{"id":215514,"date":"2026-02-20T00:34:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T05:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/20\/department-of-education-investigates-national-voting-study-for-violating-student-privacy-the-daily-texan\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T01:00:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T06:00:12","slug":"department-of-education-investigates-national-voting-study-for-violating-student-privacy-the-daily-texan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/20\/department-of-education-investigates-national-voting-study-for-violating-student-privacy-the-daily-texan\/","title":{"rendered":"Department of Education investigates national voting study for violating student privacy \u2013 The Daily Texan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Department of Education investigates national voting study for violating student privacy \u2013 The Daily Texan<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/thedailytexan.com\/2026\/02\/19\/department-of-education-investigates-national-voting-study-for-violating-student-privacy\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-02-20 00:34:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: thedailytexan.com<\/a><\/p>\n

The Department of Education launched an investigation into Tufts University to determine if a study on student political engagement, which UT Austin participates in, involves \u201cillegally sharing\u201d students\u2019 data to \u201cinfluence elections,\u201d according to a Feb. 5 news release.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Housed in Tufts, the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement, or NSLVE, measures civic participation among college students, and then provides resources and recommendations to support civic learning, according to their<\/span> website<\/span>. The University participates in the NSLVE study, meaning it sends enrollment data to Tufts. The data is then compared with publicly available voting data to create a campus report, which estimates the rates students on campus voted and registered.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the news release, the Department of Education is accusing the NSLVE of violating the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, which controls the release and access of educational records. Therefore, any institutions using NSLVE data could be found guilty of violating FERPA, according to the department.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAmerican colleges and universities should be focused on teaching, learning, and research \u2013 not influencing elections,\u201d said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in the news release. \u201cOur Student Privacy Policy Office will thoroughly investigate this matter to protect students\u2019 private data and ensure that our campuses are fully aware of and comply with their responsibilities under FERPA.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the<\/span> NSLVE website<\/span>, the study was \u201cspecifically designed to be in compliance with FERPA requirements.\u201d The department provided<\/span> guidance<\/span> to universities, recommending they wait to use NSLVE data until after the department has completed their investigation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mark Strama, director of the Annette Strauss Institute, said the institute has used NSLVE data to see how voter turnout has improved at UT. Strama said the data showed about a decade ago UT was…<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Department of Education investigates national voting study for violating student privacy \u2013 The Daily Texan…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":215515,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thedailytexan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/02-19-26_NSLVEInvestigation_Praniti-Bhoir.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215516,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215514\/revisions\/215516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}