Confidence
Student Data Backpack
A student data backpack provides a portable, secure, private backbone of a student’s data to facilitate constructive and reinforcing data sharing amongst the various stakeholders in the student’s growth and success.
Student1 is developing the student data backpack, starting with a fresh set of principles:
Student1 is developing the student data backpack, starting with a fresh set of principles:
- Parents/guardians own the data. Period.
- Parents grant schools and agencies the privilege to be stewards of that data. Vendors only use and hold student data on behalf of designated stewards.
- Parents have full and automatic visibility into the sources of student data, who is viewing and using the data, and for what purpose.
- Parents are fully engaged, with the right to have data corrected, selectively withheld, or blocked and removed from other systems.
- Privacy is built into the backbone, limiting access to those with a legitimate purpose, and minimizing the access to data only to the level of achieving that purpose.
- Student data is protected to highest level of data security, robust enough to manage, protect, and securely share the most sensitive student data.
Trusted Broker
To completely facilitate effective data sharing, the Student Data Backpack must be able to form trusted connections to across education agencies, service providers, other government agencies, and community organizations. As such, Student1 has identified the requirement to develop a trusted broker of data to enable linkages that support data sharing from external sources without having to move sensitive data to a central repository, as follows:
- Linkages extend the security and privacy controls to data shared from external sources.
- Data connections are real-time and standards-based.
- Full control and transparency are provided to parents
- Data use across sources is as-needed and for an authorized purpose.
Raymond, Margaret. (2008). “The student data backpack”. In Kanstoroom, M. and Osberg, E. (Eds.) A Byte at the Apple: Rethinking Education Data for the Post-NCLB Era (pp. 142-158). Washington, D.C.: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute.