18,000 Valley View students among those affected in data breach

Some current and former Valley View School District 365U students were among thousands across the country affected by a recent data breach.

Research company Pearson Clinical Assessment recently told the district that a product the school system had been using to track students’ academic performance was hacked, according to a news release from Valley View.

The product, AIMSweb 1.0, was used to monitor the progress of students in kindergarten through eighth grade until 2016.

Pearson believes the first name, last name, and, in some cases, date of birth of about 18,000 Valley View students were exposed, the release said. No test scores, performance data or any other identifying student information was part of the incident.

The exposed data also included the names and district-issued email addresses of 1,700 staff members. The staff member information is directory information already available on Valley View’s website.

“Although Pearson has no reason to believe that any data has been misused, VVSD is making the community aware of this incident out of an abundance of caution,” according to the release.

Pearson is providing free credit monitoring services to affected individuals. Contact Information Security Officer Alberto Diaz at iso@vvsd.org for further information.

Pearson estimates that 13,000 schools nationwide were affected in the breach.

The district said it has policies and other safeguards in place to ensure personal information of all students and staff stored in its systems is protected and places these same obligations on all third parties.