Senate Education Committee considers bill to register education-technology providers and commission study

The Senate Education Committee on April 8 considered legislation that would require providers of education-technology products used in Vermont schools to register with the Secretary of State and direct the Agency of Education to study a potential certification process for those products.

Rick Segal of the Office of Legislative Council told the committee the bill, as introduced, was pared back from a more regulatory proposal. "As it was introduced, it was a much more comprehensive EdTech bill," Segal said, explaining the current draft focuses on registration and a study rather than immediate certification or product approval. The draft definition read to the committee covers "any student-facing software, application, or platform that may collect, process, or transmit student data and that is used for teaching and learning purposes in a school," a formulation counsel and members said is intentionally broad.

Sponsor testimony stressed the bill is an initial transparency and consumer-protection step. The sponsor, who identified herself in the hearing as Erica Underhill, said education technology is "a multibillion dollar industry" that expanded after COVID and remains largely unregulated. "What we know is that education technology has grown in multiples to…