Recently reported by the New York Times and the Herald Tribune (Sarasota's local newspaper), a little bit more than 88% of the 38,500 students in the Sarasota school district had personal information posted on the Internet for nearly two months.
The school district has a contract (for now) with Princeton Review to maintain a database of Sarasota County Planning Tools, to help teachers develop tests and keep track of students' grades. The information, which contained students' names and school ID numbers (which in some cases were Social Security numbers) from this database was accidentally posted on the Internet for two months before it was finally removed this past Monday. Along with names and ID numbers the information also included students': birth dates, sex, ethnicity, disabilities, and standardized test scores. The files were able to be found by using a search engine and Princeton Review claims the files were released when the company recently switched ISPs.
Sarasota students were not the only ones affected by this mistake, Fairfax, VA. students (nearly 74,000 of them) had their information posted on the Internet as well. The company was hired to measure student performance and nearly got 74,000 students' identities stolen. Hackers could have had a field day with this information--but if we recall correctly from a previous Identity Theft post, it usually takes the Identity Theft victim three months to realize something is wrong. In the case of a young student that has no need to check their credit ratings; it could be even longer.
The article hints around as to who is to blame here. Of course Princeton Review is at fault because the security of their system and website has been compromised and over 100,000 students had their personal information sitting on the Internet for two months. Not to mention that with the world wide web, nothing that has been posted can truly be deleted--some cached record may be sitting on a server with the information.
Is the school board to blame as well? Would they need to compile this massive database of personal information if standardized tests weren't stressed as the focal point of a student's education? While I am not trying to start a debate as to the validity of standardized tests, it is just an interesting subject to touch on. What happened to the days where teachers logged the information in their grade books? Is it necessary to have a massive database with every bit of information about a student? These are all questions that the school board will be answering when deciding whether or not to keep Princeton Review's contract.
In this case I would say protecting personal information trumps the ease of sticking everything on some site to analyze the students performance. It is great for parents, students and teachers to have access to this information so they can all keep track of performance and make sure nothing is wrong. Is the risk of having this happen again worth it? Do students even get and interim reports and report cards anymore? I remember that being a pretty good gauge as to what I needed work on.
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