Even when information should be shared with other educators and/or administrators, however, this does not mean that the information should become a part of general or public knowledge (Omstein & Levine 2007). Again, the risk of stigmatizing the student or in some way calling their development into question is quite high in certain circumstances, and even in the most mundane of instances other parents and non-educators might attempt to exert undue influence over another student's placement based on rumors or knowledge obtained through a lapse in privacy protection. This ultimately takes the power of decision making out of the teachers' and administrators' hands; instead of leaving the information and the decisions to those trained and equipped to handle them, breaching the privacy rights of students could potentially lead to a sort of mob rule of the schools, where the...

At the same time, the need for respecting and maintaining students' privacy is very real, and highly imperative . Perhaps the most important reason for the need to maintain this privacy is simply for the esteem and ability for self-direction for each individual student. It simply isn't anyone else's business how one or another student performs, and creating any label based on public knowledge of performance limits a student's option to carve their own path in the world. Assisting students in this should be the primary objective of all educators (Chowdary 2004).
References

Chowdary, S. (2004). Mastery of teaching skills. Delhi: Discovery Publishing.

Omstein, A. & Levine, D. (2007). Foundations of education. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.