Over 14 million kids nationwide use i-Ready, which is developed by Curriculum Associates. It is present in classrooms, on tablets, and in the everyday lives of children as young as five. Furthermore, it might have been doing much more than just gauging reading proficiency, according to a lawsuit brought by the EdTech Law Center.

Even though they shouldn’t be shocking at this point, the accusations are startling. According to the lawsuit, Curriculum Associates developed its primary business strategy around gathering student data, including behavioral patterns, academic achievement, and personal identifiers, and then allegedly disclosing that data to numerous third parties for non-educational purposes.

In addition, the complaint claims that the business created comprehensive behavioral and psychological profiles of kids that could track them for years. Parents claim they never gave their consent. Many claim they had no idea.

It’s difficult to ignore how commonplace this arrangement has become. According to recent estimates, the average school district now uses about 2,591 EdTech tools in a single academic year. Every tool is a window. Every login is a piece of information. However, no parent in the pickup line has ever actually read the fine print of a terms-of-service agreement, so discussions about what is collected, stored, or sold seldom go beyond that.

Ninety-six percent of school apps give third parties access to student data, including email addresses, birth dates, and behavioral indicators. frequently without the express permission of parents. Frequently, perhaps in contravention of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

In 1974, FERPA was drafted. It’s worth pausing to consider that. When the legislation safeguarding your child’s academic records was being drafted, the notion of a business monitoring pupils’ eye movements to gauge their level of attention would have seemed like science fiction. However, some platforms do just that, so here we are. Children live inside the enormous gap that exists between what the technology industry has created and what the law anticipated on a daily basis.

The lawsuit filed by the EdTech Law Center against Curriculum Associates comes at a dangerous time. The Trump administration has ordered the Department of Education, the only federal agency with the power to enforce FERPA violations, to start closing its doors. That is a structural threat, not a background detail. The legal framework safeguarding student data effectively falls apart if enforcement ceases.

There would be virtually no repercussions for vendors who were already operating in the shadow of lax oversight. Although the practical implications of the Department’s closure are still unknown, EdTech companies with extensive data practices find the timing to be advantageous.

This lawsuit is not the first indication that there is a problem with classroom technology. The California-based EdTech company Edmodo was sued by the Federal Trade Commission in 2023 for collecting children’s personal data and using it for advertising without the required parental consent. Due to its inability to pay, the company’s $6 million fine was suspended.

However, the Edmodo case highlighted how readily these businesses outsource their legal obligations. According to reports, Edmodo informed schools that they were “solely” in charge of adhering to COPPA, but it did not provide them with any helpful advice on how to do so. The FTC referred to it as an unfair trade practice.

Before collecting personal information, businesses must obtain verifiable consent and notify parents about their data collection practices, according to the COPPA Rule, which regulates online services aimed at children under the age of thirteen. Theoretically, schools have the authority to approve parental collection, but only for educational objectives.

The school authorization vanishes as a legal shield the instant that data is used to serve advertisements, create commercial profiles, or satisfy third parties’ commercial interests. Despite its apparent simplicity, this distinction seems to have been frequently overlooked.

The EdTech sector seems to have operated for years under the unspoken presumption that parents wouldn’t raise too many concerns, schools wouldn’t resist, and regulators wouldn’t have enough staff to conduct a thorough investigation.

That computation might be changing. Discovery obligations are created by lawsuits such as this one, which may require businesses to provide documentation detailing the specific data they gather, how long they retain it, and who receives it. For a sector where transparency has never been a selling point, that could be truly unsettling.

The profile allegation, which is the assertion that behavioral and psychological information about specific children is being gathered in ways that could be used to track them, is what distinguishes the i-Ready case from a typical privacy complaint. A child’s profile created in elementary school and linked to a permanent digital identity may influence how algorithms classify and evaluate them years later.

These profiles might not be as thorough as the lawsuit claims. However, they might be more. It is a right to send a child to public school. The cost of admission shouldn’t include giving corporations access to that child’s data.

The post The Lawsuit That Could Force Every EdTech Company to Reveal What It Knows About Your Child appeared first on Creative Learning Guild.