Dive Brief:
- A number of big ed tech providers — including Microsoft, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Amplify — signed a voluntary privacy pledge, promising not to sell student data or target ads based on the data.
- While the "best practices" pledge does not necessarily enforce these behaviors, many believe it's a positive step in the right direction as more schools rely on digital data.
- Google, Apple, and Pearson were noticeably missing from the list of signatories.
Dive Insight:
Some feel the pledge doesn't mean much, since many of the promises are actually going to be required under a new California law that says educational sites, apps, and cloud services within schools are prohibited from selling or disclosing personal information about K-12 students, from using the data for marketing services, and from creating files on that data. Still, we like to think raising awareness and setting standards is always an important step.
Data security fears manifested last year when InBloom, a cloud-based company, faced backlash from parents and advocacy groups nervous about the security of the data it collected. After enough pushback and contract terminations, InBloom ultimately closed its doors.
