Tracking Students

ACLU rips districts student-tracking pilot

From eschoolnews

Summary: This article describes how the Middletown school district, in Rhode Island, plans to fit students’ backpacks with radio-frequency identification chips (RFID) to track their movements. About 80 students would have the chips, and the buses they use would be tracked through GPS. According to the district superintendent, the goal is only to monitor where students get on and off the bus to improve efficiency. It would also allow parents to see where the buses are, and if their children are on board. The 80 students, from the Aquidneck School, would be a pilot program; parents could withdraw their children from it. The program is opposed by the ACLU, which is worried about privacy and security. The director of the local chapter of the ACLU argues that other people could buy RFID readers, and use them to track students without consent. The district counters that only they have identification information to match with the ID number. The ACLU does not object to tracking the buses. MAP Information Technology Corp. makes the program, which was approved in November. It is not known how much it would cost to implement such a program district wide.

Response: When I read this article, I was reminded of a scene from The Simpsons. It was when Principal Skinner said that he had a student tracking system, although only one student, Martin Prince, had agreed to wear a monitor. This is bound to be controversial, and there are going to be more episodes where technology and privacy clash in the schoolyard. According to the article, a similar program was proposed in Northern California 3 years ago, but was abandoned after people protested. Eschoolnews also has another article, about how hidden cameras were found in another public school. The student newspaper broke the story – sometimes they do have real news! I remember how in class we heard about how some parent were using the internet and webcams to keep track of their children. It was the case that school life was separate from home life in the sense that parents were not immediately monitoring their children. That clearly is changing.

My View: If parents want to have their students to have these monitoring devices, than that is there choice. They should be allowed to do that. It was interesting though, that while the article contains the views of the school district and the ACLU, no parents are quoted. I would also think if they could probably get the relative information about bus operations without actually wiring the students. Moreover, if the chips were in the backpacks, one would think that students could fool the system. They might want to try to confuse people by swapping bags. I guess though, that it really is up to the parents. Is it really an invasion of privacy for parents to know where there kids are? However, would I agree to be monitored like that? NO!

Questions: There are many potential questions about this plan. How much would it cost? Couldn’t the money be better used somewhere else? How frequently would chips and other components need to be replaced? How do we prevent students from removing or swapping chips? Is it possible to obtain the information about bus operations in some other manner? Than there is the possibility about unauthorized tracking. The school argues that only they have the specific identification information. However, is it not still a problem that an outsider could track a student’s location, even without knowing the student’s name? What other privacy issues in education could arise?