The Department of Education conducts pre-employment screening for employees and investigates their past using a backgroundcheck that consists of all the records belonging to a person, regarding his past employment and other criminal record details, etc.
This becomes extremely important because of the sensitive nature of the documents the employees will have to handle and they have access to all sorts of information. These employees handle crucial information related to the students and others, such as their names and social security numbers along with a lot of other data. This has the potential to turn out to be dangerous if this information falls into the hands of the wrong kind of people.
There was a question that a backgroundcheck interferes with an individual’s right to privacy. In fact, several employees of the Department of Education have submitted a letter as a protest for the in-depth investigation being performed on them which included looking into their financial and medical records, too. Several researchers signed the letter stating that this was too much information being checked by them.
However, the general feeling is that this should be seen more as an attempt to safeguard the students rather than anything else. People cannot be employed in such crucial positions that require sensitive data handling, without completely knowing who and what kind of a person the employee is.
