The New York Board of Regents approved regulations for Education Law §2-d. The law was passed in March 2014 introducing contract requirements between schools and vendors, security standards when handling student data, and financial penalties for vendors if found out of compliance. The regulations go into effect on January 29, 2020.

The proposed FY20 budget slashes funding for critical education technology programs at the U.S. Department of Education (ED). The proposal outlines a number of priorities and makes a number of cuts to other programs reflecting the Administration’s desire to cut federal spending at ED. While it is unlikely that Congress will pass a budget that looks similar to this proposal, the FY20 budget cycle may be more contentious than previous years with the White House promising to follow the deal that was negotiated in the Budget Control Act of 2011. The passage of the Budget Control Act of 2011 enacted a series of complex mechanisms that has an impact on the federal budget. Government wide cuts, applicable to both mandatory and discretionary spending, were triggered after a failure to make a deal on deficit reduction in 2013. These cuts have been delayed a number of times but it seems the White House may push to keep the sequestration cuts intact this budget cycle as described in this ...

In December 2017, the U.S. Department of Education and the Federal Trade Commission held a workshop focused on ed tech and student privacy. The workshop brought together a wide range of stakeholders interested in protecting student privacy – business, education, and consumer advocates.

“. . . as education companies we can't just come up with a great product, show it to teachers, and expect to be successful. Our products and services have to help decision makers with their state and federal compliance and intricately defined funding requirements if we are going to be successful. If we don’t know what these are, we can’t get our products accepted.”  — Mitch Weisburgh, Managing Partner, Academic Business Advisors

Federal funding of the U.S. Department of Education is set at $71.5 billion for FY19 with the President’s signature on H.R. 6157. The funding is an increase from FY18 levels by $581 million.  The conference report recommends the Department of Education to award no less than 20 new grants between $100,00 and $1,000,000 in an Open Textbook Pilot. A 12-institution consortium led by UC Davis was awarded $4.9 million for open STEM textbooks under the FY18 appropriations Open Textbook Pilot which limited the amount of grant funds to $5 million. The Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants received a $70 million increase over FY18. The Department of Education also announced a state survey to examine the early implementation of these grants in all states. The survey will be conducted in Spring 2019. Other key funding streams are outlined below:

In what can be compared to a modern-day technology sprint, California’s legislature introduced and passed far-reaching privacy legislation - the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) - in less than a week. The multi-year effort by privacy advocates, technology companies, network providers and others before introduction ended in the final push in the legislature was completed in the just six days. This far-reaching legislation will have impact across many different business sectors when it goes into effect on January 1, 2020 requiring for-profit businesses, not just technology companies, to provide the consumer access to the personal information collected about her, the opportunity to delete the data, and to allow her the opportunity to opt-out of the sale of personal information to third parties (or, if under the age of 16, the ability to opt-in). Much like the software development process, the California legislature has acknowledged the need to fix the “bugs” ...

With just over a week until the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect, companies around the world are coming into compliance with the far-reaching law. Inboxes everywhere have been overflowing with consent notifications over the past few months. If you’re just getting started on GDPR or generally curious, here is a brief overview of the GDPR. Disclaimer – GDPR is broadly written and is context-specific. If your company is in need of compliance help, consider engaging with an outside firm to address your compliance needs.

Congress approved and the President signed the government spending bill for fiscal year (FY) 2018 on Friday. The bill includes large increases for education which is a huge departure from the President’s budget submitted to Congress in early 2017.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) signaled they are serious about enforcing current law with the announcement of the $650,000 fine and 20-year consent decree settling a complaint brought against toy maker, VTech, for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). VTech will pay the fine and is required to not violate COPPA.  It also must implement a comprehensive data security program subject to independent audits for 20 years. The FTC found that VTech, through its internet-connected toys, collected personal information from children under 13 without providing appropriate notice nor obtaining proper consent from the child’s parent. VTech, according to the complaint, did not use reasonable security measures required by COPPA despite stating they do in the available privacy policy. The toy maker suffered a major security breach in 2015 where hackers accessed unencrypted parent and child personal information, including photos and chat logs. ...

The 21st Century job landscape so far has been characterized by the rise in high-tech jobs to support the digital landscape.  The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that there are currently over six million job openings in the United States due to the lack of applicants that possess necessary technical skills.  With the increase in this type of job availability and the advent of automation, supporting career and technical education are becoming more important than ever. Just last week, Google announced its new initiative called “Grow with Google” where it will spend $1 billion in grants to nonprofits who will train American workers and also help to grow American businesses.  This announcement came in Pittsburgh, historic for its center as a manufacturing hub, showing its evolution into a major tech hub in the rust belt. The billion dollars in grants will mainly support high-tech jobs in an effort to train workers to meet the skill requirements necessar ...