Following several news stories that the company was selling its "Class Clicks" reports for $15,000 per year, N2H2 announced on February 22 that it would no longer sell the data. According to the Associated Press, a spokesperson for the company said that no personal information about individual students was collected or sold. Federal law prohibits collection or sale of a child's personal information without parental permission.

Criticism of the company grew after it was discoverd that of the customers buying "Class Clicks" data was the Department of Defense, which said at the time that they thought it would be "appealing" to find out how students were using military Web sites.

The Bess software is used by 14 million students in the United States in 40 percent of the schools, according to the company.]

It is a generally accepted, though not always successfully executed principle, that schools should be safe places for children and young adults. Increasingly, attempts to achieve this goal of safety often even include requiring that school building entrances be equipped with metal detectors to screens for guns, knives and other potential weapons. A far cry from the cozy one-room schoolhouses that even some of our parents remember. But is violence the only threat to students these days? The Center for Commercial Free Public Education (or "Unplug") in Oakland, CA is at the helm of a nationwide initiative to draw attention to another hazard invading schools: commercialism.

Unplug's initiative has blown the whistle on a number of forms of commercial marketing that have appeared in grade schools and high schools in recent years. One of the most recent being ZapME, an Internet Service Provider that claimed to help all kids cross the "digital divide." ZapME offered free computers, Internet access and technical support to schools, with the requirement that at least 15 students be online for four hours each day. The draw for schools was simple ZapME offered sorely needed, and very expensive, technology for free! But, the Internet browser ZapME offered (the only one accessible by ZapME-provided computers) came complete with a special ZapME advertising banner, featuring their sponsors, which include Nike, the U.S. Army, and various soda manufacturers.

ZapME billed itself as "America's largest Internet media network specializing in education and offering the latest technology tools and educational resources to middle and high schools across the country." But groups like Unplug and Commercial Alert aren't so sure that the free equipment and Internet access is a fair trade for free and unlimited advertising space and time targeted at youth. And not only are companies like ZapME and their sponsors able to advertise to young people, they are also able to take detailed demographics on students, asking them to fill out profiles with gender, age and zip codes. They then make even more money, selling this information to other interested parties, which, according to Unplug, include the Department of Defense.

The outcry against commercialism in schools is great, and it's growing. A number of unions like the American Federation of Teachers have gotten involved in the fight, along with the National Parent Teacher Association, and even some notable politicians. Most importantly, kids themselves are getting involved, forming and joining their own coalitions. As a result of all this pressure, advertisers have begun to get the idea that advertising in schools may do their companies more harm than good.

As Dylan Bernstein, the Senior Program Director of Unplug says, "ZapME really exposed the myth that commercialism in schools will save education. It won't. As soon as the companies financial situations are threatened, it becomes clear that they all put profits ahead of kids." Sponsors have pulled out of ZapME in such large numbers that the company has essentially folded. In October of 2000, ZapME sold 51 percent of its stock to Gilat Satelite Networks Ltd., a company that will use ZapME's resources for new business-to-business marketing strategies, turning the focus of the new conglomerate away from schools.