > as long as individual PII is removed https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html, "The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99) is a Federal law that protects the privacy of student education records" Now the question is if aggregated data with no PII is protected.
  - jasonlotito 3y ago
    Data aggregation does not guarantee privacy.
    - prepend 3y ago
      Of course not, but there are tests that can be applied to determine if privacy is protected. It’s not possible to just aggregate and be done. But it is possible to set some privacy threshold and then insure that all records conform to that acceptable risk level.

next_xibalba 3y ago

> The issue here seems to be that the school system is saying that the researchers aren't allowed to be a witness in any lawsuit against the school system Exactly. With this bit being particularly outrageous: > “Also, be aware,” wrote Cindy Kazanis, the director of CDE’s Analysis, Measurement, and Accountability Reporting Division, “that your actions have adversely impacted your working relationship with CDE, and your response to this letter is critically important to existing and future collaborations between us.”

asdajksah2123 3y ago

I think you've described the salient issues here very well.

chaps 3y ago

I think a bigger issue is whether the school system should be allowed to keep any information private in the first place. Are you genuinely suggesting that the public should have access to all attendance records, grades, test scores, etc etc of all students everywhere? That's the sort of information these researchers have.

nvy 3y ago
So long as the data cannot identify specific students (i.e. it's sufficiently anonymized) what's the issue?
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > So long as the data cannot identify specific students It almost certainly can, even if it does not explicitly do so.
- chaps 3y ago
  .....do you genuinely think that the data can be sufficiently anonymized to protect the privacy of minors?
  - eimrine 3y ago
    I believe that the data can be sufficiently faked to be anonymized.
    - pjc50 3y ago
      That also renders it useless!
      - IX-103 3y ago
        That's not strictly true. There's some recent work (as fascinating as it is incomprehensible) on generating datasets that share most aggregate properties with the actual dataset (measured through joint probability distributions), but do not reveal more than some epsilon of information about any individual contained in the original data set. These have the potential to revolutionize private computation and analysis, as they provide provable hard (theoretical) limits on the amount of information you can learn about individuals regardless of the type of analysis performed on the proxy dataset.

jrochkind1 3y ago

While not _as_ "entirely unreasonable" as what the state is actually doing -- and I think we should be clear, that, as you say, the state is doing way worse and trying to prevent researchers from testifying on any matters at all... I'm not totally sure it's actually reasonable for a government to withhold data from researchers because they think it might be used against them in a lawsuit either. Is that a valid reason for a government institution to withhold data? Perhaps a court case will end up establishing that the broader thing is in fact unreasonable under the first ammendment too, perhaps this is a good "test case" being even so much more egregious, you always want an especially egregious case.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> The issue here seems to be that the school system is saying that the researchers aren't allowed to be a witness in any lawsuit against the school system regardless of whether it has to do with the data that was shared with the researchers I think the issue isn't being a witness in the general sense, but an expert witness which is either a paid gig or one which payment is waived because of other alignment of interests. Being an expert witness against someone you are in any kind of working relationship with is a clear and obvious conflict on interest. > If the information can safely be shared with a particular researcher then it seems like there is minimal benefit to society in letting the school system pick and choose who gets access and who doesn't. So HIPAA-protected data that meets the standards for research sharing should instead be made public? (And if you say, “well, its different, this is the government”—government holds lots of data protected by HIPAA.

lowbloodsugar 3y ago
>expert witness against someone The state is not a "someone". The state is in an extremely privileged position legally, and as such is bound by the First Amendment which you and I are not.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  Sure, the State is bound by the First Amendment, and there is a fair debate as to whether the clear conflict of interest involved in being an expert witness against the state must be tolerated alongside research data sharing for that reason, either in general (unlikely, IMO) or at least in the specific case where there is no nexus with the shared data (more likely). But it is a clear conflict of interest.
  - lowbloodsugar 3y ago
    The problem is your claim of conflict. Measurement of the government by the people can never be considered a conflict. If the data shows that the government, the CDE, failed to improve outcomes, that is just data. It is the opposite of a conflict. The CDE is required to improve outcomes: suppressing information that it failed to do so is antithetical to that outcome. The CDE needs this information to do its job, regardless of claims by PHBs to the contrary.

nickff 3y ago

Wouldn't a more reasonable position be a prohibition on researchers acting as paid expert witnesses in cases against the school system? I can imagine that might disincentivize 'gold-digging' behavior by researchers. The complete ban on researchers engaging in any litigation seems over-broad, and designed to keep potential litigants from having access to anyone 'in-the-know'.

jjk166 3y ago

> The issue here seems to be that the school system is saying that the researchers aren't allowed to be a witness in any lawsuit against the school system regardless of whether it has to do with the data that was shared with the researchers. While that does seem overbroad, if the restriction were only on cases related to the data shared by the researchers, then for many cases there would need to be a demonstration that it did or didn't relate to the data, and there isn't really a way to do that without disclosing the data.

BenGuz 3y ago

What data do you want to see? Most of it exists publicly but is very messy. You can get basic financial information here,[1] but data on student outcomes and school climate is very siloed - if there's a specific school/state you're interested in, I could help you find information. Even if you're a researcher, good quality data rarely exists. In NYC, which collects more data than any other school district, you're mostly relying on a (publicly available) 100 question survey sent to every student. The survey author must have never talked to a child because the questions are worded like a clinical psychology paper. At low income schools the survey has a 20-30% response rate.[2] [1] https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/index.asp?ID=251275002087 https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/index.asp?ID=2512750020... [2] https://tools.nycenet.edu/snapshot/2022/ https://tools.nycenet.edu/snapshot/2022/

prepend 3y ago

It seems unreasonable to me. Public institutions have a duty to the public that should be above any “self preservation” to protect itself. I expect that they actually owe more to people actively suing them to prevent any shenanigans. I think this is different from private instructions who have no, or very different, duty to private citizens.

polygamous_bat 3y ago
> Public institutions have a duty to the public that should be above any “self preservation” to protect itself. Do you hold the same beliefs for publicly traded companies? Or do you just have unreasonable bars for government institutions only?
- fluoridation 3y ago
  How is that relevant? Because both have the word "public" in their descriptions? (Incidentally, I think a lot of ills in the modern world exist because of companies that exist only to increase their value in stock exchanges, rather than to be useful.)
- prepend 3y ago
  The state exists for the people. They serve me (and you). Publicly traded corporations are very different. My tax dollars pay for the government to operate and collect data. Not so much for publicly traded companies. That being said, for publicly traded corporations there are regulations on what data they must release, but I think it’s mainly about financial performance. So a private education system would not need to release anonymized data on its students. But a public education system has a legal duty.

indymike 3y ago

> It doesn't seem entirely unreasonable that if a school system gives a researcher access to data that isn't shared with the public, the researcher agrees not to use that information to sue the school system. Such agreements would allow the school system to be more free to share information. That is not what is going on here. The research is being asked to testify against the school system by someone who is suing them.

bluGill 3y ago

If you discover evidence of wrongdoing, then you are ethically obliged to act on it regardless of any other contract. We have whistle blower laws for this reason. Even if the wrongdoing is not a criminal matter, if you discover a reason that someone can be sued, then you have an obligation to inform those who could sue and act as a witness for them in court. The only exception to this is if you are the lawyer for the party you discover the data - and then you have an obligation to inform them they can be sued so here is how to fix the problem in good faith (good faith meaning if it is discovered you as a lawyer will argue that when the problem was discovered they fixed it, and thus court should dismiss the problem as an honest mistake that was corrected - the courts should in turn if not dismiss the case at least award minimal damages) The above needs to take precedence over all contracts.