Privacy Blocks

Learn about the Clearinghouse’s Privacy Block Setting. The Privacy Block Setting supports institutions in maintaining compliance with state, regional, and international privacy mandates and student requests for record privacy that may not be covered by the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.

We will review your colleges and universities role in privacy blocks, how to update a student’s privacy block via the Student Look-up tab of the Clearinghouse’s secure site, and the steps your institution needs to take to be able to submit files with a privacy block.

Resources

• Enrollment Reporting Programming & Testing Guide
• Privacy Block Frequently Asked Questions

Transcript

Thank you for joining today's presentation. Today we’ll be covering the Clearinghouse’s newly available Privacy Block Setting. The Privacy Block Setting supports institutions in maintaining compliance with state, regional, and international privacy mandates and student requests for record privacy that may not be covered by the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act. Throughout today's presentation we'll review the college's and university's role in privacy blocks, how to update a student’s privacy block via the Student Look-up tab of the Clearinghouse’s secure site, and the steps your institution needs to take to be able to submit files with a privacy block.

For today’s agenda, we will review the following topics: What is the Privacy Block Setting? What are the differences between the Privacy Block Setting (PBS) and FERPA Block and when would an institution use each of these? How to Report a Student with a Privacy Block Setting Updated Clearinghouse Validations for Privacy Block Settings including a specific error code available through our Secure Site Error Resolution on the Web application Some Next Steps including Working with you SIS/IT Team to ensure that any reported Privacy Block Setting values are also included in your enrollment file extract process Finally, we will do a review of the Resources the Clearinghouse has made available related to this topic

Your institution may be wondering what the Privacy Block Setting is and how this impacts your students. The Privacy Block Setting is a reportable value that your institution can report on behalf of your students to indicate that your student has elected to block a specific record in their enrollment and/or degree history. This block allows you to instruct the Clearinghouse not to use personally identifiable information in enrollment and/or degree records for research purposes or verifications where the student has not consented to those data uses and/or the data use is not for the purpose of complying with a legal requirement (like compliance reporting under Title IV of the federal Higher Education Act). Also, it cannot be applied retroactively. The Privacy Block Setting applies to uses of personally-identifiable enrollment and/or degree data and does not restrict the Clearinghouse’s use of such data in aggregate or de-identified form. The Clearinghouse has chosen to construct the PBS so that it blocks the entire enrollment and/or degree record of a student once the privacy block is submitted on a single record for that student.

What is the difference between the FERPA (or the Director Block Indicator) and Privacy Block Setting (PBS)? The Directory Block Indicator for FERPA: Is designed to protect student rights provided under the Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act This includes retroactive records and The Privacy Block Setting: Is intended to enable institutions to comply with regional, state, and international privacy laws such as the European Union's GDPR or California's Consumer Privacy Protection Act. and this cannot be applied retroactively

The following values are available for the Privacy Block Setting field: 00 is The institution has reported “No Privacy Block Setting” for this student 01 is This student’s record was blocked for non-consented verification purposes 02 The student’s record was blocked for non-consented student level research purposes 03 is the student’s record was blocked for both non-consented verification and non-consented student-level research purposes

To add a privacy block to a student’s existing or new record, go to the student look-up tab, search for the student by SSN or college id and school code, and then select Update Student Record. If there's no record for the student in our database currently, you'll get a student record not found and you'll need to select Add Student.

When submitting an online update, you can review the current privacy indicator for the student. To change the Privacy Block Setting, you'll select any of the drop-down options under the Select Edit Options, make your updates, and select submit. The privacy record only applies to the current entry and if a privacy block is not received for this student in the next enrollment file submission, an error will be flagged on the student's record for you to review.

There is one additional error as a result of the privacy block setting to ensure the Clearinghouse system appropriately reflect what your students have elected. To correct this error, navigate to the Student Reporting tab and select Error Correction.

Once you click on the error correction link, you'll be brought to your error resolution on the web report. Click on 215 to see the students' records that are flagging this particular error.

For more information about the directory block and privacy blocks, select the Directory Block and Privacy Block FAQs link at the bottom of the page. The privacy block setting to be applied field is pre-populated with the previous certified privacy block for your convenience. If this is the status you want, you can select Select All and then Submit Selected Records for Validation. You can also change the selection by selecting the drop-down and choosing the desired privacy block setting. If you submit students with the same privacy block as the previously certified value - what is displayed in the PBS to be applied column, a pop-up to confirm your action will be displayed when you click Submit for Validation. If there are multiple pages of student records with error code number 215, you’ll need to select all and submit for validation on each page. Alternatively, select the plus button on a student’s row to expand the student’s record for more detailed information.

If you click on the details button to view the expanded student record, you can also select the View Previously Reported Student Data link to compare the data that is in your current submission to the current data in the Clearinghouse system.

You'll want to work with your Student Information System vendor or your internal IT team to include the privacy block status information in your file extract process. If you assess that state, federal, or foreign privacy laws apply to enrollment and/or degree records you submit to the Clearinghouse and compliance with those laws requires you to communicate to the Clearinghouse that a student’s enrollment and/or their degree record is restricted from certain uses by the Clearinghouse, please contact us at schoolops@studentclearinghouse.org in advance of utilizing the privacy block setting. The Clearinghouse will respond in a timely manner with additional information and you will need to enter into a contract addendum with the Clearinghouse governing the use of the privacy block setting.

You can find additional information about privacy blocks in the links to this lesson, including our Enrollment Reporting Programming & Testing Guide, our Frequently Asked Questions document, and our tutorial for the Privacy Block Setting specific Error Code 215 Lesson. If you have any questions on the Privacy Block Setting, its uses, or how to submit these values via the individual student update or enrollment submission process, you can reach out to us at schoolops@studentclearinghouse.org. Also, in order to start sending the Privacy Block Setting values and to complete the required contract addendum, please contact our Implementations team by emailing implementations@studentclearinghouse.org.