December 18th, 2001
Marketers May Face Student-Data Curbs
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post
Congress is on the verge of giving parents the right to say no when marketers want to gather personal information about students in schools.
Businesses for years have collected data about students and their families, often without parents’ knowledge. A company in New Jersey asked students to fill out detailed questionnaires about what they like on television.
A technology marketer traded computers and Internet access in exchange for the right to track what students did online. One list broker has compiled information about millions of students, from kindergarten on. Students have offered suggestions to Internet companies, and they’ve taste-tested cereals in exchange for fees to schools.
“They’re basically selling access to kids without parents knowing about it,” said Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), who joined Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) in pressing for the change. “I don’t think it’s okay,” Dodd said, adding that parents should have a voice. “These companies were using the classroom for market research.”
Their provision would require all public schools to notify parents when businesses want to gather students’ personal information and give the parents the right to say no. It is part of sweeping education reform legislation approved by the House last week and set for a vote by the Senate today.
The Bush administration has already signaled its support for the larger bill and the privacy section.
The vote follows months of debate about the role of commercial activity in the nation’s schools. Consumer advocates and parents groups warned that marketers were taking advantage of children’s information. Conservative groups supported the law in part as a way of bolstering parents’ rights.
“The schools should be about learning, not to be information-collection centers for commercial marketers,” said Frank Torres, legislative counsel for Consumers Union, the advocacy group that publishes Consumer Reports magazine.
School districts across the country increasingly rely on business deals to bring in much-needed cash in exchange for allowing advertising and market research, as well as direct sales of products such as soft drinks and candy.
Advertisers and magazine publishers successfully battled to tone down the proposal earlier this year. They persuaded lawmakers to drop a provision requiring that parents give their permission before any information could be gathered for commercial purposes.
The businesses worried the stronger rule would have cut them off from schools that allow students to sell subscriptions to classmates to raise money and other sorts of promotions that often involve the collection of names, addresses and other personally identifiable information.
The National School Boards Association also fought hard against the privacy provision, saying the law could become an “administrative nightmare” that would hurt “productive relationships with businesses” at a time when school budgets are tight.
Jeffrey Ballabon, vice president of public policy at Primedia, a magazine publisher, said “a substantial amount of fundraising is done through schools. That is a substantial source of revenue.”
American Student List, a leading list broker, gathers student information from a variety of sources, including a group that promises to help high school students who fill out detailed surveys to get into college.
Among the American Student List offerings is information about students’ religious affiliations. The company maintains a database “of over 4 million individuals between the ages of 14 and 19,” according to its Web site.
They also target younger kids, including toddlers. “To help you reach this highly lucrative market, ASL has compiled over 12 million names of children between the ages of 2 and 13, representing Pre-K through 8th grade,” the company says in its literature online.
Company officials did not return phone calls.
Other companies gathered student information by providing computers and Internet access in exchange for names and online browsing habits. The former ZapMe Corp., for example, gave schools across the country free computers, software and services for the right to record how students used the technology.
Daniel Fuller, a lobbyists for the association of school boards, said local school officials should have the right to make their own decisions about dealing with marketers. “The compromise they came up with is not great, but it’s better,” Fuller said.
Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, a group that opposes commercialism in schools, also was not entirely pleased with the outcome. But he said it’s “a good small step forward.”