Last week the Illinois State Board of Education announced that it is now official, the state will be switching back to ACT for the high school test for 11th graders, and it will be a graduation requirement for public schools. Other ACT, Inc. tests will be administered for 9th and 10th grades. 

Illinois has one of the strongest laws in the country protecting the privacy and security of our public school students’ personal data, the Student Online Personal Protection Act, or SOPPA. Unfortunately, a major state vendor is violating that law by selling student data—the College Board, the maker of SAT, PSAT and Advanced Placement tests. The state requires public high schools to administer the SAT and PSAT during the school day. Most public high schools are also administering AP tests and additional administrations of the SAT and PSAT.

Illinois State Board of Education has announced that Illinois will now switch to the ACT for its high school accountability test in the coming school year, but unfortunately, ACT, Inc. also sells student data via its subsidiary, Encoura. And the College Board will continue to be a state and district vendor for Advanced Placement tests. So, that change won't fix this problem.

We need ISBE to ensure that any new contracts do not permit data sales. And we need the IL Attorney General Kwame Raoul to enforce the law and stop these illegal data sales. You can use this form to send him an email.

On May 6, 2024, IL-FPS held an online forum with the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy and Class Size Matters to inform parents around the country about this issue and how New York State has recently stopped sales of student data there. Slides and a recording of the event are available here.

Read more about this issue below:

Why is the College Board selling data?
The College Board has been selling student data, including names, addresses, ethnicity and race, economic status, test score ranges, and other personal information since the early 1970s. Colleges and universities buy it to use for admissions recruitment. Other organizations, like for-profit summer programs, do too. There are ongoing concerns that this data is used in unethical ways, like recruiting wealthy out-of-state students or recruiting students unlikely to be admitted just to boost application numbers. ACT, Inc., the other major college admissions test vendor, also sells data.

Are these data sales legal?
Public schools started giving college admissions exams (SAT and ACT) in school during the school day as part of federal testing requirements more than 20 years ago. And then, in the last decade, many states passed laws that forbid sale of data collected from students in schools, including Illinois’ student data privacy law known as the Student Online Personal Protection Act (SOPPA). These laws made what was already a questionable practice clearly illegal. The US Department of Education has warned states and districts about the practice.

What's been done about it?
Advocates and even some elected officials have long objected to the sales, but the College Board has continued to sell student data from states with strict laws against it. But in an important development, in February 2024, New York State Attorney General Tish James announced that College Board could no longer sell New York students data and would be paying a $750,000 fine to settle past violations.

What about Illinois' students?
The power to enforce our privacy law, SOPPA, rests with our Attorney General Kwame Raoul. State legislators asked AG Raoul to investigate this matter back in 2019, but nothing came of that. Recently, IL-FPS and eight other organizations sent a letter to AG Raoul asking for him to enforce our state law and stop these sales here too. We'd like him to know that many families around the state are concerned about this issue and think Illinois students should have the same protections as New York students have.

Why is this important right now?
The College Board has a $54 million contract with the state for the SAT and PSAT. This contract expires this summer, and the State has decided to award a new $53 million contract for the high school assessment to ACT, Inc. Unfortunately, ACT, Inc. also sells student data via its subsidiary, Encoura! So, it's important to stop this illegal practice under current contracts and also ensure sales won't take place under any new contracts either. State vendors should follow state laws! Read our comments about this we shared at a State Board meeting in March 2024 here.

Learn more

• Parent Coalition for Student Privacy
• “The Student List Business Primer and market dynamics” The Institute for College Access & Success. 2022 (More here.)
• “College Prep Software Naviance Is Selling Advertising Access to Millions of Students” – The Markup. 2022
• Assurance No. 24-004. Assurance of discontinuance document between College Board and New York AG
• “Student tracking, secret scores: How college admissions offices rank prospects before they apply” Washington Post. 2019
• “Transparency and the Marketplace for Student Data.” Fordham Center on Law and Information Policy. 2018

In a late Friday news dump, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) announced a massive breach of the personal data of almost half a million students and more than 56,000 teachers. Parents and guardians were sent individual notices if their child’s data was included in the breach. The data, which spanned four schools years, 2015-16 through 2018-19, was part of a ransomware attack on a non-profit ed tech vendor Battelle for Kids, which has had a contract with CPS since 2012.

Despite the fact that the federal government does not require standardized math and reading tests for students in grades K-2, the IL State Board of Ed is considering a proposal that would expand the state testing system to include those grades. They will be voting soon on this proposal, which would also increase 3-8th grade state math and reading testing to three times a year instead of once, in addition to paying for districts to give these tests to our youngest learners—when there’s absolutely no federal requirement to do so!

Two major changes in the IL School Code went into effect this summer: the Right to Play recess law and a major amendment to the Student Online Personal Protection Act. IL Families for Public Schools was instrumental in drafting and passing these two pieces of legislation.

What do these two new laws mean for students, families and public schools? You can watch the IL Families for Public Schools webinar we held on October 20th to learn what you need to know.

Schools have changed greatly over the past decade with the use of technology in and out of the classroom, and massive amounts of data are being collected on our children that parents have no control over at the present time. Students are being tracked, traced, monitored, and scored now more than ever before.

In May 2018, a bill was introduced in the IL Senate that would have had the IL State Board of Education administer a survey of all high school juniors in conjunction with the administration of the state test and share the survey data with all public institutions of higher education in Illinois. After opposition from RYH Action, the bill was amended instead to set up a taskforce to study this type of data sharing (PA 100-1007).

Our co-directors, Cassie and Wendy, are in Springfield this week to work on a number of issues! They will be meeting with Representatives Andrade, Martwick, and Williams to work on a data privacy bill. They will also be meeting with legislators to discuss the possibility of an override vote on the class-size goals bill Governor Rauner vetoed.

HB1295, the Student Information Transparency Act, a bill that RYH Action helped draft. We'll be meeting with the opponents of this bill again next week for further negotiations. You can help us by writing a quick note to your legislators about why action on student privacy is more urgent than ever.

In January, RYH Action wrote a student data transparency bill with guidance from Rachael Stickland of the national group Parent Coalition for Student Privacy. As computer usage and data collection increases in public ed, parents have the right to know who is collecting, storing and sharing what data on their children, and this bill would do just that.