Names, Social Security numbers and home addresses along with behavioral, disciplinary and medical records of more than 10 million California students will be released to the Concerned Parents Association, a non-profit student advocacy group, after Eastern California District Court Judge Kimberly Mueller directed the release in a landmark decision earlier this month.
Student rights activists throughout the state are protesting the judge’s order which allows a small non-profit group to search through the data collected by the California Department of Education from schools across the state as part of an ongoing lawsuit filed by the Morgan Hill Concerned Parents Association, an advocacy group for California children with disabilities.
Confidential information on every student who attended California schools since January of 2008 will be handed over to a court appointed data analyst so that the Concerned Parents Association can, in their words, “…vindicate the rights of these [disabled] students.”
Judge Muller’s decision is a major turnaround in a five year-old court case between the Concerned Parents Association and the California State Department of Education over whether students with disabilities are receiving the “free and appropriate public education mandated under federal law.”
According to a statement by the non-profit advocacy group, “During the two years leading to the issuance of this court order, Plaintiffs attempted to negotiate with CDE production of these materials in an anonymized form. CDE persistently declined. The Court overseeing this litigation, faced with an uncooperative CDE, ordered the materials produced subject a tight protocol that would protect the data.”
The California Department of Education, who have fought disclosure of student information in any form, have sent notice to districts across the state that information will be released. Along with the notification the CDE also provided notice pursuant to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regarding the court’s order and parents’ and students’ opportunity to object to the disclosure of protected personal information and records.
Click here and follow the link to the Department of Education’s website for a downloadable form.
The form must be mailed to Judge Mueller’s court by April, 1st, 2016.
Once the group has completed its statistical analysis, it is required to “either return or destroy the confidential data at the conclusion of the lawsuit. No student’s identifying records will be disclosed to the public,” the parent group said.
Comments are closed.