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By Kaitlyn Naples and Susan Raff

HAMDEN, CT (WFSB) - Controversy is brewing in Hamden over what some feel could threaten student’s privacy.

The Connecticut Council for Education Reform recently entered into an agreement with the Hamden School District.

The group is being criticized for collecting a large amount of sensitive date with the ability to share it.

There are no indications that the nonprofit had any intentions of giving the information to anyone, but some feel that the potential is there, and believe parents should know information about their child is being shared.

“Anything that has to do with our kids - we need to know about it,” said Eleanor Moye, of Hamden.

Parents said they didn’t know anything about an education consulting company, or the agreement it had with the school district to collect personal information on students.

The nonprofit group works to close the achievement gap.

“What we have here is parents were not even notified - had no opportunity to say ‘I don’t want my child’s information being shared’,” said Mark Waxenberg, of the Connecticut Education Association.

The association claims the agreement with Hamden schools allows the nonprofit the right to own student data and share it with subcontractors who can commercialize it.

Some state lawmakers said they feel sharing date with private companies put personal information at risk, and they have a bill to add more rules and notify parents.

“This bill would require a lot of regulations on those third party vendors,” Republican State Rep. Gail Lavielle said.

The nonprofit said the criticism against them is false and irresponsible.

In a statement the group said, “CCER does not and has never collected personally identifiable student data from public school districts. We have no interest in that level of data, and we would never seek to profit off of the free services that we provide to districts.”

The Hamden superintendent of schools did not return requests for comments.

View the original story here.

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