Episode 154: Your Kid’s Homework Has More Trackers Than Your Fitness App

Your child’s school day is powered by data—grades, health records, survey answers, device activity, and the dozens of apps woven into homework and instruction. I pull back the curtain on how that data move through districts and vendors, and how a lack of basic policies turns classrooms into soft targets for misuse and cybercrime. From the NYC Illuminate incident to AI-driven tools in everyday learning, I connect the dots so parents can spot real risks and take clear action.

I talk through the expanding role of artificial intelligence, the practical gaps many districts face in staff training and encryption, and how political shifts reduce federal enforcement even when laws stay on the books. You’ll hear how state privacy laws and youth-focused bills aim to help, where they fall short for daily school operations, and why opting out of edtech can undermine personalized instruction if schools don’t plan carefully. Most importantly, I explore equity: low‑income and majority Black, American Indian, and Alaska Native communities face more ads, more trackers, and fewer disclosures—conditions that feed data brokers and deepen bias.

I frame student data privacy as a civil rights issue with real‑world consequences and share a focused action plan: seven questions to take to your principal or district leaders about app sprawl, data use, survey storage, protections against data brokers, and best practices for vendor oversight. Expect practical language, not jargon, and resources like third‑party certifications that signal stronger privacy hygiene. If you care about how technology can help your child learn without turning them into a data product, this conversation gives you the clarity and confidence to speak up.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with another parent, and leave a review to help more families find these insights. What’s the first question you’ll bring to your school?

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Chapters

• 1:01 Host Introduction And Purpose
• 3:35 Why Data Privacy Matters For Families
• 5:23 NYC Breach And Vendor Failures
• 7:05 District Responsibility And TLE Seal
• 8:59 AI Expansion And Policy Gaps
• 11:56 Federal And State Policy Landscape
• 13:51 Tradeoffs Of Opt Outs In Schools
• 15:08 Dismantling ED And FERPA Risks
• 16:54 Inequities And Targeted Ads In Edtech
• 19:03 Data Brokers And App Vetting
• 21:37 Privacy As A Civil Rights Issue
• 23:59 Seven Questions Parents Should Ask
• 26:17 Reinforcing Risks And Leadership Gaps
• 27:47 Call For Feedback And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:36

Welcome to another episode of K-12 Public Education Insights, Empowering Parents of Color Podcast. The podcast that converges at the intersection of educational research and parental actions. It's about making the trends, topics, and theories in public education understandable so that you can implement them into practical, actionable strategies that work for your children. My name is Dr. Kim J. Fields, former corporate manager, turned education researcher, and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators, as well as experiencing the microaggressions that I faced as an African-American mom raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. Once I gained the information and the insights that I needed, I was then equipped to be able to successfully support my children in their educational progress. This battle-tested experience is what I provide as action steps for you to take. It's like enjoying a bowl of educational research with a sprinkling of motherwit wisdom on top. If you're looking to find out more about the current information and issues in education that could affect you or your children, and the action steps you can take to give your children the advantages they need, then you're in the right place. Thanks for tuning in today. I know that staying informed about K-12 public education trends and topics is important to you, so keep listening. Give me 30 minutes or less, and I'll provide insights on the latest trends, issues, and topics pertaining to this constantly evolving K-12 public education environment. If each of your children have a Social Security number, their privacy could be at risk. Would you want unauthorized vendors to have access to your family income information? You're going to want to listen to this two-part series on data, privacy, and cybersecurity in schools and the issues schools are grappling with in these areas. The impact could have implications on your child's privacy now and in the future. This episode will be part one of the two-part series and it will explore data privacy concerns for your children. Part two of this series will cover cybersecurity risks, their impact on your child's educational experience, and the prevalence with which cyber attacks are targeting schools. Not taking data privacy and cybersecurity issues as serious concerns would be short-sighted on your part. It's never too late to be up to date on how your children's schools are addressing these problems. I discuss weaknesses in student data privacy protections and the implications of a lack of data privacy for your children. Keep listening to the end of this episode where I provide seven questions that you can ask your school principal or district leader about how your child's data are protected. Let's gain some insight on this. Weaknesses in student data privacy protections were amplified when COVID-19 hit five years ago, and schools, teachers, students, parents, and technology companies had to quickly shift to remote learning on a large scale. Vulnerabilities still remain. In March 2022, personal data of 820,000 current and former students in the New York City School District were compromised because of a security breach at Illuminate Education, an Irvine California-based student data vendor. In this breach incident, a hacker gained access to student names, birth dates, and data on characteristics such as special education, English language learner, and free or reduced price meal status. Supposedly, the vendor did not collect students' Social Security numbers or family income information. Officials with the New York City Department of Education told the local news outlets that Illuminate Education failed to encrypt data on classroom management, scheduling, and pupil data platforms, which was required by the contract between the company and the school system. There are many issues with the protection of student data, and many education technology companies or ed tech companies have access to student data that is not sufficiently protected. While the district, any district, can outsource the work, the responsibility of data privacy is on the district. Student data privacy encompasses a broad range of considerations from students' own smartphones, the classroom applications that are discovered and embraced by teachers, the district level data systems, and the state testing programs. The responsibility of student privacy falls on the superintendent, the curriculum office, professional development trainers, the technology department of the district, and everyone in between. In most cases, parents are informed about what data are being collected by private companies, how the data are being used, and how the data are being protected. The Consortium for School Networking serves school district technology directors across the country. One area where the Consortium for School Networking is working on is promoting stronger protections of student data privacy at the school district level with its Trusted Learning Environment SEAL program. The Trusted Learning Environment SEAL program requires an extensive application process focused on five areas of school district practice leadership, business, data security, professional development, and the classroom. The process is valid for two years and encourages best practices. The SEAL helps district superintendents have a plan in place, a framework that makes it easier when teachers and staff are accessing information online. Schools face an uphill battle protecting student data in the age of AI. Many school district technology leaders are struggling to establish fundamental student data privacy practices, mostly due to a lack of support from the rest of the district. Protecting student data has become one of the most pressing challenges for district technology leaders because learning environments are increasingly digital. Districts are expanding their use of artificial intelligence in teaching and learning, as well as the management of schools, and schools are becoming a top target for cyber criminals. Some of the key challenges facing school districts regarding student data privacy include most job descriptions for those responsible for implementing student data privacy practices don't even mention privacy responsibilities. There is a lack of basic privacy policies and student data privacy training for school and district staff members. And barriers exist to enforcing policies and managing district staff members' online behaviors to better protect student data. A recent report from the Nonprofit Consortium for School Networking highlighted that roughly half of the school districts in this country have policies that address how data should be retained for use in student records, encryption of student data, and which district staff members have access to certain student data. Further, district technology leaders indicated that they lacked support from their superintendents as well as other departments, making the work of protecting student data across the district much more difficult. These findings underscore that there's an urgent need for stronger leadership, training, and resources to protect student data in an increasingly digital world. The weakest link when it comes to data privacy and security is always the human. District superintendents and other district leaders can put all the data privacy tools in place, but at a certain point, people have to follow the rules. The bottom line is school leadership needs to recognize that encouraging a security culture increases the district's reputation and boosts trust from parents. More federal and state policymakers are focusing on addressing data privacy, especially for children, because of the increasing concerns about how companies collect and sell user information. Congressional lawmakers have introduced several data privacy bills, some of which deal directly with children's online privacy, and at least 15 states have enacted comprehensive data privacy laws since 2020, while other states have either now or have laws that have at least introduced data privacy concerns during their current legislative session. Some of these laws include the Children and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act and the Kids Online Safety Act of 2023. This latter bill, the Kids Online Safety Act, would require certain online platforms to provide children with options to protect their information, disable addictive features, and opt out of personalized recommendations. This would apply to online video games, messaging applications, or video streaming services that connect to the internet and that are used by a minor. The problem with some of these policies, however, is that they don't always consider the day-to-day school operations and how they would be affected. Schools use student data to support decision making, to personalize learning, and for better reporting as required under federal and state laws. It's a double-edged sword, for sure. If students and families opt out of the educational technology that schools use for day-to-day operations like adaptive learning software, then it could undermine the teachers' ability to facilitate personalized assignments for their students. In the president's plan to shutter the U.S. Department of Education, did Doge put student and educator data at risk? There are three main concerns that teachers and students should be aware of. One, the risk to educators' personal data through financial aid systems that store the data of people who have taken up federal student loans to pay for college. Two, how AI is being used to analyze personal data to make decisions about federal government cuts. And three, what happens to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act or FERPA if the Education Department is dismantled. For the most part, the Department of Education doesn't collect personally identifiable information about K-12 students, but the data the department collects and maintains to award financial aid for higher education are extensive. Those data include the student's legal name, Social Security number, tax records, and other data which have additional legal protections beyond the blanket federal privacy law. The problem with Doge accessing these types of data is that the more people who have access to the data and the more times it is transferred, the greater the risk of bad actors accessing the data. This can have serious real-world implications for most people because these data are highly valuable to criminals who can use the information to steal identities, take out loans, open credit cards, and apply for government benefits in the victim's claims. And that's just a few examples. There's a thriving market for this kind of information on the dark web. As the Education Department continues to be dismantled, the data privacy laws would still exist, but there wouldn't be an enforcement authority behind them unless Congress gives the authority to another federal agency. Potentially, this is where state privacy laws might address how education agencies can share student data with technology providers, for example, and they may be able to fill in the gaps of the federal data privacy policies. One thing is for sure, under the current administration, there will be less federal oversight of education technology companies and how they are handling student data. This alone should be sufficient cause for concern for all parents. Unfortunately, this should come as no surprise to you. Students from the lowest income families are the most likely to attend schools that don't systematically track their education technology. This puts these students' data privacy at risk. The apps that these schools use are also the most likely to contain ads targeted to the students who use them. The same problems were true for schools with majority American Indian and Alaskan Native students. Schools serving the lowest income students are three times more likely to recommend or require apps with behavioral ads than schools serving students from families earning$150,000 or more per year. Also, schools with majority black student bodies were most likely to have ads and trackers on their websites. These schools have the biggest data privacy problems with their school websites. Additionally, schools serving the lowest income students were less likely to provide students with the technology notice that clearly lists all the technology products that their students must use. Altogether, this adds up to a potentially worrisome level of data collection on students from minority and low-income families. You might be thinking that an ad in an education app collecting data on students may seem innocuous, but it is the aggregate of all the different technology that students use in school and in their personal lives that are collecting data and sending it to third-party data brokers. That's the big concern. Data brokers compile detailed profiles on everyone who uses technology that they would then sell to third parties. And you have no control over who buys the data and how those data are used. For third-party data brokers, it's all about the money they can make on their data. The fact of the matter is that schools are falling short on vetting the apps and internet services they require or recommend their students use. Not protecting students' personal information in the digital space can cause real-world problems. Strangers can clean a lot of sensitive information about students from even just their location and calendar data. Roughly 30% of schools appear to be embedding all the apps used by students and schools, and systematically were less likely to recommend or require students to use apps that featured ads. It's also hard for families to find information online about the technology their children are required to use for school, and it's difficult to opt out of using that technology. Only about 50% of all schools provided a technology notice that clearly lists all the technology products students must use, and while this may not be required under federal or most state laws, it is a best practice. Overall, apps with third-party certifications such as One Ed Tech, Student Privacy Pledge, and the Student Data Privacy Consortium received better data privacy safety ratings based on the rubric developed by Internet Safety Labs. These third-party certifications apply to off-the-shelf applications. Custom-built applications that some districts use to communicate with families often have more privacy issues than regular off-the-shelf apps. The big takeaway for schools and district leaders is that they should be picky about what apps students are required or recommended to use. Less is more should be a guiding star for schools. The reality of it is that student data privacy is a civil rights issue. If you think about all the data that schools collect on your children, it's a massive amount. From health records to grades to disciplinary actions to attendance. And these are data outside of the apps that they are required to use. A recent Center for Democracy and Technology report found that monitoring software that is supposed to keep students safe and on task when they use school-issued digital devices had significant downsides. The tools were more likely to be used for disciplinary purposes, which mostly affected students who were black, Hispanic, or had disabilities rather than for counseling purposes. The findings from the report showed that student data privacy is a civil rights issue. Some of the technology tools that schools use and the data they collect are biased because they are a product of a society with racial, social, and economic inequities. One of the main issues with student data privacy is that the laws that govern it are rarely enforced. Federal agencies must step up enforcement, and federal and state policymakers should use their powers of influence to provide guidance on which technology tools are aligned with data privacy laws. Older students need to also be part of the conversation about what happens to the personal information that's collected about them so that there is a feedback loop in the school community. So, what can you do with the information that I just shared about data privacy protections for your child? Here are the action steps you can take regarding this topic. I hope you're now able to see the seriousness of data protection and privacy issues for your children, especially in the apps they use in school. You may be thinking, what can I do to ensure my child's data are kept private? Well, you can begin by asking the school principal or district leaders these types of questions. One, I was looking over my child's shoulder while they were completing a homework assignment and they were using ten different apps. Why are they using ten apps? Two, how are their data being protected? Three, my kids took a survey asking about how they were emotionally. Where are those data going? Four, how is my child's data going to be used? Five, is the school making sure that data really are being used to help my children and to not put them in a box? What policies does the school have in place for protecting my children's data from being sold to third-party data brokers? And seven, what best practices does the school utilize to protect my child's data across the board, including app usage and staff access? Getting answers to these questions can at least be the start to your understanding about how your children's data are being used. Staying vigilant on this issue may give you the peace of mind that you are advocating for and keeping your child safe, physically and virtually. Because privacy is safety. The weakest link when it comes to data privacy and security is always the human. District superintendents and other district leaders can put all the data privacy tools in place, but at a certain point, people have to follow the rules. Schools face an uphill battle protecting student data in the age of AI. Many school district technology leaders are struggling to establish fundamental student data privacy practices, mostly due to a lack of support from the rest of the district. Protecting student data has become one of the most pressing challenges for the district technology leaders because learning environments are increasingly digital. As the education department continues to be dismantled, the data privacy laws would still exist, but there wouldn't be an enforcement authority behind them unless Congress gives the authority to another federal agency. Potentially, this is where state privacy laws might address how education agencies can share student data with technology providers, for example, and they may be able to fill in the gaps of the federal data privacy policies. One thing is for sure, under the current administration, there will be less federal oversight of education technology companies and how they are handling student data. This alone should be sufficient cause for concern for all parents who have children in the K-12 public education system. What are your thoughts about data, privacy, and security of your children's personal information? Voice your concerns by leaving me a text comment on my podcast website, K-12Education Insights.buzzsprout.com. Here's how to leave a text message. Go to the episode description page and click on the Send Me a Text Message link. Again, that's K12Education Insights.buzzsprout.com. If you enjoyed this episode, why not listen to another episode from my catalog? It could take as little as 15 minutes of your day. And remember, new episodes come out every Tuesday. Thanks for listening today. Be sure to come back for more insights on K 12 educational topics that impact you and your children. Until next time, learn something new every day.