POSTED BY Kaleigh Fitzpatrick
The growing opportunities for schools to integrate technology into classrooms and school administration are increasing productivity, organization, and capacity to foster positive student learning and development. The availability of these technologies, however, is putting a tremendous amount of pressure on administrators and teachers to implement these technologies now. Therefore, in the scramble to get these technologies in schools, there has been no check to ensure that the necessary protections are in place for student data. The existing systems to protect student data are incapable of controlling the risks and concerns associated with these new technologies. Over the past year, many states across the country are trying to address some of these gaps in protection through new legislation. California legislators are leading the way by putting forth the most comprehensive bill to date. Just last month, California passed legislation prohibiting any education sites, apps, and cloud services used by schools from selling or disclosing personal information about elementary and secondary students. At present, a student’s privacy is in serious jeopardy of being violated by hackers, marketers, and government authorities because proper regulations are not yet in place.
The educational software and digital content industry was estimated at approximately $8 billion nationally last year. Teachers now can use programs to teach and track progress or control behavior through individual accounts for each student. In addition to being teaching tools, these programs are also collecting massive amounts of individualized data on students. School districts are also now commonly outsourcing the management of student records, including attendance, grades, discipline, health, academic progress, and parent and student contact information. Conventionally, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) 20 U.S.C. § 1232g (2013) has protected student data, but is simply not equipped to provide the protection necessary with uses of these new technologies.
Across the country this year, states have made promising strides towards mitigating the gap between new education technologies and student data privacy needs. During last year alone, 110 bills in 36 states were introduced, with 30 bills passing both houses and 24 being signed into law. California is receiving the greatest attention because it is the first state to comprehensively restrict how student data is used by the education technology industry. If the California bill is signed into law it will prohibit targeted ads based on school information, the creation of student profiles that are not used for education purposes, and would require that any data collected through educational technology be kept secure. It is the first bill of its kind to place the responsibility on the private data management companies to ensure that student data is only used to enhance education for students and not sold to outside companies for advertising purposing or any other purpose.
Without such protections in place, the real fear for parents is that when their child applies to college, that child’s difficult behavior in the 6th grade or his low math score from the 3rd grade could be viewed by admissions officers and those insignificant and very typical childhood struggles would haunt them forever. Furthermore, it is far simpler to protect data upfront than to leave data unprotected and vulnerable to misuse and try to retroactively regain the privacy of that data. Therefore, the movement towards better protections for student data is timely, promising, and critical. However, continued work must be done to ensure that the problem is being addressed holistically and fully because no one wants their one and only detention in the 7th grade to keep them out of their dream college.
Bio: Kaleigh is a Staff Member of the Journal of High Technology Law. She is currently a 2L at Suffolk University Law School. She holds combined masters degree in Child Development and Urban/Environmental Policy and Planning from Tufts University.
