Department of Education Releases New FERPA Resources for Schools

“This guidance document consists of thirty-seven commonly asked questions. These are about schools’ and school districts’ responsibilities under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA for Schools). It relates to disclosures of student information to school resource officers (SROs), law enforcement units and others. This guidance not anly seeks to explain and clarify how FERPA protects student privacy, but also ensures the health and safety of students and others in the school community.”

At PikMyKid, we are FERPA and COPPA compliant, and we have taken a pledge to support student privacy. For full information on our platform’s privacy guidelines visit our page here. We are also fully compliant with the stringent SOPIPA law in California. It deals with protecting the online privacy of children.

The SOPIPA bill would prohibit an operator of an Internet Web site, online service, online application, or mobile application from knowingly engaging in targeted advertising to students or their parents.

Building Effective Communications Around Student Data Privacy—A PikMyKid Study By Carnegie Melon University, Heinz College of Public Policy

“Relative to other companies in our study, PikMyKid clearly thought about its privacy imprint long before it had a client or a staff. In our review, this front-end consideration allowed PikMyKid to really stand out compared other companies in the study. Based on PikMyKid’s choices, we broadened this recommendation to other startups in the educational technology space.”

– Joseph Babler & Amanda Prichard, Heinz College of public policy, Carnegie Melon University

A team of graduate students examined current practices of a select group of education technology startups in the K-12 space around student data privacy issues. Through a series of semi-structured interviews, the team explored how each company develops public-facing communications regarding data use, privacy, and security policies including FERPA for Schools. From analyzing the findings, the team garnered key insights and identified themes. These were used as a foundation for developing recommendations to the industry on building effective communications around student data privacy issues. Read the entire report here