Parents Challenge President to Dig Deeper on Ed Tech - NYTimes.com
▻http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/parents-challenge-president-to-dig-deeper-on-ed-tech
Education technology companies that have pledged not to exploit student data they collect for marketing purposes welcomed President Obama’s endorsement on Monday of the industry’s effort to limit its use of classroom data.
But the president’s comments did nothing to alleviate the unease of some parents concerned about potential civil rights issues raised by the increasing use of ed tech in schools, including the possibility that some programs and products might automatically channel or categorize students in ways that could ultimately be discriminatory or detrimental to their education.
“We’re very excited that President Obama is endorsing the pledge and calling for other companies to sign it,” said Jules Polonetsky, the executive director of the Future of Privacy Forum, an industry-financed research group in Washington that helped draft the industry pledge. Mr. Polonetsky’s group has received financing from dozens of companies including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft.
But some parents, educators, technologists and education privacy law scholars say there is little evidence to back up the marketing hype over personalized learning technology. While welcoming efforts to curb the use of educational data for advertising purposes, they contend that neither the industry pledge nor the California law that President Obama invoked as a model for federal student digital privacy legislation places any meaningful requirements on companies regarding the accuracy, efficacy or fairness of their novel digital learning products.