The Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) has released a new survey, Beyond One Classroom: Parental Support for Technology and Data Use in Schools. The survey asked parents to outline their goals and concerns about the use of technology and student data.
The survey found the rates of technology use in schools – both by students and parents – went up by 20 % since 2015.
According to most parents, the most convincing reasons to use individual student information are to:
- Identify students who are struggling so that schools can provide appropriate support earlier (85%);
- Personalize the learning process by identifying the strengths and weaknesses of individual students (82%); and
- Help schools build profiles on individual students, such as those used to predict best fits for future vocations or professions (57%).
The findings also illustrated that more parents are seeing the value school districts gain from the use of traditionally “sensitive” information. Support for the collection and use of parents’ marital status, family income, and social security numbers all increased significantly:
- parental marital status — 45%, up 8%,
- family income —37%, up 10%, and
- Social Security numbers — 35%, up 11%.
Over half of parents of school age children now agree that race and ethnicity are data that is appropriate for collection and use by schools.
