The Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC) announce the release of the National Data Privacy Agreement (NDPA), version 2

WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATE OF AMERICA, April 24, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC), a special interest group of the non-profit Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community, is proud to announce the release of the National Data Privacy Agreement (NDPA), version 2, which has been further developed to streamline application contracting and set common expectations between schools/districts and marketplace providers.

Currently, the freely accessible SDPC Resource Registry hosts over 130,000+ signed Data Privacy Agreements (DPAs) between more than 12,000 schools/districts and 6674 education application providers. This NDPA has been developed by the 28 state Alliances addressing common obligations across the U.S. as well as their specific state needs. The version 2 release incorporates feedback from Alliance leaders and Vendor Community Members, and has been reviewed by legal representatives through A4L Community Member Review. It is designed to address common student data privacy concerns and streamline the educational application contracting processes for schools/districts who do not have the legal or fiscal resources and vendors who previously had to sign “one off” contracts with each of the over 13,000 US school districts. While the NDPA allows for any state specific legislative requirements, the majority of the privacy expectations are standardized and can be used by any entity as part of their Terms of Service Agreements.

“The NDPA v2 represents the byproduct of hundreds of hours of thoughtful input from the SDPC Vendor and Alliance community. The goal was to clarify the language, and balance substantive changes and create a structure that makes the NDPA easier to use. The result is a new NDPA, and updated usage guide, that will save time and money for schools, districts, and edtech companies, ultimately benefiting students by allowing schools and districts to allocate more resources to learning and less to negotiating.” Jim Siegl, Senior Technologist, Future of Privacy Forum.

“The community input and support during this process was incredible. Many, many people from districts, alliances, non-profits and vendors provided hundreds of thoughtful and usable comments. The new version is organized better for our users and their legal advisers, which is going to save a ton of time in both new contracting and ongoing management. I’m especially excited for process changes that’ll make life easier for our vendors doing business in multiple states. And as Jim said, we’ll all be able to put more of our effort to learning and less to negotiating.” Steve Setzer, CEO, Loop Data.
To access the work of the SDPC, including the SDPC Resource Registry, visit https://privacy.A4L.org

About the Access 4 Learning Community
The Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community, and its special interest group the Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC), is a unique, non-profit collaboration composed of schools, districts, local authorities, states, US and International Ministries of Education, software vendors and consultants. The Community is “Powered by SIF” as its major technical tool to help manage learning data simply, securely and in a scalable, standard way regardless of platform. The SDPC is designed to address the day-to-day, real-world multi- faceted issues faced when protecting learner information by setting common expectations between market providers and end users. The A4L Community has united these education technology end users and providers in an unprecedented effort to ‘connect and secure effective learning ecosystems’ to give teachers more time to do what they do best: teach. For further information, visit https://www.A4L.org.

Penny Murray
Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community
+1 202-621-0547
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