Student Privacy and Ed Tech (K-12) Research Briefing

Foundational changes at the intersection of technology, society, law, and behavior are disrupting and energizing large institutions, impacting the educational technologies and student privacy landscape at lightning speed. Greater levels of connectivity and participation are raising questions about how best to navigate new types of learning environments, how best to engage in data-driven decision-making, and how best to ensure channels for positive collaboration in decision-making. This research briefing builds upon student privacy research and activities, and aims to translate these into practical take-aways. The briefing provides a map of the current digital learning ecosystem in the U.S. primary and secondary space, surveys at a high-level critical issues in the ed tech and student privacy space, and outlines key tools and opportunities for decision-makers.

The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University ("BKCIS") has prepared this research briefing on educational technologies ("ed tech") and student privacy for use by decision-makers in the private and public sectors that are charting the future of K-12 education in the digital age. 1 In this briefing, enabled by generous support by the Ford Foundation and building on a series of bilateral and multilateral consultations, 2 the BKCIS team seeks to summarize and translate selected findings from student privacy research into practical considerations and take-aways that might be helpful to non-academic stakeholders.
Overview 3 Part I of this briefing is an ecosystem map, i.e. a high-level survey of the following features of the public digital learning ecosystems emerging in the U.S. primary and secondary (K-12) space: 4 • Landscape shifts • Key actors • Drivers-focusing on technological, legal, regulatory, policy-based, and behavioral. 5 • Issues-both current and emerging.
• Values-surrounding student privacy and related considerations, such as student autonomy.
Part II of this briefing is an action map, i.e. a high-level survey of several key current and emerging issues in ed tech & student privacy, categorized by governance approaches and accompanying values that key actors are employing to respond to these issues.
Part III of this briefing is a navigation tool, i.e. a high-level aid for decision-makers who seek to harness opportunities to identify and pursue their own values-based goals-independently or collaboratively-in the complex, sensitive, and pressing student privacy dialogues and debates that exist today and are likely to unfold in the near future.
1 We understand this audience broadly as encompassing policymakers (lawmakers, regulators, and other government actors at the local, state, and federal levels); advocacy organizations (mission-driven non-profits engaged with K-12 education, ed tech, privacy, or related fields); vendors (for-profit providers of ed tech products and services); educators (at the administrative and classroom levels); parents; students themselves; and others that may wind up engaging the complex and rapidly evolving questions in the ed tech & student privacy landscape. When we seek to refer to the same players in more of their participatory capacity rather than their decision-maker capacity, the term "stakeholder" has been used.

I. Ecosystem Map
The ecosystem map that follows offers (in text form): 1. A brief description of the overarching tectonic shifts in our increasingly networked world that impact the educational technologies ("ed tech") & student privacy landscape; 6 and 2. A snapshot of today's ed tech & student privacy landscape (including key actors and drivers).

Tectonic Shifts
As we consider the roots of our world today, we see that foundational changes at the intersection of technology, society, law, behavior, and related spheres are disrupting and energizing familiar institutions at lightning speed. As we start to think about the ed tech & student privacy landscape, we see several of these subterranean shifts exerting a particularly strong impact: Participants in these new and emerging networked environments are experiencing an increased level of interconnectedness and engagement with each other, as well as with decision-makers and other constituencies within the network. 9 • There are some tension points around increased accessibility and participation, which include: » A lack of technological interoperability: ecosystems may have a wealth of systems in place but face technological barriers to the systems' abilities to "talk" with one another. 10 » The potential for unequal access by and scope of engagement for participants based on their racial, socio-economic, or other facets of their identities. 11 These networked environments generate "big data" that affords decision-makers an enhanced capacity for making data-driven choices that affect individuals and cohorts within-4 and sometimes outside of-that particular environment. 12 There may be a lack of clarity surrounding "trust points" and decision-making channels in these environments as unfamiliar challenges and opportunities arise that require novel forms of collaboration and processes. 13

Snapshot of Today's Ed Tech & Student Privacy Landscape
As we move up to the "ground-level" view, we see these major tectonic shifts manifesting themselves in the following dominant features of the ed tech & student privacy terrain: Formal and informal connected learning environments are both strengthening and disrupting brick & mortar K-12 public school systems.
Some key examples of connected learning environments include: 14 • MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) • After-school programs • Student generated and managed social media platforms alongside of conventional coursework. » Within these and other connected environments, students are increasingly transformed into content creators themselves, which expands their opportunities as well as disrupts aspects of educational hierarchies.
Teachers and administrators have expanded potential to engage in data-driven decision-making with respect to students-across cohorts and individually-because of the "big data" generated by learning analytics and other ed tech affordances. This increased capacity results in both challenges and opportunities, which include: 15 • Opportunities for individualized learning and "early intervention" for at-risk students.
• Challenges as a result of the potential for "tracking" students into trajectories that limit their potential or are discriminatory, as well as making decisions based on incomplete or poorly-understood data generated by non-interoperable systems. • In some learning ecosystems, there may be a more fundamental challenge: a lack of decision-maker awareness of what types of data are being generated, how they are being generated, and why and how they are being used. » This challenge may be most acute with new and emerging types of ed tech, such as the Internet of Things, which may not be fully understood by users. 16 5 The legal and regulatory regime that requires parental consent (in most circumstances) before schools and districts share student data with third parties (such as outside vendors) was developed before today's digital learning revolution. Fissures are continuing to open in this framework for a number of reasons, including: 17 • Teachers may adopt new ed tech at the classroom level rather than at the school or district level. This practice may facilitate both educational and technological innovation but potentially undermine adherence to applicable state and federal privacy laws requiring parental consent for sharing students' personally identifiable information ("PII") or the existence of an exception to the consent requirement. » The difficulties posed by classroom level adoption may arise in part due to a lack of clarity or conflicting ideas around which decision-makers should be empowered to make and implement ed tech decisions.
There is the potential for "digital divides" that may result in uneven access to and privacy protection within connected learning environments for student participants and their families. Concerns are arising around various scenarios, including: • One-to-one learning ecosystems that issue their own devices may capture data about students' and their families' behavior outside of school, especially for students and families who lack the means to afford their own devices. 18 • Learning ecosystems that do not issue their own devices, yet still have curricular and extracurricular requirements and opportunities for student engagement in digital learning outside of school hours, risk disadvantaging those students without the means to get online and participate. 19 • Learning ecosystems that use ed tech for behavioral and disciplinary issues are potentially positioned to use that data to feed the "school-to-prison pipeline" by referring more students to the juvenile justice system for low-level misbehavior rather than dealing with such behaviors in-house. 20 » The "school-to-prison pipeline" is known to have a disproportionately negative impact on students of color and students with disabilities.

II. Action Map
The action map that follows offers (in chart form): 1. A broad-brush taxonomy of the different governance approaches to addressing digital information questions in the student privacy & ed tech space, including some representative uses of each approach by key actors; and 2. A brief identification of the values that seem to be embedded in each of these approaches, which inform key actors' privacy commitments, with related questions for users interspersed where appropriate.
Governance Approaches: as we consider the new ways in which "information is created, shared, accessed, and used in the globalized digital world" of education, 21 we see five broad categories of governance approaches:

Tech-based Market-based Human-centered Law Blended
Approaches Technologies that enhance student privacy by building access controls or usage restrictions into the ed tech products being used.
Market incentives-voluntary, not required by the government-for protecting student privacy.
Mechanisms that rely on one or more forms of inter-personal engagement.
Addition of new or reform of existing laws, regulations, and policies at all levels to address student privacy challenges.
Interrelated use of more than one of the tech, market, human, and law-based mechanisms to address multi-dimensional student privacy problems. Autonomy of market actors and other non-student stakeholders (self-regulation over government regulation).
Promotion of student agency & autonomy; seems to be key governance vehicle for advocacy organizations (and policymakers, albeit to somewhat lesser extent) to promote these empowerment-based values.
Preservation of parental autonomy (largely consent-based framework)-adherence to law's traditional concept of childhood as protected space in a way that may be more paternalistic than empowering for students.
Inclusion of different voices; non-hierarchical; de-centralized and iterative. This existing and emerging multi-stakeholder student privacy network is fairly robust, with multiple points of interface, tools of engagement, and sustained enthusiasm for tackling identified and future student privacy challenges and opportunities.

Questions (Sample)
What would tech-based student privacy solutions that promote student agency (roughly understood as a sense of control over one's choices and actions) and autonomy (roughly understood as a sense of independence in making decisions) look like?
What would market-based student privacy solutions that promote student agency and autonomy look like? Some disconnect because students don't make ed tech purchases, so even if market is offering mechanisms that aim to foster student agency and autonomy, students don't have direct purchasing involvement.
Should digital literacy, safety, privacy, and citizenship instruction become a required part of curricula under state law or regulation or local policy? *Note: this would transform curricula into blended approach.
Is there a normatively desirable balance to be struck between the role of federal legislative and attendant regulatory reform to foster uniformity and the role of states to serve as laboratories for legal and regulatory innovation?
How could student voices be empowered to play a more significant role in this networked governance response?