Dive Brief:

• Rep. Jared S. Polis (D-CO) and Rep. Luke Messer (R-IN) have introduced a bipartisan data privacy bill that places restrictions on how tech companies can use data on K-12 students.
• The Student Digital Privacy and Parental Rights Act, introduced Monday, has already received pushback from critics who argue that it does not do enough. According to Politico, the bill still allows companies to sell students' personal info to potential employers, colleges, and possibly the military, and to continue building studentprofiles based on "their aptitudes and attitudes."
• The New York Times points out that the bill comes on the heels of the Pearson pandemonium, where teachers, parents, and administrators expressed concern over the fact that the curriculum and testing powerhouse was monitoring student social media accounts for posts related to its PARCC exam, but the new bill would probably do very little to stop a situation like that from happening again.

Dive Insight:

Last May, after the shuttering of inBloom, the White House issued an 85-page guidance on data privacy, in which it also recommended that FERPA and COPPA laws be updated to further protect student data in the ever-expanding and often uncharted digital era. This new bill is said to be something of a response to that request. FERPA and COPPA affect what schools do with data, but there is currently nothing on the books that regulates the companies themselves. Unfortunately, the gaps that this bill have reportedly leave much to be desired.