Dive Brief:
- The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Tenth Amendment Center are teaming up in an attempt to advocate for states to adopt model legislation, written by the ACLU, aimed at strengthening student privacy protections.
- Some 16 states and the District of Columbia have already introduced proposals modeled on the ACLU's template.
- In all, 32 states have already enacted data privacy laws, but they are different in tenor, tone, and the amount of protection they offer students, with California's being the strongest.
Dive Insight:
The new partnership between the ACLU and the Tenth Amendment Center comes at a pivotal time, as more attention is being paid to how districts and companies access, protect, save, and use student data. A complaint to the FCC made by the Electronic Frontier Foundation recently accused Google of spying on students, in part, via pre-loaded settings in Chromebooks.
Weeks ago, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) also took up the cause, sending a formal letter to Google asking for the company to release information about its collection and use of student data.
Some districts have cooperated in order to protect student data. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation have helped to fund an initiative called the Trusted Learning Environment, intended to standardize school districts' privacy practices and make them transparent to the public. A total of 28 school districts worked with the Consortium for School Networking, the School Superintendents Association, the Association of School Business Officials International, and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development on the standards.