Fordham on Data Privacy

Federal student privacy laws are riddled with loopholes that present “a very disturbing set of risks” to children’s privacy, Fordham law professor Joel R. Reidenberg testified today at a joint subcommittee hearing on data mining.

Reidenberg urged Congress to update FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, to protect the vast streams of student data collected by private, often for-profit vendors. He noted that many companies collect detailed — and often highly intimate — data on what students, including lunchroom purchases, fitness profiles, learning styles, family financial information, even “whether a child blinks as he reads.”

FERPA does not protect such information, Reidenberg told a joint hearing of the Committee on Education and the Workforce’s Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education and the Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Security Technologies.

“Schools essentially routinely relinquish their students’ privacy when they contract with outside vendors, and parents are kept in the dark,” Reidenberg said.


He noted that many companies provide their software for free — which means that the company is most likely bringing in revenue by monetizing the data in one way or another, such as delivering targeted advertising to students based on their profiles. “In other words, school districts are paying for services with their students’ privacy rather than cash,” he said.