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Wednesday, February 8, 2012
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The reactions to Maine's plan to collect students' Social Security numbers this fall have been building this week.
Maine's Department of Education is highlighting parents' option to opt out of the collection, school boards are expressing skepticism about the plan, and the Maine Civil Liberties Union continues to press for the Department of Education to be more forthcoming about the privacy-related dangers of sharing one's Social Security number.
The privacy concerns, however, haven't changed the minds of those who favor the Social Security number's use in state longitudinal data systems that keep track of student progress throughout school and college and into the workplace. In fact, the primary interest group promoting longitudinal data collection on students vouches for the Social Security number's use.
"The benefits of having it are just incredible, because you can link very easily a student record over time," Aimee Guidera, director of the Data Quality Campaign, told me in May 2009, as Maine legislators debated the law requiring students' Social Security number collection. "They're able very easily, and with higher levels of accuracy, to link information systems so that policymakers and researchers can tell you incredible things about the impact of education on all kinds of things."
That task becomes a whole lot more complicated (and expensive, says Bill Hurwitch of the Maine Department of Education) with the use of another identifying number, known as a unique identifier, says Guidera, who notes that Florida has been using the Social Security number for years in its data system. Florida, in education reform circles, is the standard bearer of the student longitudinal data system.
And a quick look at the Data Quality Campaign website shows Florida isn't alone in collecting students' Social Security numbers. Some 10 of the 12 states that the Data Quality Campaign says have 10 of the required 10 data system elements are using or have used students' Social Security numbers.
Maine might be joining those ranks, but it remains to be seen if parents will go along.
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A note of consolidated interest: Maine education observers might be interested in talk of school district consolidation elsewhere. Mary Schulken of Education Week is out today with a fresh edition of "Consolidation Watch." Check it out here.
Archives
- Rewriting No Child Left Behind: What to expect
- Recurring themes, fresh outlook on education
- National pressure on Maine to allow charters
- The debate on administration, and the latest on the top administrator
- Private funding for "student-centered" learning
- Landing on the staff, not in the cabinet
- Education and the inauguration
- Home schooling, education jobs and Social Security: An education roundup
- A change in circumstances, and a change of heart
- Tonight, students challenge the candidates
- MEA's endorsement and Mitchell
- Worries of the administrative realm
- What's next for Maine students' Social Security numbers?
- Paying for performance, indirectly
- Beyond pay incentives
- Will there be evaluation momentum?
- Same SAT scores. Same questionable comparison?
- It had to be asked sooner or later
- Short of completely empty, and a chance to influence
- UPDATE: Fact-checking Paul LePage, and Common Core's tangled web
- How much and when?
- Zeroing in on "value added"
- Sierra Club: Maine has 3 "Cool Schools"
- Maine joining SSN ranks. Will parents go along?
- Some loose ends tied this week in Maine education
- Six in Maine go for i3
- A steeper cliff after EduJobs
- MEA and the favorable incumbents; updates to a data repository
- One federal pot out of reach, another in flux
- Ed Week: Maine's Race to the Top fate will be known tomorrow
- New graduation rates released, little gained so far
- An updated student-teacher ratio, and updated inconsistencies
- Reformist v. status quo, and a tempering force
- Could Race to the Top shrink?
- Midcoast project earns "pilot project" designation
- What the heck is Maine's student-teacher ratio?
- UPDATED: MEA announces it's Mitchell. Anyone surprised?
- On buy-in, below average
- Initial thoughts on a LePage v. Mitchell match-up
- Innovations that don't fit the national mold: Maine and Race to the Top
- Performance-based evaluations from the bottom up
- Choice phrasing in Race to the Top
- Breaking down buy-in
- For after-school programs, a risk apart from grant bungling
- Building buy-in: Maine at 68 for 215 and 14 for 55
- Choosing the evaluation panel's future
- Maine is in Race to the Top running
- Is MEA warming to Race to the Top?
- UPDATED: Will the budget referendum stay in place?
- Who knew? Department of Education stands in liberty's way
- Bold approaches beyond pilot-project phase
- Not down to 80, but getting closer
- Baldacci claiming credit where it's undue
- Not only plagiarism from Otten, but a lack of facts
- A tiff of irony, a question of purpose, and the administrators' absence
- Teacher evaluation catch-up and the would-be's on education
- A big week in Maine education
- 'Conversations' amid shadows
- A barrier comes down? A few more thoughts
- UPDATE: Sticking to the 'poison pill'
- UPDATE: Amended bill wouldn't do the trick
- UPDATE: More than Race to the Top hangs in the balance
- Hanging in the balance
- Evaluating teachers? Choose from one of the following
- Highlights from the data drop
- What do Delaware and Tennessee mean to Maine?
- 'A personal journey for next generation learners'
- Channeling consolidation's energy in Hancock County
- Innovating within existing infrastructure
- A model charter school law
- Preparing for another charter schools battle
- Will Maine stand a chance in Race to the Top?
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