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New York State attorney general Letitia James’s office has reached a settlement with the College Board.
Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images
The College Board, the nonprofit that owns and administers the SAT and PSAT as well as AP tests, will pay a $750,000 settlement to the New York State attorney general’s office for illegally sharing and selling students’ personal data collected through its exams.
The settlement, announced Tuesday, also prohibits the College Board from “monetizing New York students’ data” collected through contracts with the state’s public school districts and from asking students taking exams for permission to share data.
“Students have more than enough to be stressed about when they take college entrance exams, and shouldn’t have to worry about their personal information being bought and sold,” New York attorney general Letitia James said in a statement.
The AG’s investigation found that the College Board solicited student information—including GPA, area of anticipated study, interest in a religiously affiliated college and family income—during the administration of the AP, SAT and PSAT exams. Between 2018 and 2022, the organization licensed those data to more than 1,000 higher education institutions and “received significant revenue” from doing so, according to the AG’s statement. In addition, the College Board used the data to target students for its own marketing campaigns.
