Over the past six years, a little-known private equity firm, Vista Equity Partners, has built an educational software empire that wields unseen influence over the educational journeys of tens of millions of children. Along the way, The Markup found, the companies the firm controls have scooped up a massive amount of very personal data on kids, which they use to fuel a suite of predictive analytics products that push the boundaries of technology’s role in education and, in some cases, raise discrimination concerns.

In 2022, Researchers at the Internet Safety Labs found that up to 96% of apps used in US schools(new window) share student information with third parties, and 78% of them shared this data with advertisers and data brokers. Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) 2022 global analysis of 164 Ed Tech products(new window) across 49 countries revealed that 89% of them risk children’s privacy by embedding trackers that report back to the advertising industry. Another study by the Internet Safety Labs, this one published in 2024, found that the average Ed Tech app with trackers forwarded data to 6.7 different data broker companies(new window) every time a student logged on. This means every students’ click, keystroke, and physical location can be traced by companies with commercial motives — often without parents or teachers even knowing.