Throughout this week, the Washington Examiner’s Restoring America project will feature its latest series, “Reforming the Deep State: Reining in the Federal Bureaucracy.” We invited some of the best policy minds in the conservative movement to speak to the issues of what waste, fraud, abuse, and unaccountability exist throughout the federal government and what still needs to be done. To read more from this series, click here.

Dropping off a teenager at college for the first time is a momentous occasion in a parent’s life. Will they thrive? Will they keep up with the academic rigor, the new expectations, the navigation of social dynamics, a new pattern of life, and the transition to adulthood over the coming years?

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These questions weigh on the minds of many college students’ parents. But, as if they aren’t enough to worry about, the federal government has quietly allowed the exploitation of these students‘ personal information. This practice by the Department of Education only serves to make parents more worried.

For over a decade, under a very questionable interpretation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the Education Department has allowed sensitive student data to be collected from schools and delivered to outside organizations. These organizations, in turn, funnel this data to partisan operatives targeting college students for voter registration and voter turnout.

How is this legal? 

The exploitation of FERPA revolves around the “study exception.” FERPA was originally intended to protect student privacy and data, but its “study exception” allows schools to share student information with organizations performing educational research, or “studies.” Under previous presidential administrations, guidance from the Education Department on what this meant stretched this exception far beyond what was originally intended. Schools were permitted to share sensitive data, including names, addresses, and even behavioral statistics, with outside organizations, and with little oversight. 

These outside organizations, often labeled as “research” entities, then passed this sensitive data to partisan groups orchestrating voter mobilization campaigns. For example, one such partisan group, Civic Nation, is led by former members of the Obama administration. The group’s website landing page is graced by former first lady Michelle Obama. One of its initiatives to “create a more inclusive and equitable America” is the All In Campus Democracy Challenge. In 2022, it recruited over 1,000 colleges and universities from every state in the country, including almost 10 million students. The challenge is a get-out-the-vote competition with awards focused on voter participation rate and effectiveness of Civic Nation’s action plan.

THE LEFT’S REAL POWER IS CONTROLLING THE BUREAUCRACY

As part of Civic Nation’s action plans, school administrators are pressured to measure student voter registration and voter participation through the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education’s National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement. Civic Nation action plans must include campus participation in the NSLVE, which mandates that school administrators share protected student data. The data sharing authorization agreement says IDHE will use this dataset to study student registration and voting rates.

This is just one example of the exploitation of student data. Under schemes like this, the students, many of whom are unaware that their data is being shared, are subjected to political agendas. Taxpayer-funded campuses, intended to be politically neutral, academically focused places, are transformed into strategic pipelines for political activism.

The Education Department must act now to end these parasitic practices. Here’s how it can accomplish this:

First, the department should conduct internal reviews to identify any misuse of federal funds related to this problem and publish a public report. Students and parents deserve to know what has been happening under previous administrations. Institutions participating in this data exploitation need to be held accountable.

Second, the department should review existing guidance and publications established under previous administrations and rescind those that support inappropriate, partisan activities on college and university campuses, such as the 2012 “Road Map and Call to Action,” the “Toolkit for the Promotion of Voter Participation for Students,” and “Publication DCL ID GEN-24-03.” Clear and enforceable rules must replace existing directives, ensuring the study exception is used only for legitimate educational research, not as an obvious loophole for political operatives.

Third, the department should advise federally funded colleges and universities that it is aware of and will investigate schemes involving the disclosure of private student information to clearinghouses and data aggregators under the study exception to FERPA.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE ‘REFORMING THE DEEP STATE’ SERIES

Some may argue that getting more people registered to vote is a good thing, implying that the benefit outweighs the costs in this student data sharing scenario. But using student data for partisan reasons, without students’ or parents’ knowledge or consent, poses a serious ethical problem. It’s one thing to promote civic engagement; it’s another to harvest student data and feed it to political machines. The job of a school isn’t to be a political data broker. The Education Department must act now to close this loophole, not only to ensure student privacy but to curtail public educational institutions from turning into partisan political entities.

Exploitation of student data under FERPA’s “study exception” has eroded student privacy, politicized taxpayer-funded campuses, and betrayed the trust of students and parents. Students deserve to be treated with more respect than this. Americans need to be assured that their taxpayer dollars are not being used to support dishonest, partisan, and political efforts on college and university campuses under the guise of educational activity. It’s up to the Education Department to right this wrong.

Anna Pingel serves as campaign director for Election Integrity at the America First Policy Institute.