4 ms·

Why are the K-12 data non-public? Aren't they from publicly funded institutes?

by ww520 3y ago

kayodelycaon 3y ago
There’s a law protecting individual student records: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Educational_Rights_and_Privacy_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Educational_Rights_an... It also goes beyond K-12. Quite a few parents try to get their children’s college grades and run smack into this law.
spamizbad 3y ago
I'm guessing detailed information on individual students, anonymized - that's not something that any edu department will make public.
edgyquant 3y ago
Things involving minors tend to have stricter regulations.
jimhefferon 3y ago
Might it bump against privacy? If you do a search on third graders receiving speech services in towns of pop less than 3000 in county... at some point you have private information.
tmpX7dMeXU 3y ago
How would you feel if data pertaining to your interactions with government were made public just because the government is taxpayer-funded? How about data pertaining to your kids? Any Joe Taxpayer doesn’t have a right to walk in and demand any data they want from a government department. That’s entirely entirely reasonable. Anonymising data isn’t nearly as easy as a passer-by with “faker.fake_name()” may think it is.
- smcin 3y ago
  I didn't see any mention of individual student records anywhere; seems like a red herring. It's very possible to aggregate and anonymize (remove PII); aggregate the records by zipcode, anonymized school ID, school district, grade-level of student, age of student, educational attainment, etc. You agree that's possible, FOIA-compliant and has been done already for decades? Like how Census data is made public (the Census also uses fuzzing to prevent reverse-engineering to individuals, esp. in tracts with small populations). > Any Joe Taxpayer doesn’t have a right to walk in and demand any data they want from a government department. Red herring: the CDE is not trying in good faith to define what level of aggregated data would be sufficiently anonymous; they're blanket-opposing legitimate public access to this data (even highly aggregated) via the researchers being allowed to testify in court. > How about data pertaining to your kids? Absolutely can and should be disclosed, in aggregate. Otherwise you have a public entity spending $128.5 billion taxpayer money that is not performing so well, violating constitutional disclosure requirements, gotten worse since 2020, lost students to homeschooling [0] and move-aways. In any case, this isn't fodder for an opinion poll, it's what the Constitution says. [0]: https://www.montereyherald.com/2023/06/04/three-years-after-covid-19-began-thousands-of-families-are-still-homeschooling-their-children-whats-keeping-them-from-california-classrooms/ https://www.montereyherald.com/2023/06/04/three-years-after-...

Why are the K-12 data non-public? Aren't they from publicly funded institutes?

by ww520 3y ago

Why are the K-12 data non-public? Aren't they from publicly funded institutes?

There’s a law protecting individual student records: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Educational_Rights_and_Privacy_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Educational_Rights_an... It also goes beyond K-12. Quite a few parents try to get their children’s college grades and run smack into this law.

spamizbad 3y ago

I'm guessing detailed information on individual students, anonymized - that's not something that any edu department will make public.

edgyquant 3y ago

Things involving minors tend to have stricter regulations.

jimhefferon 3y ago

Might it bump against privacy? If you do a search on third graders receiving speech services in towns of pop less than 3000 in county... at some point you have private information.

tmpX7dMeXU 3y ago

How would you feel if data pertaining to your interactions with government were made public just because the government is taxpayer-funded? How about data pertaining to your kids? Any Joe Taxpayer doesn’t have a right to walk in and demand any data they want from a government department. That’s entirely entirely reasonable. Anonymising data isn’t nearly as easy as a passer-by with “faker.fake_name()” may think it is.

smcin 3y ago
I didn't see any mention of individual student records anywhere; seems like a red herring. It's very possible to aggregate and anonymize (remove PII); aggregate the records by zipcode, anonymized school ID, school district, grade-level of student, age of student, educational attainment, etc. You agree that's possible, FOIA-compliant and has been done already for decades? Like how Census data is made public (the Census also uses fuzzing to prevent reverse-engineering to individuals, esp. in tracts with small populations). > Any Joe Taxpayer doesn’t have a right to walk in and demand any data they want from a government department. Red herring: the CDE is not trying in good faith to define what level of aggregated data would be sufficiently anonymous; they're blanket-opposing legitimate public access to this data (even highly aggregated) via the researchers being allowed to testify in court. > How about data pertaining to your kids? Absolutely can and should be disclosed, in aggregate. Otherwise you have a public entity spending $128.5 billion taxpayer money that is not performing so well, violating constitutional disclosure requirements, gotten worse since 2020, lost students to homeschooling [0] and move-aways. In any case, this isn't fodder for an opinion poll, it's what the Constitution says. [0]: https://www.montereyherald.com/2023/06/04/three-years-after-covid-19-began-thousands-of-families-are-still-homeschooling-their-children-whats-keeping-them-from-california-classrooms/ https://www.montereyherald.com/2023/06/04/three-years-after-...