Portland State University Researchers May Have Violated Federal Law by Using the Personal Data of Thousands of Portland-Area K-12 Students

Katie Shepherd:

For two years, professors at PSU’s Graduate School of Education conducted a research project using unwitting K-12 students as subjects. The university has since acknowledged it failed to inform parents of the research and did not get their permission to access the student data. University officials say they are still examining whether any laws were broken.

Starting in 2016, two PSU graduate school professors asked teaching candidates to collect the personal data of students by taking it off school computers, including names, race, gender, disability status and whether they were learning English as a second language.

PSU says the aim of the study was to create better results for students of color, by changing teaching methods to reduce racial disparities in test scores.

But WW has exclusively obtained an internal report showing that in trying to reach that goal, PSU professors and grad students collected personally identifying data from minors without asking for the consent of their parents—as federal law typically requires.