Fort Worth parents can opt their children out of surveys. Why did they push for change?
Each day in Fort Worth classrooms, children start with a five-minute check-in and activity.
First, they choose from six emojis representing what mood they are in, followed by a three-minute activity teaching an “essential life skill.”
The tool provides valuable insights into campus culture, student mental health and social emotional learning, Fort Worth ISD officials say.
But parents opposed to the check-in say the program, known as Rhithm, is the latest in a series of surveys collecting student data without parental consent, violating student privacy and — they allege – the law.
The district has denied those charges in interviews and during grievance hearings for one of the parents and has implemented a new policy allowing parents to “opt-out” of some surveys for their children and “opt-in” to others to address their concerns.
“Fort Worth ISD parents: we hear you, and we have created a process that gives you a greater say in the district surveys your child takes,” the district said in a statement at the beginning of December.
Surveys that the district has deemed “opt-in” will only be given to students with parental permission, while those deemed “opt-out” will be given to students unless parents tell the district not to give them, either through a portal that was open from early December to Jan. 6, or by contacting campus staff. Future opt-in/out forms will be part of standard registration.
In addition to grievances, the district convened a stakeholder group to solicit feedback about the surveys.
What school officials found, according to a news release, is that parents want transparency around protocols, a clear understanding of why the district conducts surveys and how the data is utilized and the ability to review survey questions — something the district said will happen soon.
Todd Daniel, one of the parents who has filed a grievance against the district, said the policy is a win. But he still has questions about how data collected by the district, in surveys and elsewhere, could be used in the future.
“Who gets to see the data?” he asked. “What do they do with the data? What’s the rationale behind the original questions? And, you know, where is it? Where does it go?”
Those questions speak to a broader concern by advocates and experts as education technology companies proliferate classrooms, accelerated by the circumstances of virtual learning due to the pandemic.
Student data could be shared with colleges and universities
District leaders, including Chief of Secondary Schools Cherie Washington, said there are strict laws that protect student data, adding that data is not shared with third parties beyond what is needed to run the programs.
Those laws include the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
But exclusions in the law, and a lack of enforcement allow some data to be shared without parental consent, according to Jason Kelley, the associate director of digital strategy for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
A recent study by Internet Safety Labs found that 96% of common classroom apps share some data with third parties, including Google.
About 23% of apps, selected from a random sample of 13 schools from each state, exposed children to digital ads creating “a risk that personal student data is being sent into advertising networks, with no way for the public to inspect where it goes or how it’s used.”
Of those, more than half used retargeting ads, according to the report, which use trackers called cookies, along with search and site history to target specific advertising to the children.
While Rhithm policies forbid the company from data-mining, or selling personal information, there are still ways the collected data could be used.
Kelley pointed to one exception to Rhithm’s FERPA policy listed online, that allows for information to be shared with “officials of postsecondary institutions in which a student seeks or intends to enroll, upon request of officials at that other institution.”
While it is unclear under what circumstances a postsecondary institution would make such a request, “there’s definitely a market for … that data to be used to determine if a student would make sense at a school,” Kelley said.
“If you have a year’s worth of sad face emojis, as your daily update, I don’t know exactly how a university might look at that, but it certainly could be interesting to them,” he said. “Picking up any bit of private student data, about their mood, their academic progress, their interest in different activities, things like that could certainly be valuable for a university.”
The Rhithm FERPA policy later states that just because the exceptions exist, does not mean employees have the right to use them to share information. Contractual obligations, like the one with Fort Worth ISD, would bar them from doing so. Disclosures would also have to approved in writing by a Rhithm supervisor.
Washington, the district’s chief of secondary schools, said that surveys, check-ins and other data collected by Fort Worth schools are intentionally not tied to grades or participation points, so opting out will not impact the quality of a student’s education.
However, technology has become ubiquitous in classrooms, from grading software and literacy interventions, to check-in activities and homework assignments.
Unlike the surveys, there aren’t opt-out processes for everything that could be tracking student data, Kelley said.
“At this stage for students, it can be very difficult to do anything on a computer that’s not tracked in some way,” he added.
Rhithm did not respond to emailed questions.
Parents can opt out of CDC survey on risky youth behavior
Another survey listed on the recent opt-in form sent to parents is a survey of youth risk behaviors provided by the district, with technical support and funding from the Centers for Disease Control.
According to the CDC, the Youth Risk Behavior Study,YRBS, is the largest public health surveillance system in the United States, monitoring multiple health-related behaviors among high school students since 1991.
Daniel and another FWISD parent, Hollie Plemmons, are among those who have called the survey inappropriate, and accused the district of profiting off of students by receiving grant money for the anonymous results.
Marcey Sorensen, the chief academic officer for the district, said the study is used to support school health services and to support a safe environment for quality education.
Questions track a wide range of potential risk factors, such as unprotected sex and drug use. Since 2015, the survey also has included questions about sexual orientation and identity.
Plemmons said those questions are invasive and private, regardless of whether the survey is anonymous — adding that there is no way to know whether students are even telling the truth, or simply selecting answers at random.
But the CDC says findings important at the national, state and local level have come from the survey.
Paul Fulton, a spokesperson for the CDC said, for example, that the surveys “have consistently shown that lesbian, gay, and bisexual students are significantly more likely than heterosexual students to report being forced to have sex; sexual dating violence; and being bullied — and that LGB students are at substantial risk for severe consequences, including suicide, from these types of health dangers.”
Beyond that, Fulton said, the survey has revealed the changing threats that contribute to “death, disability and social problems among our youth.”
“Communities, school districts, physicians, parents, and anyone who works with youth can use these data to identity emerging health threats, as well as areas of improvement, to make sure they have the resources they need to thrive,” Fulton said.
Parents can opt their children out of the survey by telling officials at the campus level.
Data privacy issues not political
The issue surrounding the surveys comes at a time when many aspects of school policy, from library books to curricula to health protocols have come under increased scrutiny by mostly conservative parents.
Plemmons and Daniel have been chief critics of the district on many of these issues, going as far as to file a lawsuit against the district over mask mandates.
But Kelley said there is enough to be worried about for all parents when it comes to the data being collected in schools.
“It cuts both ways,” he said.
Students who are gay, or transgender, may have pressing concerns over data privacy as the state targets parents whose children use gender-affirming care for investigations of child abuse, for example.
Other parents might be concerned about their children being exposed to questions of a sexual nature.
“These are reasonable concerns, I think, from any political spectrum,” Kelley said. “The best way to figure out what the school is doing with that information really is to reach out to them and ask them what your options are for opting out, what the data is being used for; in particular, whether or not it will be personally identifiable or it will be anonymized.”
This story was originally published January 10, 2023 at 10:30 AM.
