Marjorie Mastie, a school testing specialist at the Washtenaw Intermediate School District in Ann Arbor, Michigan, describes the federal law that prohibits the public release of any individual child's test scores. Excerpted from The ABCs of School Testing (The Joint Committee on Testing Practices, 1993).
"It's a very appropriate concern for any individual parent to wonder about whether that child's results will ever be released as an individual. The answer is no, resoundingly no, there is a federal law the family educational rights and privacy act which actually protects the privacy, the confidentiality of any individual student's test scores. Now, we can aggregate the individual score and report groups. We can report the score for the fourth grade, or for Baxter Elementary School, or for this school district or for this state, and that's very appropriate to do as we try to make good sound education decision, but we do not release those confidential individual student scores."
Date posted: 1995