To be clear, this is how most school districts in the country operate. (This particular district just happens to include the word “independent” in its name.) However, they’re only “independent” in that their administration isn’t part of another governmental entity. Most school districts in the U.S. are funded primarily by their state, (which usually receives a very small percentage of funding from the federal government), though often a large portion of the state funding originates from local revenues. For this reason, school districts are beholden to state mandates regarding academic standards and curriculum, as well as administrative practices. (To the degree that the state also channels federal funding, they have to abide by federal law as well, such as the No Child Left Behind Act, if they want to receive that funding.)
AFAIK, all states determine the allotment for public school district funding by attendance. Anyone who’s ever worked in public education can attest to the huge amount of administrative energy and paperwork that is devoted simply to tracking and recording the simple presence of the students. This all is done in order to determine the all important data point known as “ADA” – average daily attendance, which is mentioned in the article linked by the OP. (I have often joked that in public education, “ADA” is “God” spelled backwards.}
The motivation behind this RFID program clearly seeks to boost ADA, and thereby increase funding for the school district. I have to wonder how much they really think this is going to happen. I would really like to know what percentage of students they believe are getting missed by the usual roll call and bubbling methods. What it really means is that they believe a sizable number of students are out of the classroom when they should be–but still on campus somewhere.
The really stupid thing here is that the presumed Mark of the Beast is supposed to be a requirement for buying and selling. It has nothing to do with Lojack For Kiddies.
I don’t know; in some ways I think that’s the dilemma of the technology age. There are so many contexts in which it has been acceptable and unconcerning for citizens/authorities/the powerful to collect information about other people, but what those contexts are needs to be constantly re-evaluated as the ability to accurately and completely collect that information becomes easier and easier.
In other words, the better job the school is able to do at tracking students, we ought to think carefully about the benefits and costs of choosing to do so. I don’t think it’s a given that just because we want the school to know where our kids are, that we want to give them the ability to follow each students exact movements through the course of the day.
I was thinking that whatever would be unconstitutional for the population at large would be likewise for students in a school which receives state funding, although I may well be wrong there (I was thinking specifically of the precedent of prayer in public schools).
What do you think are the chances that the student will actually win in the courts based on the First Amendment?
Not so. For example, schools can limit students’ free speech rights with regard to speech that may be disruptive. The school-prayer thing is because the school is state-funded; school-sponsored prayer amounts to a government endorsement of religion.
I wouldn’t mind my child being tracked at school, I feel anyone who is expected to be responsible for my child deserved a bit more locational awareness of where he/she is. What privacy is invaded?, since where they will be throughout the day is already predetermined and theoretically already known. So I don’t think the implementation of this technology is breaching any privacy issues/laws since where you are and when you are there is already (supposedly)known by the school anyways. I think video cameras are basically the same thing in principle. If the problem is individual tracking then I would think you would oppose school video surveillance unless every child’s face was blurred out so as to not be able to identify anyone from another in any single given frame of video.
Nah, I can well see how it would be that to them, the Mark (as mentioned) is a way to exclude innocent citizens from legitimate economic activity, it’s not “the Mark” to set up systems to watch and track those people who need or deserve to be watched and tracked - and the Texans surely feel minors at school are in this group.
In my limited experience with RFID systems, they are not used to track positions in real time. Typically you set sensors at all the entrances, when the student (or piece of clothing, can of beans, television, etc.) crosses the door way, the system registers a hit for that RFID at that location. It seems that the ISD in question is going to track attendance similar to how high end retailers control losses.
In my non-legal opinion I don’t think the system described above would violate rights, positions aren’t tracked in real time they just track whether a student is on campus or not, and since students are legally required to be at school anyway I can’t see how this system would be unreasonable. (Not to mention it makes it really hard for someone to forge a student ID)
I’m wondering what’s going to happen when the girl complaining about the mechanical makr of the beast gets a “D” in Science class, especially if that grade is written as “66.6%”!
Stupid fucking idea. As many have already noted, the kids will be trading cards and carrying other kids’ cards for them. This crap won’t really help the school know where the kids are at all. It makes it easy to track the good kids (who really don’t need to be kept such close tabs on) and does jack shit about keeping the bad ones under observation. The school needs to invest some time in finding out what the kids are doing instead of spending money on a tracking system that won’t work. If there are so many kids skipping out of school or not showing up in class, then I’d say they’ve got a systematic problem in the community and that they need to address that.
This crap is a lot like gun control laws. They only affect the law abiding whilst the criminals carry on as usual. The habitual class-skippers will find a way to carry on, whilst the other kids have to live their lives under a microscope.
No. These systems are similar to the ones used in nursing homes. There are receivers mounted on the ceiling and you most definitely can see the location of any particular ID in real time. I worked for a company who made such devices.
