Several major technology companies signed a pledge not to sell or misuse private student data. Critics were not reassured.
According to a story in Education Week,
K-12 student-privacy pledge released Tuesday and signed by prominent ed-tech providers prompted immediate statements of concern from some advocacy groups about whether self-regulation will do the job of protecting student data.
The voluntary Pledge to Safeguard Student Privacy, co-authored by the Software and Information Industry Association or SIIA, and the Future of Privacy Forum, and signed initially by 13 companies and one non-profit, includes six “do’s” and six “don’ts” of handling student data. The signers—including Amplify, DreamBox Learning, Edmodo, Follett, Knewton, Knovation, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Microsoft, and Think Through Math—agree to abide by the provisions of the pledge effective January 1, 2015.
Among key elements of the pledge are promises to:
Not sell student information
Not behaviorally target advertising (which means targeting advertising based on a student’s web-browsing behavior)
Use data for authorized education purposes only
Not change privacy policies without notice and choice
Enforce strict limits on data retention
Support parental access to, and correction of errors in, their children’s information
Provide comprehensive security standards
Be transparent about collection and use of data
The pledge was created as parents’ worries about the privacy and security of their students’ data have resonated in state legislatures, and as the state of California enacted a strict privacy law last month. It also follows the collapse of inBloom, a controversial data management company that was striving to be a single repository for up to 400 pieces of information about each student whose data were uploaded to the cloud—but that fell under the weight of protests from parents, some educators, and others.
Software companies selling products to K-12 schools have been concerned, too, that their mission to collect and use student data to help educators better teach their students will not be permitted by law. “Without data, we are flying blind,” said Aimee Rogstad Guidera, founder and executive director of Data Quality Campaign, a national nonprofit that advocates for the effective use of education data to improve student achievement, in a statement in support of the pledge.
Range of Reactions to Pledge
The National School Boards Association and the National PTA joined the organizations that released the pledge with their endorsements in the launch announcement. Keith Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking, said he thinks the pledge is helpful. “It states, pretty clearly and crisply—in language a non-lawyer can understand—what’s not going to happen with your data,” he said. Schools and districts are looking for that kind of assurance in an industry standard about the collection, management, and use of personal information, he said.
But Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters based in New York City and co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, said in a statement that “we need legally enforceable provisions requiring parental notification and consent for the disclosure and redisclosure of personal student data, as well as rigorous security standards.” She predicted that the pledge would not reassure parents about data sharing, data-mining and data breaches.
Mark Schneiderman, the senior director of education policy at SIIA, said that, when companies make public pledges like this one, it is enforceable by the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC.
It is worth remembering that the CEO of Knewton, working with Pearson, boasted that education is the most data-minable sector of the economy. Data mining is big business. Can we trust them?
Instead of corporate pledges, why not have Arne just rescind the changes he made to FERPA? Oh, right…pledges can be broken with impunity.
I agree – the pledge is merely an attempt to deceive.
California passed two laws this year–AB 1584 and SB 1177–that protect students against targeted advertising, selling/misuse of data, and other data mining. Anybody who is interested can get more information at http://www.leginfo.ca.gov.
Because the point of these companies is to collect, monitor, disseminate, cull, stack, etc. student data, from cradle to grave, right? So sure, lets believe they are going to keep the information to themselves. Does that not defeat the data collection efforts in the first place? We live in an awful world. There are wars ongoing; people from all over the world will be contracting Ebola. People in the middle east want every “infidel” dead. The nonsense in the education world pales in comparison….smoke and mirrors people. We’re all doomed.
““Without data, we are flying blind,” said Aimee Rogstad Guidera, founder and executive director of Data Quality Campaign,…”
Correct me if I am wrong, but didn’t companies have ways of collecting information before the advent of the computer? The access to data that computer connectivity allows has everyone salivating at the reams of information they can hoard. As a teacher, I have watched students trawl the web in a frenzy of “data” collection. InBloom struck me as the same type of gluttony of doing it because they could. This high tech worship tends to eliminate the careful planning required when resources are scarce. No longer is it necessary to hone what information is needed before the search. In the age of easy data, the urge to gorge oneself on a menu that expands a search far beyond relevance or necessity has taken over.
I think history already shows us that self-regulation doesn’t work well when those self-imposed rules compete with profits.
Be wary of what these CEO’s say and watch what they do.Guaranteeing privacy is the essence of human freedom.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/10/privacy-matters-ted-talk/
Be afraid be very afraid
There was a Broadway play with some great music called “Promises, Promises.”
Anyone who believes a promise with no teeth to enforce it is a fool.
There must be a law guaranteeing parents the right to opt their child out of data mining. And the law must have a meaningful sanction for any company that violates it. Say $500,000 for every violation. Or more.
Actually, it would be far better if there were a law requiring parents to opt IN. That would put the burden on the companies which stand to profit. They’ll fight that tooth and nail, because few parents would sign up for such an intrusion.
When the fox promises not to eat the chickens, even though the coop door is open, he may even believe it himself at the time, but at some point he’s going to get hungry. Eating chickens is essential to his nature. So too the free market.
“Among key elements of the pledge are promises to:
Provide comprehensive security standards
The signers—including ….Microsoft,”
Having a standard is not the same as fulfilling it.
Windows security update of the day, anyone?
Microsoft is to secure data as a sieve is to water.
Microsoft data security is one of those impossible things that the Queen in Alice in Wonderland used to practice believing before breakfast.
Have you heard of the scorpion and the frog?
A scorpion asks a frog to carry him over a river. The frog is afraid of being stung during the trip, but the scorpion argues that if it stung the frog, both would sink and the scorpion would drown. The frog agrees and begins carrying the scorpion, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When asked why, the scorpion points out that this is its nature.
“Secure Data”
“The data is secure”
Said NSA to Congress
“Of that we are quite sure,
Cuz Edward Snowden told us”
Self-regulation! Awesome. That always works. Because if we’ve learned anything over the last 75 years, we’ve learned that people who sell product to kids Care About Kids.
That’s probably why we have a whole set of elaborate rules governing everything from children’s’ pajamas to how far apart the slats in a crib can be, because the companies who sell tangible products to kids were doing such a bang-up job “self-regulating” before they were ordered to comply with product safety rules.
http://www.cpsc.gov/Business–Manufacturing/Business-Education/childrens-products/
Meth Heads Sign Pledge to Safeguard Meth
Good analogy!
At my age, 85, I have seen MANY corporate promises AND have also seen how empty those promises have proven to be. To be skeptical is an understatement of the highest order.
If they plan not to utilize it, why gather it?
It was just so CLEARLY an effort to head off real regulation.
They may as well have said “we’re seating a panel and then taking a pledge to stop any contemplated regulation”.
I don’t know what it is with people and tech companies, why there’s this this idea they’re different than any other large companies.
Apple. Google, and Pearson all declined to sign.
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/student-privacy-tech-companies-111645.html
Google’s entire business model is based on collecting and sharing data — for a price, of course.
They would never sign anything that might potentially tie their hands in that regard not even if it was “voluntary”.
Given their very poor track record (eg, of illegally collecting personal data — passwords, emails, etc — with their Street View system) I don’t really understand why people even still use Google.
It saves ALL your searches forever (to be used at a future date by who knows who for who knows what) and is actually not even a particularly good search engine — returning the most “popular” results (based on number of links) rather than the most relevant.
To SomeDAM Poet,
True that about Google. I bought some socks online, and now wherever I go on the Internet, those doggone socks are following me everywhere. I only have two feet! Enough with the socks!
Khan Academy also declined to sign.
How about the College Board?
And I don’t believe Adobe signed either. Adobe was in the news this week regarding privacy issues and library patrons.