DQC In The News

Kowalski: Lesson from the State of Louisiana — If Your Student Privacy Laws Are Making Kids Go Hungry, There’s a Problem

Kowalski: Lesson from the State of Louisiana — If Your Student Privacy Laws Are Making Kids Go Hungry, There’s a Problem

States and communities need the flexibility to use data to nimbly solve problems when people are hurting. Poorly designed privacy laws that put data under lock and key and forbid leaders from using it to help people are not serving anyone.

A 2014 student data privacy law prevented Louisiana agencies from knowing which families were eligible for meal assistance for several months during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this analysis piece for The 74, DQC Executive Vice President Paige Kowalski shares best practices from states to safeguard student data privacy while also using data to nimbly solve problems.

For more on this law and how states should be thinking about student data privacy, read this paper for the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) by DQC Director of Policy and Research Strategy Rachel Anderson.