Last week TeachBoost signed the Student Privacy Pledge.
The pledge is organized by The Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) and the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), and acts as a safeguard for student privacy. According to their press release, the pledge is “built around a dozen commitments regarding the collection, maintenance, and use of student personal information.”
As a signatory, we commit to:
- Not collect, maintain, use or share student personal information beyond that needed for authorized educational/school purposes, or as authorized by the parent/student.
- Not sell student personal information.
- Not use or disclose student information collected through an educational/school service (whether personal information or otherwise) for behavioral targeting of advertisements to students.
- Not build a personal profile of a student other than for supporting authorized educational/school purposes or as authorized by the parent/student.
- Not make material changes to school service provider consumer privacy policies without first providing prominent notice to the account holder(s) and allowing them choices before data is used in any manner inconsistent with terms they were initially provided; and not make material changes to other policies or practices governing the use of student personal information that are inconsistent with contractual requirements.
- Not knowingly retain student personal information beyond the time period required to support the authorized educational/school purposes, or as authorized by the parent/student.
- Collect, use, share, and retain student personal information only for purposes for which we were authorized by the educational institution/agency, teacher or the parent/student.
- Disclose clearly in contracts or privacy policies, including in a manner easy for parents to understand, what types of student personal information we collect, if any, and the purposes for which the information we maintain is used or shared with third parties.
- Support access to and correction of student personally identifiable information by the student or their authorized parent, either by assisting the educational institution in meeting its requirements or directly when the information is collected directly from the student with student/parent consent.
- Maintain a comprehensive security program that is reasonably designed to protect the security, privacy, confidentiality, and integrity of student personal information against risks – such as unauthorized access or use, or unintended or inappropriate disclosure – through the use of administrative, technological, and physical safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information.
- Require that our vendors with whom student personal information is shared in order to deliver the educational service, if any, are obligated to implement these same commitments for the given student personal information.
- Allow a successor entity to maintain the student personal information, in the case of our merger or acquisition by another entity, provided the successor entity is subject to these same commitments for the previously collected student personal information.
We urge other edtech companies to take the pledge here.