![]() ![]() “There has really been an epic failure,” said Hector Balderas, the attorney general of New Mexico, whose office has sued tech companies for violating the privacy of children and students. At a moment when some education technology companies have amassed sensitive information on millions of school children, they say, safeguards for student data seem wholly inadequate. Although it was not the largest hack on an ed tech company, these experts say they are troubled by the nature and scope of the data breach - which, in some cases, involved delicate personal details about students or student data dating back more than a decade. Now some cybersecurity and privacy experts say that the cyberattack on Illuminate Education amounts to a warning for industry and government regulators. As these student-tracking systems have spread, however, so have cyberattacks on school software vendors - including a recent hack that affected Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s third-largest district. The intent of such tools is well meaning: to help educators identify and intervene with at-risk students. Over the last decade, tech companies and education reformers have pushed schools to adopt software systems that can catalog and categorize students’ classroom outbursts, absenteeism and learning challenges. It’s getting into college, getting a job. “If you’re a bad student and had disciplinary problems and that information is now out there, how do you recover from that?” said Joe Green, a cybersecurity professional and parent of a high school student in Erie, Colo., whose son’s high school was affected by the hack. The exposure of such private information could have long-term consequences. At least one district said the data included more intimate information like student tardiness rates, migrant status, behavior incidents and descriptions of disabilities. Officials said in some districts the data included the names, dates of birth, races or ethnicities and test scores of students. Now these systems are coming under heightened scrutiny after a recent cyberattack on Illuminate Education, a leading provider of student-tracking software, which affected the personal information of more than a million current and former students across dozens of districts - including in New York City and Los Angeles, the nation’s largest public school systems. The software that many school districts use to track students’ progress can record extremely confidential information on children: “Intellectual disability.” “Emotional Disturbance.” “Homeless.” “Disruptive.” “Defiance.” “Perpetrator.” “Excessive Talking.” “Should attend tutoring.”
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