PA Digital Trust Hub joins the Pennsylvania Student Data Privacy Consortium.

The Pennsylvania Digital Trust Hub has joined the Pennsylvania Student Data Privacy Consortium (PA-SDPC), giving member schools a shared, statewide way to put strong data privacy agreements in place with the vendors their students and staff rely on. Membership began September 1, 2025.

What the Student Data Privacy Consortium is

The Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC) is a national community of schools, districts, states and education technology vendors working to set common expectations for how student data is protected. It is a project of the Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community, a nonprofit that brings schools and vendors together around data privacy and interoperability.

At the center of the SDPC’s work is the National Data Privacy Agreement (NDPA), a standard contract that spells out how a vendor may collect, use, share and protect student data. Instead of each district negotiating its own privacy terms with every vendor, schools and vendors start from the same vetted agreement, with a Pennsylvania version that addresses the state’s requirements.

A collaboration with IU13

Lancaster-Lebanon IU13 leads the SDPC in Pennsylvania, organizing the state’s alliance of schools and supporting members as they get started. The Hub joined through IU13, which also provided onboarding and training for member schools.

What membership means for schools

• A searchable registry of signed agreements. Members can see which vendors have already signed data privacy agreements with other Pennsylvania schools, and under which terms.
• Less negotiating from scratch. Many vendor agreements include a general offer of terms (Exhibit E) that other schools can accept, so a district can often adopt an agreement another school has already completed.
• Standard Pennsylvania agreements. Members work from the Pennsylvania version of the NDPA instead of negotiating privacy terms vendor by vendor.
• Consortium pricing. Because the Hub joins on behalf of its members, schools receive PA-SDPC membership at a discounted consortium rate, included in their Digital Trust Hub membership.

Paired with 1EdTech affiliate membership, including TAMS for vetting apps, PA-SDPC membership gives schools two halves of the same job: knowing what an app does, and having a signed agreement that holds the vendor to it.