Is student privacy erased as classrooms turn digital?

[Commentary] When parents and school officials in New Jersey discovered that educational publisher Pearson recently monitored students' Twitter accounts during standardized testing periods, an uproar ensued. Parents were alarmed and one superintendent called it "disturbing." But Pearson maintained it was doing what was necessary to make sure students weren't cheating on the Common Core test it administers. The debate highlights the evolving nature of student privacy in the Digital Age. As schools rely more apps and educational software inside and outside the classroom, massive amounts of data are being collected on students. More often than not, parents are in the dark about how this data is being used -- and how their kids are being monitored -- by schools and software companies. I recently spoke with Elana Zeide, a privacy research fellow at New York University's Information Law Institute, about privacy concerns in education.

[Evan Selinger is an associate professor of philosophy at Rochester]