Assessment and survey tools

Assessment tools produce exactly the data that is hardest to de-identify: a detailed profile of how one specific teenager thinks. Small caseloads make "aggregate insights" from these tools riskier than the word suggests.

A transcript says what a student did; an assessment profile claims to say who a student is. That is a different kind of record to have floating around: harder to correct, more embarrassing to expose, and more valuable to anyone building profiles. And because consultants run boutique caseloads, the "aggregate" reporting these platforms offer often averages groups small enough to point straight back at an individual student. Ask what the assessment vendor does with completed profiles, and how small a group its reports will happily summarize.

Start with these explainers

• What "de-identified" student data actually means

  Platforms keep de-identified data forever. How de-identification works, why small groups re-identify easily, and the questions that reveal the difference.

• The bankruptcy clause: what happens to student data when a platform folds

  Most privacy policies let data transfer in a merger, acquisition, or bankruptcy. What the clause looks like and what happened when the FTC intervened.

• Does FERPA protect your students' data? For IECs, mostly no

  FERPA binds schools that take federal funds, not independent educational consultants. What actually protects the data families hand to your practice.

• What SOC 2 does and does not tell you about student data

  SOC 2 is an audit of security controls the company chose, not a promise about what it may do with student data. What the badge covers and what it never can.

• How do free edtech platforms make money from student data?

  Free tools for your practice are paid for somehow. The revenue models behind free edtech and the policy clauses that reveal which one you are looking at.

• Can aggregate data identify individual students? start here

  Averages over small groups can identify individual students. Why aggregate reports from a boutique practice are riskier than the word aggregate suggests.

Evaluating an assessment tool? Take the checklist to the demo, and ask how small a group their "aggregate" reports will summarize. The checklist and the prompt pack are both free and printable.