Great victory for NYC privacy!

Feb. 20, 2024

1.On Valentine’s Day last week, we received some exciting news. NY Attorney General Tish James had finally forced the College Board to sign a consent decree to halt their practice of selling the personal data of NY public school students– which has been illegal since the state student privacy law passed in 2014. This agreement is the culmination of nearly ten years of advocacy on our part, along with NY State Allies for Public Education and the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, which I co-chair. Please read my account of our decade-long fight to make this happen, with some of the back story behind this important victory.

My account also includes some of our continuing concerns about DOE and College Board’s weak privacy practices, as well as a list of 20 other states where the College Board continues to sell student data, despite similar prohibitions in their student privacy laws. If you know any parents of high school students in these 20 other states, please forward the post to them, and ask them to get in touch by emailing us at info@studentprivacymatters.org .

2. On Saturday, I was in Albany, at the Black and Hispanic Caucus weekend, participating in a Workshop sponsored by Sen. Robert Jackson entitled, “Every Student Deserves Small Classes: The Road Map towards Compliance with the State Law.” My brief presentation is here; and here is a handout with an updated FAQ that also counters some of the misinformation about the new class size law.

A growing number of CECs and Community Boards have passed a resolution urging the DOE to start implementing a real plan to reduce class size. Please let me know if your organization would like a presentation on this issue, and/or would consider passing a similar resolution. Let’s hope that unlike the fight to stop the College Board from selling student data, it won’t take ten years to persuade the DOE to comply with the law.

3. Finally, a reminder: If you support the work we do every day to strengthen student privacy or the right of students to have smaller classes, please make a tax-deductible contribution to Class Size Matters. If you’d like you donation to go to our advocacy to strengthen student privacy, please indicate that on the form. We can continue our work only with your help.

Thanks Leonie