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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."
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
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...
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.