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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."
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.
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'?
You know...
If all the databases with personal information were merged some really really interesting things could be derived asbout you. Think about it. What if your bank thought that you were going to die in 15 years and wouldn't give you a home loan?
Some documents are declared top secret because they combine information available to the puplic in creative ways.
Help I'm a rock.
The intention of predictive models is to find underperformers and work harder to engage them before it's too late.
The reality of predictive models is that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If any of the counselors, teachers, receptionists, principals, or aides approach an underperformer with a speech about how they need to buck up before they drop out, all that many kids will hear is, "they know I'm a failure, so why try?"
For a small minority of kids, this gets even worse. We have discussed the profiling it takes to predict violence. This sounds a lot like the same arguments raised which lead to flame-out sentiments like "they know I'm violent, so I've got nothing to lose."
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Had Bill Gates been under this kind of scrutiny and prevented from dropping out, MS may never have been born!
I'm picturing a "special retention class" into which the people who score high on this metric are segregated. In order to "keep them enrolled" they basically teach them how to calculate the area of a circle... year after year. After all, they don't want to overburden them with education and homework, because that might make them drop out. "And besides," they will say "the low-risk kids can now afford to cover more material while the retention-challenged get lessons more targeted at their abilities."
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.
[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."
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.
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.
Back in my senior year of high school, we had some sort of tracking system that was based primarily on attendance. It flagged me as a student that was going to fail out, never mind my 3.9 GPA and my acceptance to Stanford based upon the entrance exams (untimately did not go to Stanford because I could not afford the $25k/year). I had a meeting with our vice principal telling me I was in serious trouble with my attendance. What a joke.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
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?
The students are minors.
Here's a secret though.. DONT TELL ANYONE!
Schools have kept records of this exact same stuff for decades. This newspaper article is a fluff piece, probably some new school board member got elected and wants to blow his horn on their new computer.
But the notion of noticing a students grades or attendance suddenly dropped, and asking them whats wrong, well... that's happened before! EVEN WITHOUT COMPUTERS!
I cant believe this type of crap gets posted on slashdot. I mean seriously. Can they not tell when they're reading a small town PR piece?
This just in! School keeping track of students grades! Film at eleven.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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.
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.
If they have the same socioeconomic status, they will have pretty much the same dropout rate. I can't see why a poor family from the Philippines will have a lower or higher dropout rate than a similarly poor Mexican family.
"These are very tangible and reasonable criteria they're using to make these determinations."
As a part time university teacher I found out when one student was giving me trouble that he had been giving others trouble as well. I was not told of the trouble because that information would have biased my perseption of and treatment of that student. That is an important principle that may be violated here if "teacher" were to get ahold of that data.
Schools administrations would use the data for those things that were most important to them. This may include avoiding lawsuits, eliminating trouble makers. With limited budgets and overcrouded classrooms the insentives would be to diminish classroom size and be able to apply budget to where it would be most effective. You know the current political envirionment is one to privatize or business-tize all activity.
Now with that information would be very useful to at tracking teachers. Lets see, at teacher that has mass defections, well lets get rid of them. Or classes that have certain individuals attending, show scores dropping (trouble makers and cultural disruptors). The data mining capabilities are endless. But of course the adminsitrators would never think of using the data in these ways.
I am reminded of a story where a friend had a meeting with their boss. The boss offered them a project. They said they would like it. It was given to someone else. The reason was the boss said that even though she said yes, her body language said no. The same danger is here with the interpretation or "profiling" of individuals from scan data.
Kill them all and let God sort it out.
What happens when they tell the computer to automatically unenroll students that have 0 attendance for one month (again my mono example)?
In most states they can't do that. Most states have constitutional guaruntees saying that each and every person has a right to a HS education.
Also, I would imagine that if you really had Mono and were a good student up to that point you would inform the school and make some attempt to keep up with your work from home/hospital...
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
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.
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Actually, what I was referring to was a check on the performance of the teacher. From my experience, there were teachers who were clueless or who just didn't care enough to notice the things that needed to be noticed. If a teacher's boss were asking them about each of the students they were responsible for, then they'd have to have an answer. If one of the flagged students was fine, the teacher could say so and explain why. If a student was having problems, that teacher would have to explain what he/she was doing to help or what could be done. Such an accountability review would quickly indicate a counselor/teacher who has a problem, and also be a motivator for the teachers to pay attention.
Mine were. I had horrible grades, and every marking period: "Student is not working to potential." I just wasn't doing homework. It was a waste of time. I was scoring 95 or better on pretty much all of my tests, so I didn't see the point.
I wish I had just played their game sometimes and gotten better grades, but no regrets.
As to the mono example, I once had pnuemonia for 6.5 weeks while my parents thought I was faking it. That made for a lot of "rosonowski skips school to go lay down somewhere and slowly die"
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
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
Your analogy is flawed.
This is not like the owner of a "hangout" collecting information on his patrons to predict marketing trends.
This is like an Assisted Living community keeping track of residents' eating habits and excersize participation. They have an implicit obligation to protect the health and comfort of their residents; certain factors are useful in this goal. If a resident's eating or excersize routines change suddenly, there is a likelihood that a change has occurred in the health of the resident.
Similarly, schools have the obligation to protect a child's health and future. When you attend school, you are entering into an implied contract. There are many rules inside a school that would be violations of the constitution in the outside world. The point is that you (or your legal guardian) agrees to sacrifice some rights for the benefit gained through education. You lose the right to free assembly or a trial by a jury of peers, for example.
The right to privacy is fuzzy, because it is not laid out in a detailed manner in the Constitution. (Notice I said, "detailed manner," before you start quoting Constitution to me.) You have the explicit right not to be searched arbitrarily. However, school property is not public property, not as a sidewalk or street is public. A school can establish certain rules, such as x-raying backpacks, that would not be allowed in the public domain.
A high school has the obligation to protect you; that is the central argument here. One could argue that a federal government has the obligation to protect its citizens; therefore they can do whatever they want to the citizens, by the logic I used above.
However, there is a difference in that schools and Assisted Living communities have as subjects those citizens who voluntarily or involuntarily must sacrifice some rights as a citizen, because they are viewed as unable to function in society without external assistance. That also presents the problem of who gets to decide which people fall into categories of "half-citizens" like minors, mentally handicapped, or dependent elderly. It seems that our federal government is currently trying to stick American-born terrorists and members of militias into this half-citizen category.
Yes. This is quite slippery...beyond my reasoning ability I think. On an emotional level, I, being only 21, strongly believe that high schools have the right to monitor students' behavior at school and even search lockers if a student is reported to have a weapon. If you want to deal drugs or injure people, you can do that after school, off of school grounds. I also believe that schools have no right interfere with any extracurricular affairs or base decisions on external affairs; e.g., a high school does not have the right to search a locker or car due to a rumor that Johnny smokes weed at parties.
Many more thoughts on this topic...but I'm beginning to bore even myself.
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?
"how can this information be improperly used?"
Because someone thinks a tool is being used to do their job. iow, unless the computer identifies it, the faculty may get passive, or not be as alert to what they normally would catch.
It wasn't high school and most people would have been quite happy being where I was, but when I "dropped out" out of my formal educational life, I was not only attending every class, seminar, lab, and doing volunteer work, I was doing extremely well on my test scores. I left ultimately because my personal life went to shit and I was seriously long-term depressed--but I functioned well on the surface, as I hid my fears and, well, pain by overextending myself and trying to be *more* involved in what was going well. A bad cycle--wearing myself out, thinking I could make it through, thinking it was a phase or a wall I could blow through the depression and the "my life is just crap" issues. I buried myself in coursework and study.
When I just disappeared from school, I still had faculty calling me over a year later on some work I had done previously, being courteous getting my permission to use my papers they wanted to pass out to future classes. 6 months after I was gone, I went in to clear up administrative stuff, I ran into faculty who eagerly waved like I was the "good student, future collegue" type, and when I ran into classmates, who were wondering how my "research" studies were going--it's odd what people invent--short term, they think you're doing something special, they don't see you for a little longer, they think you did something near criminal.
My point is that unless that system records family life, transitions in friendships, phone conversations, significant other relationships, food consumption, and the like, it's going to miss a BIG part of the picture for a lot of people. To some people, school is important, and they will pull the load first before they drop the line.