A lawsuit
was filed against the SAT and ACT for selling
confidential data of students to colleges. Some states mandate that
all students must take one of these tests, whether they are college
bound or not. Students assume that their names and scores will be
shared with colleges to which they apply, but it turns out that far
more is disclosed about students, and it is sold, not just shared.
It appears that ACT and SAT are in the data-mining business for
their own gain. A lawsuit filed this week contends
that the College Board, which runs the SAT,
and ACT,
Inc., sell identifying information
about the hundreds of thousands of teenagers who take the exams
each year without the students’
consent. The test
companies are “masking the sale” of personal details about the
students “under the
guise of ‘sharing'” the teens’
information with other
agencies, the suit says. It says
the companies don’t disclose to students that their
personal information will be sold for profit.
The companies collect data from test-takers, then sell
the teenagers’ names and personal details to colleges. The
universities use the information to market themselves to potential
students. Across the country, more
than 1.6 million students in this
year’s high school graduating class — including 101,368 in
Pennsylvania and 83,489 in New Jersey — took the
SAT. Nearly 1.8 million graduating high
school students — including 26,171 in Pennsylvania
and 24,202 in New Jersey — took the
ACT. The lawsuit says the companies
collect details about those students — such as their
names, home addresses, birth dates,
phone numbers and social security
numbers — and sell it at a price of 33
cents per student, per buyer, but “at no time disclosed” to
test-takers that their information would be sold “to third parties
for monetary gain.” On its
website, the College Board tells students it provides
information to educational organizations “looking for students like
you” but says the students’ scores, Social Security numbers and
phone numbers aren’t given to other parties.
Last month, the College Board increased
its fees for student information to
37 cents per name; the ACT now charges 38 centsper
name.
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I’m very pleased to see this, as my state, Utah, is one of the states that require that all students take the ACT. I didn’t realize that the ACT was selling their data until a couple of days ago. I’m not surprised, really, that they’re selling the data, but I am disturbed by it and I’m glad that someone has noticed. I hope it moves quickly before my son has to take the ACT next year. (it won’t move that fast of course, but I can dream)
I am not a lawyer but the argument looks sound to me.
Minors cannot legally contract to release their private information for sale to third parties. Moreover, the intention to sell this information to third parties is never disclosed in the first place.
Who buys this information, and for what purpose?
Well, it says that colleges and universities buy the information but, speculating now, perhaps they are not the only entities.
This has been happening to some degree for a long time. I remember getting brochures from lots of random colleges I would never apply to but that was before the dates of this class action lawsuit. It looks like at some point what was a scores/grades/address database turned into a profit center for ACT/SAT but the terms were never disclosed to students.
These days, a lot more data can be imputed from an address so this is very valuable for colleges and worth paying for. Colleges want to (cheaply) increase their application pool so they can lower their admit rate and they are also looking for full pay students. Purchasing these data can help them do this more efficiently.
This should be outrigt illegal in the states that require the SAT at a minimum. Talk about a sweet deal…
Colleges can and do utilize zip codes to gather demographic information. They then use this in admissions in order to obtain students “most likely” to have resources to pay up front. That’s only one aspect of the data mining currently in place.
Data mining such as this will become more widespread as private companies make further inroads into the Educational-Industrial Complex.
Of course the game is rigged. ACT’s and SAT’s say a lot more about a students socioeconomic status than their intelligence. And “intelligence” as a sole benchmark is also a poor barometer of any individuals overall capabilities.
As currently measured the very concept of “intelligence” holds no meaning as the best and brightest in the Ivy League e.g. have some of the lowest overall creativity I’ve ever seen. Imagination? forget it. Initiative? They won’t breathe without directions. They also have an incredibly low level of political awareness- nor do they care about any of this. I could go on all day on this.
The entire notion of “high-performance tests” (how “high” did you perform in a rigged contest?) needs to go.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
― Albert Einstein
All public high school students in Florida must take the ACT. In fact, a minimum score of 19 can be used as a criteria to permit graduation. According to the article, one must opt OUT of the ACT to prevent data from being gathered. Bet that’s in the small print.
Well, that puts my mind to rest about Common Core and the sale of student data. David Coleman, President of the College Board; David Coleman, architect of the Common Core.