In February, Professor Joel Reidenberg, Founder and Director of the Center on Law and Information Policy, testified at the hearing on “How Emerging Technology Affects Student Privacy.” The hearing was held by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education.
Prior to Professor Reidenberg’s testimony, which focused on the need to modernize federal educational privacy law to meet the challenges of today’s educational technologies, CLIP published the Privacy Handbook for Student Information Online: A Toolkit for Schools and Parents. This handbook provides materials that aid people in understanding and addressing online privacy protections and legal requirements.
In order to put this together, CLIP conducted a research study titled “Privacy and Cloud Computing in Public Schools,” which showed that major gaps exist in the protection of student privacy for many of the services used by schools.
Professor Reidenberg used the study in his testimony: “The study identified that school districts have a tremendous need for assistance in addressing privacy and called for the development of a national clearinghouse and research center to develop and distribute materials for schools to be able to use free of charge.”