As part of a study on the marketplace for student data, researchers at the Fordham Law Center on Law and Information Policy (CLIP) called a few different data brokers, looking to see what kinds of limits exist, if any, for the commercial use of student data. One of the data brokers they called followed up with a voice message, responding presumably to CLIP researchers' requests for student information. A salesperson from the data broker called back “just wanting to touch base regarding that marketing list you had requested from us. I know that your target audience was fourteen and fifteen [sic] year old girls for family planning services. I can definitely do the list you're looking for.” Researchers were startled to find that while they were able to easily purchase this information to sell potential products to this demographic, the 14 and 15 year old girls who were presumed to need family planning services knew very little about what data they were providing to commercial data brokers to make this assumption. Their parents were largely in the dark, too. CLIP recently published the findings from their study, “Transparency and the Marketplace for Student Data,” and found little transparency for data subjects about how student data is being used commercially. Data brokers advertise lists of students organized for traits from religion to “awkwardness,” yet almost no information exists for students or parents about where data is being collected, how high-level insight is being derived, or what rights they may have to opt-in or out. “The high level takeaway is that it's difficult for parents and students to find out much information. There's a transparency issue,” N. Cameron Russell, an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School and lead author of the study, told Legaltech News. Russell and his colleagues pursued their research following a similar study intended to track the growth of cloud computing in school districts. In their followup, the researchers intended to examine some of the sources of student data and map the market landscape around it. Instead, they found those data sources to be “completely a black box.” To look at publicly available sources would give a fairly reduced image of the issue at hand. Public records requests cited in the study supported the charge that large school districts provide student information only to military recruiters, as mandated by law, or other educational institutions, though the report did note that some companies are permitted to administer student surveys and questionnaires in school. Moreover, Russell noted that CLIP identified only 13 or 14 student data brokers directly, a relatively low number in an otherwise crowded data brokerage field. The lack of transparency can however make it difficult to see the potential size of the problem. Education is one of the largest growing verticals in the technology industry -- market research group Metaari found that edtech investments garnered over $9 billion worldwide across 813 different companies last year. Marketing data is an even bigger market, predicted to top $115 billion by next year . “There may be a much larger marketplace,” Russell noted. “The ecosystem is opaque from the perspective of parents and students.” Consumer privacy law, such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), protects specific-types of information, but student data doesn't fit obviously into any of those protections. Specific student record policy like the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), though intended to bolster parental control over student records, also permits schools to provide personally identifying information to external companies without student consent. “It's just an unregulated space,” Russell said. “Just by getting an education, is that some kind of acquiescence to the commercialization of your information?” Russell added. CLIP researchers are hoping that a new Vermont regulation mandating that data brokers register with the state can at least provide some clarity as to who these brokers are. “I think the Vermont state legislation is going to have an indirect national effect because it's unlikely that a data broker is just selling data about Vermonters. They're doing so about Vermonters and folks in the other 49 states. That makes the Vermont requirement have national impact,” he said. Russell hopes that the Vermont law will prompt other actions from state and federal government agencies about student data transparency. “We can't even have an intelligent conversation as a society about whether things are good or bad, whether uses of student data are proper or improper without the ability to gain information about them,” he said. The Vermont legislation is a really nice first step. Hopefully there will be national momentum of that type,” Russell added.