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<\/a><\/p>Over the past six years, a little-known private equity firm, Vista Equity Partners, has built an educational software empire that wields unseen influence over the educational journeys of tens of millions of children. Along the way, The Markup found, the companies the firm controls have scooped up a massive amount of very personal data on kids, which they use to fuel a suite of predictive analytics products that push the boundaries of technology\u2019s role in education and, in some cases, raise discrimination concerns.<\/p>
One district we examined uses risk-scoring algorithms from a company in the group, PowerSchool, that incorporate indicators of family wealth to predict a student\u2019s future success\u2014a controversial practice that parents don\u2019t know about\u2014raising troubling questions.<\/p>
\u201cI did not even realize there was anybody in this space still doing that [using free and reduced lunch status] in a model being used on real kids,\u201d said Ryan Baker, the director of the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Center for Learning Analytics. \u201cI am surprised and really appalled.\u201d <\/p>
Vista Equity Partners, which declined to comment for this story, has acquired controlling ownership stakes in some of the leading names in educational technology, including EAB, which sells a suite of college counseling and recruitment products, and PowerSchool, which dominates the market for K-12 data warehousing and analytics. PowerSchool alone claims to hold data<\/a> on more than 45 million children, including 75 percent of North American K-12 students. Ellucian, a recent Vista acquisition, says it serves 26 million students<\/a>. And EAB\u2019s products are used by thousands of colleges and universities<\/a>. But parents of those students say they\u2019ve largely been left in the dark about what data the companies collect and how they use it. <\/p> \u201cWe are paying these vendors and they are making money on our kids\u2019 data,\u201d said Ellen Zavian, whose son was required to use Naviance, college preparation software recently acquired by PowerSchool, at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Md.<\/p> After growing concerned about the questions her son was being asked to answer on Naviance-administered surveys, Zavian and other members of a local student privacy group requested access in 2019 to the data the company holds on their children from the district under the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). But to date, she has received back only usernames and passwords.<\/p> \u201cParents know very little about this process,\u201d she said. <\/p> The ed tech companies in Vista\u2019s portfolio appear to operate largely independently, but they have entered into a number of partnerships that deepen the ties of shared ownership. PowerSchool and EAB, for example, have a data integration partnership<\/a> aimed at \u201cdelivering data movement solutions that drive value and save time for Districts.\u201d The two companies also signed another deal<\/a> last year that made EAB the exclusive reseller of some PowerSchool products. <\/p> EAB did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p> To piece together the extent of the companies\u2019 data collection, The Markup reviewed thousands of pages of contracts, user manuals, data sharing agreements, and survey questions<\/a> obtained through public records requests. <\/p> We found that the companies, collectively, gather everything from basic demographic information\u2014entered automatically when a student enrolls in school\u2014to data about students\u2019 citizenship status, religious affiliation, school disciplinary records, medical diagnoses, what speed they read and type at, the full text of answers they give on tests, the pictures they draw for assignments, whether they live in a two-parent household, whether they\u2019ve used drugs, been the victim of a crime, or expressed interest in LGBTQ+ groups, among hundreds of other data points. Each Vista-owned company doesn\u2019t necessarily hold all the data points listed here.<\/p> Some of those data fields were recorded in the traffic between students\u2019 computers and PowerSchool servers when students used their accounts. The Markup reviewed the accounts with students\u2019 permission. Other data fields were listed in districts\u2019 data privacy agreements with PowerSchool and the data library\u2014a list of all available data fields\u2014for one district\u2019s PowerSchool database. Our review offers a more detailed picture of the company\u2019s data operations than PowerSchool publicly discloses, but it is likely an incomplete portrait.<\/p> According to its contracts<\/a> with school districts, PowerSchool has the right to de-identify the data it holds on their behalf\u2014by removing fields such as names and social security numbers\u2014and use it in any way it sees fit to improve and build its own products. <\/p> In some districts, such as Miami-Dade County Public Schools, recent PowerSchool contracts<\/a> have exceeded $2.5 million for a single year, according to copies of the deals obtained through public records requests.<\/p> \u201cIt\u2019s hard for me to understand how PowerSchool would not be paying for the privilege\u201d of extracting so much student data, said Alex Bowers, a professor of educational leadership at Columbia University\u2019s Teachers College. \u201cYou don\u2019t pay the oil company to come pump oil off your land; it\u2019s the other way around.\u201d<\/p> PowerSchool declined to answer specific questions about the data it collects and how it uses that information.<\/p> \u201cAt PowerSchool, ensuring student equity, privacy, and access to good quality education is our top priority and is foundational to everything we do,\u201d Darron Flagg, the company\u2019s chief compliance and privacy officer, wrote in a brief statement to The Markup. \u201cPowerSchool strictly and proactively follows legal, regulatory, and voluntary requirements for protecting student privacy including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), state regulations, and the Student Privacy Pledge. PowerSchool customers own their student and school data. We do not sell student or school data; we do not collect, maintain, use, or share student personal information beyond what is authorized by the district, parent, or student.\u201d<\/p> Many of PowerSchool\u2019s newer product lines, including its predictive analytics tools and personalized learning platform, require troves of student data to train the underlying algorithms. But experts who reviewed The Markup\u2019s findings said that some of the data being used for those purposes is bound to lead to discriminatory outcomes.<\/p> Consider School District U-46 in Elgin, Ill., which was the only district\u2014out of 27 we submitted public records requests to\u2014that provided a complete list of the data PowerSchool warehouses on its behalf. The district also provided documents detailing how PowerSchool\u2019s predictive analytics algorithms draw on some of that data to influence students\u2019 educational journeys.<\/p> U-46\u2019s PowerSchool database contains nearly 7,000 data fields about Elgin students, parents, and staff, according to a copy of the data library<\/a> The Markup obtained.<\/p> As early as first grade, algorithms from the company\u2019s Unified Insights product line start generating predictions about whether students are at low, moderate, or high risk of not graduating high school on time, not meeting certain standards on the SATs, or not completing two years of college, among other outcomes. The district\u2019s documents describe dozens of different predictive models<\/a> available via PowerSchool, although U-46 says it does not use most of them.<\/p> The district begins displaying student on-time graduation risk scores to teachers and administrators beginning in seventh grade, according to Matt Raimondi, Elgin\u2019s assessment and accountability coordinator.<\/p> Free and reduced lunch status\u2014a proxy for family wealth\u2014and student gender are among the most important factors in determining that risk score, according to the documents<\/a>. At one point, Elgin\u2019s models\u2014developed by a company called Hoonuit that was acquired by PowerSchool in 2020 and rebranded as Unified Insights\u2014also incorporated student race as a heavily weighted<\/a> variable. <\/p> Flagg, from PowerSchool, said race was removed from the models in 2017 before the company acquired Hoonuit.<\/p> The predictive models also draw on data points like attendance, disciplinary history, and test scores.<\/p> Learning analytics experts told The Markup that the use of demographic data like gender and free and reduced lunch status\u2014attributes that students and school officials can\u2019t change\u2014to predict student outcomes is bound to encode discrimination into the predictive models.<\/p> \u201cI think that having [free and reduced lunch status] as a predictor in the model is indefensible in 2021,\u201d said Baker of the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Center for Learning Analytics. Baker has consulted with BrightBytes, a competitor of PowerSchool in the K-12 predictive analytics space.<\/p> \u201cUnified Insights does provide the option for school districts to include free and reduced lunch status to enable districts to reduce dropout risk associated with economic hardship and identify additional social service supports that may be available to impacted students,\u201d Flagg, from PowerSchool, wrote in an email. <\/p> \u201cIncluding these things that are not within the control of the family or the school is highly problematic,\u201d said Bowers, from Columbia University Teachers College, because even the best-intentioned school cannot change all the systemic gender and wealth disparities that affect a particular student. Basing the risk scores so heavily on those factors therefore obscures the impact of other factors a school may be able to influence, he said.<\/p> Raimondi said U-46 has chosen not to use many of the predictive models PowerSchool makes available because of their reliance on immutable student characteristics<\/p> \u201cEspecially down at the early grades, we don\u2019t even make it visible to any users besides myself and a programmer,\u201d he said. \u201cThe models at the lower grades, they\u2019re not that accurate and they rely a lot more heavily on demographic-type data.\u201d<\/p> Each year, Elgin\u2019s dropout risk model misses about 90 students in each grade level, out of 3,000 students per grade, who do not go on to graduate on time, according to a presentation prepared<\/a> by a PowerSchool data scientist and obtained by The Markup.<\/p> \u201cWe have no comment on the sensitivity\/specificity of the models,\u201d U-46 spokesperson Karla Jim\u00e9nez wrote in an email.<\/p> The Markup has previously reported<\/a> on a similar dropout prediction tool EAB sells to colleges and universities. Some of those schools incorporated race as a \u201chigh impact predictor\u201d of success, and their algorithms labeled Black students \u201chigh risk\u201d at as much as four times the rate of their White peers, effectively steering students of color away from certain majors. After our reporting, Texas A&M University dropped the use of race<\/a> as a predictive variable. <\/p> Vista Equity Partners has been expanding its reach in the educational software industry for years. Along with that expansion, it\u2019s put together a portfolio of companies that amass data and effectively track kids throughout their educational journeys. <\/p> Since 2015, when Vista first purchased PowerSchool from Pearson for $350 million, Vista has been on a spending spree, acquiring other ed tech companies that collect different kinds of student data.<\/p> In 2017, PowerSchool bought SunGard K-12, which provided human resources and payroll software for schools. In 2019, it purchased Schoology, a widely used learning management system that served as the digital backbone for many schools\u2019 curriculum and lesson plans. It acquired Hoonuit, which provides the predictive risk scoring used by districts like Elgin, in 2020. <\/p> Last March, it completed the purchase of the college preparatory software Naviance, and in November it purchased Kickboard, a company that collects data about students\u2019 behavior and social-emotional skills. In presentations to investors<\/a>, PowerSchool officials have said more acquisitions are a key part of the company\u2019s growth plan.<\/p> EAB has been on a similar purchasing spree, acquiring companies like Wisr, YouVisit, Cappex, and Starfish that are used for college recruitment, advertising, and tracking students on campus. It also announced the creation of Edify<\/a>, a \u201cnext-generation data warehouse and analytics hub\u201d designed to \u201cbreak down data silos.\u201d<\/p> Last June, Vista also acquired a co-ownership stake in Ellucian<\/a>, which sells a variety of educational technology products. The company claims to serve more than 26 million students across 2,700 institutions.<\/p> That consolidation of data and power has triggered a backlash from privacy-minded parents, some of whom have been trying, unsuccessfully, to find out what the deals mean for their children\u2019s sensitive data.<\/p> Piercing the veil of secrecy can be difficult, even when parents turn to privacy laws designed to increase transparency.<\/p> Illinois, for example, has a state law that requires school districts to post specific information about the ed tech vendors they use, including all written agreements with vendors and lists of the data elements shared with those vendors.<\/p> Despite that, districts like Chicago Public Schools have yet to post any of the required material<\/a> pertaining to PowerSchool and Naviance. CPS has, however, posted data use disclosures for other vendors. Across Illinois, 5,800 schools use PowerSchool software, according to the company<\/a>.<\/p> FERPA has also proven of little use for some parents.<\/p> Cheri Kiesecker, a Colorado parent of two, said that she requested her children\u2019s records under the law from PowerSchool earlier this year after it completed the Naviance deal. <\/p> \u201cEach school district owns and controls access to its students\u2019 data, Flagg, from PowerSchool, wrote in an email to The Markup. \u201cAny requests from parents for access to their children\u2019s data must be managed through their respective school districts.<\/p> PowerSchool instructed Kiesecker to request the records through the school, which she did. When PowerSchool did not comply with the school\u2019s subsequent request by the statutory 45-day deadline, her school\u2019s attorneys sent a legal demand to the company, which The Markup reviewed. To date, Kiesecker said, she has still not received her children\u2019s complete records, although PowerSchool has provided partial documentation.<\/p> Deborah Simmons, a Texas parent, said she began looking into the Vista-owned companies after discovering that her school had automatically uploaded her child\u2019s data into Naviance. She filed public records requests and grievances with her school but still doesn\u2019t know the full extent of the data the companies hold or who else it\u2019s been shared with.<\/p> \u201cThese tech companies want to eliminate the data silos and merge and streamline all of this stuff, but no, our children aren\u2019t products,\u201d Simmons said. That\u2019s what they do, they treat our children like products. They\u2019re human beings and they deserve privacy and freedom.\u201d<\/p> This article was originally published on The Markup<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Vista Equity Partners has been buying up software used in schools. Parents want to know what the companies do with kids\u2019 data By: Todd Feathers Over the past six years, a little-known private equity firm, Vista Equity Partners, has built … Continue reading A Cautionary Tale: Elgin, Illinois<\/strong><\/h2>
The Data Empire Is Growing<\/strong><\/h2>