Brian Schaller of InfoLawGroup provides yeoman service by recapping legislative news in 2015 in ed-tech:
There was a lot of legislative movement for the educational technology (ed-tech) industry in 2015 with states placing additional privacy regulations on the industry, and the effects of those new acts should be felt this year. The states that passed this type of legislation in 2015 were following California’s lead. California’s governor signed the Student Online Personal Information Protection Act (SOPIPA) (2014 Cal SB 1177) back in 2014. Even though these states enacted legislation after SOPIPA, at least one of these acts came into effect before SOPIPA became operative (which was January 1, 2016). Maryland’s Student Data Privacy Act of 2015 (2015 MD H.B. 298) was approved by the governor on May 12, 2015 and took effect July 1, 2015. On August 7, the influential and often business friendly state of Delaware saw its governor approve the Student Data Privacy Protection Act (2015 Del. SS 1 for SB 79). Some of the Delaware act’s provisions became effective upon its enactment into law, but the provisions that have the most impact are effective “August 1 the first full year following the Act’s enactment into law”. Georgia’s Student Data Privacy, Accessibility, and Transparency Act (2015 GA S.B. 89) was signed by the state’s governor on May 6, 2015 and will become effective July 1, 2016. Additional states passed similar legislation such as Arkansas and Virginia. According to an article by the National Association of State Boards of Education released last June, 111 state bills “were aimed at establishing better safeguards for the collection, use, and disclosure of student data.”
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