[PRIVACY] Is Google Spying On Students?

Data Collection Is Expanding in Schools

In public and private schools, ed tech companies are collecting personal data such as kids’ names, birth dates, browsing histories, location data, and more, often without the knowledge and consent of parents, or even of school administrators, according to a new report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

EFF’s report, “Spying on Students: School-Issued Devices and Student Privacy,” comes from online surveys and face-to-face interviews with over 1,000 parents, teachers, school IT managers, and other stakeholders. It reveals a disturbing lack of meaningful privacy protections for students, and schools’ resistance to letting students opt out of school-provided ed tech.

EFF identified 152 different ed tech apps through its surveys. Only 118 had published privacy policies. Very few of those privacy policies went into important details such as data retention, encryption, de-identification, and aggregation.

Perhaps most disturbing, ed tech is teaching children as young as five to hand over their personal information on demand. It’s not uncommon for a student to have multiple ed tech online accounts, each including a “teachable moment” when it requires personal information.

Google seems to dominate the classrooms of EFF’s survey sample, although ed tech firms Pearson and McGraw-Hill are also mentioned by participants. “One-third of all K-12 students in U.S. schools use school-issued devices. Google Chromebooks account for about half of those machines. Across the U.S., more than 30 million students, teachers, and administrators use Google’s G Suite for Education (formerly known as Google Apps for Education), and that number is rapidly growing.”

"You Can Check Out Any Time You Like..."

In December 2015, EFF filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission concerning Google’s G Suite for Education. The main allegation was that Google was tracking students and building advertising profiles when they used Google apps that were outside of Google Apps for Education (now G Suite). About a year later, Google changed its privacy policy to assure everyone that it does not use any data collected on K-12 students to target ads on non-G Suite Google properties. But Google still collects data on students and associates it with their G Suite accounts, perhaps to target ads within G Suite.

Parents expressed great frustration to EFF surveyors when discussing efforts to get information from schools. Several parents said their students were issued devices and signed up for online accounts without their knowledge or consent.

Opting out of ed tech is made difficult deliberately, in many school systems. Exceptions to rules are always discouraged in schools, but the hurdles that parents report seem especially absurd. For instance, many schools have an “all or nothing” privacy policy that is simple for schools to administer, but can result in a child’s picture being dropped from the yearbook if the child’s parents opt out of ed tech.

On the other hand, EFF gives the example of a rural, heavily Amish school district in Indiana. “The schools provide students and their parents with a “menu” of options for opting out. In addition to FERPA-compliant options for whether or not students’ names and pictures can appear in the school directory, yearbook, website, etc., families can separately choose whether or not they want their student to use technology in the classroom.”

Student privacy matters too. Parents should ask probing questions, discussed in Part 3 of EFF’s report, to understand what data is collected about their kids and get control of it. What technology is being used? Is there a privacy policy available? What data is being collected, how is it protected, and is it being used outside the school? If clear answers are not available, contact your local PTA, school board, or newspaper.

We haven't even touched on the issue of how much screen time is too much for younger kids, how early access to computers affects learning and cognitive abilities, or the health effects of smartphones, tablets and laptops on children. Do a little searching on your own, and let me know what you think.

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