I’m sure that this would depend on the individual district, perhaps even school
It seems the law has decided that the school’s property (eg, a school computer or locker) is treated differently than a student’s personal property (eg, a backpack):
I think it’s tantamount to people who drive another’s vehicle for a living. They are frequently monitored by ‘vehicle management software:’
So there are definitely things that people who’ve reached the age of majority can do that minors cannot, and/but there are also significant differences between what you can do with your stuff and what you can do with my stuff.
No school would ever dream of abusing software on student computers.
Did anyone in this thread make such a claim? If so, they’re being ridiculous. Obviously schools and school officials who misuse this software should be held accountable.
The spyware only activates when the student logs onto their school account. That would be when they are doing school work, either at school or at home. I’m not seeing any problem with that. It’s not like the school is requiring the software be installed on the kids home computer.
When kids are distance learning, are they using their own laptops, or one provided by the school?
I’ve heard that due to poverty many kids don’t have access to laptops and have to ask for one from the school. In my case (being an adult), I’m “distance working”. I can use my personal computer to look up Youtube during work (I shouldn’t, but I could) and not do that kind of thing on my work computer.
Depends on the school, but with how useful computers are for education, the value of standardizing the hardware/software to ensure lessons and programs work for everyone, and the poverty issue you mentioned - many districts have a One To One policy, where every student is given a computer.
Thank you for the information.
IMO the school is perfectly justified in spying on their computer, but not on a kid’s computer. If there is a One To One policy, every kid gets a laptop from the school, which still belongs to the school, so spyware is fine.
Of course, not every school board has a One to One policy, maybe only giving laptops to kids who don’t have one (or worse, saying “tough luck” to any kid without a computer). They shouldn’t be allowed to install spyware on a laptop owned by a kid (or their parent).
It might be arguable that a school has the legal right to spy on the students who are using school-supplied equipment (if all parties have agreed explicitly or implicitly), but do they have the moral right to do so? If you were (or are) a student, do you find this acceptable?
My job has the legal right to spy on my work computer (which I see as similar to a school computer). I don’t object to that morally at all.
I do object to them spying on a personal computer though.
Or hiding the fact that Big Brother Is Watching. As long as it is plain to everyone involved, I have no moral problem with it at all.
IMHO, it depends: on what kind of “spying” they’re doing, and on how open they’re being about doing it. (The term “spying” implies that the person being spied upon is unaware, which is not necessarily the case here.)
Even if you’re using a personal computer, I think a policy like “while in class (during distance learning or if you bring your personal computer to school) or while taking a test you must use Chrome, be logged in to your school account, and have the GoGuardian app enabled” is totally reasonable. So is making it so students cannot use a school Chromebook without being logged in to their account.
Forcing students to install and run GoGuardian while outside of class on a personal computer is not OK, bit I’ve also never heard of a school that requires this.
Define “spying”. Is my employer “spying” on me by blocking websites related to guns or porn or monitoring all traffic over the VPN?
Yes
Can it be remotely activated otherwise?
It’s a Chrome extension. It requires you to be logged in to Chrome using your school account (which is usually just a Gmail account on a custom domain name for the district).
On a Chromebook, your computer user account (what would be your Windows user on a PC) IS your Google account. So a school provided Chromebook will only let you log in with your school account, and the extension can be set to not allow it to be disabled.
On a personal computer, the app can only work if you have Chrome running, are logged in to your school account, and have the extension running.
GoGuardian itself does not give the school the ability to launch Chrome on an arbitrary and remote computer, enable the extension, and log in as a student. It is possible that there is other software that does grant districts that ability, but I am not aware of such software.
I see no technical reason why it couldn’t be activated for any reason whatsoever. I am upset since the only barrier to doing that is “What, us? We would never do that!”
You see no reason as to why a Chrome extension, that requires Chrome to be running and logged in to a student account, wouldn’t be able to be activated on a computer that’s not running that Chrome account or extension? 
For one thing, the child can’t legally agree to anything. Their parents can, tho. Did they all?
Again, that’s gonna depend on the district or even school. GoGuardian is a tool, how it is used is up to the school or district.