SAT org. fined $750K for selling student data

The College Board is paying up to settle claims that the SAT administrator peddled personal info about teenage test-takers to colleges and others, allowing the group to profit off New York student data.

State Attorney General Letitia James announced that the test developer agreed this week to cough up $750,000 and will be prohibited from monetizing student data it obtains through contracts with New York schools and districts.

The attorney general said College Board for years licensed information to colleges, scholarship programs and other customers who used it to coax young people to their programs.

“Students have more than enough to be stressed about when they take college entrance exams,” James said in a statement, “and shouldn’t have to worry about their personal information being bought and sold.”

According to James, College Board collected data such as student GPA, anticipated major, interest in a religiously affiliated college and religious activities, and household income, and sold it to more than 1,000 institutions in violation of state education law.

In 2019, for example, the exam administrator licensed the information of more than 237,000 New York teens who took the SAT, PSAT and Advanced Placement, or “AP,” exams, James said.

The attorney general’s crackdown comes after a decade of parent advocacy. In 2021, parents led a petition that garnered 718 signatures calling on James to investigate “the illegal sale of student data by the College Board.”

“They are a serial violator of student privacy rights in many ways,” said Leonie Haimson, co-chairwoman of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, “and they’ve gotten away with it for too many years. It’s time for this to stop.”

The settlement only covers testing done in schools, and does not apply to New York families who seek out a testing center not through school and district contracts, according to the coalition.

“I’m glad that this has finally been addressed in New York, but I still have a lot of concerns about the College Board, and the weakness of their encryption and deletion practices,” Haimson said.

Roughly 20 New York schools or school districts, including the New York City Department of Education and its more than 500 high schools, have entered into contracts with College Board in recent years to offer PSAT and SAT exams during the school day and to cover student exam fees, according to the attorney general.

College Board in a statement did not admit to breaking state education law, and said it discontinued some services in New York at the state’s request in 2022.

“It’s important to note there is no finding that … harmed students or that colleges or scholarship organizations ever misused student information,” said a spokesman. “College Board is pleased to have resolved this investigation and remains committed to educational opportunity and success for the students of New York State.”