Education companies’ voluntary student-privacy pledge draws mixed reviews

Several education technology companies have signed a pledge to protect student privacy in respects not required by federal law.

Reports Politico:

Companies signing the pledge — including Microsoft, Amplify, Edmodo, Knewton and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt — will commit to clearly disclose what type of personal information they collect about students, and for what purpose. They will promise not to sell the information or use it to target advertising at students. They’ll pledge to let parents see their children’s records and correct any errors. And, perhaps most significantly, they will extend those protections to cover all data they collect.

But critics note that several key players in the market (such as Apple and Google) have not signed on, and point to loopholes and omissions from the policy (such as the absence of a parental consent requirement before collecting student information).

Read more about the pledge, and the tension between self-regulation and proposed government regulation, here.

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