Seattle Schools Community Forum

 Update: Great suggestion from reader MammaHynkel  on how to proceed with your child's FERPA form (if you want as little data going out as possible): I read through familypolicy.ed.gov about FERPA and I read: "FERPA requires that a consent for disclosure of education records be signed and dated, specify the records that may be disclosed, state the purpose of the disclosure, and identify the party or class of parties to whom the disclosure may be made." So I am choosing to interpret on the Pre-K to 8 FERPA Form authored by SPS that: Under FERPA, SPS may release "directory" information to anyone, including but not limited to parent-teacher organizations, the media, colleges and universities, military [recruiters], youth groups and scholarship grantors, unless you notify SPS in writing that you do not want the information released . I'd amend the form by replacing the period ending text to the right of Box B with a comma, and " and except as...

Here's the district's info on the new link to The Source . The online student gradebook The Source and other student tools will now be one click away. Beginning Sept. 9 , the link to The Source will be replaced with “Student Portal” on the top right side of your school and the district webpages to access The Source and Schoology. See  yellow circle in the image to the left to see where to look for the link.

The Senate HELP (Health Education Labor and Pensions committee) is negotiating over the re-authorization of the Education Sciences Reform Act.  We were told that there are Democrats on the committee who are pushing for relaxing limits on access to personal student data, and are saying that researchers should be able to obtain open-ended access to complete student data sets– and that they shouldn’t have to even specify which specific student level data they want for what purposes. Please call Senator Patty Murray, who is a senior member of the HELP committee, and let her know strong controls and oversight of student data are important to you. It is especially important that parents/advocates who live in the states represented by Dems below call on Monday. Senator Murray's D.C. office:   (toll-free) 866-481-9186

Arne Duncan spoke at a public education summit yesterday put on by Common Sense Media. From Ed Week : The event came in the midst of a recent flurry of student data privacy-related activity. In addition to the non-binding federal guidelines , expected to be made public Tuesday afternoon, a leading technology trade group released recommendations on the issue ; major state legislation on the issue was proposed in California; and U.S. Senator Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts who also spoke at Monday's school privacy summit, announced that he will soon introduce new federal legislation. All of this is good news. The big takeaway: One key principle around which there is an emerging cross-sector consensus is that educational data about students should be used solely for educational purposes—and not for targeted advertising. Industry representatives and some education officials in attendance at Monday's event supported the general notion, but said much co...