Huge Databases Offer a Research Gold Mine — and Privacy Worries
As states create warehouses of information about students, scholars see opportunities to assess the effectiveness of education..The fusion-center debate has an echo in the world of education research. Now that Congress has rejected the idea of a national “unit-record tracking” system for student data, scholars and policy analysts are tantalized by the possibility that states will beef up their own education-data centers. The most celebrated example is Florida, which began in 2001 to assemble a “data warehouse” that allows officials to track a person’s progress from kindergarten through graduate school and beyond, including postcollege wages and employment, military service, incarceration, and receipt of public assistance.” [The Chronicle of Higher Education. Section: The Faculty, Volume 54, Issue 35, Page A10]