Student Data Protection In An Era Of Education Technology Innovation

Reaching a Congressional Consensus Will Likely Require Additional Deliberation

During the current 114th U.S. Congress, a variety of House and Senate bills have been introduced that propose different approaches to addressing the growing bipartisan concern about protecting the privacy of student data (below, "Personally Identifiable Information" or "PII"). The bills address PII maintained by public and private educational institutions and state educational agencies and, in some cases, PII maintained or accessible by technology service providers or other third parties doing business with these educational entities.

Consensus regarding how and whether to increase federal mandates and penalties concerning protection of PII has not yet been reached, but awareness exists that student PII, whether for K-12 students or older, is becoming increasingly vulnerable to unauthorized disclosure or misuse, in particular for marketing purposes. Another concern is that the Family