An unusual partnership between the American Civil Liberties Union and the Tenth Amendment Center is pushing states to adopt model legislation that the organizations argue will fill in gaps in student-data-privacy protections.

Proposed overhauls of digital-privacy laws, including many that regulate relationships between ed-tech vendors and school districts, were simultaneously introduced in 16 states and the District of Columbia last month in bills based on the model legislation.

Though the ACLU, with headquarters in New York City, and the Los-Angeles based Tenth Amendment Center are generally seen as being on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, they have found common ground in their advocacy for stronger electronic-privacy protections.

In consultation with the center--a think tank that advocates strict limits on federal power--the ACLU wrote model legislation that both organizations are urging legislators around the country to support.

Chad Marlow, the ACLU advocacy and policy counsel, said that the parts of the bills aimed at bolstering student-privacy protections were written to ensure that "schools don't become a Constitution-free zone," and that companies that want to collect student data must first get explicit permission.

Over the past two years, 32 states have enacted some sort of data-privacy law, according to the Data Quality Campaign. Some of those laws have been sweeping, such as California's Student Online Personal Information Privacy Act, which has drawn particular praise from privacy advocates. Other laws are much weaker, experts say.

To work around a lack of movement at the federal level over data-privacy protections for students, the activists and lawmakers working with the two organizations are calculating that if they get enough states to adopt a stricter slate of privacy expectations for vendors, companies will have little choice but...