Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

Education, technology groups collaborate to leverage student data

A partnership will help schools turn data into student achievement.

A new collaboration among three prominent education and technology groups will aim to help schools meet growing demands to leverage student data to boost achievement while highlighting best practices nationwide.

The American Association of School Administrators (AASA), Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), and Gartner Inc., a global information technology research and advisory company, are collaborating to support schools as they move forward in implementing these new systems and practices.

“This is a collaboration that will provide assistance to educators on the front lines,” said AASA Executive Director (and eSchool News contributor) Daniel A. Domenech. “It does no good to talk about data-driven decisions if schools do not have the means to collect reliable data. CoSN and Gartner can provide teachers and administrators [with] tools that are critical to making gains in individual classrooms.”…Read More

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Feds take huge step to protect student privacy

Lack of clarification around FERPA has created a game of ‘telephone,’ says the Data Quality Campaign.

Asking state leaders to use data to drive school improvement and innovation sounds like a logical idea, but how can they also maintain student privacy in this often treacherous digital age? To help answer this question, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) on April 7 released a few innovations of its own.

Student data privacy is not a new concern. In 1974, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) was created to address the issue. But as the world goes digital, data breaches become an everyday occurrence, and ED continues to push for data-driven decision making as part of its school reform movements, it’s time to give FERPA a 21st-century makeover, experts say.

The push for a revamp comes not only from digital privacy concerns, but also as all 50 states have committed to building education data systems need to meet the September 2011 deadlines of the federal stimulus.…Read More

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