EdLaw
Texas student information protection — Education Code ch. 32, Subchapter D
Texas's student-data-privacy regime, added by H.B. 2087 (85th Legislature, 2017) as Subchapter D of Education Code Chapter 32 and amended in 2023. It is a SOPIPA-style statute: it binds the operator of a website, online service, online application or mobile application directly — not through the school's contract — where the operator has actual knowledge that the service is used primarily for a school purpose and was designed and marketed for a school purpose (§32.151(3)).
Applicability to EdTech
This is the Texas instrument that applies to us most directly, and it is the whole subchapter, so the boundaries are readable rather than inferred:
- "Covered information" is defined expansively and expressly enumerates biometric information, voice recordings, photographs, search activity and geolocation among the identifying categories (§32.151(1)).
- Prohibited outright: targeted advertising based on anything acquired through the school-purpose service, profiling a student other than for a school purpose, and selling or renting covered information (§32.152) — with the merger/acquisition carve-out in (c).
- Adaptive learning is expressly preserved: the subchapter does not limit an operator's use of student data "for adaptive learning or customized student learning purposes" (§32.157(2)).
- General-audience services are outside it (§32.157(3)) — the same consumer/school-surface split that recurs across the corpus.
- An operational duty with a Texas-specific hook: an operator approved by, or whose product has been adopted by, the Texas Education Agency must use the Texas Student Data System (TSDS) unique identifier to mask personally identifiable student information for account creation, upload, transmission, analysis and reporting, and must adhere to the state-required student data sharing agreement (§32.155(b)). This is a product requirement, not just a contract term.
- Deletion on district request within 60 days, unless the contract specifies otherwise or the student/parent consents to retention (§32.156).
- Being regulated here has a second effect: the SCOPE Act expressly does not apply to "an operator or provider regulated by Subchapter D, Chapter 32, Education Code, that primarily provides education services to students or educational institutions" (§509.002(b)(7)).
Contents
| Document | Covers |
|---|---|
| STUDENT-INFORMATION.md | §§32.151–32.157 in full — the complete Subchapter D |
Key obligations at a glance
- No targeted advertising, no non-school-purpose profiling, no sale or rental of covered information — §32.152(a).
- Disclosure only in the listed cases — §32.153.
- Permitted uses enumerated: improving educational products, demonstrating effectiveness and marketing only with information not associated with an identified student, and in-service recommendations not determined by third-party payment — §32.154.
- Reasonable security procedures and practices; TSDS identifier masking for agency-approved or agency-adopted products — §32.155.
- Deletion within 60 days of a district request — §32.156.
Enforcement
Subchapter D contains no penalty, remedy or enforcement provision of its own — §§32.151–32.157 are the entire subchapter and none creates an enforcement mechanism or a private right of action. Enforcement therefore runs through general Texas law (for example the Deceptive Trade Practices Act route the legislature used expressly for the SCOPE Act) and through the district's contract. No enforcement action under this subchapter is recorded in this corpus.
Licence
The reproduced text is Tex. Educ. Code §§32.151 to 32.157, enacted by the Texas Legislature and served by the Texas Legislative Council on statutes.capitol.texas.gov. No copyright subsists in this text. In Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., 590 U.S. 255 (2020), the Supreme Court held: "Under what has been dubbed the government edicts doctrine, officials empowered to speak with the force of law cannot be the authors of—and therefore cannot copyright—the works they create in the course of their official duties." It went on: "judges—and, we now confirm, legislators—may not be considered the 'authors' of the works they produce in the course of their official duties as judges and legislators. That rule applies regardless of whether a given material carries the force of law." (slip opinion, pp. 1 and 5–6, read 2026-10-01.)
The reproduced pages carry no copyright notice or terms of use (checked 2026-10-01 against the live pages or the builder's cached copies).
Public-domain text carries no conditions. The corpus attributes it all the same: the {.meta} provenance line on each section names the publisher, the Sources section links the official text, and the Meta section describes what the builder changed (markup and anchors only). Nothing here suggests that the Texas Legislature endorses the corpus.
Related
- California SOPIPA — the model this regime follows
- Texas SCOPE Act — §509.002(b)(7) exempts operators regulated by this subchapter
- Texas TDPSA — §541.003(13) exempts FERPA-regulated personal data at the data level
- Texas school cybersecurity (§11.175) — the district-side security and breach-reporting duty
- FERPA — the federal education-records layer
- SDPC NDPA — the standard agreement Texas districts commonly use to impose these terms