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I am surprised and really appalled.
PowerSchool aloneclaims to hold dataon more than 45 million children, including 75 percent of North American K-12 students.
Ellucian, a recent Vista acquisition, says itserves 26 million students.
And EABs products areused by thousands of colleges and universities.
But to date, she has received back only usernames and passwords.
Parents know very little about this process, she said.
The two companies alsosigned another deallast year that made EAB the exclusive reseller of some PowerSchool products.
EAB did not respond to requests for comment.
Each Vista-owned company doesnt necessarily hold all the data points listed here.
The Markup reviewed the accounts with students permission.
You dont pay the oil company to come pump oil off your land; its the other way around.
PowerSchool declined to answer specific questions about the data it collects and how it uses that information.
PowerSchool customers own their student and school data.
Flagg, from PowerSchool, said race was removed from the models in 2017 before the company acquired Hoonuit.
The predictive models also draw on data points like attendance, disciplinary history, and test scores.
Baker has consulted with BrightBytes, a competitor of PowerSchool in the K-12 predictive analytics space.
We have no comment on the sensitivity/specificity of the models, U-46 spokesperson Karla Jimenez wrote in an email.
The Markuphas previously reportedon a similar dropout prediction tool EAB sells to colleges and universities.
After our reporting, Texas A&M Universitydropped the use of raceas a predictive variable.
In 2017, PowerSchool bought SunGard K-12, which provided human resources and payroll software for schools.
It acquired Hoonuit, which provides the predictive risk scoring used by districts like Elgin, in 2020.
Inpresentations to investors, PowerSchool officials have said more acquisitions are a key part of the companys growth plan.
Last June, Vistaalso acquired a co-ownership stake in Ellucian, which sells a variety of educational technology products.
The company claims to serve more than 26 million students across 2,700 institutions.
CPS has, however, posted data use disclosures for other vendors.
Across Illinois, 5,800 schools use PowerSchool software,according to the company.
FERPA has also proven of little use for some parents.
Any requests from parents for access to their childrens data must be managed through their respective school districts.
PowerSchool instructed Kiesecker to request the records through the school, which she did.
Thats what they do, they treat our children like products.
Theyre human beings and they deserve privacy and freedom.
This article wasoriginally published on The Markupand was republished under theCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivativeslicense.
