As far as I can tell, this doesn't aim to stop the use of student learning data to support student learning. I think it's about the "other stuff", like selling PII to third parties or using it for targeted advertising.
Then that should clarified by the FTC. As you can see from other comments, it appears that some people want to stop the use of student learning data to support student learning.
Educational systems fundamentally need to collect data on student learning progress. It is how education functions as a system. Lumping together the unethical (selling PII) and the ethical (continuous improvement) is very problematic.
It's clarified in the actual policy statement [0][PDF].
Particularly:
> must not condition participation in any activity on a child disclosing more
information than is reasonably necessary for the child to participate in that activity.
> are strictly limited in how they can use the personal information they collect from children. For example, operators of ed tech that collect personal information pursuant to school authorization may use such information only to provide the requested online education service.
They're not prohibiting the collection of data, they're strictly limiting what can be done with it.
I think this is good middle-ground privacy policy in general.
> must not condition participation in any activity on a child disclosing more information than is reasonably necessary for the child to participate in that activity
That may prevent gathering data about, for instance, their performance on other related skills.
> are strictly limited in how they can use the personal information they collect from children. For example, operators of ed tech that collect personal information pursuant to school authorization may use such information only to provide the requested online education service
How about using their PII to link data sources together? That might be done for the improvement of related systems, rather than to provide the educational service used by the child. I mean it’s arguable, but this could create a real chilling effect.
Educational systems fundamentally need to collect data on student learning progress. It is how education functions as a system. Lumping together the unethical (selling PII) and the ethical (continuous improvement) is very problematic.