Portland Public Schools contracts with ed tech company being sued over for-profit student data harvesting

In an email to Portland Public Schools (PPS) employees and partners, the district's Chief of Staff, Deborah Kafoury, today announced a new $1 million investment into high impact tutoring, personalized learning and school-based food pantries. A portion of the investment which comes from The Fund for PPS, a nonprofit that collects and distributes parent-raised funds, will be used to pay the company, IXL Learning, for individualized digital math platform licenses for seven thousand 9th and 10th graders. 

An issue of concern is that the California-based ed tech firm IXL Learning is currently being sued over collecting and selling children’s personal information without their or their parents’ knowledge or consent. 

The lawsuit was brought to federal court by three Kansas families of children who have used the company's platforms. They are represented by attorneys with a personal injury law firm and the EdTech Law Center, which works to challenge the exploitative practices of the ed tech industry.

The plaintiffs claim that IXL, used by an upwards of 17 million students, surveils not just children, but also their family members. They argue that IXL’s nonconsensual data practices are unfair, unlawful and harmful to children and families, violating the Federal Wiretap Act and other state laws.

The lawsuit alledges that IXL "has built a multibillion-dollar empire by monetizing vast troves of personal information that it has taken from students and their parents without their knowledge or consent. . .  exploiting that information for profit."

The lawsuit further states: "Although IXL markets these products as conferring to schools and school districts administrative and pedagogical benefits, they are undeniably commercial, for-profit products that have enabled IXL to build a multibillion-dollar surveillance-technology empire, all under the guise of improving education."

According to the education news website, K-12 Dive, Julie Liddell, the founder of the Ed Tech Law Center and the attorney representing the plaintiffs, says that that these types of lawsuits are “the first of many cases to come.” This is especially important considering that nearly three-quarters of the most popular apps and online platforms directed at children are likely profiting from user data, according to Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that studies the impact of technology on kids.

Lindell hopes that the case “can force change through the court saying that … this kind of surveillance data collection business model, it’s not okay in the context of compulsory education.” 

The idea is that if courts rule against these types of business models, ed tech tools will have to focus solely on educating students rather than relying on the ulterior motive of collecting and monetizing data.

Why is it that these unethical, for-profit data mining practices so prevalent among ed tech platforms are not discussed or considered when our district makes decisions on how to spend its limited resources? Should this lawsuit and its serious claims not give us pause? Why is there no voice of reason publicly asking the decision-makers who hold the purse strings the hard questions concerning the possibility and prevention of data harvesting practices by ed tech companies?

District leadership should model its own "Educator Essentials and Core Values," in this case, namely the core belief that "positive impacts on students are at the center of each decision and action."