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A new report finds that, under the guise of “personalized learning,” school-issued computer devices — now distributed to one-third of K-12 students in schools across the United States — are serving to collect and store an unprecedented amount of personal data on children without their parents’ notice or consent.

A newly released investigation by Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reveals student use of technology in school has grown at a profound rate, especially with free or low-fee devices issued by schools.

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In 2012, Jose Ferreira, CEO of ed tech company Knewton, observed in a video at the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Educational Technology, “Education happens to be, today, the world’s most data mineable industry by far… Education beats everything else, hands down.”

Because the data collected is labeled necessary for “individualized” instruction, parents who do become aware of the mining and wish to have their children opt out of the collection are often unable to do so. In fact, many of these parents are painted as “paranoid” and behind the times.

“We were given no information about our first-grader receiving a tablet this year,” one Maryland parent responded to EFF’s parent survey regarding transparency. “And when we ask questions, there is little information given at every level.”

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Colorado parent activist Cheri Kiesecker says Big Data has been given free rein under the guises of both “personalized learning programs” and workforce development, with both Democratic and Republican lawmakers on board with the program.

“There is no evidence that these online ‘personalized’ programs accurately measure or predict,” Kiesecker tells Breitbart News. “In fact we see quite the opposite. Algorithms are often biased and wrong. So why are we pushing online learning in classrooms? Data is money.”

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Malkin details the data-mining situation:

Every webpage viewed, every answer given, every grade received becomes part of a digital digest of students’ interests, thoughts, abilities, and conduct. And that data doesn’t always stay in the classroom. More and more, big corporations are gaining access. At first glance it’s just information broken down into strings of numbers stored on a computer. The corporations ask for the data and offer the very computers and apps the students use in class as an incentive to hand it over.

Data for dollars might seem like a fair trade until you realize tech companies are taking advantage of our youngest and most vulnerable population, our kids.