I wonder how much PII is getting shared with the companies? According to examples in the article, it looks like at least as much as names, personal preferences, and academic performance. Certainly pretty fine-grained versus "this school has a 30% hispanic population which averages 84 out of 100 on the math portion of SOLs."
An individual's name, grades, school, age, and race are bits of potentially PII by themselves, but depending on how they're used, context, and combination, they aren't necessarily personally identifiable. If you know someone's name is John Smith and he's a male, that's not PII because John Smith is a common male name. But it *is* PII if someone's name is uncommon and essentially unique in a given application or context. Saying John Smith who is at Central school might or might not be PII (are there more than one John Smith? Is it a teacher, student, staff?). Combine that further with John Smith, age 16, at Central school and it turns out there's only one John Smith aged 16 there, then that's PII because you can use it to personally identify John Smith in that context.
Actually, come to think of it, would PII laws apply to those under 18? I don't know -- all my training is dealing with adult PII. The Department of Education seems OK with distributing at least some student information with private companies depending on what's stipulated in the school-company contract. Though if they have rules/laws against additional distribution of PII, I dunno. And the example given in the article would fall under PII, I think.
In any case, the concept of a cohesive standardized database tracking critical student information and academic performance is one thing, but tracking things like preferences, hobbies, non-school related activities...that's a bit much. Selling that information is even worse.
Besides, all these companies are chomping at the bit by indicating they'll deliver personalized learning experiences to each student. This indicates some sort of regular access by the student to individual interactive multimedia: computers, tablets, etc. A lot of schools struggle to keep a decent computer lab big enough for one class at a time that students might get to visit once a week -- if that -- let alone something like an iPad plus apps for every student. Maybe the companies are going to provide some sort of incentive, such as providing the hardware for free but requiring bulk licensing of their apps? *shrug*
Ignoring the PII and finance issues, such personalized learning experiences would be great and could do a lot for education. I just don't know how to get from standardized to personalized of that level without sharing significant levels of personal information. That's the nature of personalized things, is it not? My girlfriend, who is a kindergarten teacher, has to do a lot of personalized instruction for each student. But it's by a licensed teacher under strict laws and constant administrative observation, not a company with a big database of information constrained only by a loosely worded contract.
Usual disclaimers: IANAL, all names/locations/ages fictional and any bearing to persons or places -- living/in use or dead/destroyed -- purely coincidental. Etc., etc., etc.
Facebook
Twitter