With three out of four Illinois students still learning remotely full or part time, protecting children's privacy from threats like face recognition and surveillance for remote proctoring is more important than ever.

The Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) is a uniquely protective Illinois law assuring that the biometric information of Illinois residents is protected from the threats of face recognition and surveillance.

➡️ New York Times "The Best Law You've Never Heard of"

The Chicago Public Schools are preparing for compliance with the changes to IL's Student Online Protection Act, passed in spring 2019 and going into effect on July 1, 2021. As the largest district in IL, CPS's policy will have important implications for the rest of IL's public schools.

After feedback on their initial policy draft from IL-FPS back in November and some ensuing discussions with us, the policy on the agenda for the Chicago BoE's January meeting has improved---and we're especially pleased to see it will mean students themselves can no longer be required to sign contracts with vendors anymore.

The changes to the Student Online Personal Protection Act passed as PA 101-0516 will go into effect on July 1, 2021. The IL State Board of Education released their draft regulations to implement the law for initial review for December's ISBE meeting. We sent a letter with our feedback on the rule to the Board yesterday.

These recommendations are intended as a resource to assist students and families, teachers, administrators, school board members and others, whether they are writing, revising or advocating for improvement of policies covering the role of tech in students’ remote learning experiences.

The Chicago Public Schools are preparing for compliance with the changes to IL's Student Online Protection Act, passed in spring 2019 and going into effect next summer, and we provided input on their proposed district policy on SOPPA. As the largest district in IL, CPS's policy will have important implications for the rest of IL's public schools.

In this issue:

1. Fair Tax amendment: Help us make that call--every Wed. night, including tonight!
   
2. Remote learning, surveillance and student privacy
3. Why hasn’t IL waived the SAT requirement for seniors?

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With the mass school closures due to COVID-19, there has been a sudden shift to crisis schooling via remote learning, and in the wake of this existing student data privacy concerns about education technology have ballooned.

Unfortunately, in many cases, parents’ need and desire to protect their children’s privacy has been put in direct conflict with how schools are attempting to provide a substitute for education away from the physical classroom.

January 28th is Data Privacy Day, an international annual day of awareness to promote protection of our personal data.

Illinois has a state law to protect student data privacy, the Student Online Personal Protection Act---a law that will be even stronger when the amendments we worked to pass last year go into effect.

But, even as it stands now, vendors cannot legally sell, rent or lease student data they collect in Illinois' schools.

For Immediate Release, Monday Aug 26, 2019

On Friday Governor Pritzker signed PA 101-0516 (HB3606), an update to Illinois’ Student Online Personal Protection Act (SOPPA) into law. The legislation, one of the most far-reaching student data protection laws in the country, will provide much greater transparency and control to parents on how schools, vendors and the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) are collecting and using data from public school students from preschool through 12th grade.

Last month, assessment giant Pearson began notifying 13,000 schools and universities of a massive data breach involving their AIMSweb product.

We now know that at least ten Illinois school districts including tens of thousands of IL students data were affected by this breach. (We're keeping a running list of reports here.)