LEGISLATIVE UPDATE
Senate Accepts Dodd Student-Privacy Amendment
House-Senate Negotiators to Decide Future of Measure
| |
As the U.S. Senate rushed to complete work on the education bill on June 14, it accepted Senator Chris Dodd’s (D-CT) student-privacy amendment without a vote or any debate. It also accepted an amendment that Senator Tim Hutchinson (R-AR) was prepared to offer as a substitute to the Dodd measure.
A last-minute agreement between Dodd, Hutchinson, and Senate leaders paved the way for both amendments to be added to the Senate bill. It will now be up to the House-Senate conference committee, which must iron out the differences between the two versions of the education bill, to determine the ultimate fate of the two provisions. The House-passed bill does not include similar provisions.
Negotiators are expected to reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill by the end of August.
The Dodd amendment, which was also pushed strongly by Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) requires schools to obtain parental permission slips before an outside group can collect information about students for “commercial” use. The Hutchinson amendment requires schools to develop privacy policies for non-education-related activities involving student privacy.
The Senate deal is a serious setback for schools and groups that serve them. Senator Dodd will play a prominent role on the conference committee. He will be joined by Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House education panel, who tried to offer a similar amendment in the House. Another challenge to overcome is that the Dodd and Hutchinson provisions do not overlap. Lawmakers wonÕt need to address inconsistencies between the two measures.
Kids in the Know, its members, and allied groups have been lobbying for more than a year to educate lawmakers about why the Dodd amendment is unnecessary, unwarranted, and would seriously hurt students and schools.
The behind-the-scenes deal accepting the amendments was forged to put off making a concrete decision about the measures. In part, it was due to the desire of Senate leaders to wrap up debate on the education bill, which had gone on for seven weeks.
Some lawmakers also wanted to avoid a vote on the Dodd measure, fearing that it would put Senators in the difficult position of voting against “parental-consent” and “student privacy,” even though they recognized that the measure harms students and schools, and is an intrusive federal micromanagement that undermines local control of schools.
A leading conservative advocacy group, Focus on the Family, identified the Dodd amendment as one of only four amendments to the education bill that it supported. More than 180 amendments had been proposed.
| | |
