Athletes protected while schools blab everyone else's grades

An investigation by the Columbus Dispatch finds that colleges and universities all over America are shielding important information about student athletes from public view.

Schools cite a multipartisan 1974 law that protects information about college, high school, and elementary school students from being disseminated. But this law was never intended to protect the kind of data that colleges are shielding. One of the law's authors even admits as much.

This isn't the athletes' fault. This is the schools' fault.

In fact, the law seems to specifically allow colleges to release the very data that they're withholding.

Colleges withhold information about violations of NCAA rules, team flight manifests, and even lists of people who get complimentary admission to games.

To put it in franker terms, schools are misusing the law to cover up information that should be public.

Meanwhile, high schools illegally blab students' grades everywhere - despite this being clearly illegal under the 1974 law. They release grades to the DMV, in the hopes of revoking a student's license if they don't score 100% on every standardized test.

A Kentucky judge already ruled this illegal, but lawmakers think they can circumvent this by making teenagers who get a driver's license sign a form to waive their right to not have their school release their grades.

Seriously, our legislators actually think that.

(Source: http://content.usatoday.net/dist/custom/gci/InsidePage.aspx?cId=cincinnati&sParam=30870973.story)