A lawsuit accuses Bain Capital's PowerSchool of trafficking in student data. The edtech giant says everything it does is legal
A lawsuit alleging that Edtech giant PowerSchool is selling student data - including health and disciplinary records - without the knowledge and consent of students or parents, has been filed in San Francisco federal court.
It claims that PowerSchool can collect "virtually unlimited" data about its students, including email addresses and phone numbers, grades, assessments, transcript data, extracurricular and academic program memberships, and more.
This data, it goes on to say, is used to train AI technologies - including a chatbot that is marketed to both educators and state officials to assist in "workforce planning." While the data is anonymised, the lawsuit alleges that it is so "granular" that it may be able to identify individual students.
A PowerSchool spokesperson said the claims are unfounded and inaccurate, and that no PowerSchool product sells any form of student data.
Publication: Business Insider
Writer: Laura Italiano