Have you signed a privacy agreement with your edtech provider?

3 minute read?

The amount of time students are spending online is increasing exponentially with young learners tightly tied to their phones and the explosion in online learning and the use of edtech tools. That explosion has fuelled an increase in cybercrime too. In Verizon’s 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report educational institutions had the sixth most cybersecurity incidents out of 20 sectors. While schools can rely on edtech providers to deliver services and products, the responsibility to ensure those vendors have and utilize appropriate protections ultimately lies with the school. The compliance landscape is evolving and changing at a rapid pace as many states move to implement regulations regarding student privacy and the protection of their data. Districts and schools need to be completely confident in their providers and their policies for protecting student data, and in what they use it for. Can you say that you have that level of confidence in your provider? Let’s examine how privacy agreements are important and why Hāpara signs them.??

What is a privacy agreement?

A privacy agreement is a binding contract between you and your provider which can be personalized and tailored according to the level and types of compliance you need to achieve, and the level of control you want to obtain concerning students’ data and how it is collected, stored and used. Critically, a privately negotiated privacy agreement, in addition to a terms of service contract, can close any gaps between a vendor’s published terms of use and privacy policies which may not address all of the privacy requirements the district or school needs.

Why privacy agreements are important and why Hāpara signs them

Privacy agreements are important because they establish the standards of acceptable behavior by vendors and give districts and schools confidence in how data is being used and protected by their vendors. A privacy agreement enables schools to retain direct control over the information collected and maintained, aligned with legal requirements. As most states either have or are moving toward higher standards around student privacy, negotiated privacy agreements help schools ensure they and their vendors comply with the applicable law and can communicate that with confidence to the school community.

At Hāpara, we sign privacy agreements because we know that trust matters. It matters to the more than 2 million learners and their educators worldwide who use Hāpara. Perhaps other providers will tell you that like Hāpara, they comply 100% with federal government regulations such as Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA ), Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA ), the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA ), and new state regulations such as SOPPA and that they are, like Hāpara, signatories of the Student Privacy Pledge . These are all fundamental to protecting student privacy, but are they enough?

Hāpara goes the extra mile because it believes in the sanctity of student privacy. Privacy is built into our company DNA -- from our tools that help engender digital citizenship to our ethical monitoring practices to our K12 real-time web filtering powered by artificial intelligence . Our principles include openness about when and how students are monitored, and we encourage an ongoing dialogue with parents about this. We strongly believe in teaching students about the importance of their privacy, and we provide robust learning materials for educators to teach students while providing a gradual release of responsibility.?

Our privacy toolkit is a comprehensive guide written in plain English and free of legal jargon that outlines our numerous commitments to safeguarding student privacy. Our privacy policy is robust and goes beyond what most other providers offer. Finally, we regularly sign privacy agreements so our clients can hold us to a high standard and have confidence and trust in us–the basis of our relationships with schools since we began in 2010.?

What does it mean if my provider won’t sign a privacy agreement??

If your provider won’t sign a privacy agreement, ask them, and ask yourself: why not??

Then, proceed with caution. Privacy protections that are assumed to exist may not; for example companies may retain the right to share data with a third party (we never do), or change their privacy policy at any time without notice (we don’t do this either). The importance of protecting a student’s personal identifying information (PII) goes beyond complying with state and federal law, so if your vendor won’t sign a privacy agreement, you may have good reason to doubt the confidence or control you require for peace of mind.

Finally, there’s no doubt that researching and comparing the complex legal requirements of companies’ privacy policies is time consuming and complex for schools and districts, requiring additional resources to ensure that obligations are met. I believe we need increased transparency across the board to enable our schools and districts to assess their choices as easily as possible, and Hāpara is happy to get behind that–perhaps this is the next and most necessary evolution in student privacy?