Posts Tagged ‘privacy’

Presidential Election Comes Into Focus, Congress Continues Work on Funding | Legislative Update

Friday, July 26th, 2024

Over the last two weeks, lawmakers have continued to work on federal funding legislation for the next fiscal year while the ongoing Presidential campaign comes into sharper focus. Elsewhere, Congress and federal agencies have been considering learner privacy legislation and efforts to increase learner internet connectivity. 

FY25 Appropriations Continue to Take Shape

This week both the House and the Senate remained in session. In the House, Republican leadership attempted to advance several federal fiscal year 2025 (FY25) appropriations measures through the full chamber. While lawmakers narrowly passed five of the annual dozen appropriations measures by late Thursday this week, these efforts have largely stalled due to inadequate support within the House Republican conference for the remaining funding bills. The Labor-HHS-ED appropriations bill—the funding measure that provides funding for the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education (CTE) Act (Perkins V)—is among the measures with an uncertain future and although House leadership has indicated they will revisit this issue following the Congress’ upcoming August recess period.

As a reminder, the House FY25 Labor-HHS-ED funding measure proposes a $10 million increase for Perkins V’s state grant program and requests the U.S. Department of Education clarify its intent to regulate the federal investment in CTE later this year. However, the proposal also envisions significant funding reductions for many other workforce and education programs. Advance CTE and partners recently issued a statement regarding this proposal. The House has now adjourned a week early to begin the August recess period and lawmakers are expected to return to Capitol Hill in early September.

Meanwhile in the Senate, lawmakers have established topline spending caps for each of the dozen appropriations bills that compose the federal budget, including the FY25 Labor-HHS-ED funding measure. Importantly, this topline cap is higher than the House’s, indicating that the Senate is likely to take a different direction for workforce and education funding in the upcoming fiscal year. Next week, the Senate appropriations committee will formally consider and markup its FY25 proposal for Perkins V funding and other critical education and workforce development programs. 

As these efforts continue to take shape, Advance CTE will continue to advocate for robust investments in Perkins V’s state grant program.  

President Biden Ends Campaign and Endorses Vice President Harris

Over the past weekend, President Joe Biden formally announced that he was ending his Presidential campaign. Shortly after this announcement, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. Throughout the week many leaders in the Democratic Party have followed suit and announced their support of her candidacy. Prior to becoming Vice President in the current administration, Harris served as the U.S. Senator from California where she advocated for public K-12 education, teacher pay, and increased access to and support for postsecondary education and job training. 

Former President Trump Names J.D. Vance as VP Candidate

Last week Congressional Republicans headed to Milwaukee, Wisconsin for the party’s national convention. During the event, former President Donald Trump announced that he selected Ohio Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) as his running mate. Vance was first elected to the Senate in 2022 and rose to prominence with the publication of a book entitled Hillbilly Elegy. During his time in the Senate, Vance has a limited record on education issues but has co-sponsored several pieces of legislation prohibiting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies in schools as well as proposing to allow bipartisan Safer Communities Act funding to be used for hunting, archery, and gun shooting programs. He has also supported bans on cell phone use in classrooms. 

FCC To Allow Hotspots for E-Rate

Last week the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted in favor of a new order authorizing the use of E-Rate program funding for Wi-Fi hot spots and wireless internet access services. The 3-2 vote largely broke along party lines, with two Republican Commissioners arguing that the order goes beyond the FCC’s existing statutory authority. The order is aligned with FCC Chair Rosenworcel’s “Learn Without Limits” initiative which broadly calls for more innovative uses of E-Rate resources to increase access to the internet while allocating additional funding for several pilot projects including Wi-Fi on buses.

Senate Considers Learner Privacy Legislation

This week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced that the Senate would take a procedural step to advance two pieces of federal data privacy legislation intended to protect children online. This includes the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens Online Protection Act (COPPA 2.0). Both measures appear to have bipartisan support and would strengthen protections for youth online. Yesterday, the Senate advanced these measures by a wide margin and is set to further consider them next week. 

ED To Enforce Title IX Rule Next Month

This week the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) Office of Civil Rights (OCR) announced that it intends to enforce recently updated Title IX regulations set to go into effect August 1 of this year. As a reminder, the regulations would establish a more uniform grievance process for schools and institutions adjudicating allegations of discrimination or misconduct. The rule also codifies new protections for LGBTQ+ learners, staff, and others against discrimination, including discrimination based on one’s gender identity. However, 26 State Attorney Generals have sued to block the rule and lawmakers in the House recently voted in favor of repealing the new regulation. These efforts have led to several court injunctions, blocking the rule from going into effect in many of these same states. In anticipation of beginning to enforce the new regulation where it is currently permitted to do so, OCR has published several new resources to support states and schools to comply with these new requirements. 

Read more on the amendments

DOL Announces New Round of Community College Training Grants 

This month, the U.S. Department of Labor announced the availability of new funding through a fifth round of Strengthening Community College Training Grants (SCCTG)– a program authorized by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) that provides resources for community colleges to develop and provide robust training opportunities for learners. Applications for this funding are due September 24, 2024. Advance CTE is strongly supportive of the SCCTG program and is currently advocating for its codification in WIOA as discussions continue regarding reauthorization of this legislation. 

Read more about the round of grants

Steve Voytek, Policy Advisor 

By Layla Alagic in Public Policy
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DQC Webinar: Update from the US Department of Education on Privacy, Security, and Confidentiality

Thursday, September 27th, 2012

The Data Quality Campaign is hosting a webinar on October 19th that will feature U.S. Department of Education officials talking about new privacy resources, and their perspective on trends and challenges in privacy, security, and confidentiality. Join Chief Privacy Officer Kathleen Styles, Statistical Privacy Advisory Michael Hawes, and new Family Policy Compliance Office Director Dale King for this informative webinar!

Date: October 19, 2012

Time: 2 p.m – 3 p.m ET

Register now and submit questions to be answered during the webinar.

 

Nancy Conneely, Director of Public Policy

 

By admin in Meetings and Events
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Legislative Update: FERPA, WIA, Race to the Top, ESEA

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

Department Releases Final FERPA Regulations

The U.S. Department of Education released its final regulations for the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act yesterday after soliciting public comments earlier this year. In a statement released by the Department, they stated that “The regulations announced today will strengthen the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) by protecting the safety of student information, increasing the Department’s ability to hold those who misuse or abuse student data accountable and ensuring our taxpayer funds are invested wisely and effectively.”

We are still working through the regulations and will update you on anything that relates to CTE.

NSC Releases State-by-State Impact Analysis of Proposed Cuts to WIA

In their draft Labor-HHS-Education funding bill released last month, the House proposed to cut Workforce Investment Act (WIA) programs by more than $1.9 billion for FY12. To help states better understand the impact of these cuts, the National Skills Coalition developed a state-by-state impact analysis of proposed cuts to the WIA Adult, Dislocated Worker, and Youth programs in FY12. Their analysis finds that as many as 6.5 million jobseekers would lose access to employment and training services if the House funding levels are enacted.

Seven States Apply for Third Round of Race to the Top Grants

As we told you last week, the nine runner-up states in the last round of Race to the Top grants are eligible to apply for the latest round of grants totaling $200 million. The seven states that submitted applications are: Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. South Carolina did not submit an application, and California submitted an incomplete application, according to the Department of Education.

States will now have to submit a budget by December 16 for how they would use the grant and identify which part of their Round 2 application they want funded. The Department will announce the winners by the end of December.

Secretary Duncan Voices Concern about ESEA Draft

In a recent radio interview on Bloomberg EDU, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan expressed his concerns with the Senate’s draft ESEA bill. While the Department has been happy with the bipartisan process of crafting the bill, it is not happy with much of the bill’s content, especially teacher evaluation and accountability. However, Duncan hopes that this is just a starting point, and that the bill can be further strengthened:

“There are some good things in the bill, but you don’t want to walk away from accountability, you don’t want to walk away from focusing on achievement gaps, you don’t want to walk away from making sure we’re rewarding great teachers and great principals and shining a spotlight on excellence in education. So you want a good process, but at the end of the day you want really strong policy. And it’s early innings, obviously, in the bill that came out of the Senate HELP committee, and we think it can be strengthened going forward. So I applaud the work that’s gone on so far, clearly not a finished product, but a long way to go.”

 

Nancy Conneely, Public Policy Manager

 

By admin in Legislation, Public Policy
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DCQ Webinar on Protecting the Privacy, Security and Confidentiality of Student Data

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011

Join the Data Quality Campaign on April 28, 2011 from 12:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET for a webinar to discuss issues related to protecting the privacy, security and confidentiality of student data, developments in state and federal policy, best practices and emerging solutions, and remaining challenges.

Panels include:

For a complete agenda, click here. Space is limited, so register now!

By admin in Webinars
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New NCES Brief Series Highlight Privacy Issues Related to SLDS

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

Due the increased mandatory reporting and expanded record keeping required by the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS), the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has authored a new series of briefs on different topics related to the protection of personally identifi­able information in students’ education records. These SLDS Technical Briefs provide “best practices” to guide states that are developing Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems.

The first brief in the series, Basic Concepts and Definitions for Privacy and Confidentiality in Student Education Records, discusses basic concepts and definitions, namely “personally identifiable information,” “privacy,” and “confidentiality.” The brief also touches on concepts such as disclosing confidential information, protecting confidentiality by de-identifying and making data anonymous, data stewardship, and privacy frameworks.

Topics for future SLDS Technical Briefs include:

You may send any feedback about this and future SLDS Technical Briefs to NCES at [email protected].

By admin in Public Policy
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