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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 pert

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-...

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-...