Electronic Data Interchange
The Council of Chief State School Officers is facilitating the implementation of SPEEDE/ExPRESS, a system for the exchange of permanent records for students and schools...
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The Council of Chief State School Officers is facilitating the implementation of SPEEDE/ExPRESS, a system for the exchange of permanent records for students and schools. This approach has two advantages: teachers and counselors can allocate far less of their time to completing idiosyncratic forms and EDI eliminates the sometimes 3 month lag between the time a student transfers to another school and the arrival of a cumulative folder (Often in migrant ed the student has moved on to another school by the time the record arrives at the first transfer point). The major areas of contention within this effort are: the fear that standardization of forms may lead to standardization of the curriculum and, in turn,student outcomes and the loss of privacy if student records are widely circulated.
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All in all, these emerging systems save much money and time. In order to avoid form standardization some participating schools, especially at the college level, ask for a supplement to reflect student individuality. As for loss of privacy, electronic records are subject to the same teacher whims and legal protection for the student as paper. Industrial strength security standards for electronic transmission actually guarantees access only by authorized parties. Unfortunately, many users do not embed a security mechanism so that such software gets a bad reputation. Software vendors, too, contribute to the difficulty by not informing their purchasers that user information is automatically recorded. (The code for standards, such as S-HTTP, has never been cracked.) So, if school folks do not incorporate security, they and, more importantly, their students could be burned. The Freedom of Information Act ensures that students or their parents (if the student is a minor) always have access to their own records, including teacher comments and recommendations.
