[Infowarrior] - Critics Question Education Department ¹ s Screening

[Richard Forno]

February 11, 2007
Critics Question Education Department¹s Screening
By JONATHAN D. GLATER
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/washington/11privacy.html?ei=5094&en=63c85
32822a1a911&hp=&ex=1171170000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

As a condition of his work for the federal government, Andrew A. Zucker was
willing to be fingerprinted and provide an employment history. But then he
was asked to let federal investigators examine his financial and medical
records, and interview his doctors.

Dr. Zucker was not tracking terrorists or even emptying the trash at the
Pentagon. He was studying how to best teach science to middle school
students. He was stunned at the breadth of the request for information.

³To me, personally, it¹s shocking,² said Dr. Zucker, who worked for a
contractor doing research for the Education Department. He withdrew from the
job.

For about a year, contractors say, the department has been requiring
employees of the thousands of contractors it hires ‹ many of them academic
researchers like Dr. Zucker ‹ to go through a level of security screening
usually reserved for those working with very sensitive information.

Katherine McLane, a department spokeswoman, said the scrutiny was warranted
because her agency had access to databases with financial data and other
information, including names and social security numbers of students or of
applicants to colleges or other programs. ³We want to make sure that the
people who handle and have access to this information are responsible,
reliable and trustworthy,² Ms. McLane said.

The policy is prompting critics to question when a prudent background
investigation becomes an invasion of privacy. About 100 researchers,
including Dr. Zucker, have signed an open letter of protest to Margaret
Spellings, the secretary of education, calling the quest for information
³far beyond bounds of reason, necessity, and decency.²

Others echo the protests.

³These requirements have very little connection with the work that we do,²
said Michael Knapp, director of the Center for Study of Teaching and Policy
at the University of Washington.

Mr. Knapp, a former Education Department contractor, called the policy ³an
example of going overboard.²

Gerald Sroufe, director of government relations for the American Educational
Research Association, which represents about 25,000 people, most at
universities or research organizations and companies, said, ³Our concern is
really whether or not all the measures that have been introduced are
necessary.²

But Ed Elmendorf, senior vice president for government relations at the
American Association of State Colleges and Universities, said criminal
record checks, which are considerably less invasive than the screening
required by the Education Department, are becoming ³pretty much a standard
operating procedure² at many public academic institutions.

Still, efforts to put criminal record checks in place have met with
resistance. Some faculty members protested when the chancellor of the
University of Georgia said recently that new hires would be required to
undergo a criminal record check.

Although some federal agencies like the Departments of Defense and Homeland
Security routinely seek detailed personal information from contractors
considered for classified work, others generally do not, unless the
contractors are expected to work in federal buildings or have access to
federal databases.

At the Agriculture Department, Boyd Rutherford, the assistant secretary for
administration, said that if contractors were not in a position of public
trust, the department was not asking for a detailed screening. He said that
positions of public trust would include those that allowed a contractor
access to areas like government information technology.

At the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the National
Institutes of Health, the intensity of background screening also turns on
access, said Bill Hall, a spokesman. The lowest-level screening requires
running fingerprints through the Federal Bureau of Investigation, performing
a criminal records check and determining whether someone had undergone a
background check with another government agency.

Ms. McLane, the Education Department spokeswoman, acknowledged that her
agency¹s policy may be stricter than others, but she defended it, saying the
department ³takes very seriously its responsibility to safeguard information
and maintains strong systems that protect confidential data.²

Dr. Zucker, a Harvard-trained educator, was a consultant for a subcontractor
on a Pennsylvania State University contract with the Education Department.
He was developing a procedure to study methods of teaching middle-school
science. ³I was just designing a study, so I had no access to data because
there was no data,² he said.

Kyle L. Peck, associate dean at the College of Education at Penn State, said
Dr. Zucker would have been comparing test scores of students taught using
one method with scores of those taught using another. The data would not
necessarily have identified individual students.

Dr. Zucker said he would not have had access to any databases that would
identify individual students. He also did not work in a federal building.

³On the one hand, it makes sense,² Dr. Peck said of the screening. ³On the
other hand, we have institutional review processes that govern educational
research that protect the confidentiality, and, I think, make this
additional level of security clearance unnecessary.²

Many employees asked for information by the Education Department were
academics like Dr. Zucker. In some instances, the agency has backed down
when its policy was challenged. When Dr. Zucker protested, he said the
department excused him from providing access to his medical and financial
records.

But Dr. Zucker still had reservations about other information the agency
required and stopped work on the project.

³I had worked on many Department of Education contracts before,² he said,
³and other federal contracts from other agencies, and I have 20 years of
experience or more in the business, and I had never seen or heard of
anything like this.²