Assignment 2: Taking Action



Privacy of Students & their Educational Records

Problem Identification

American society places a high value on personal choice, individual rights and autonomy, and a private sphere shielded from intrusion; and one means to revere persons and improve individual autonomy is to make sure that people can make the choice about when, and whether, personal information (chiefly information that is sensitive) can be shared with others. Privacy is depicted by some theorists as a basic human right with fundamental significance (Fried, 1968; Moore, 2005; Terry and Francis, 2007). Privacy, as a crucial element of human well-being, is objectively valuable in itself. The existence of a free society is promoted by privacy (Gavison, 1980). Preserving privacy from extensive scrutiny can be envisioned as protecting not only the private sphere of individual, but also all over society.

Just like any other personal information, the education records of student are also confidential and official documents that need to be protected. Protecting student privacy and confidentiality of personally identifiable information is essential for avoiding identity theft, discrimination, as well as obviating other damaging and malicious criminal acts. In case of accessibility of student's data, recipients of that information could do whatsoever they wanted to have with it, from opening specious surveillance based on membership of a student in a student group, to publishing that piece of information in the local newspaper, to declining to give interviews for employment to students not in their class' top percentiles (Shiley, 2003).

Legislation

One of the strongest privacy protection laws of nation- the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) was passed in 1974 in the course of prevalent concern regarding federal power abuse and domestic surveillance (www.doe.sd.gov/). Also known as the Buckley Amendment, FERPA is a Federal law protecting the privacy of education records of student. Schools are ...