Congress Mulls Kid Data Measure
An amendment added to a major education bill last month would require public schools to get parental consent before students could participate in education-related market research programs.
The Direct Marketing Association “will try to have that amendment stricken from the bill before it reaches the House floor,” said Richard A. Barton, the DMA’s senior vice president, Congressional Matters.
The amendment “actually is an opt-in” and includes aggregate non-personal information that is obtained quite often from school authorities and administrations, Barton continued.
The Education Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives voted 26-20 to add the measure to the Education Opportunities to Protect and Invest in our Nation’s Students Act.
Quid Pro Quo Quashed?
Under the bill, the federal government would fund a broad array of educational programs, including some aimed at fighting drugs and violence.
Rep. George Miller (D-CA) said he proposed the amendment in response to the growing number of commercial contracts with public schools that require students to disclose personal information to the vendors.
He pointed to a recent cable TV station’s survey of children in a New Jersey school; a cereal company’s use of elementary school children in Massachusetts to test a new type of breakfast food; and a company that, after providing free computers to a California school district, monitored the students’ Web-browsing habits while obtaining voluminous personal information about them.
Parental Consent
“My bill simply makes it clear that if students are going to be asked to divulge personal information to people who plan to profit from it, [their] parents should be involved,” Miller said in a statement.
“If parents do not want their children to be objects of market research firms while in school, they should have the right to say no,” he added.
The National Association of School Boards and the National Association of Publishers are among a number of other groups also opposing the Miller amendment.
