Last fall, California enacted what Education Week called a "landmark" student-data privacy law (SB 1177). This was passed because some educational technology companies were caught abusing their access to personal student data.
As a parent, the digital privacy of my children is very important. I don't want an educational technology vendor using my kids' school created digital data for behavioral advertising or for profiling purposes that may be utilized to discriminate against them in the future. The Family Educational Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) was enacted in 1974 and has not kept up with the innovative digital learning technologies that are becoming more widely available for our students.
Today, schools utilize cloud-based technologies, apps, and other digital services to teach our children. Unfortunately, metadata created from these platforms is not considered an educational record under FERPA and thus not protected from the prying eyes of advertisers and others who covet this rich information. Therefore, students and their families need stronger legal privacy protections. Absent more robust student privacy laws, our children's privacy and safety will be compromised and innovative learning and educational technologies will face increased parent skepticism and opposition.
Maryland, a state that has vied with California to be a national leader in digital privacy protection recently introduced the Student Privacy Act of 2015. The bill is modeled after California's groundbreaking SB 1177. Mark Schneiderman, senior director of education policy for the Software & Information Industry Association said California's SB 1177 "seems to generally strike the right balance". Thus, the SIIA should hold the same position on Maryland's student data privacy act.
Last month, President Obama gave a historic speech at the FTC about his privacy agenda for the last two years of his term. In regards to student privacy the President stated: "But we’ve already seen some instances where some
companies use educational technologies to collect student data for commercial
purposes, like targeted advertising. And parents have a legitimate concern
about those kinds of practices.
So, today, we’re proposing the Student Digital Privacy Act. That's pretty
straightforward. We’re saying that data collected on students in the classroom
should only be used for educational purposes -— to teach our children, not to
market to our children. We want to prevent companies from selling student data
to third parties for purposes other than education. We want to prevent any kind
of profiling that outs certain students at a disadvantage as they go through
school."
Congress is also concerned about student privacy issues. On February 12, 2015, it held a hearing entitled, "How Emerging Technology Affects Student Privacy". The testimony during the hearing demonstrated that FERPA needs to be updated. While my hope is that one day Congress passes stronger student privacy legislation, I am not optimistic in the short term due to all of the acrimony on Capitol Hill.
Until this occurs, states such as Maryland must fill this void and step up to protect the digital privacy and cyber security of our kids.
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