On February 27th, PowerSchool, the company that oversees the college and career readiness program Naviance along with the Chicago Public School district, agreed to a $17.5 million settlement in a class action lawsuit alleging that it invaded student privacy by collecting data without proper permission. The lawsuit, initially filed on behalf of an anonymous Chicago student, claims PowerSchool violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as federal and state laws. Despite denying wrongdoing, PowerSchool agreed to enter the settlement to avoid going to trial.
The initial complaint, filed in a US District Court, states that Naviance unlawfully recorded student school records and demographic information in addition to private communications between teachers and students. It also accuses Naviance of using a “replay software” from a redacted party to surreptitiously track all computer inputs on the website without user knowledge. These practices, it says, intercept electronic communications and are in violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
This is not the first time PowerSchool has found itself in hot water regarding data security and privacy practices. A 2022 investigative report from The Markup detailed how Naviance sold data it had gathered from students’ college research to colleges seeking to produce targeted advertisements. Furthermore, a December 2024 security breach exposed the data of 62 million students and 9 million teachers in the largest student data breach in American history. A hacker used an administrator’s stolen credentials—which lacked multi-factor authentication—to gain access to data including personal information such as medical history and Social Security numbers.
Currently, Cambridge Public Schools uses three PowerSchool products (notably, not the one affected by the aforementioned data breach). A spokesperson for the district stated that they “do not currently have plans to change products” after the Naviance settlement, but that “further conversations will be held internally.”
Needless to say, parents, educators, and policymakers have expressed concern over the practices of not just PowerSchool, but education technology (known as EdTech) companies in general. During COVID, learning forcibly became reliant on technology. Today, though the pandemic is over, technology still plays the same large role in the classroom—a role many argue is far too big. PowerSchool alone now claims to have data on 75% of North American students between kindergarten and 12th grade. A report from non-profit Internet Safety Labs found that 96% of EdTech companies shared data with third parties and 78% with advertising and monetization companies. Though the government seems to now be cracking down on some questionable practices, the scale of EdTech’s grasp on the education system is concerning. The CPSD spokesperson stated that “districts have very limited options to actually know what happens behind the curtain.” This, combined with their tendency to track enormous amounts of student data without proper security, raises questions about what role EdTech companies should have in the future of education.
This article also appears in our April 2026 print edition.
