In at least 20 states, the College Board collects and sells student data, despite state law forbidding it.
New York was one of those states, but activist parents led a years-long campaign to block the practice.
Recently, State Attorney General Letitia James won a judgment against the College Board for $750,000, and it agreed to stop monetizing student data in New York.
What happens in your state? Does your state protect the privacy of student data? Does it enforce the law?
Read Leonie Haimson’s account of how parents in New York pushed back and finally won. She includes a list of other states that protect student privacy.
She writes:
For decades, the College Board has been selling student names, addresses, test scores, and whatever other personal information that students have provided them, when they sign up for a College Board account and the Student Search program. According to the AG press release, in 2019 alone, the College Board improperly shared the information of more than 237,000 New York students. Since New York’s student privacy law, Education §2-d, calls for a fine of up to $10 per student, the penalty for selling student data during that one year alone could have equaled more than $2 million.
And yet for years, on their website and elsewhere, the College Board has also falsely claimed they weren’t selling student data. Instead they called it “licensing” data, a distinction without a difference. For years, they also claimed that they never sold student scores, though that was false as well, as they do sell student scores within a range.
The College Board urges millions of students to sign up for their Student Search program, with all sorts of unfounded and deceptive claims, including that it will help them get into better schools or receive scholarships. The reality is that their personal data is sold to over 1,000 colleges, programs and other companies – the names of which they refuse to disclose — who use it for marketing purposes and may even resell it to even less reputable businesses.
Is your state one of them? Is the law enforced?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
YES it was (X2).
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Instead of the faux theater with tech bros in Congress, maybe what leaders need to be doing is thoughtful investigations into our collective loss of privacy. Those on the web should not have access to everyone’s data simply because it makes them rich. Let’s start by putting real restrictions on political fund raising and then require internet entities to ask for our locations rather than track us. I guess expecting Congress to pursue meaningful legislation is a bit much.
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PRIVATE data???
Gee, ain’t it funny
how the mind
slips away…
Snowed in wasn’t joking.
As sang wasn’t joking.
Brad wasn’t joking.
What are you gonna believe:
The evidence of your eyes or
what the textbooks and
actors for the state said?
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It’s a non-profit so it’s not about the money!
Let’s see, income from data searches for NY students between 2018-2022 $28M
Fine for illegally using the data $750k.
Think they will do it again? At a 2.7% expense……
Oh, and if you think zip code shouldn’t matter:
“d. Search Customers were then provided access to an online portal through
which they could then identify the characteristics they were searching for
in students. These criteria included, among other things, zip code, gender,
ethnicity, and score ranges on PSAT, SAT, or AP exams.”
Click to access college-board-student-privacy-aod.pdf
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The College Board may be a nonprofit but it pays huge salaries. Its CEO David Coleman is paid more than $1 million a year.
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Exactly, the CB is a “nonprofit” in the sense that a lot of charter schools and charter school chains are “nonprofit.” Nose-bleed altitude salaries and perks. After those, no profit is left.
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The EU has laws that protect personal data including the fact that people own their data, but the US, the home of Big Tech, offers no such protections for citizens. Data are the “new gold” in the US where companies continue to monetize our very existence. https://www.endpointprotector.com/blog/eu-vs-us-what-are-the-differences-between-their-data-privacy-laws/
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I recall an expression: “when anything is free on the internet, you are the product.”
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Every US tech CEO has his or her own private collection of legislative, judicial, and administrative government bobble heads and action figures.
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“the College Board has also falsely claimed they weren’t selling student data. Instead they called it “licensing” data, a distinction without a difference”
A saw-scaled viper by any other name is still the deadliest of all snakes.
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California is one of the states that bans sale of student data. My site administrator tells me she is being forced by Los Angeles Unified School District to force all of my 8th grade students to take the PSAT. There is no opt-out. They are being forced to surrender personal email addresses and other private information. Drives me up the wall. We desperately need a Leonie Haimson in California. I can’t do it. I must teach. The Left Coast needs a savior. College Board is attacking our young people with a vengeance, and my business-connected superintendent is aiding and abetting the crime.
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