Lawsuit Accuses PowerSchool of Selling Student Data To 3rd Parties

A former teacher has filed a federal lawsuit against PowerSchool, alleging the education technology giant illegally sells student data to third parties without proper consent. Emily Cherkin, lead plaintiff in the class action suit filed in San Francisco, claims PowerSchool has amassed 345 terabytes of data from 440 school districts, including sensitive information about students' health, behavior, and academic records. The company provides software services to more than 60 million students across 90 of the largest U.S. school districts.

The lawsuit alleges PowerSchool sells anonymized student data to over 100 partners, including educational consultants and government agencies, while marketing its analytics for workforce and policy planning. The company's Naviance college-planning software alone tracks 6 million high school students. PowerSchool has denied the allegations.

If they haven't sold it yet, they will really soon

[Fly Swatter]

That data is probably the goal of: PowerSchool to be Acquired by Bain Capital in $5.6 Billion Transaction [baincapital.com] - another Private Equity group buying another asset to exploit.

Your children are now for Sale to a Private Equity group, this class action smells new money.

Why are you surprised?

[Gravis Zero]

I can't believe that people can be so naive as to think any company that collects data isn't selling it. School systems need to insist on adding causes that explicit list possible used of collected data that include massive fines when found in breach of contract whenever they make contracts with companies. If you give a damn then why have you waited until it's too late to do so?

at least an school can get out of EULA and forced

[Joe_Dragon]

at least an school can get out of EULA and forced arbitration

Re:

[Stephenmg]

They do. It is also federal law, FERPA. Not saying that a teacher won't go and download a random math app that has no vetting, but something like a student information system defiantly has something in the contract on who owns and controls the data.

Re:

[Stephenmg]

PowerSchool isn't collecting data just to collect it. The data is required by schools to operate and PowerSchool's business model is to sell software to schools.

Anonymized data

[Tony Isaac]

This may be a legal gray area. It's clearly illegal to sell PII or PHI or other personally-identifiable data without consent. I haven't seen any legal precedent determining that it's illegal to sell anonymized data. Perhaps this case will help the courts determine the answer.

No evidence

[Stephenmg]

PowerSchool is a Student Information System used by schools to manage REQUIRED (grades, attendance, behavior) data. The lawsuit isn't alleging any data collected beyond what I would expect a student information to collect. There is also no evidence that they sold any data. "Cherkin, a Seattle mother of two, former teacher, and author of the new parenting guide "The Screentime Solution," is now the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit that alleges the education technology giant PowerSchool is selling st

That's one piece.

[waspleg]

They own a bunch of other shit under their umbrella too. Including Schoology LMS for one thing.

Re:

[Stephenmg]

The data collected for LMS is often similar to an SIS, assignments and grades plus some demographic information.

Non-paywalled link

[jenningsthecat]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/a-lawsuit-accuses-bain-capitals-powerschool-of-trafficking-in-student-data-the-edtech-giant-says-everything-it-does-is-legal/ar-AA1tt1A4

PowerSchool claims that the data is anonymized. But does anonymized data really exist anymore? They also claim that they don't sell the data. I find that hard to believe. And the plaintiffs raise a valid concern when they note that PowerSchool is about to become a private company which "will no longer be legally bound to make even the minimum disclosures required by a public company."

I'm on the side of the plaintiffs here - I hope they win big.

Re:

[Stephenmg]

I'm not a fan of PowerSchool, but who are they selling the data to? The one example looked like it was just a tool to compare to other schools. As for anonymized data, it might just be counts and percentages. Thanks for the link. I'm all for student data privacy. I push for it within, but this could hurt schools. I use competing products.