The computerized paper trail that follows students from kindergarten to college is raising concerns about access to private information.
At last week's Fifth Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy in Burlingame, experts from around the country grappled with questions of individual rights and intellectual freedom in the information age.
Anita Hoge of National Documents Inc., an organization alarmed by the growing nationwide network of electronic student records and the federal government's use of them, outlined her fears in a symposium titled "Students Databases: For Education And For Life?"
"The issue is: Do we have the right to think and feel what we want?" Hoge asked.
Public Interest Activist Janeane Dubuar agreed and said current education reform channeled through computerized conduits is "leading us to an unprecedented invasion of individual privacy," especially for students in primary and secondary education.
The problem, Hoge said, is the means used to achieve the goals of "America 2000," the U.S. government's blueprint for education. One of the main aspirations of the plan is to make sure every student in America graduates high school with "zero risk of failure."
To accomplish that end, Hoge said, results from national and state assessment tests identify students who are at risk of failing, not because they lack basic skills, but because of psychological and behavioral "problems." These "attitude-problem" students are then scheduled for counseling and "remediation" to ensure their graduation.
The engine that drives this process is computers.
In Pennsylvania, one of the test states in this program, parents and students were told that the exam would measure "citizenship," Hoge said. The test comprised 405 questions: 345 on attitudes and behaviors, 30 on math skills and 30 on verbal analogies. Hoge provided an example:
"There is a secret club at school called Midnight Artists. They go out late and paint funny sayings and pictures on buildings. You are asked to join the club. In this situation, I would JOIN THE CLUB when I knew...
The "correct" answers to number one and two are "yes," and to number three is "no." If a student answered "no" to the first two questions he or she would be considered "anti-social," Hoge said.
Handbook codes, some of which are based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychological Association, catalog student results for the "whole child concept" where "individual learning outcomes" are designed to help students meet the "minimum positive attitude" needed for a "certificate of mastery" in a "total quality management" scenario.
Hoge argued that this jargon means government will have a psychological profile of every student. This profile will go on each student's record, set in stone with the help of computers. And when government decides "how we view ourselves" and "how we communicate with others," it raises important questions of freedom of individual thought, she said.
"Einstein was shy," Hoge said. "Under this program, he would have been targeted for counseling as an introvert.
"What if a student has a bad day? Does that mean he or she will be forever identified as 'at risk?' Or will that student be labeled as psychologically disabled, and under the American Disabilities Act, be eligible for Medicaid?"
Barbara Clements objected to Hoge's big brother vision of education and called it premature. As a member of the Council of Chief State School Offices, a liaison organization between schools, states and the federal government, she enumerated the advantages of electronic record keeping.
All student information used to be kept on paper in file cabinets in teacher's classrooms or in school offices. "There were a lot of problems with paper accuracy," Clements said. "Information had to be compiled manually. Transcripts going from school to school were not standardized."
There are about 50 million students in primary and secondary schools in the U.S., she said. With this incredible diversity, computers provide clear advantages: "less paperwork, better accuracy, better access for educators and better security."
She pointed-out that there is still no federal mandate for what information is collected on the local level. America 2000 is still a voluntary program. Code books for assessing student responses to tests are also voluntary. And, there is still no real national computer network linking schools to the federal level.
Hoge countered that 41 states are using attitude assessment tests, including California. And, students are being categorized using 10 different code books based on data that facilitates computer analysis.
Moreover, Dubuar said state and local computer systems are rapidly building toward a national computer network, possibly via the Internet. More importantly, "laws that protect confidentiality were written for a paper system."
The main law that governs student confidentiality is the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, said David Banisar, an attorney for the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Any institution that receives federal money is not allowed to disclose private student information, including social security numbers, without consent from the student or a parent if the student is under 18.
There are some major exceptions, he said. One is for research purposes by federal and state education agencies conducted for "legitimate educational purposes," including the development, validation and administration of "predictive tests." Another exception is for "juvenile justice purposes (prior to trial)."
Students are entitled to access their private records and have a right to ask for a correction of a record they think is wrong.
Under general privacy law, Banisar said, information can only be used for the purpose for which it was collected. However, the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, that recently passed the House of Representatives, encourages data sharing among the agencies of the federal government. It is unclear if this bill includes the sharing of private student records, Banisar said.
If it does, then it might conflict with the Privacy Act of 1974, which denies the disclosure of social security numbers without notice; failure to do so violates the person's constitutional right to privacy, Banisar added.