The U.S. Department of Education is conducting several activities to address privacy and security issues related to education data. Earlier this year a contractor for the Department convened a group of privacy and security experts and produced a report with recommendations to the Department on ways they can address emerging challenges in protecting student data in education data systems. The Department released those recommendations on its website and is accepting feedback on them via its blog through August 13, 2010. See: http://www.ed.gov/blog/2010/06/data-security-and-privacy-protections/. The Department has indicated that these recommendations, and the feedback submitted on the blog, will serve as the basis for coordinated guidance and communication that will come out of the Department's new Privacy Technical Assistance Center. The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) commends the U.S. Department of Education (the Department) for its efforts to highlight the need to ensure the security, privacy and confidentiality of sensitive education data and to provide more systematic assistance to states and local agencies in meeting these challenges. As a result of the their initial analysis and interpretation of these recommendations, as well as conversations with privacy and security experts and state stakeholders, they offer four overarching reactions, as well as a handful of specific questions. They hope these comments are the beginning of ongoing and transparent conversation between the Department and the field on these issues. (Contains 3 footnotes.)