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Schools to go high-tech with education records

Sounds like another year of inservice for the "new program".

I hope this one will stick around more than 5 years.

Although a centralized database is needed lets hope it doesn't get abused. The district should also realize that any personal information about students and family belongs to the parents and can't be used or disclosed. Parental permission should be required for any use of this information on an individual basis. Family income should not even be a part of the data base, it has nothing to do with the students. This data base should only be used to track individual student progress at parent and teacher levels. Another violation of privacy act information being used in an unathorized manner. And parents should not be blackmailed to signing documents to give the governement permission access to privildged information. This information could also lead to lobbyist demanding the release of all this information for purposes of telemarketers and financial instutions putting credit cards and advertising to irresponsible students.

California has a program like this to track student attendance. It is causing huge problems with school districts. Hope it works better here.

Bob G doesn't have clue. Every concern he expressed is already taken care of by federal and state law. What was sought through the contract is a way for all student information to be available to those who have a right to see it and protected from others and, at the same time, available in sanitized disaggregated form by different factors including ethnicity, socioeconomic status, English as a second language, etc.

While I use and love computers, I also wonder if sometimes we get too dependent on them. What happens if in the futures computers crash for extensive amounts of time?

Here are two important understandings of data. One is cautioning against the use of digital information to make important decisions regarding individual students and the second is suggesting that schools capitalize on the ease of managing data to analyze the needs of a given population, monitor program progress, etc.

For example, data is good for identifying trends, measuring causal factors and studying the variables of an under served subpopulation. But, as a teacher, I would never make an important decision regarding a student based on digital record alone. The digital record corroborates but does not necessarily substantiates. Too much is at stake if an input error has occurred. And we know that they do happen.