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."

Comments

Nobody's interested in my success..

[mrseigen]

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.

Re:Nobody's interested in my success..

[binaryDigit]

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.

Nice FUD here. But assuming you're looking at say attendance and grades (or test scores), how can this information be improperly used? If Johnny has had 100% attendance, and suddenly it drops to 50%, why wouldn't you want to call Johnny in and ask him if everything is ok? Or if Sue's test scores drop suddenly, why wouldn't you want to talk to her to ask her if anything is wrong. Your "shooter" profile is completely off target here (forgive the pun). These are very tangible and reasonable criteria they're using to make these determinations. Now if they said that they were going to track how much a student ate, or if their clothes suddenly fit into some "radical" category, then I might have agreed with you. By your argument, we should'nt test and grade, because after all, these mechanisms "profile" students.

Re:Nobody's interested in my success..

[allism]

They're not creating any data that's not already there, they're just centralizing it so the teachers can spend more time on helping the students that might be heading toward problems instead of spending all their time trying to figure out which ones those students are. Trust me, the school already has all of this information on you, and no, they probably don't erase it.

Most anything that makes it easier for a teacher to do their job is OK in my book. (yeah, yeah, someone is going to take this to some extreme and say I'm advocating guns in classrooms or something. piss off in advance.)

Re:Nobody's interested in my success..

[holt]

Yeah... thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, eh?

It was that way at my school, too. I don't understand a number of those policies. And since my dad was the school board president, we had a number of heated debates about them.

Nothing to see here, move along

[TopShelf]

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???

Useful, yet frightening.....

[Scorpion265]

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.

1984

[yamla]

"All students will know someone is watching them, tracking them, and is interested in their success"

Remember, children, "Big Brother loves you."

and this is new how?

[Telastyn]

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.

Re:and this is new how?

[MAXOMENOS]

But with this system, they won't have to care. The computer will flag at-risk students for them based on known behavior patterns, and send them to a cookie-cutter behavior modification program that fits the criteria of the special interests that elected the political leadership. This way we'll guarantee the next generation of Stepford Consumers.

If you have a problem with this, then you must be a terrorist.

Re:and this is new how?

[derfel]

This is true, its easy for someone in close contact with the kids to notice, but not for an administrator. If a principal could interview a guidance counselor/teacher while referencing a list of those who have been tagged "at risk", then there could be a better chance of making sure some kids get attention who would have otherwise fallen through the cracks.

Re:and this is new how?

[CracktownHts]

Anyone that cares to notice could say.

Or anyone who teaches at a well-funded school in an expensive suburb. But the kind of schools that would profit from this are the humungous, overcrowded, underfunded inner-city public schools where the overworked staff barely has the resources to teach properly, let alone monitor each kid's personal life.

oxymoron

[pjack76]

I don't think that telling students that you're watching their every single move is the way to build their trust. Teen angst can easily tranform the noblest intention into an invasion of privacy.

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!

Funny...

[Dr. Spork]

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)?

Dropout rates

[bytesmythe]

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.

might work?

[yali]

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.

double standard?

[trmj]

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.

Is this really going to help?

[cdf123]

I dropped out of high school (yes, I went back for my GED), and I can remember 2 distinct teachers that pulled me aside from the rest of the class to talk to me about class activities and participation, and they were worried that I would drop out. But why didn't the others do it? Did I do anything different in there classes? No. The reason these two pulled my aside, was that they were good teachers, and they cared. Now that doesn't show that the others were bad teachers, but most of them were overworked, or didn't have time. Maybe if we had a higher teacher/student ratio, or increased the class time so they could manage better, we wouldn't need databases of behavior profiles on students. A good teacher doesn't/shouldn't need a database to find a troubled student.

Just my $0.02

They already do this crap.

[HanzoSan]

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.

Get them used to it at a young age..

[nurb432]

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.

Predicting School Failures

[brre]

As a taxpayer and member of the community, I too am concerned with underperformance: schools that are not delivering quality education.

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.

Your Permanent Record

[CrazyJim0]

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.