Digital Learning Companies Falling Short of Student Privacy Pledge

Digital learning products can collect and analyze a wealth of detail about student use of apps and online services. The nationwide student privacy pledge was designed to reassure parents and teachers that the education technology industry was committed to safeguarding the student information it collected and to using it responsibly. Yet, Cambium Learning Group and several other digital learning companies signed the pledge even though, at the time they joined, they had not begun full encryption, an elementary security measure.

For school officials, teachers, parents and students, this practice may call into question the trustworthiness of the industry pledge. “Parents and educators who don’t have the training to test for themselves wouldn’t be able to tell which companies have reasonable security and which do not,” said Tony Porterfield, who tests the security practices of digital learning companies, “and that makes it hard to trust the pledge.”