Class Action Lawsuit Claims Instructure Illegally Monetizes Student Data Collected Through Canvas, Other Education Products

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Instructure, Inc. faces a proposed class action lawsuit that alleges the education technology company has illegally collected, shared and monetized the personal information of millions of school-aged children.

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According to the 82-page lawsuit, Instructure extracts troves of student data through its suite of digital K-12 education products, including Canvas, Mastery, Impact, LearnPlatform, Intelligent Insights and Elevate. Without parents’ knowledge or effective consent, the defendant exchanges student information with more than a thousand private companies, the case claims.

The complaint alleges Instructure and its many third-party partners compile this data into “highly detailed and intimately personal” profiles about each child and their preferences, behaviors and aptitudes. Per the filing, the defendant uses these profiles to develop products that purportedly predict student performance and behavior.

“Instructure markets these analytics to its customers for use in wide-ranging decision-making about children, a practice known as algorithmic profiling,” the case explains. “Such analytics purport to help teachers and administrators ‘personalize’ a child’s curriculum and learning plan, understand a child’s strengths and weaknesses, identify a student’s individual education goals, formulate plans for reaching those goals, and a host of other predictions and recommendations for purportedly better management of the child.”

The filing argues that the amount of data Instructure collects about children far exceeds any legitimate educational purposes. Rather, the defendant’s massive data-harvesting scheme has allowed it to hone its for-profit products and establish a “multibillion-dollar corporate empire,” the suit contends.

“ … [T]he extractive corporate business model does not prioritize positive student outcomes; it prizes ‘measurability,’ ‘scalability,’ and other profit imperatives that are often unaligned with, and are even adversarial to, children’s privacy and healthy development,” the filing argues. “Companies may not deny parents the ability to guide their children’s lives by marketing to schools and concealing their practices behind opaque technology and empty promises of improving education.”

The Instructure lawsuit was filed by three parents on behalf of their minor children, who, according to the complaint, are required to use the defendant’s products in their California public school districts. The plaintiffs claim they were never given the opportunity to consent to Instructure’s data practices, which they allege violate their constitutional right to privacy.

The lawsuit looks to represent all United States residents who attend or attended a K-12 school and used Instructure’s K-12 school-marketed products.

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