Student data collection requirements are mandatory to fulfill when securing funds for grant-based programs. For those that are unaware, grant coordinators collect data to maintain the federal funds when their after-school program participates in the U.S. Department of Education's 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) initiative.
The 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21CCLC) program awards grants to programs to fund after-school enrichment. These federal grants promote the creation of after-school learning centers and other academic enrichment efforts.
Student Data Collection Challenges
Despite the importance of these federal education grants, they require an immense amount of data from grant recipients. This can cause districts to become overwhelmed by the student data collection requirements for the U.S. Department of Education’s 21st CLCC data collection system, 21APR.
Regardless of the meticulous data collection process, many school districts still want to offer federally-funded or subsidized programs that:
- Improve student learning outcomes.
- Build community centers and after-school programs
- Provide monitoring for at-risk learners, so they don’t fall through the cracks
- Support English language learners (ELLs) with literacy enrichment
Unfortunately, school administrators are grappling with how to safely manage large amounts of highly-sensitive student data—without jeopardizing student privacy or exposing the school to potential data security breaches.
Federal and State-Compliance Solutions That Ensure Data Privacy with GG4L
School administrators and district managers can become inundated with new student data collection requirements necessary to continue receiving supplemental program aid. Furthermore, the bureaucratic paperwork can clog standard workflows and data migration for the school’s day-to-day needs.
As a result, some schools must hire additional staff to handle the data collection requirements to fund after-school programs and other initiatives.
To help with the data collection process, TransACT has spent over 25 years providing thousands of K-12 school districts, schools, and educational organizations with software that:
- Saves valuable time and protects data
- Creates more efficient workflows
- Complies with federal mandates and state-level regulations
Global Grid for Learning (GG4L), a public benefit corporation, enables TransACT’s portfolio of education compliance software and solutions to migrate student data — free of charge. GG4L’s School Passport is a globally-recognized way for schools to work with various educational technology vendors while prioritizing privacy, security, and safety.
Information Technology and Increasing Amounts of Student Data
Thousands of educational technology companies and organizations provide school districts with everything from:
- eBooks, curriculum plans, and software
- Early student progress detection monitoring
- Enterprise learning management systems
These technologies often require extensive student data to work efficiently. While learners and districts can benefit from these rapidly evolving educational technologies, program administrators and teachers are finding it more difficult to mitigate the risk of protecting student privacy.
Student Data Collection and Migration for Programs
Learning management systems may require student data transfer from a school’s Student Information System (SIS) to integrate everything from a learner’s address and contact information to test scores and financial data. Enterprise academic improvement software may need student data to track progress.
It’s no secret that schools collect a lot of student data. However, federal, grant-funded initiatives and after-school programs often require extensive data collection to remain compliant.
TransACT is committed to ensuring student data is secure, safe, and encrypted as it works to provide 21CCLC schools with solutions that save time, increase district ROI, and reduce the burden of data collection.
Rigorous and Globally-Recognized Data Security Protections
Public K-12 education already involves the handling of highly-sensitive student information and data. Innovations with educational technology have also increased with all learners with a robust education that maps to state standards.
A thorough curriculum that produces expected outcomes should protect the students they are charged with educating and ensure that security standards are rigorous enough to withstand a data security breach.
21CCLC Schools Reluctant to Share Student Data with Vendors
The pandemic forced schools and learning organizations nationwide to purchase and implement new educational technologies to adapt to remote instruction. Education-based organizations and support programs require funding and support to remain open.
School districts from San Diego to New York City had no choice but to purchase EdTech platforms, online student assessment tools, and student data collection solutions for grant-funded programs.
While this transformation has largely been positive, an increasing amount of student data is regularly collected and provided to EdTech vendors and government program entities via cloud technology. This has some privacy experts concerned.
“Infrastructure for protecting students’ personal data wasn’t that sound, to begin with,” says Leah Plunkett, a Meyer Research Lecturer at Harvard Law School. She likens the current situation to building something “using duct tape on top of LEGO [pieces]” in The Wall Street Journal.
Student data migration from legacy servers to cloud databases outside the school district's Student Information System (SIS) should be a concern. This is why TranACT and its related companies work with GG4L to ensure that all student data is integrated safely and efficiently.
“To date, we’ve never had a security breach,” said Todd Yates, head of student data and privacy at TransACT.
The GG4L is a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation and membership-based collaborative that works with EdTech vendors and more than 20,000 schools.
This provides essential data security benefits for users of TransACT’s 21APR Data Management and After-School Programs for 21CCLC schools:
- Open standards-based data integrations
- Industry-leading PII Shield protection
- GG4L’s School Passport
- Cloud integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)
- Globally governed data exchange
- Rigorous student data privacy compliance
- Impactful initiatives that help close student skills gaps
Student Data, Privacy, and Security Standards
School districts and organizations increasingly must provide student data to numerous EdTech vendors, state and federal government programs, and various intermediaries regularly. Naturally, sharing personal data can generate anxiety for all stakeholders in the age of online education.
Students and their parents have a right to understand how their data is used. In some cases, parents should be able to opt out of learning systems that require sensitive data collection by 3rd party solution providers.
With highly publicized consumer data security breaches occurring regularly, it makes sense that school districts are anxious about how student data is used and shared. Fortunately, TransACT prioritizes a robust data security protocol for all data migration required for its EdTech solutions.
AfterSchool21 by TransACT is the first educational technology to offer direct data transfer to 21APR for 21CCLC schools. Thousands of after-school programs and more than 10 state departments of education trust AfterSchool21 with the student data required to fund these critical programs that help K-12 learners and their working parents.
Schedule a demonstration to see why AS21 is the best choice for growing after-school programs.
