Hefty price for Tahoe dad to see kids’ school records
By Perry Chiaramonte, Fox News
Nevada dad John Eppolito got a bad case of sticker shock when he asked state education officials to see the permanent records of his four children.
He was told it would cost $10,194.
A Lake Tahoe-area real estate agent by trade and a fierce opponent of Common Core, Eppolito was concerned about Nevada’s recent decision to join a multi-state consortium that shares students’ data. He wanted to know exactly what information had been compiled on his school-age kids. But state officials told him he would have to pay fees and the cost of programming and running a custom report.
“The problem is that I can’t stop them from collecting the data,” Eppolito told FoxNews.com. “I just wanted to know what it [collected data] was. It almost seems impossible. Certainly $10,000 is enough reason to prevent a parent from getting the data.”
Nevada has spent an estimated $10 million in its 7-year-old System of Accountability Information in Nevada, known as SAIN. Data from county school systems is uploaded nightly to a state database, and, under the new arrangement, potentially shared with other counties and states. But Eppolito wonders why the state is collecting data that parents can’t even view.
According to the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), parents have the right to review their kids’ records. Small fees are allowed to be issued for records unless they in any way prevent them from obtaining them.
The Nevada Department of Education attempted to justify the hefty price tag for viewing copies of student records in a response to Eppolito.
I’m guessing Data Miners could get the kids records for far less money.