The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is designed to protect students and families from unlawful use and release of private data. It firmly undergirds how Arroyo Research Services handles data confidentiality and security, and it most often requires strict de-identification and/or prior written consent, if any access is allowed, before data is provided to third parties for the purposes of independent research.
Unfortunately, we find FERPA is often misinterpreted to mean that identifiable or non-consented data may never be released. That’s not actually the case. (more…)
Continue readingAs education researchers and evaluators, data security is mission critical. That’s why we’re committed to the strongest possible data security policies and practices to assure the confidentiality of student and teacher data. Just like larger firms, we adhere to a detailed Data Confidentiality Policy that keeps us in compliance with FERPA and related federal and state guidance. But we go a bit further, so we thought we’d share how we think about protecting student data and some of the practical steps we take to do so. (more…)
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