The school has a duty of care to ensure kids are not doing bad things via the internet. And yes - without filtering software its as bad as you think it could be.

Do parents have rights when it comes to this? What if the only way to compete school work is with a school issued laptop?

Change schools, or if public school get involved with the school board and make a stink.

Private schools can set their own rules.

With a public school you could just start shouting about the 4th amendment.

Home-schooling, and/or private schooling

Its issued for the purpose of doing schoolwork. What do you care if some Russian hackers gets their hands on your child's science fair project?

That said, do put electrical tape over the webcam and microphone.

> That said, do put electrical tape over the webcam and microphone

For the camera, I can see it (pun intended) as electrical tape is usually opaque to visible light. But the microphone? All electrical tape should do over the microphone is lower the input level slightly.