Public Pacing Trackers and FERPA
My son is at a public high school in WCCUSD and has an English teacher who subscribes to the Modern Classroom Project methodology. This self-paced approach makes use of a pacing tracker that shows all students in the class the progress of other students through the units. He showed me the google sheet that lists each student by full name and how they are progressing - it shows what they have completed and what they have not.
I was honestly a bit shocked that this was available to all students. While the document does not share actual grades on each unit, his teacher has very strict expectations on how long students have to get through the units (if they are too far behind, they can't complete the unit at all) and it is not hard to infer that a student that is behind is going to have a much lower grade. My question is whether these types of public trackers are a potential FERPA violation. When I looked at the Modern Classroom Project website there was a lot of hedging there that boils down to "our legal team has determined this isn't really a FERPA issue, but if you are worried maybe you should not use names" which is not reassuring.
Is this common in other local classrooms? Is this something I should bring up to administration?
Parent Replies
As a classroom teacher and education researcher, I see several problems with the public sharing of student progress. 1. Privacy issues, even if they don't violate FERPA, especially since ANY student could share the information with ANYONE. There are other privacy issues that extend beyond FERPA. 2. Classroom dynamics...public shame? competition? Is there a sound pedagogical reason for public sharing that has been researched and proven effective? I WOULD bring it up to the administration and ask them to respond to your concerns. My first impression is it could cause more harm than good. There are plenty of ways to allow the technology to help students keep track without sharing everyone's information with everyone. And one final thought experiment...how would teachers respond if THEIR employment information were shared publicly (e.g. salary, education, evaluation, etc)...no names of course, just a description of their "progress". I think you can see how troubling a practice it is. Good luck. -Andrew
https://intercom.help/modern-classrooms/en/articles/5168469-public-paci…;
I’m a teacher (high school) and my husband is a community college professor and graphic novelist who has written many articles in critique of “tech solutions” to human education. I absolutely think this is a FERPA issue. In fact my husband wrote a comic about it several years ago- about where this ranking could go. However I’m not surprised because you are experiencing this because there is a trend in education to take whatever is the tech-iest solution and not think about the consequences.
I absolutely think you should bring this to admin. However I worry it won’t be addressed, not because of your individual admin, but because there is little pushback against tech “solutions” in education right now. Good luck and thank you for bringing this up.