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Predicting H.S. Dropouts With Pervasive Databases
rhadamanthus writes "As seen on the Houston Chronicle: 'With a new computer database available at every campus this fall, teachers can keep a virtual eye on every student and identify those at risk of leaving. For the first time, educators can look up a student's attendance, discipline, immigration status, grades, and test scores at one source and use that information to predict dropouts. ... "All students will know someone is watching them, tracking them, and is interested in their success," school board member Laurie Bricker said at a press conference today.' Hooray for surveillance in the HISD."
Somebody sure is watching and tracking individual students, but they're definitely not interested in the student's success -- collecting all this data together and using it to generate mass "trends" will likely end up in having various kids who are doing well being sat down and had a talking-to by the school's guidance counsellors about not dropping out, merely because they don't fit the trend. Same thing happened with kids who may fit the "school shooter" profile.
There's no excuse for this data collection -- but hey, schools and prisons are the two places where new privacy invasion is tried out before being installed in mainstream society.
Most high schoolers need a kick in the ass once in a while.
Nobody gave me a kick in the ass, and just look at my spalling!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Complain about the dropout rate and how the nation is losing the skills to compete worldwide.
Complain that educators do anything to try to understand and reverse the rate of dropouts.
Who the hell assumes noone is watching them in high school, anyways?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
instead of surveilance, they could just use the market. Say maybe a government-funded futures market on who's going to drop out...
Heaven forbid that a student get out of the wretched public school system and actually try to take his/her education in her own hands.
Public school, while good for some, has held me back due to the lack of qualified teachers, and terrible textbooks. Those of us who want a real education get nothing out of it.
Basically this looks like they're beefing up their data controls, and centralizing existing data - as opposed to invasively gathering more data and infringing on privacy. What exactly is the problem, then???
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Get those kids used to the fact that everything they do will be under a government microscope.
Will kids that grow up in a situation like this mind at all that it doesnt really end when they leave HS for the 'real world'?
For a moment I thought you were talking about my old HS.. HISD
For the first time, educators can look up a student's attendance, discipline, immigration status, grades, and test scores at one source and use that information to predict dropouts.
/. in a day.
Or, they could just get their sysadmins to monitor how many times a user visits
I can understand the fact that schools do need to track such information, but my question is do they erase the data afterwards? I really don't want those records floating around after A. I graduate, or B. I do drop out.... granted I've allready graduated, but this is for the people who will be going into this system.
I am full of goo... black evil goo
1) How readily accessible to the outside world would this info be? Like perspective employers/colleges/etc.
2) Does this get children to accept total monitoring of thier lives, and hence make them less upset when a TIA project wants to get started in the future?
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
Fort Bend ISD, near HISD, is considered one of the worst school districts as far as student's rights and quality of education.
They'll probably have a database to keep tabs on students who try to supplement their piss-poor public education with real education on their own time.
Anyone else read this as "and is waiting for them to drop out"?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Remember, children, "Big Brother loves you."
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Come on guys. It doesn't take a giant computer and wonderous code to tell which kids are likely to drop out of school. Anyone that cares to notice could say. If teachers and parents don't care enough now to notice, a big blinking computer light isn't going to help any.
I can see the dialogue going like this:
Teacher: Our extensive data indictates you may be thinking of dropping out--
Student: FUCK YOU, BIG BROTHER! I'M OUTTA HERE!
Wow, a lucrative publishing contract! I don't have to be evil anymore. --Meteor
do something about the 60% illiteracy rate of those that actually finish high school that would really be something.
Nothing like a state controlled and rigidly enforced propaganda machine feeding bullshit to our children. I chose to homeschool so at least I would know that my son could actually read.
God forbid that a teacher has this information handy. Big Brother and all.
Just another example of the YRO section of this site becoming more and more irrelevent.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Does this mean that there really IS a permanent record? I thought that was just a vague threat. Yikes!
They didn't mention race as one of the features in the equation, even though there is (unfortunately) by no means an equal drop-out rate among the various races represented in US schools. Is this to sanitize the article, or is race really ignored in the database (surely making its predictions less accurate than what would be possible)?
"This will go on your permanent record!", for years just an idle threat, may finally have some real meaning.
And for any HS'ers reading this and wondering if I tell the truth... I had less than stellar grades (before college, where I did very well). Got suspended once. Due to moving, I may not actually have ever completed 5th grade. Yet, I got accepted to every college to which I applied (including a few "big name" ones, of which I actually went to WPI my first year. Hated it and left, but that goes beyond my intended point).
Though, I do have to wonder about the darker side of such tracking. Already, we have students removed from regular classes for so little an offense as acting different, for writing "dark" poetry, for daring to speak against the system even on private websites. I see this finding more use in eliminating MORE people from the regular education system than it will in keeping potential dropouts in school.
Conform. Or else.
Sigh.
Yeah, I'm sure it can predict which high school kids are going to drop out... way out. I think acedemic dropout is only their cover story, this looks tailor made to catch budding activist, I mean terrorists, before they do any "harm" to society.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I support this product and/or service. Hey, I like being contrarian.
--- Ban humanity.
Why didn't they have this when I was in school? Maybe then I wouldn't of skipped chemistry class and become the great chemist that I was destined instead of the mediocre chemist that I am today.
I don't think "knowing someone cares about their grades" is going to be a big factor in affecting whether students drop out or not.
From the people that I've met in this situation, they either don't understand the benefits of a quality education, or they just don't care about how important it is. There are still others that both know and care, but may have a lot of other problems in life to deal with.
The first two groups can only be helped by convincing them how an education can help them later on in life. But the latter group is the one that this system might help if a person can be identified and they can get help with whatever other problems might be holding them back in school.
The only problem I have is, why the hell does it track immigration status? What does that have to do with the quality of their education; apart from language barriers, but even that has nothing to do with immigration status.
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
Is this information stored?
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
I can speak to this a little bit, as I actually used to teach high school...
You see, schools make money based on the number of students that attend every class period. If a student drops out, that's less money the school is getting. The school at which I taught went nuts looking for dropouts. School-wide PA announcements were made regularly asking if anyone had heard from various students, or even seen them around town. They don't care if the kid is in class getting educated... it's all about the money.
Also, if too many students dropout, your school gets flagged as low performing and you lose money that way, too. Any tactic the school can use that is inexpensive and provides an easy, scattershot approach to keeping as many kids in classrooms as possible will be used.
The great thing to administrators is that they can keep the kids in class, get all the money, and they still don't have to spend it on teachers. School administration generally uses budget surplus to control departments and hammer teachers into submission or force them into retirement.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
Let's turn it into a modern Jonathan Swift satire and solve the world hunger problem by eating high school dropouts.
A modest proposal?
Ha Ha
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Sounds like they're not collecting any information they haven't always had -- just putting it together into a predictive model. And unlike some of the poorly-thought-out "school shooter" type of models, this is (a) predicting an event with a high enough prior probability that it might work decently (from a Bayesian perspective), and (b) targeting kids for extra help instead of punishment. At least if they end up implementing it the way they say they will.
This reeks of the slippery slope to me.
Houston ISD wants to collect aggregate data about the student (attendance, grades, trends) in the name of keeping kids in school. How is this different from the FBI or local PD keeping an eye on when I leave for work, my salary history, and my career development? It's just the established authority making analogous observations.
What if it was to keep an eye on me to make sure I don't go postal (apologies to USPS) at work? Would it be okay then? And would you trust the government to do it legitimately?
Pardon me while I go into tin foil hat mode, but I don't like it when my employer watches me. I get really scared when my government starts watching people, and that includes the public schools looking at students. The assertion is that minors enrolled in public school don't have the right to privacy. Do they? Or is aggregation of data even an invasion of privacy?
Dare to Hope. Prepare to be Disappointed.
It's always been a pet peeve of mine that florida school teachers are never tested. There has been moves to try to get them tested but they always get shot down. Since this is one of the worst states for public education you'd think they'd be unable to prevent testing of teachers but they do. I can't imagine other states with lack luster shool systems being too different.
I sure the Schools will love spying on and keeping track of their students. But how will they react once they realize that this student surveillance can be data mined to show who the worst teachers are. Whether a school is doing better or worse with a new principal. Or if the extra money going to the school budget is actually having any effect on the students.
.. welcome our new teacher overlords.
All output is displayed in Newspeak.
Thank god I live in nearby Sugar Land and go to FBISD...not that they are any better....but at least they don't have databases keeping track of everyone.... or do they....?
http://chrono.posterous.com/
we will catch a future terrorist, or maybe even commie.
It's YOUR duty to keep an eye open for YOUR country!
Every little hint can be ever so important.
"Thanks Comrade"
Don't hesitate to report people, you see how little things can be important. it's for your own protection!
My high school encouraged the lower half to drop out, or join a vocational school (circa 1991).. boat floats higher if you kick out the dead wood. It wasn't an official policy, but hanging out with the "riff-raff" showed me the light... they were encouraged by their guidance coucelors, despite having obvoius talents in art, or whathaveyou, to drop out. Keeping the low performers would make them look bad.
meh
That someone would implement Pervasive. They'd better use PostgreSQL instead of a Pervasive Database...
Had Bill Gates been under this kind of scrutiny and prevented from dropping out, MS may never have been born!
Is this article politically motivated?
National Do Not Harass Students List?
Actually, when I was a student five years ago, my school did a very poor job of teaching the importance of that diploma.
Academics always strike me as detached from anything real. Don't get me wrong, I was Merit Roll student my entire enslavement, so I wasn't really harassed. But it just seems like I was a little victimized by the incessant Gotta Pass attitude rather than This is why you Gotta Pass reasoning...
Maybe everybody should drop out in their junior year and go back for their Senior year like I did.
Have things changed? Am I making sense. College blows, btw...same thing.
After spending millions to do this and after a team of researchers and scholars intensely scrutinize the data, they'll like determine that attendance and effort directly correlate to good grades. All of the educrats in HISD will then pat themselves on the back so hard their lungs will collapse.
... you could rest assured that when a teacher/adminstrator said, "This is going on your permanent record" they were full of shit. Now it might actually mean something.
I for one have little objection to another check on HISD principals inflating their own performance by disowning failing students.
Chris Owens
San Carlos, CA
I get SICK and TIRED of being treated like a prison inmate.. Ask permission to take a piss, no snacks, no laptops, state mandated cirriclum, low standards for teachers (who can't teach), crap textbooks, and so on.
I seriously would drop out if I could. I am getting ZERO out of this education. I would rather teach myself the stuff I need to know, take the SAT's and get into college. High School is great for people in the lower-classes who don't have any other oppritunity for sucess otherwise, but people who are self-motivated are being punished by being put through this horrible system.
Lets start by giving motivated students the oppritunity to do independent study on their own, or take classes at the local commuinity college instead of high school.
This kind of system is great on paper, but terrible in practice. I've got 3 reasons why:
/. does not need this point explained, as much as I'd love to vent.
1. People don't like to be watched. This starts early in life. How many station-wagon's have resonated with the words, "MOM! Jeffy's lookin' at me!" Care and attention are nice, being watched is not.
2. This is not a positive effort. It is not set up to encourage kids to succeed. It is a system whereby they are monitored to try and predict when they will do something "bad."
3. This will accustom our young to being monitored by computer, all the time.
"Wrong! do it again!" - P. Floyd
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
The subject says it all. Sorry for the short comment, but for what reason do they need to know.
- Martin
Houston ISD has been receiving intense scrutiny. According to district officials, their current rate of graduation is seventy two percent; however, the Texas Education Agency initiated an investigation regarding the validity of their drop-out reporting practices after it was determined that a district employee had modified those records at Sharpstown High School. And, as a result of monetary indiscretions, two hundred employees were terminated in February.
Do you like German cars?
These are the guys who lied about their dropout rates, and whose former superintendent is now the U.S. Secretary of Education. So you can see why they are now using any method they can find to cover their asses.
sulli
RTFJ.
The real smart students would see the opportunity here. The futures would be based on a dropout date, or range of dates. If I were a student, I would constantly skip class, not turn in assignments, and tell everyone I was going to drop out. Then, sell that future, when everyone else is buying, and don't drop out.
You could make big cash. You might be able to get by with this a couple of times saying "Oh, my parents found out", etc. Then, when everyone is crying wolf, and selling futures, you buy and really drop out.
Boom! You have the scratch to fund your uneducated, unemployed self.
Of course, the also scrapped the terrorist market because it gave incentives to those committing terrorism.
Student Attendance: Frequent Mental Absence ...
Discipline: KUNG-FU, Monkey Style
Couldn't resist...
I wonder how they are going to do this...are they gonna licence expensive database software like Oracle or go for a cheaper open source solution...wait a sec...its a school....I bet they are gonna licence 2000 copies of Microsoft Office Data Analyzer...
http://chrono.posterous.com/
Now teachers will be able to tell which students to write off earlier, so they don't waste so much time on those likely to drop out.
Hooray, progress!
Cheers
-b
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
[quote] ...
For the first time, educators can look up a student's attendance, discipline, immigration status, grades, and test scores at one source and use that information to predict dropouts.
[/quote]
What does immigration status have to do with dropping out of school? Also, what business is it of the schools?
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
PASS standards for "Student Performance Analysis System" and can be found here
(I guess they felt that PASS was a better acronym then the actual acronym which is SPAS).
The system is part of the HSID extranet which is accessible on the web here (you can read more about HSIDConnect here). (Thanks for Google!)
John.
I work for a company that does candidate selection and succes prediction work for Fortune 50 companies.
This really isn't anything new, it's been used in the work force for many years now. Surveys my company cranks out, based on validated information can predict sales performance, turnover, likelihood of theft and other tid-bits of information about possibly employees.
It's all based on statistics and (in my field) I/O Psychology (Industrial/Organizational). The whole idea of reading habits in students and predicting their likelihood of drop out is no difference than what companies like ours use to predict turnover.
I'm just surprised it's taken this long to be put into use in other fields.
Here is a link for information regarding Biodata use and how it all works, for those who are interested.
As a high school student, I can say that you can usually spot the ones who are going to drop out just by looking at them. I think teachers would have an even better idea of this, and i think this computer database is unessesary
I hate my sig
While I doubt it, perhaps Texas has already enacted some form of California's proposed Racial Privacy Initiative? Or they see it on the horizon? Or the policy represented in the RPI is already school district policy?
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
did this work with our current president? is that why he never dropped out of ivy leaque schools despite getting only C's?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Ya know, it's funny. We here on slashdot are always talking about privacy at home and at work, but when it happens to a group of people that we consider to be in a lower status (eg in high school instead of college), we are all for the big brother concept.
I'm going to give an example, but let me put it in perspective first. In school, you don't get paid. It's not your job. It's your daily life. You meet new people and make friends there. For the sake of being evenly sided I won't go into saying that you're forced by society to go there. This compares nicely to an adult's social life and what places they frequent, so let's go from there.
This would be the same thing as the owner of the (insert hangout place here, club, diner, bar, etc) having a declared record of everything you do thewre, when you do and don't go, where you're from, what you like to do with your time, and assorted other things. Said owner then uses said information as demographics to, instead of changing the service to suit whatever new styles might be going in and out, predict when you are going to leave and give you a small reason to stay. Nothing so great that you want to stay, just barely enough so you don't check out the competition.
But wait a minute, isn't that like invasion of privacy and all those mega corporations tracking your every move to attack you with the ads they want you to see, when they want you to see them? It is. And if you rationalize the use of this system on others, it's only a stone's throw away from coming back to bite you in the ass.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
Most my teachers did not have the time, inclination or just weren't competent to teach me properly.
Metrics should be measured from without the system, not from within it.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
Schools aren't interested in keeping kids from dropping out for purely selfless reasons. My old high school didn't give a damn what went on as long as you showed up to be counted and didn't drop out. It, like most other public schools, got state and federal funding based on its attendance and drop out rates. I'm sure a few people genuinely want to help, but parading around like philanthropy is your only concern will help people not to trust you.
I graduated a year after the columbine fiasco, and my senior year I too was put on a list. Every time a bomb threat was called in, or 'random' locker search came time... I was on the list. Except for a few incidents in middle school I had a spotless record. The reason was because I stood up to the knee-jerk stupidity of new policy after everyone became afraid of their children. One example is, with the exception of the dock and the main doors, all doors were locked from both directions until an alarm was triggered. We also had to wear ID badges at all times. If we didn't, or interfered with lasers scanning us in the halls, we were suspended for a day. It's really useless, because the two at columbine would have had all the security to get in without a problem. The moral of the story: Most kids don't like being labeled or put on a list and respond poorly to it.
Of course, you can't spell "online soot church" without "Houston Chronicle"...
This is terrible. Our kids should be free to drop out of school and seek their own path in life, whether it's cleaning out the grease traps at Jack In The Box, schlepping lumber at Home Depot, driving a garbage truck, or even selling pharmaceuticals on street corners, without nosy school administrators trying to force them to "learn" or "go to college". Where are our priorities?
The way the school system is going, there won't be anybody left to track!
People"we want beter education"
politician"you got, but there will be a tax increase to pay for it"
people "get out!"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just my $0.02
Have you ever been a teacher?
These DBs are different than you think.
I have seen firsthand the school problems,
including missed classes & immigration changes.
Try having student who skips your class often,
but you don't know if it's just your class,
or other classes too, and you can't coordinate
any intervention with any other teachers.
Worse, try having a parent-teacher conference
when you can't even find the parent because
of immigration issues like migrant workers face.
Look, I fear government intrusion too,
but having stood in the teachers shoes,
I think this project may have some merits.
There *are* good teachers who need this.
Cheers, Joel
It seems as if i'm harking on rather minor civil liberties, but this system is not used for what it is intended, and strains what little trust students still put in their teachers.
It creates a system where one party has absolute power and the other is absolutely powerless.
transmission_err
Whether or not someone is watching them isn't going to stop them. They legally have the right at age 16 or above to dropout of school. They going to do it if they want to.
Ok now I feel safer, I thought it was something against privacy but it seems like something ... um really ... um interesting ... for our children.
I have a name for it: "Trusted Education®".
Professor: Hello my dears, starting from today, we got a new tool called `Trusted Education®'.
Students: What is it ?
Professor: We will track you down until you will all get the required level to enter Standford. That is why we call it trusted.
Students: But this is not right ! We have rights !
Professor: But this is for you, you will probably thank me later, if you do not suicide before getting a job in a big company. *Maybe I was too direct*.
Students: So why is this called `Trusted Education®'? I don't see why I should trust it at all!
Professor: It's almost an in-joke. In the US Department of Defense, a `trusted system or component' is defined as `one which can break the security policy'. This might seem counter-intuitive at first, but just stop to think about it. The mail guard or firewall that stands between a Secret and a Top Secret system can - if it fails - break the security policy that mail should only ever flow from Secret to Top Secret, but never in the other direction. It is therefore trusted to enforce the information flow policy.
(this part is from Trusted Computing Frequently Asked Questions)
Student: So a `Trusted Education®' is one that can break into my personal details?
Professor: Now you've got it.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
For the first time, educators can look up a student's attendance, discipline, immigration status, grades, and test scores at one source and use that information...
...to trim the teaching rolls and hire more administrators who will cut budgets to the bone and put illiterate children on the streets by the thousands.
High school is hellish enough without this tracking system.
The thing is, I really don't see this making much of a difference. This isn't going to stop people from dropping out. The problem, in almost all cases, is that the students don't want to be at school and they don't give a crap what kind of life they'll live in the future. A lot of the people that I've gone to school with were planning on doing factory work, or working in a garage, or going into child care...They don't have ambition. They don't want to learn, and even if they're in the building physically, there's no way on Earth to force them to be there mentally.
All of the technology in the world won't stop dropouts.
Goo goo g'joob.
After I took a psychology class I realized I could learn everything they're trying to teach me in school much faster by reading the books and doing it by myself. So I stopped wasting my time and money. That was also after the tech market basically crashed, so I understood what my Psych. Prof was saying. He was saying that school prepares you for work, now that there's no blooming tech sector school is prepared to teach you all you need to be a tech. Well, I just know they (the schools) didn't have a clue when i was trying to find a decent education in technology 5 years ago. What makes you think they know what they're teaching today?
When I grow up I don't want to belong to any groups, any affiliations, any religions. I don't want to think like you, act like you, or talk like you. I want to be myself.
I bet they don't get many students like me in these schools anyway. It would be a lot easier to tell if they're likely to dropout if they did.
From the Houston Chronicle article:
[quote]
District officials also are considering a plan to assign an adult to each student.
[/quote]
I've got news for the district: the plan is already in existance. They're called "parents".
Besides, can you imagine the expense of paying a salary for each person who is watching a single child? Thousands and thousands of salaries for adults!
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
Many here have already stated this system doesn't collect anything new, just centralize existing data.
But what if analysis are done on a scoring basis? Then will this system eventually be used by colleges to consider a student's qualification for admission? It says it is used to predict drop-outs, but I'm sure it will have the capability to determine any student's performance as well.
Yes, this might - and I say that with skepticism - help identify potential dropouts who need more attention. It will also identify the kids who just don't fit in, for whatever reason; but they fit the "at risk" profile. However, this is high school; no matter how secure the admins think the information is, it won't stay a secret, so long as a school allows student staffing in the office. (If the school doesn't allow that, finding out will just take longer.) Once their peers find out that a student's name is in the "dropout database," the hazing will begin in earnest.
Does this sound to anyone else like a potential recipe for school shootings?
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
Cameras in the locker rooms?
RIAA's answer:
You see that we are right about DMCA and TCPA/Palladium.
makes no sences. the school makes money based on how many seats it fills.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm not trying to troll, but merely offer a different perspective. Any other private school kids out there feel the same way?
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
"All students will know someone is watching them, tracking them, and is interested in their success," school board member Laurie Bricker said at a press conference today.
Let's not get carried away: mechanical supervision and administrative checks aren't "someone"--they are impersonal procedures. The next step is probably to hook up the system to pager and E-mail systems to warn parents about this sort of thing automatically. Presenting such impersonal supervision as if it were personal attention and interest is somewhat analogous to referring to a police state as "Big Brother" in 1984.
Now, in this case, impersonal supervision is probably justifiable if personal supervision is just not available. But let's not hide the reality of it behind warm-and-fuzzy phrases.
I always stayed up until a few hours before I had to go to school last semester. I nearly failed French.
At the same time, I was working on an extremely educational (to me at least) programming project and some web sites.
Would my school's system see my drop in French test scores as a sign of impending doom? Would it correlate that with the departure of Jane Doe, who dropped out due to a pregnancy and accuse me of being the father?
Had I been sidetracked, I never would have had this site of mine on this slasdot article. I wouldn't have gotten a local computer store to invest time/money in my first commercial program.
You can't reduce anything as complex as a human being to mere comprehendable numbers. Anyways, this new system sounds like it'll be great fun to mess with.
(On another note, it's hilarious how schools are scared to put a picture of a student on the school's website without a notorized rights waver, yet they jump at the chance to make a national database of students.)
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
My favorite statement in the article was
"The dropout issue is a key battleground for our future," Stockwell said. "We must keep these students in school and learning. Failure is not an option."
My only question is "why?" Actually that's just my first question. This inane statement just begs for about a thousand hours of elucidation.
that the school recorded your attendence and test scores anyways...what's the story here? That they had the brainstorm to put that data into a database? My high school had that when I went there, and that was 5 years ago...
All the filthy potential dropouts should be kicked out of school immediately.
is that they better make sure that this system is super secure... this much information, couppled with their SS# as Im sure it will be indexed, just screams "HACK ME!!!".
just think, a whole school full of social security numbers, names, addresses, dob's, and (mostly) clean credit... Ill get that 21inch lcd yet.
The Code Ninja is swift with his tool, precise in his delivery, and deadly accurate in his execution.
It takes more than a database and an expert system with forecasting to create the 1984 situation. If that were so, we have been living in 1984 for years (Insurance Companies).
It takes centralization of power to create a 1984 situation. Things like:
* Taking away freedom of speech
* Ignorance of the population
* Repressing human rights
will create 1984.
This database can contribute to oppression if it is in the hands of a very select few for the sole purpose of "criminal profiling".
If the database is used to make a more customized learning plan, including emotional counseling for hardships, this database can actually create a more intelligent population, improve the standard of living, and provide greater opportunities for the "at risk" individuals.
Finally, the database can help the education system learn from its mistakes and successes. This will create a robust educational system that is tailored for the individual student rather than stamping out more "bricks in the wall".
The database should be open to all interested parties, including the parents and students.
Also, add a few anti-discrimination laws and then it will be very difficult to oppress somebody by profiling.
student's attendance, discipline, immigration status,
None of these things have anything to do with intelligence or learning. What about looking at a kids work? Where does the quality of their work count for anything? You see school is dumb, currently it focuses more on teaching discipline, good attendence, and obedience more than anything else.
This is why the current schools are failing, none of this helps a kid learn how to think. Its all useless. Why should the smartest kid in school fail because they had poor attendence or because they were late?
School sucks and this database wont help it, predicting drop out is just another way of choosing who will put pressured by teachers to drop out, because teachers dont care generally, they will look at this database and see you were late all the time or have poor attendence and instantly label you stupid, and or a drop out, without even looking at your work.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I recall recently reading a lengthy NY Times article about the Houston School District getting flack for underreporting the high school dropout rate.
It seems a lot of good political hay was generated about their success in having low dropout rates, when in fact the statistics keepers were logging dropouts as "transferred" to some other school.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Principal Iamanazi - This incident will go down in your permanent record.
Now -
Principal Iamanazi - This incident will go down in your pervasive database.
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
I'm so used to new jargon in computers, that I first thought that H. S. dropouts refered to some kind of network packet loss problem.
-=Robo=-
What if this is a hit? What if this catches on in all schools and becomes as advanced as some of us geeks could make it if WE were doing it.
Then what will the colleges do??? would your attendance be based not on your application, but on where you rank in some SQL Query?
The Code Ninja is swift with his tool, precise in his delivery, and deadly accurate in his execution.
If this is anything like how other school systems have developed this (and no, contrary to what the article says, this is NOT a one-of-a-kind system), it's not going to 'raise red flags' and automatically un-enroll you from classes, it will simply let teachers know that there is a trend with a student - and probably only then if the teacher actually puts the effort into looking at the data.
I would like to think that 95%+ of teachers are not the type to just blindly shuffle off a student because their test scores are low.
Sorry guys, but this is not Big Brother, it's not going to be a case where the computer runs the school, it's not going to be automatically doing anything to the students. It's a tool. Just like your hammer doesn't jump up and hit you in the head all on its own.
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
It is a heck of a lot easier to get to the USA from latin america than it is from the east - as in you can walk from Mexico but you'd be hard pressed to swim from China. Thus the people who come from the east are self-selecting to be more dedicated with greater initiative than those who have lesser obstacles to overcome in their journey to our country. You can be sure that there are just as much of a precentage of lazy, ignorant asians in asia as there are latinos in latin america.
Yesterday I was appliying for something over the internet through a bank. I gave all my personal information - all ID#'s and bank card #'s I had and as soon as I was done step 2 they (the script on the page) downloaded my personal banking history and TESTED me on it - which account I had what trafi on at which perticular moth in a form of a multiple-choice. They have more information about me than I do... and as upsetting as that is, well - I already knew that.
... my art teacher said I did excellent...) but it's the idea I'm trying to get across
The problem is that this data that the schools are collecting may or may not leave the school board. (I assume it's the school board at the least doing this not each school by themselves, and if not the school board - maybe the govt. thet's even better)
At any rate, I don't think that the teachers, principals or guidance councilors will use this info to benefit (themselves) financialy. As with any data mining (think of your computer being mined) there's always reason's being given about why it's good and why it's constitutional and beneficial etc.. But let's face it 99% of the population (no I don't have anything to back that up) don't like the idea of data baing collected on what websites they visit, what brand of milk they buy, how much they pay for rent, what greades they had 20 years ago in H.S. and so on.
As I see it the problem is worse when people do look at H.S. stats and make biased - yes BIASED decisions about people whether this is hiring a student for a summer job or 8 years later when choosing a profession. Or how about a teacher enforces a seating arangement where the "DUMB" kids sit at the back because they're not willing to learn anything. None of you had a teacher that was bised about his sudents when going to H.S. I know I did.
Anyways - I've got plenty of examples (I can even draw you a picture
If you dont act a certain way schools and teachers go out of their way to label you.
Theres a whole array of labels, the most popular? ADD, then theres Bipolar, then theres Manic Depression, they basically have a label for anyone who doesnt act in the "normal" way.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
your parents notify the school and all is well.
Move along..
There are 2 ways to look at a system such as this.
If we focus only on the potential positives of such a system, it looks good. One of the biggest complaints that people have is that the public school system does very little to tailor their curriculum to students that don't "fit the mold". Exceptional students are left in classes with average students where they quickly grow bored which can lead to a myriad of problems, and students that may be having difficulty whether it be from a learning disability, issues with parents or any other factor that can make an adolescents life complicated. Monitoring attendance and academic performance will make it easier to target the special attention. Blah blah blah we all know this song and dance.
But there are a whole host of reasons why this system isn't the best of ideas. Profiling and particularly racial profiling may very well lead to a lot of self-fulfilling prophecies. Secondly, if schools can't spare the resources to help those students that they know are having problems already, what makes us think that they are going to be able to handle it any better with a score card to consult? Many teachers and facilities are overworked and under equipped to handle the students that they have. Getting a database to track under achievers without providing the resources to do anything about it is akin to installing brand new instrumentation to a car that you can't afford to fix. To top these complaints off, the most common method states employ to rectify poor school performance is to cut the funding levels of schools that don't meet state mandated expectations. This is going to make it even easier to justifying cut budgets.
In a prefect world absent of ulterior motive and intrinsic human stupidity, this system could be helpful, but the way things are right now far too many other things would have to change before its going to do anyone a lick of good.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
Hopefully our educational system switches the priority to teaching.
Maybe we should use more "self paced" and "project based" courses. After all, in the work world, we have projects, not tests.
This shit is what I hated most about school, I would get judged more on my attendance, or being on time than my actual work!
I mean I could get all my work done, do a perfect job, but because I was late or had bad attendance suddenly none of it matters.
This is the prolem with school, attendance has absolutely nothing to do with learning, if I can keep up and do my work I shouldnt have to go to ever class. Just like if I do go to class I shouldnt HAVE to pay attention, this is what is destroying our school system. Teachers spend more time trying to "Control" the students, than actually teaching students. A teacher could spend all the class trying to get johnny to sit still, could waste time having johnny see doctors to see why the kid wont pay attention and sit still, and ultimately give johnny pills to make him sit still
All this time invested trying to get Johnny to act normal could have been time Johnny spent learning!
This is the problem. Kids are judged on stupid stuff, homework, attendance, how they dress, ability to sit still, ability to pay attention.
NONE of this has to do with this kids work, if the kid wants to space out and draw all class but still submits A quality work, why resort to drugging the kid, having all kinds of tests, running tests on a database, and giving the kid some sort of label?
Its all a waste of time.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Predicting drop out from atendence records and grades - what a concept. Teachers do this already they are the ones that will create the attendece records that will then be passed on to potential employers, loan agents and others who have no real business with the information. That's the problem with making teachers do this aditional chore. The central office should not even keep names in their records. All they need to know is how well each school is doing and why. It's the local schools responsiblity to make sure their students are doing well.
Oh well, welcome to the future of pre emptive judgement. It's not enough to follow the rules, you must do so cheerfully with enthusiasm. Miss a few days, for any reason, and a little mark will be activated by your name. You might get an embarasing visit from a school counseler who will just make sure everything is OK and your are not thinking of dropping out, or shooting your classmates.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
For the first time, educators can look up a student's attendance, discipline, immigration status, grades, and test scores at one source
For the first time? Haven't universities, and all educational institutions, been doing this for years? They take your marks in, and do things like decide what level of exam to enter you for, or what set to put you in, and so on! It's why they give you tests throughout the year and take in your scores. Sorry to be negative, but this is completely normal
For example: I was at Durham three years ago. Four months into the nine month term, our Maths lecturer called me into his office one day, showed me the results of the homeworks I'd done for the past four months, and told me that the marks suggested I was going to fail. Sure enough, he was right - I got 2% in his module, and also failed every other module on the course. I got to leave the place permanently (thank god!), which was the outocme I'd been looking for. It went to show that they predicted it though.
Am I right, or is there something really major I'm missing here? Educational institutions have been keeping track of student's marks, attendance, behaviour and so on for years, and have also entered this stuff into computers for years, often using spreadsheets to calculate mean scores and so on, which could in turn be used to predict how well students are going to do at the end of the year. It's common sense.
-Andrew
Hmm yes I can just see how well the following will go down in the Litigious States of America:
"Ah, Mr Jones. Please take a seat. Our computer says you're overweight, black and have missed two lectures, and that this means you're about to drop out, so we're going to bung you into Remedial classes, ok?"
Youre right, it does sound alot like 1984.
Find those goddamned SLACKERS and put them away for good!
I do not have a high school diploma (not even a GED).
I do have an AA from a junior college, a BS from a well-respected major university, a real job, and am starting in a program to get my MS (at the same place as my BS).
Get your parents to support you on it and leave high school. Enroll in a junior college (you'll need your parents to sign some stuff), get an associates degree (or at least look at and take what four-year schools expect you to have from the JC--most JCs will have some relationship with the nearby big schools and will have lots of guidance info about this), do reasonably well, and then transfer to a four-year school for the rest of your undergraduate college education.
If you're really ready to motivate yourself, skip jail (err, high school) and get a real education.
Then when the REALLY invasive stuff happens as they reach adulthood ( and when true rights and freedoms kick in ) they will be used to it and accepting of the practice. Give it 2 generations and it will just be 'normal' to be watched 24/7. Why not RFID tag them while we are at it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
But individual Deans look better when they produce higher SAT scores... the individual motive over-ruels the organizational motive. In a military town, its number of MILITARY brats (like myself) that count, not locals.
meh
If you always aim low but not too low you won't raise expectations and no one will care. Even the database.
In the end I guess it all depends on how much reward you get or think you will get from playing the game.
Especially Homeschoolers who "drop out" of high school and complete their education at home. As a life-long homeschooler, i have many friends who, dispite being excellent students, decided to stop attending school and start learning at home.
Will the system be able to detect and predict the "dropping out" of those students as well? Should it be able to? Or, because the number of Homeschoolers is relatively few, will those students be completely ignored.
Personally, i hope the latter is true: it's the student's and parent's choice that they homeschool, a busy-body school official has no reason questioning their rationale.
20 mil and I will! Learn Esperanto with 20M others.
I have a right to privacy in my home, church, etc. where the Constitution says The Man cannot tread without a warrant. Where education is involved, there is no right to privacy within the institution: you have availed yourself of a government institution and its benefits. The school therefore has the right to collect information about its students.
The things you do in the school while you are there are not matters that can be released to just anyone because you have a general expectation of privacy (and a justified one at that). But the school is allowed to use that information within the school anyway it sees fit to benefit the student. As the learned poster Allism said, anything that helps techers help students can't be a bad thing.
Privacy advocates are always jumpy when they hear the word "database" with relation to names. Sometimes those fears are justified. It sounds like this is a system trying to help students who might otherwise fall through the cracks.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
"His attendance, discipline, grades, and test scores are down, but he's white, so that counts in his favor."
"Her attendance, discipline, grades, and test scores are great, but she's black, so let's put her on the watch list."
Race might be correlated with some of the factors that lead to dropping out, but it in itself is not a factor. It would be dangerous to confuse the impact of having a black father with the impact of having a father in prison, just cause we've got so many black men locked up in this country.
A quick HOWTO in turning a democracy into a plutocratic fascist state:
The outcry was initially the collection of the data. We were told not to worry, it is for private industry's use and, besides, we don't have a constitutional right to privacy in business.
Now the outcry is the use of data mining and aggregation to take the data thus collected and use it to profile our private lives in minute detail, effectively creating a defacto, if hybrid, police-surveillence state. And you dismiss it as "they're not creating any data that's not already there", as though that somehow negates the consiquences of such behavior.
The initial public outcry against the collection of private data on private individuals was right then, and it would be right today were it not for the deafening silence of those who have recognize a battle long since lost.
The public outcry against the sale and exchange of data between private corporations (and government agencies) was right then, and it is right today, even if the number of voices has declined over the years.
And the outcry against aggregating and mining this data to microanalyze our individual lives is justified, appropriate, and dismissed at our own peril. This isn't the start of a slippery slope we're talking about here, this is another in a long series of runs down it we're skiing
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
it is meant to socialise the working class. I concur with the learned Enomar, the reason there is structure and deadlines and scutwork and all that is because that is the way 85% of the world's jobs are.
For the very bright kids, school matters little: they will always be entreprenurial
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
Uh no. Its not predictable. I was doing very well in high school and then, with only two classes left to go, I dropped out.
My reasons were different than most. Mostly it was my social anxiety paired with my growing obesity but still... this system can't account for everything.
Elements like "attendance, discipline, immigration status, grades, and test scores" are already tracked by most student information systems. Information that was once stored for you on a piece of paper in a file cabinet (aka transcript) is now stored in a database. (However most schools still like to print and store paper copies.)
NOTE: Information relating student achievement (test scores) and each student's classifications (i.e., race, ethnicity, gender, English language proficiency, migrant status, disability status and low-income status) are used in the No Child Left Behind reporting.
Things have changed a lot in the past few years! (A great example is what the State of South Dakota is doing.) Teachers no longer put check marks on a piece of paper to record attendance. Instead teachers click on radio buttons in their favorite web browser to mark a student absent. An added bonus is that parents can also be notified via email or text message to their cell phone within seconds of the teacher marking their child absent.
From what I understand from the article the district is taking information they already track and have written a specialized report to alert them to possible drop-outs. We'll see a lot more "intelligent" reporting like this as more districts move to more cutting edge student information systems.
And is merely a database with some screens and a ranking algorithm.
as long as you are not the lowest common denominator, the creator of a HOSTILE environment or the cause of some financial liability, you will slide through. The schools are interested in MINIMUM acheivment, federal funds for those students in attendance, and additional federal funds they can derive by ID'ing a student as needed 'special care'. As one who failed to fit any of the standard profiles I was a pot smoking hippie, who ran the computer lab, the physics lab, and was the district computer resource, while regularly cutting an english clash and acing the finals. Today I'd be on a 'mood evening' drug and under observation as a 'suspected terrorist' When will we realize that a sanitized, standardized education system produces standardized vanilla think in a cardboard box people, while unique indiviuals respond differently, produce new ideas and growth, which lead to profit and growth.
I guess the corporate consumer drone society doesn't leave much room for independent thought, just consume what is placed before you in a reflexive action, and DO NOT QUESTION......
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I had a 'study period,' third class block of the day, which i also attended diligently- they'd wake me up when the bell rang. To get the tone of this tale completely, you have to know that this school had the same administration that it did in my mum's day.
I got called into the vice-principal's office midway through the year. They'd finally gotten past my different last name and figured out where they'd seen a teenaged girl who looked like me before.
"We've got you," he says, leaning back in his chair.
Me (confused) : What???
Him: "we've got you cutting class. I knew we'd catch you on something; that's it. You're out."
Me: What?????
Him: "I've got a pile of cut slips tis high- " indicating with hands- "sixth period, study with Mrs. (name i'd never heard before.)"
Me: You're kidding, right? Me: I DON'T EVEN HAVE THAT STUDY.
HIim: "Yes, you do, I've got it right here, and there's a cut slip for every day this year."
Me: Sixth period was Psych for the first half of the year. Sociology for the second half the year. It's a class that i love, i've attended it every day even when i was sick, and it's the only reason that i haven't dropped the hell OUT of your school yet!!!!
him: (leaning back weakly)"...what?"
Me, on rampage: I have attended every DAY. I have study third period and i've attended that, too. Go check. You want to suspend me for this, you go ahead and try- I wasn't. I graduated, late but for real. His speech didn't exactly put the fire in me to stay, but i figured that it would be worth it to not have to go for a GED later on. (It was.) I went on to have my own rule in the book that my mum was the initiative for (she said, "how can you hold me to it if you haven't written it down?" and her family backed her up through the ensuing battle. They ended up having to write down the rules.) but i didn't end up getting thrown out or quitting.
Now, this makes me wonder what would have happened if they'd had the computer work on it.
a) they would have figured it out sooner, and known (maybe) that i couldn't be in two classes at once,
b) they might have been more worried about me quitting, what with the poor grades, etc.
c) they might have thrown me out, leaving me to bring them to court in an attempt to appeal based on computer error. They might even claim that i tampered with the system, who knows. But as long as there are people around who are looking to make examples, looking to abuse the system (he should have warned me after the first incident, and the whole interview could have been avoided from the start), there will be problems with any system.
just my tuppence worth thrown in.
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
Combine all that with nutritional information harvested from grocery store loyalty systems and you've got a real predictor there.
I have a second sig, I call it sig#2.
This is great for teachers who care, but what happens when, in the case of a local HS, the dropout rate is about 50% and the attrition rate from freshman orientation to graduation is 75-80%, and no one--not the teachers, not the students, not the public at-large, gives a flying fuck? What happens when no one cares, and F's are handed out to 1/3 of Gym students (Gym for Christ's sakes!) simply because the coaches don't give a rat's ass, but will mark them down for not dressing out--possibly because it's in the poorest part of the goddamn city.
So, exactly how is the going to help solve that?
What a goddamn waste of money.
Just find out which ones are registered Democrats.
Teachers, like cops, are human, and when they see the same things happen over and over they tend to stop trying to fix them. Now you're giving them a model that predicts failure. Now it no longer even matters what the student thinks about his own chances, because many jaded teachers will not even attempt to help a doomed person.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Wow... this is new for a school? This has been around for the last five years in the high school I went to. They use a program called "WinSchool". It's a database - it has everything. Every grade, your school photo, phone numbers, attendance for each period, hell, even your locker combination. And each teacher has access.
But, the school was still really liberal - it was your choice to come to class. And I have to say, it didn't bother me for a second.
Sidenote: when I was in grade 10, a student hacked in, and changed his grades. The school took him to court, and he got a criminal record. That was quite possibly the only the school took seriously.
this would have helped that 15 year old dropout Albert Einstein.
computer databases are the new snake oil. it's pretty important for techies to state loudly what this stuff does not do. the same way the medical doctors have completely failed to confront the pharmachems.
if ((student_skin == WHITE) && (student_clique != WIGGER))
return GRADUATE;
else
return DROPOUT;
Where is the database I can monitor to provide me with accurate, timely information to predict which schools are failing?
My idea was to keep a virtual eye on every school administrator and identify those at risk of reducing the quality of education at the school. I'd like to be able to look up the measurements of that person's effectiveness from one source and at a glance: test scores, attendence, discipline, and so on for all students that he or she is responsible for.
My idea was not to punish low performing administrators, but identify high-risk ones so that early intervention can be used.
And this is how it starts.
This isn't some prediction or slightly uncomfortable future, this is going to happen next year...and there's nothing anyone can do.
So what happens once this has been running for a few years? Right; students (the people most likely to become 'leaders') get used to it, and find this kind of 'oversight' normal. And once that happens, goodbye privacy due to the "if it's good enough for us/didn't harm us, it's good enough for everyone".
Be slightly uncomfortable.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
It's not about education and the kids for the administrators, its about the dollars. There are teachers that care, and some admins do too, but they are the minority. Personally, I feel that you got to teach yourself to think critically and educate yourself. -antim
Word on the street is that at some schools, there are even more powerful computers tracking the students. From time-to-time, these computers are brought together in a closed-door kind of LAN party. There, information about the students is exhchanged and processed, and determinations are made as to whether or not the student is doing OK or if remedial action is necessary. IIRC, they call the computers "brains" and the meetings are "parent-teacher conferences". Very spooky.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
A school is a public institution, not a private institution (at least in most cases). Despite legitimate and appropriate reasons for concern among many Slashdot readers, there are instances when compiling such data is a good thing. This happens to be a case where that is so. I would think that parents would want the schools to keep an eye on which students are having trouble at school, and possibly help them along.
That being said, I agree with the points you laid out for the most part. The real critical part is in the re-selling of that information to 3rd parties. If that can be prevented, then the bulk of the potential problems cease to exist.
END COMMUNICATION
So I take it that retired Admiral John Poindexter's next job is serving as a high school principal marching up and down the virtual halls hunting for "slackers".
Its no longer an Urban Legend
God spoke to me
The urban legend lives? Do we really need to pidgeonhole unlikeable kids as stupid kids?
Theres more genious out there than you think. I have friends that are very smart, but the school system didn't work for them.
School needs to change, but not like this.
God spoke to me
So, if it costs you money when kids don't attend classes, why not just pay them to attend?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
The fact is, children don't have rights in the same sense as adults. Nobody seems to object vocally to this (except, of course, the kids). A 16 year old can't be out after midnight in most parts of the country. You can't buy alcohol. You can't decide which parent you want to live with in the event of a divorce. Nobody complains about this lack of rights. Kids are kids, after all.
Now, I'm not advocating a fascist-style crackdown in schools. It wasn't that long ago that I was in high school (and believe me, I hated it). But I don't see that kids should have any right to privacy while attending school (as in, on school property), and I see no reason why their own school performance records shouldn't be used, in a statistical fashion, to figure out who is and is not at risk of dropping out.
If we can use statistical data to determine whether an email message is spam, to a high degree of accuracy, why shouldn't we use data to figure out who is at high risk of dropping out? Why is everyone so eager to defend kids who want to throw away their own lives? There is a reason kids aren't given full control over their own lives, and that's because, honestly, they don't know what the hell to do yet.
(Vent mode on)
:)
This is the sort of moronic powermongering that makes me want to stop at a Sports Authority to buy a baseball bat on the way to visiting the local school board. When will these people grasp that they don't have these jobs to develop their own fiefdoms? Does anyone remember a time when the bullies were just other children, or is that just a nostalgic false memory on my part?
And jeez, it's not even like they're powermongering over a difficult audience...these are KIDS for chrissakes! So you can keep an orwellian eye on them...congratufrickilations! Wimp bitches.
(Vent mode off)
If venting is worthy of modding down, by all means, do so. I certainly did vent
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Parent post is hardly a troll. It is good information to everybody, including these geek mutha fuckers who think they are better than everybody.
I hated all you people in HS who thought they were better then me because they didn't show up to class or did homework: the geek cool behavior.
I just love these high school big brother issues. So the big problem is that a large school district that has really big problems (probation, if you read the article) is going to take existing data and actually do something useful with it? Sheesh, people should be jumping up and down trying to get everyone else to do the same. Schools are gearing up to collect more assessment data then ever with the NCLB stuff coming out of Washington, and they already have all of the attendance, demographic, grade, and other data mentioned. But instead of putting out bogus school report cards or trying to spin aggregate information in the local paper, they are actually going to apply that data against Real Student Problems, yes, affecting real students directly.
:) --chris
This should be a slashdotters dream. Student data is already protected by federal and state laws, and they have the data already: they are just going to apply some data mining and six-sigma practices. Hey kids, if they actually start looking at their own data they might even figure out what it is that make you think that school sucks.
e-commerce. e-this. e-that.
e-GATTACA.
That's all.
"Good morning Mr. Tanaka."
When I was in HS, I did well, but I noticed that a great deal of time was spent by some teachers browbeating the kids as much as possible. There are some truly sadistic personalities in the public school system, I kid you not. I wish that teachers would get down to the business of actually teaching the kids rather than engaging in this crap. GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
The real reason most of those kids are going to bail is the school itself. Some will self destruct just because some will. Most of the ones that leave will do so out of boredom, driven out by a lame curriculum and lame faculty. Some will be driven out because they're not jocks or cheerleaders. Columbine was a symptom of a greater problem. There are way too many kids being marginalized by the system for not being in the one-size-fits none category. The U.S. school system is less about learning and more about conforming. Don't ask pertinent questions, ask the approved ones; letter in a sport, marry a cheerleader; go to college, major in marketing and succeed! A la Enron or Merrill Lynch.
When the system includes relevant statistics about the teachers, the counselors and the rest of the staff, we'll see some meaningful use of data. Let's look at the staff; are they computer literate? have they taken a course other than those that they have been required to? do they have any other interests other than their work? do they care about anything other than tenure and retirement?
I've had the opportunity to know too many high school teachers that don't want to learn anything about computers at all. They don't care about much other than getting through another year. We voted a bond for all the teachers in the city to be issued laptops before they left for the summer with free internet accounts and training. The majority returned in the fall with the laptops still wrapped or still very low mileage. Yes there are many that do, but they are in the minority.
When as many teachers can discuss online gaming, overclocking systems and hacking the way so many can discuss football, working on cars and philosophy, we'll have a staff that really can relate to the students they teach. Right now there's a huge disconnect between a significant part of the student body and the staff.
This idea completely ignores the other relevant apects of a student dropping out. I really have a problem with a system that only wants to study the students while ignoring the critical role the staff has in the drop out rate. Then again, maybe that's the idea.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world - Ghandi
This from a School Distric with Teachers that gave up on my (step) son; because, they thougth he had flunked two yesrs just because he was 6'2" and 260lbs. He has never failed a class untill going to this school/teachers. When we pulled him out for Home Schooling they told us it was best for him because he had already failed two years!
Oh but they were very interested in him being on the football team! Not his grades.
Today I'm the proud stepdad of a:
IM, ICQ'n, P2P pop'n, self taught GEEK.
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
It really irks me how so much attention is being put on people for whom education is a waste of taxpayer's money.
The reason for this attention is the simple statistic that says high school graduates are better off than people who dropped out. The belief is that by keeping would-be dropouts in school their lives can also be improved. Unfortunately things just don't work that way. The reason why high-school graduates are better off has everything to do with their character and intelligence and virtually NOTHING to do with whether they have a high school diploma or not. These educators, in no small part because of their own need to feel important, have got the cause and effect reversed.
Spending time and energy trying to keep these people in school does nothing but worsen the educational environment for students who might actually stand to benefit from an education. The money would be better spent providing more challenging or comprehensive classes for gifted students since they are the ones who benefit the most from an education. Society itself has more to gain by investing in our best and brightest than it does from trying to rescue losers from their own self-destruction.
If only foolishness and stupidity were fatal, imagine how much better our gene pool would be.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
There are too many Chinese people coming across as students, only to drop out and find illegal employment to make better wages than back home. These are the kind that Tokyo Governor Ishihara is looking to kick out asap.
All the best to him!
Nowadays getting into small classes are nearly impossible. Getting personal attention is extremely difficult. Hiding problems or issues is not a great solution because students already have trouble finding mentor type figures. I recently graduated high school and i haven't felt very close to any one of my teachers, probably because i don't know any that haven't dealt with at least 90 other students daily.
Luckily I've had plenty of mentor type figures in my life but many do not. Students need people to care about them and sometimes parents aren't enough. I think the data itself is not a bad thing... it can be used for good and bad reasons like any new information or power.
Luckily I found the administration at my school to be pretty decent. I had one chem teacher in which almost 60% of students would drop out in the first day (the other chem class students would increase). The admins knew this but didn't mind because they knew that although the guy was hard on the students he really cared and knew his stuff.
Hmmm... Pie...
Besides they already have your grades well tracked... As long as you don't fail many classes I don't think they care. The teacher of that class might be worried a bit i guess. Then and again your school might be different from mine.
Hmmm... Pie...
Allow me to give some background. I teach in the Houston School District. First, schools in Texas are all rated by the state on several key factors including test scores and drop out rates. These ratings are very very important and are actually a factor in principal's salaries and bonuses. So, it was no real surprise this year to discover that many high schools with sterling ratings were actually lying about their drop out rates. Instead of coding kids as droping out, they were coding them as going to a private school or moving to another district. The reporters tracked down several of the students, well, ex-students, and proved that the school administration was lying. So, instead of 0% dropouts at one high school it was actually 15% ( I think, it was a high number). This greatly embarassed the school district. Now it must show that not only will it crack down on bad data, it will improve the drop out rate in the high schools. This is what they came up with. Actually, if used correctly, it can be a positive tool. At the high school level, a teacher might teach 6 periods of 20 students each, that's over 120 students. And we definately can tell the factors of what kids are likely to drop out. Hispanic immigrants, children labeled emotinally disturbed (they have a drop out rate of 50%) children with one or both parents in jail, children whose families move a lot. You can look on the database and see what risk factors the students in your class have. At the elmentary level, you have to have a written plan in place for some of those children. It's a way to hold teachers and adminstrators accountable. Of course, it can still be used in a heavy handed and stupid manner, but so can every other tool. And it's not like teachers don't already have access to the child's permanent record folder, which has this information in it.
Not all schools are crazy about the money... but then and again my school found some way to waste 3 powermac g4's to be used as research by one student (me :)) back when they were the latest and greatest from apple and had a 32 in tv in every classroom and many hallways with a fiberoptic video system.
Hmmm... Pie...
"All students will know someone is watching them, tracking them, and is interested in their success"
Yes, because nothing says "I care" like a Big Brother-style database in the hands of government employees. OTOH, paranoid students on the edge of a killing spree can now take comfort in the fact that, indeed, someone is watching them and keeping tabs on them via computer.
And yes, I know that last statement sounds harsh and unfeeling. Just like Big Brother's database.
--Mythos
1) HISD paid $1,000,000 for this little database.
2) HISD recently got caught cheating on the numbers that would have gone into this database.
This was an obvious waste of taxpayers money.
I saw the publicity on this tonite on TV.
The heart of the system will be designed by the drug companies to randomly select some drug that they produce.
.... never hurt anyone.
A little prozac, zoloft, lithium,
Some of these idiot teachers are actually daft enough to believe that the computer cannot be wrong.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Why on earth would you trust someone's opinion on what she or he thinks you are going to be in life when THEY have no real-world experience or know anything about REAL jobs. Instead of figuring out who is going to flunk out, they should concentrate on the rest of the students. (like putting students who are not challenged enough into more difficult classes and motivating those who CAN do better) :)
Did anyone take a test that was supposed to predict what you would become later in life? I wasn't given that test for some reason but most of other students took it. Some were supposed to be farmers,(we lived in URBAN area:) police officers and some other stranger profession. If I took it, I would prob fall somewhere between a CIA sniper and that kid in Heathers who almost blows up the school
I'd like to point out that this guy is onto something -- not with all students, but with the at-risk students.
The at-risk students typically are so because they are discovering that their parents are not interested in them, or their success, or anything except themselves.
The teachers are interested in their job, not truly in the students' success.
So you can have your database, but "nobody's interested in my success" is exactly what the student is going to respond with.
This is exactly a case where technology is not going to solve the problem -- rather, we're just going to spend more assets to say "well, yep, we knew there was a problem. Tough luck, kid."
This is a social problem, and more than that, a moral and religious problem.
Religious, because until the people get back to the spiritual root of their moral problem (not taking care of their kids, due to overwhelming ego and self-absorption), they won't solve it.
Unfortunately, I think that there is nothing that technology can do here. There is nothing that government can do here. Unless, of course, you include the 5th Estate in your definition of government, and point out that the government could stop promoting commercialism and self-absorption.
But our government has a cold war to win (whoops, I mean war on drugs; I mean illiteracy; I mean terrorism--Yeah, terrorism, that's it), and they have, in their infinite self-presumed wisdom, determined that winning a war requires a strong economy, and a strong economy requires people to buy lots of things, which means that we have to promote consumerism, which means we have to convince people that they need lots of stuff, which means we have to increase egotistical navel-gazing.
So though I don't think there is anything our government can do to solve the problem, I do think that they could do less. I think the government bears some responsibility for the problem's severity, by what they do, not by what they don't do.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
may you be a pillar of truth for them that can`t see. i only wish more people here would wake up! so much talent and so little being done.. pity.
...one step at a time!
Hello, Mr. Freeman,
Your urine sample, please.
"Get your Equifax Dropout Score, only $12.95!"
...."
"Ways to improve your score:
"Your Equifax Dropout Score is 342. This means that you're 94% likely to drop out in the next 6 months...."
"Teachers, with the Equifax Dropout Score, you can identify students that are likely to drop out so you can avoid spending unnecessary time on students that probably will not graduate. You will instead be able to focus on students that are going places."
"Equifax, tracking you since day 1 of your life..."
Hey add to your list:
7. Claim that the purpose of public education is to prepare students the working world rather than for Citizenship in a democracy.
8. Repeal the inheretance tax so that wealth and power accumilates only in families that already have them in surplus. (Bill Gates XII will also be the richest man in the world)
9. Privatize every important institution so that the deserving (the wealthy) can get the best services, the undeserving (the poor) will not be a burden on the deserving.
10. Encourge Nationalism and Religious ferver to destract the masses from what your real goals are.
11. Teach blind faith in the idiology of the market place.
</Rant>
Have a nice day!!!
You did, of course, read the article in the NYTimes today about the fudging of dropout numbers by calling them "discharged" rather than dropped out? The article is interesting and I think may force schools to become truely accountable.
Why should the poor schools train kids for MC Donalds while the prep schools train kids for college?
I'm glad I went to a charter school.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
...is just a line everyone deviates from. This urge to quantify, measure and predict individual behavior has been going on a long time now. And it's been continually frustrated by the "sports"; those who don't follow set patterns and yet become wildly (or even mildly) successful at various activities.
ADD, Bipolar disorder/Manic Depressive (different names for the same thing), hyperactivity, blah, blah, blah are just attempts to classify all the different variations in the human condition. And, in the end, none of this leads to any increase in the success rate in actually teaching individuals.
Reading the article in the NYTimes, made me think that students being forced out of schools need to be the equivalent of Mirandized. "You are being forced out. You have the right to continue your education until you are 21. You have the right to appeal this decision to ..."
Do you think that there should be more emphasis on providing hig school students with the option to take a GED at 16 if they really want to get out of school?
All,
Am I the only one that sees it?
You can never apply statistical probability to an individual, or an individual within a statistical group. It doesn't stand up to reality or predict anything. In fact, we have a name for it, "profiling". Profiling is a shotgun approach and it doesn't work.
Please note the difference between statistical profiling and racial profiling.
If there is one thing that I have learned it is that the human being is more or less completely unpredictable with regard to behaviour and an individual is just that, regardless of what statistical groups they happen to fall in, what intersections they are a part of.
By profiling you only catch the applicable individuals within the group. Those that fall outside of the group will be missed. Likewise there are those in the group, while fitting the profile, never develop the issues.
I don't even have a Phd and know this.
l8,
AC
Considering that Secretary of Education Rod Paige got his current job because of the gravity-defying dropout rates, this is a serious political scandal down in the Texas swamps. Tracking students through data mining may not be the best way to handle the problem, but I suppose it's somewhat cheering that they're trying at all.
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
It's hard to get funding from investors if you can't show up on time or show consistant results. I've seen a lot of businesses where the 'really bright kid' has to hire a 'not so bright kid' to handle sales, organization and client relations. Schools can teach a lot more than pure academics. You can't blame them for trying to produce well rounded people.