As it collects student data, N.J. wades past resistance Wednesday, November 29, 2006 • BY JOHN MOONEY • Star-Ledger Staff After five years and millions of dollars, New Jersey has almost finished a database that will allow educators to track academic progress for its 1.4 million public school students. Dubbed NJ SMART -- for "Standards Measurement and Resource for Teaching" -- the computerized tracking system promises by next fall to drag education records into the 21st century. But as officials reach out to families for data, some schools have run into unexpected problems and complaints from parents and privacy experts. The new system would mesh information from individual districts into a central clearinghouse so officials can follow students across school and district lines. That would mean better information on developments like dropout rates and more insight into which school programs are working. More than 40 other states are working on similar projects, and many already are completed, meeting one requirement of the federal No Child Left Behind act. "As sophisticated as New Jersey is in many areas, we were never able to track students over time," said Isaac Bryant, the state's deputy commissioner of education. But as New Jersey enters into the home stretch of what will be a $10 million effort, there have been hitches. For some, it has been just technical hurdles. In Elizabeth, schools were part of a pilot program last year, and the district's technicians had to adjust their own data by hand to match the state's formatting. In Bridgewater-Raritan schools, a team of more than a dozen secretaries is working in the high school computer lab to enter student information ahead of the state's Dec. 18 deadline. "It has been a little overwhelming for us, given we are such a large district," said Debra Sheard, the district's executive director of special programs. But there have been deeper worries expressed about what might happen with the information, enough so that state Education Commissioner Lucille Davy issued a letter this month for distribution in every district, explaining the need for the data. "As a parent myself, I can appreciate the concerns you may have about giving anyone personal information about your child," Davy wrote in the letter, which was also distributed in Spanish. "Please be assured that your local district is collecting this information at the request of the Department." THE IDENTIFIER Many concerns surround the state's need to develop a "unique student identifier," a 10-digit number that would stay with each child and allow for tracking of progress without disclosing the child's name and other personal information. To set up the identifiers, the state has sought several pieces of information. One is a child's birthplace -- which some immigrant families worry could be used to target them. Sheard, the Bridgewater-Raritan administrator, said a small number of parents resisted giving up the information and the district went forward without it. Millburn school board member Joel Reidenberg is also a privacy expert, a Fordham University law professor who directs the school's Center on Law and Information Policy. To him, the state's effort is rife with questions. For instance, he said, there appear to be no protocols for parents to double-check the information's accuracy or to limit how long the information would be held. "And those are just the basics," Reidenberg said. "If you look at the scope of the information they are asking for, it is very broad and appears to go beyond anything they could be using it for. With a click of a mouse, they could racially or ethnically profile kids without any clear use of it at all." Reidenberg's concerns have been enough to bring pause to other Millburn officials, who contacted the state. District superintendent Richard Brodow said he was told the district could lose state aid if it did not comply, and so it is still proceeding. "I understand this is something that almost every other state is doing," Brodow said. "But I have concerns about how the information will be secured and used." ARMED GUARDS Grayson Barber, a privacy lawyer in Princeton and member of the national board of the American Civil Liberties Union, said he has similar concerns about profiling that could "take on a life of its own." The man in charge of the state data-collection effort said the safeguards are numerous, including armed guards at the Massachusetts site where the data are being kept by the state's vendor, Public Consulting Group Inc. Jack Longworth, director of the state education and information technologies, said he is fully confident that the system is safe from abuse. Few such concerns, if any, have arisen in other states that are further along, he noted. Longworth just hopes the data the state does get from districts in the next month will be sound. "The biggest challenge in anything like this is data quality," Longworth said. "We don't know how good the information will be until we upload it." John Mooney covers education. He may be reached at jmooney@star ledger.com, or 973-392-1548. © 2006 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with permission.