IN THE NEWS: Franchising a Student Digital Privacy Law

By Natasha Singer for The New York Times, Taken from Benton Foundation Headlines

As a reporter who covers tech industry data-mining practices, I’ve received my fair share of there-oughta-be-a-law-against-that calls and emails from outraged readers.

So naturally I was skeptical when James P. Steyer, the chief executive of Common Sense Media, a children’s advocacy and media ratings group in San Francisco (CA), called me in the fall of 2013 to announce that he was going to have a law passed in California to restrict how education technology companies use student data. Steyer was not just worried about possible commercial exploitation of student data, he said. He also foresaw that parents’ mounting privacy concerns could scuttle the adoption of education technology in schools -- a cause he and his group have championed.

Read the full article here.