FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Public Interest Privacy Center (PIPC) today joins 10 other members of the Federal Education Privacy Coalition (FEPC), a coalition of nationwide education membership and privacy-focused organizations interested in advancing principled student privacy practices, in a letter endorsing the updated version of the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) that was released on February 15, 2024, and the House companion to COPPA 2.0 that was announced on April 9, 2024.
“The Public Interest Privacy Center (PIPC) is proud to support the updated version of COPPA 2.0 and its codification of long-standing administrative policy allowing schools to consent to educational technology uses,” said Amelia Vance, President of PIPC and Chief Counsel of the Student and Child Privacy Center at AASA, the School Superintendents Association. “COPPA 2.0 finds the right balance between protecting child and teen privacy online while allowing schools to provide appropriate, technology-enhanced educational opportunities to all students.”
The other signatories are AASA, The School Superintendents Association; AFT; the Association of Educational Service Agencies; the Association of School Business Officials International (ASBO); the Consortium for School Networking; the Council of the Great City Schools; the National Association for Pupil Transportation; the National Education Association; the National Rural Education Association; and the National School Boards Association.
“AASA is proud to support COPPA 2.0. We commend Senators Markey and Cassidy for their tireless work on the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, and are pleased to see today’s legislation balance two critical priorities: supporting the incorporation of education technology into education to promote learning and success for students and ensuring student data privacy,” said Noelle Ellerson Ng, Associate Executive Director of Advocacy & Governance at AASA, The School Superintendents Association. “We look forward to continuing to work with Congress to ensure COPPA 2.0 maintains its enhanced privacy protections for children and teens online, and that these protections do not have unintended consequences for our nation’s schools.”
From the letter:
“Our organizations take student data privacy seriously and we strongly support updates and revisions to child privacy protections. At the same time, we believe that effectively incorporating edtech into classroom instruction is necessary to promote greater learning and success for all students and will help local education agencies best serve their communities. We are confident that the updated version of COPPA 2.0 accomplishes both of these goals by enabling schools to provide their students with access to edtech platforms when the school has entered a contract with the edtech vendor and has thoroughly vetted the platform for privacy and security safeguards.
School districts have consistently relied on the FTC’s COPPA FAQs and the FTC’s Statement of Basis and Purpose to the 1999 COPPA Rule for authority to consent to data collection and use on behalf of parents in educational contexts if the technology services are solely for the use and benefit of the school and for no other commercial purpose. We strongly support the updated version of COPPA 2.0’s explicit codification of this long-standing administrative policy, which has become fundamental to the basic administrative and educational functions of school districts. In recent years, some privacy advocates have pushed to change current law to explicitly require that schools get parental permission to use edtech in classrooms or to provide parents with additional rights that could prevent schools from using edtech with students unless a parent opts-in to its use. For this reason, codifying the ability of schools to consent to edtech use in COPPA 2.0 is crucial to both preserving this ability for schools and to ensuring that the bill’s positive advancements to protect children and teens online do not unintentionally restrict them from experiencing the benefits and opportunities of a technology-enhanced education at school.”
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About PIPC
Founded in 2022, the Public Interest Privacy Center is a nonprofit organization that equips stakeholders with the insights, training, and tools needed to cultivate effective, ethical, and equitable privacy safeguards for all children and students. Our vision is that high-impact stakeholders at every tier will have the information and tools necessary to protect all children’s fundamental right to privacy. By educating and equipping high-impact groups and fostering a culture of privacy, PIPC helps create an environment where all children will enjoy privacy-protected benefits of emerging technologies and data use.
