Strive Together Student Data Privacy Task Force

In August 2014, StriveTogether convened a national task force to focus on effective practices of data protection and use. The task force consisted of local community practitioners and national experts in the areas of data use, school-community partnerships, student privacy, and data security. The charge to this task force was to recommend a core set of practices related to data sharing across systems. These recommendations would specifically address the practices of community-based organizations—including cradle to career collective impact initiatives, place- based initiatives, and community schools initiatives—that have access to personally identifiable information about students in the schools and districts in which they work. The primary goal of this document is to provide general guidance to enable cradle to career partnerships and community-based organizations to learn, employ, and demonstrate best practices to protect student privacy. The scope of these practices applies to any community-based organization that is accessing personally identifiable information (PII) about students. PII refers to information that can be used on its own or with any other information to identify an individual. The secondary goal of this document is to establish the guidelines that can inform further work to better simplify and organize the privacy ecosystem to be more efficient, equitable and accessible. These guidelines can also be used to provide broad specifications for developers and funders of technology solutions aimed at creating more secure and seamless student data privacy and sharing solutions. An initial set of practices began with practitioner input. These practices were vetted and developed further by members of the task force and can be summarized under five primary topic areas: 1 Foster a culture for using data, 2 Fully integrate all privacy regulations into your practices, 3 Develop policies to share and protect data, 4 Employ strong data security strategies, and 5 Be transparent about why and how you use data. TASK FORCE MEMBERS Erica Bernabei, Promise Neighborhoods Institute, Washington, D.C. Matt Deevers, Summit Education Initiative, Akron, Ohio John Dicello, Chicago Public Schools, Chicago, Illinois Gordon Freedman, National Laboratory for Education Transformation, Santa Clara, California Larry Fruth, Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) Association, Washington, DC. Kacey Guin, Seeding Success Partnership, Memphis, Tennessee Matt Harris, Puget Sound Educational Service District, Seattle, Washington Josh Hawley, Ohio Education Research Center, Columbus, Ohio Leah Hendey, Urban Institute, Washington, D.C. Reuben Jacobson, Coalition for Community Schools, Washington, D.C. Chris Kingsley, Data Quality Campaign, Washington, D.C. Marcy Lauck, National Laboratory for Education Transformation, Santa Clara, California Lisa Neilson, Ohio Education Research Center, Columbus, Ohio Theresa Pardo, Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany, New York Danya Pastuszek, Promise Partnerships of Salt Lake, Salt Lake City, Utah Michael Robbins, Span Learning, Washington, D.C. Mary Jean Ryan, Community Center for Education Results, Seattle, Washington Andrew Sahalie, Community Center for Education Results, Seattle, Washington Greg Wong, Pacifica Law Group, Seattle, Washington Geoff Zimmerman, StriveTogether Staff, Cincinnati, Ohio One West Fourth Street, Suite 200 Cincinnati, OH 45202 513.929.1150 @strivetogether www.strivetogether.org