Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) has become the latest craze in public education. Promoted as a way to help students manage emotions and build empathy, SEL is now a packaged product sold by education vendors—complete with online platforms that collect data on every child who participates in Tier 1 of the Multi Tiered System of Support- Behavior.
While some children may benefit from lessons in self-awareness or cooperation, SEL programs are not targeted interventions. They’re universal—applied to all students in public schools. The problem? These programs often gather behavioral and mental health data, and no one really knows where that information goes or who has access to it.
School administrators often assume the data is protected, but the reality is far murkier. Parental consent requirements that once safeguarded student privacy were loosened during the Obama administration, allowing third-party vendors unprecedented access to sensitive student information.
Even if parents opt their children out of SEL lessons, the data collection doesn’t stop. Many online learning platforms, including math programs used on school-issued Chromebooks, embed SEL elements within academic exercises—quietly harvesting behavioral and emotional data.
Consider PowerSchool, a widely used educational technology company. It was recently sued by parents over the vast amount of personal information it collects. According to the lawsuit:
“The information PowerSchool takes from students is virtually unlimited. It includes everything from educational records and behavioral history to health data and information about a child’s family circumstances… collected for its own commercial gain.”
The complaint continues:
“If the surveillance business model is unfair when used against adults in voluntary consumer transactions, use of the model against school-age children in the compulsory setting of K–12 education is unconscionable.”
This isn’t hypothetical—it’s happening every day in schools across New Hampshire. Parents have no idea that their child’s emotional and psychological data is being harvested, analyzed, and potentially monetized.
A New Hampshire physician raised this alarm in The Wall Street Journal, explaining how schools are effectively building psychological profiles on students without parental knowledge or consent. (Read the article here.)
Parents are starting to push back, refusing to allow their children to participate in SEL activities. But with SEL quietly woven into core academic programs questions remain:
How can families protect their children’s privacy when education technology has turned classrooms into data farms?
How will this impact my children if they decide to join the military, or apply for a job with law enforcement?
Now that the U.S. Department of Labor can access information, will their future employer gain access to this sensitive personal information?
This is why so many parents are now refusing to allow their children to participate in this data-mining scheme.
