Many parents feel it’s a great convenience to receive automatic email updates about how their children are doing in school. But some wonder if the systems producing these updates also provide student information to profit making third parties. In light of the growing debate about student information and the use of private tech contractors, Education Week conducted a review of three of the education tech sector’s biggest players to see how their privacy policies stack up—Edmondo, Khan Academy, and Pearson.
Education Week arranged for two privacy experts, Joel R. Reidenberg, a Fordham University Law professor, and Khaliah Barnes, a lawyer for the electronic privacy information center, to review these companies’ privacy policies, and the experts’ findings raised many concerns. “We're just scratching the surface with our understanding of how the education sector is gathering and looking to monetize student information,” Reidenberg told Education Week.
Khan Academy came in for the harshest criticism. Barnes told Education Week that this California-based non-profit’s privacy policy allows for an “almost limitless” sharing of student data with third parties. Khan disputed Barnes’ claim, stating that his analysis did not reflect its actual practices and that the firm is “adamantly opposed to the idea of commercializing student information, particularly through third parties.”
Pearson, a large publishing company, offers the PowerSchool student information system, which includes sending email updates to parents in K-12 districts. Pearson raised the fewest concerns. The Education Week review noted that Pearson does not have any right to the student data, which many districts store on their server, not the company’s server. Furthermore, the Education Week article quoted a North Carolina state education leader saying that Pearson must get local district permission before giving a third-party vender access to student information. PowerSchool is currently in use in about 4,500 school districts around the country, including Hartford, Stamford, New Britain and other Connecticut districts.
