PowerSchool Naviance Settlement: $17.25M, File by July 27

At a glance

Status

Pending final approval

Defendant

PowerSchool Holdings LLC / Hobsons, Inc. / Heap Inc. / Chicago Board of Education

Settlement fund

$17,250,000

Claim deadline

July 27, 2026

No-proof cash option

No

Estimated payout

Pro rata share of the $17.25M fund

Administrator

Kroll Settlement Administration LLC

Official site

powerschoolnaviancesettlement.com

Court

U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois

Case number

1:23-cv-05689

Last verified July 16, 2026

Key dates

Milestone	Date	What it means
Claim deadline	July 27, 2026(passed)	Last day to file for a payment
Opt-out (exclusion) deadline	July 13, 2026(passed)	Last day to leave the settlement and keep the right to sue
Objection deadline	July 13, 2026(passed)	Last day to object to the terms
Final approval hearing	August 19, 2026(passed)	When the judge decides whether to approve the settlement
Expected payout	Not yet scheduled	Payments are not sent until after final approval and any appeals

Where to file

PowerSchool Naviance Student Privacy Settlement is administered by Kroll Settlement Administration LLC. The only place to file is the official settlement website:

Verify on the official site

powerschoolnaviancesettlement.com

Filing is free. No legitimate settlement charges a fee to file a claim.

You cannot file on RecordingLaw.com. We are an independent publisher, not the settlement administrator, and we are not affiliated with any court, agency, or defendant.

PowerSchool Holdings, the education-technology company behind the widely used Naviance college-and-career-planning platform, has agreed to pay $17.25 million to settle a lawsuit over how that platform tracked students. The claim window is open now and closes July 27, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. Central time.

If you are searching for a "PowerSchool settlement," read this first. There are two separate PowerSchool legal matters right now, and this page covers only one of them.

What happened with Naviance

Naviance is the online platform widely used by U.S. high school students, often at their school's direction, to research colleges, track applications, and plan careers. It was originally built by Hobsons, Inc., which PowerSchool later acquired.

A lawsuit filed in 2023, Q.J. v. PowerSchool Holdings LLC, alleged that PowerSchool, Hobsons, and a third-party analytics company called Heap, Inc. embedded tracking code on Naviance that captured students' activity without adequate consent. The official settlement administrator describes the claims as the "non-consensual interception of students' confidential and sensitive communications," in plain terms, secretly monitoring how students used a school-assigned tool, the kind of claim RecordingLaw.com covers under wiretapping and eavesdropping law. The Chicago Board of Education is also named as a defendant, reflecting Naviance use in Chicago Public Schools.

The proposed class covers a broad window: anyone who, while a student, logged into Naviance at least once between August 18, 2021, and January 23, 2026. PowerSchool and the other defendants deny wrongdoing but agreed to settle to avoid the cost and uncertainty of continued litigation.

This is not the 2024 PowerSchool data breach

This is the part most searchers miss. In December 2024, PowerSchool separately suffered a cybersecurity breach of its student information system, exposing student and educator personal information nationwide. Those lawsuits were consolidated into multidistrict litigation now before a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. As of mid-2026, that case remains in active litigation, with only partial rulings on motions to dismiss in March 2026, and there is no settlement or claim form for it.

The Naviance settlement here is a different, earlier case, filed in 2023, about how the platform tracked student activity, not the 2024 hack. If a site or email asks you to "claim" money for the 2024 breach, that claims process does not exist yet. As of July 2026, this Naviance settlement is the only PowerSchool-related matter you can actually file a claim for.

Where the case stands right now

As of July 2026, the Naviance settlement has preliminary court approval and is in its claims period. The deadline to exclude yourself from the class or object to its terms was July 13, 2026, and that date has already passed.

The claim deadline, July 27, 2026, is still open. The final approval hearing, where a judge decides whether to formally approve the deal, is set for August 19, 2026, in Chicago, after the claim deadline. That timing is normal, but it means you should not wait for the hearing before filing. File by July 27 regardless of what happens in August; waiting risks missing the deadline for nothing.

Who is in the settlement class

You are potentially a class member if this describes you: you were a student, at any grade level, and you logged into Naviance, offered first by Hobsons and later by PowerSchool, at least once between August 18, 2021, and January 23, 2026. That is the entire test in the class definition; it does not matter which state or school district you were in.

That window means many now-adults qualify. If you researched colleges on Naviance as a high schooler in 2022, you are potentially a class member even if you are now out of school. Parents and guardians of a current student should check the official settlement site for how to file on that student's behalf, since many class members here are minors.

How much you can realistically expect

Do not expect a specific dollar figure from this page, because none exists yet, by design. Every valid claimant receives a pro rata share of the $17.25 million fund, meaning the fund is divided among everyone who files, so your payment depends on how many other people file, not on a fixed price list.

That is a real structural difference from many breach settlements. There is no flat no-proof cash amount and no separate documented-loss tier here. There is one path: file a valid claim, and your share is calculated once the window closes and the total number of valid claims is known. More claims filed means a smaller individual payment; fewer claims means a larger one. Nobody can tell you your exact payment before that math is done.

What you need to file a claim

Filing happens at the official settlement website, run by Kroll Settlement Administration LLC. File online, the fastest method, or mail a paper claim form postmarked by the July 27, 2026 deadline. Filing costs nothing.

Unlike settlements built around receipts or proof of loss, this one centers on a single Claim Form confirming you were a class member who logged into Naviance during the covered window. Have your basic identifying information ready, and check the official FAQ page if any part of the form is unclear.

Protecting a child's information beyond this settlement

This case is about tracking, not a hack that exposed Social Security numbers, so it does not call for the same identity-theft response as a financial-data breach. Still, if your child used Naviance, a few basic, free steps are worth taking.

A credit freeze blocks anyone from opening new credit in your child's name. By federal law, parents and guardians of children under 16 can request one for free at all three credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, typically by showing proof like a birth certificate. It is one of the few identity-theft protections built specifically for minors, whose Social Security numbers are attractive to fraudsters precisely because nobody checks a child's credit for years. See our guide to freezing your credit after a data breach for the bureau-by-bureau steps.

If you ever suspect actual misuse of your or your child's information, whether tied to this case or something else, IdentityTheft.gov is the federal government's free recovery site and a safe place to start, not a paid monitoring service.

We are tracking this case

If the court denies final approval, if the payout becomes clearer after the August 19, 2026 hearing, or if the separate 2024 PowerSchool breach litigation produces its own settlement, we will update this page and our data breach settlement tracker. As of July 2026, this Naviance case is the only PowerSchool-related settlement you can file a claim for, and the deadline is July 27, 2026.