language: en · status: in-force · last checked: 2026-10-08

South Dakota — student data reporting and privacy of records (SDCL 13-3-51 to 13-3-51.6)

South Dakota's student-data statute, enacted as SL 2014, ch 76 (2014 Senate Bill 63, signed by the Governor on 13 March 2014), which prescribes no effective date and has no emergency clause, so under SDCL 2-14-16 it took effect on 1 July 2014. That act created SDCL 13-3-51.1 to 13-3-51.6 and added the collection limit to 13-3-51, whose reporting duty is older (its Source credit begins with SDC 1939). It governs the state Department of Education, not an operator or vendor. SDCL 13-3-51 sets up the uniform data-reporting system and limits it to the information that is necessary. The privacy sections 13-3-51.1 to 13-3-51.6 add the following: definitions that borrow FERPA's terms; a consent requirement for surveys, analyses and evaluations that reveal listed sensitive information; a bar on reporting personally identifiable information to the U.S. Department of Education; and a duty to keep that information confidential and secure.

Applicability to EdTech

South Dakota has no operator-binding student-privacy statute. A search of SDCL chapter 13-3 and of the codified laws for one found none (see Meta). For a vendor, the layers are therefore the following:

• The collection limit flows down through districts. Nothing in SDCL 13-3-51 "authorizes the collection of information not necessary for the calculation of funding for public education, the determination of student academic progress, state and federal reporting requirements, or other duties prescribed […] by law" (SDCL 13-3-51).
• Surveys and assessments. No student may be required to submit to a survey, analysis or evaluation that reveals political affiliations, mental or psychological problems, sex behaviour, religious practices, family gun ownership or income, among other listed topics, without the required consent. The list is "not an exclusive list", and the secretary may add other data (SDCL 13-3-51.2). The word analysis matters for a product that analyses student responses, wherever the product sits.
• FERPA definitions are adopted. "Disclosure," "education records," and "personally identifiable information" carry their 34 C.F.R. § 99.3 meanings as of 1 January 2014 (SDCL 13-3-51.1(3)). Personally identifiable information is confidential and not a public record, and the department must protect it (SDCL 13-3-51.4).
• Breach notification applies to a vendor directly, under SDCL 22-40-19 to 22-40-26 — see data-breach.

Contents

Key obligations at a glance

• State data collection is limited to what is necessary for the listed purposes — SDCL 13-3-51.
• Consent is needed before a student submits to a survey, analysis or evaluation that reveals the listed information — SDCL 13-3-51.2.
• The department may not report PII to the U.S. Department of Education as part of a federal-funds reporting requirement (migrant-student exception) — SDCL 13-3-51.3.
• PII is confidential; the department must have security measures — SDCL 13-3-51.4.

Enforcement

The sections set no penalty. The South Dakota Board of Education Standards may promulgate rules under chapter 1-26 to further define the required data (SDCL 13-3-51).

Licence

The corpus reproduces SDCL 13-3-51 to 13-3-51.6 verbatim from the South Dakota Legislative Research Council's statute service.

Statute text enacted by a state legislature is outside copyright under the government edicts doctrine. In Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., 590 U.S. 255 (2020) (slip opinion), the Supreme Court held that "officials empowered to speak with the force of law cannot be the authors of—and therefore cannot copyright—the works they create in the course of their official duties". It applied the doctrine to work authored "by an arm of the legislature in the course of its legislative duties". The per-section documents served by the LRC (sdlegislature.gov/api/Statutes/13-3-51.1.html, read 2026-10-08) carry no copyright notice. The catchlines and "Source:" credits are the work of the Legislative Research Council, the legislature's own agency.

Conditions: none. The corpus names the source in Sources and in each section's {.meta} provenance line.

Related

• South Dakota breach notification (SDCL 22-40-19 to 22-40-26) — the South Dakota statute that binds a vendor directly
• FERPA — whose definitions SDCL 13-3-51.1(3) adopts
• PPRA — the federal survey-consent rule that SDCL 13-3-51.2 parallels and expressly does not supersede

Sources

• South Dakota Legislature — SDCL 13-3-51.1
• South Dakota Legislature — SDCL chapter 13-3
• South Dakota Legislature — 2014 Senate Bill 63, enrolled — the act as passed: sections 1 and 3 to 7 add the privacy sections, section 2 amends 13-3-51; no effective-date or emergency section
• South Dakota Legislature — 2014 Senate Bill 63, bill history — SL 2014, ch 76 (89th regular session); "Signed by the Governor" 13 March 2014
• South Dakota Legislature — SDCL 2-14-16 — an act which does not prescribe when it shall take effect, "if passed at a regular session, takes effect on the first day of July after its passage"