The Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) values data transparency as well as security. DDOE complies with all federal and state data standards and laws, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) in an effort to protect personally identifiable information (PII).

While data used by DDOE, districts and charter schools is comprehensive, risky data (data that can be used to uniquely identify a student) presented to the public must be redacted, or masked, to avoid unintentionally identifying students. When reporting data to the public, DDOE requires the following data be redacted.

  • DDOE redacts the following risky cell values:
    • Any cell whose student or teacher population value is less than fifteen (15), regardless of the cell’s value
    • Any cell whose corresponding student or teacher population value is at or above fifteen (15), but whose cell value is less than five (5) or within five (5) of the population.

To protect the privacy of a data category or data group, DDOE will also redact a non-risky cell in order to prevent the value of a risky cell from being calculated by subtracting the reported values from the column row or total. This is referred to as complementary suppression by category (CSC)  or Complementary Suppression by Group (CSG)

  • Redacted data may appear as:
    • a dash (-)
    • a space
    • an asterisk (*)
    • “Protected”
    • “<X” (or “>X”) where X is a number below (or above) the risk of disclosure