Kids Who Skip School Get Tracked By GPS

suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from the Orange County Register: "Frustrated by students habitually skipping class, police and the Anaheim Union High School District are turning to GPS tracking to ensure they come to class. The six-week pilot program is the first in California to test GPS. Seventh- and eighth-graders with four unexcused absences or more this school year are assigned to carry a handheld GPS device, about the size of a cell phone. Five times a day, they are required to enter a code that tracks their locations – as they leave for school, when they arrive at school, at lunchtime, when they leave school and at 8 p.m."

Comments

Great plan there

[Drakkenmensch]

Because kids who regularly skip school can be relied upon to willingly cooperate in keeping and activating their own personal tracking device.

Re:Great plan there

[veganboyjosh]

This was my first thought as well.

1. make friends with truants.
2. collect their GPS devices.
3. enter codes when called to do so.
4. profit.

Re:Great plan there

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do they have to do it at 8:00pm? That seems like a really dumb time; its none of the school's business where the student is at 8:00pm.

Four unexcused abscences seems a bit of a low bar; I know my daughter has they many just due to custody hearings this past fall when her mom tried to get her back.

Re:Great plan there

[Anonymous Coward]

4 UNexcused are quite different than your daughter's excused absences.

Re:Great plan there

[Drakkenmensch]

"Excuse me sir, but all the GPS hoodlums are reporting from the same location, every day!"

"Dear god, they've formed a GANG!"

Re:Great plan there

[mysidia]

Why do they have to do it at 8:00pm?

To make sure they are at home, awake, and studying at that time; instead of at a friends house drinking, OR sleeping when the school has dictated they should be finishing their homework?

Re:Great plan there

[tibit]

I generally find the low unexcused absence threshold in the U.S. to be overboard, by an order of magnitude at least, or maybe two. When I was in 11th grade of high school in Poland, I had 51% attendance rate. You'd get to repeat the grade if it dropped to 50% or less. That was fair, IMHO. I don't think I turned out all that bad, nor do I think I missed out on much. U.S. schools seem to be designed like prisons with "voluntary" attendance.

Never mind that the U.S. school system on one hand tries to promote attendance, on another -- in spite of itself -- also promotes expulsion and suspension as disciplinary aids. Every time I hear that, it's a WTF?! moment to me. If a student messes up, make them work more, not less!

What's especially puzzling is that if, say, your parents decide not to let you go to school, they may lose custody of you. OTOH, when the school district decides they don't want you anymore, it's fine and dandy. Our former school district's superintendent saw no problem with that, citing that state law forces their hand, too. Then I asked her: what did she personally do to influence a change in state law, to get rid of expulsion/suspension as disciplinary measures, and to promote/reinforce attendance instead? She seemed puzzled that I'd expect her to do something about changing a law that she pretended to disagree with (the radio show she participated in was about promoting attendance). It was like Hypocrisy 101.

Re:Great plan there

[Anonymous Coward]

As I recall from high school, what was excused and what should be excused were two completely different things. There was a very short list of things that would qualify you as excused. Various things I saw count as unexcused included vomiting at school and being sent out by the school nurse and genuine medical emergency of a parent. Your own illness is always unexcused unless it is severe enough to go to a doctor, and I heard it gets tough to get excuses for a parent's medical emergency.

Overall, the high school I recall was more burdened with bureaucracy than any corporation I've worked at since.

Re:Great plan there

[rsilvergun]

It's not about learning, it's about training kids to be profitable worker bees. High attendance rates in school train them to come to work on time every day. When company's can count on 100% attendance they can hire less employees because they don't have to worry about covering shifts.

Re:Great plan there

[jeffmeden]

I missed 40 days of school in 8th grade (a personal high point), and I didn't get much better about it during highschool. Now I'm working on a Ph.D. in Neurobiology at a translation research and teaching hospital. I credit my not-being-at-my-public-school for the level of success I've achieved.

    As a parent, it's my business where my kid is. I'll smash that damn device and hand it back to the truant officer on my kid's behalf. Schools have become the Juvenile Executive branch of the government, and it's not their responsibility. "We'll educate you with the information we want you to know, whether you like it or not!"

Send your kids to private school, or home school them; there is no law that says you have to send them to public school (at least in my state). There are options besides teaching them that its OK to completely disregard authority...

Re:Great plan there

[corbettw]

As Mark Twain famously observed, one should not let one's schooling interfere with their education.

Re:Great plan there

[Low Ranked Craig]

Sounds autobiographical.

Re:Great plan there

[glazener]

This may well be related to a funding issue. In my state, schools receive money based on the average daily attendance, not the actual enrollment. In any case, it seems that having a draconian excused absence policy only serves to teach both parents and kids to lie effectively. My son's high school had a fairly strict excused absence policy. When one of his friends was killed in an automobile accident the school told us that if he missed school to attend the funeral, the absence would have been unexcused. I had no problem at all telling the school that he was absent due to a scheduled doctors appointment. Had the school asked for proof that he had actually seen the doctor I would have had no problem mocking of the letter on official looking stationary stating that he had been seen on that day and scrawling a doctors name at the bottom. Even if the school were inclined to verify the excuse with the doctor, medical privacy laws in general prohibit medical practitioners from disclosing information about the patient so the risk of detection would be minimal. Even if we were found out, there were essentially no negative consequences to lying to the school. There were a couple of other instances when I felt it was reasonable and proper to keep my child out of school but the school would have defined the reason as an unexcused absence. I felt no obligation to be honest with the school under the circumstances. In some ways I guess that the schools are teaching a valuable lesson. Sometimes it's just best to tell the convenient lie rather than the truth. Honesty is not always the best policy.

Re:Great plan there

[khallow]

Overall, the high school I recall was more burdened with bureaucracy than any corporation I've worked at since.

They have to be in order to evade any shred of responsibility for their actions. If they didn't have rigid rules on what counted as an excused absence or not, then they might have to make a decision and that could be inconvenient or even cause them trouble.

Re:Great plan there

[Push Latency]

Which means they're likely skipping class to play Dungeons & Dragons!

Re:Great plan there

[mlts]

Disclaimer: Not all school districts are like this. However, a lot are.

It is more like a vicious circle. Parents with justified issues are completely ignored by the school board muckety-mucks until they start having to get "loud" enough to be heard by having to threaten litigation, or actually start hauling school officials into court.

Schools retaliate by adding more and more paperwork to cover their derrieres, and start adding more levels of bureaucratic crap, to try to make themselves more deaf to parents and students.

So, it ends up that having to retain counsel becomes second nature with the thick-headed school districts as opposed to actually being able to voice concerns and have some action taken in the first place.

Of course, there are the idiot parents as mentioned above who have their kids beat people up, and then said parents get mad because their little darling is in the in school suspension room. However, school districts don't address either type of parent (the bad ones, nor the ones that have legitimate issues), and try to bury themselves in paperwork.

The best thing for the US education system? Well, funding comes to mind first of all [1]. It might be nice for something other than football stadiums to receive grants [2]. It is absolutely laughable how pathetic the school system here is compared to almost any other developed country. It can be debated, but probably one of three options is needed:

1: Go with a system similar to Germany, let each state have its own schooling ability, overseen by the Federal government.

2: Go with a voucher based system similar to France, and let schools compete for students, assuming the schools are accredited.

3: Try to fix the existing school district system here in the US without throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and not doing brain-dead things like No Child Left Behind either.

[1]: Funding to college level. An American has to get $50,000+ in debt to finance four years of college unless they are lucky to have savings, or a fat trust fund. Their competitor coming from Chile, Venezuela, China, or India? Their entire education was financed by their government, so they have no worries about finances once they get their diploma.

[2]: Where I live, high school football stadiums are starting to have skyboxes. Districts which barely can keep their vital services running ask for bond money so they can rebuild their 5 year old stadium with a bigger Jumbotron so they can be on par with the small town down the road.

Re:Great plan there

[digsbo]

As petty as it sounds I think he resented me.

Of course he resented you. While I have friends who are public school teachers, and though they're great people, for many of them it's inconceivable that children can learn without them, and they find it threatening, as though the secret might get out that there are alternatives to public schooling which work well for some people. Why do you think states with stronger teacher unions have laws which make it harder to home-school?

Re:Great plan there

[Anonymous Coward]

And we all know that playing fantasy games in school makes you a felonious terrorist...

Re:Great plan there

[uigrad_2000]

It was my first thought as well. TFA addresses it though:

"The idea is for this not to feel like a punishment, but an intervention to help them develop better habits and get to school," said Miller Sylvan, regional director for AIM Truancy Solutions.

Clearly, it won't help a student that doesn't want help. But for students who have trouble remembering where they are supposed to be, it may be just what they need.

Re:Great plan there

[Korin43]

If you need to remind the kids to leave for school, get them free watches with alarms. The whole point of this is so they can watch them at all times (because kids don't deserve any privacy -- especially the kids who dare to ignore the school's authority).

Re:Great plan there

[DinDaddy]

Sorry, have to slice you with Occam's razor.

Public schools lose money for every day a child does not attend.

Now we might extend your reasoning to the motivation BEHIND that policy.

Re:Great plan there

[Belial6]

There is a simple solution for this for most people. Open a private school. Enroll your child in that school, and declare wherever they are to be the classroom at that time. I know it sounds like that wouldn't work, but it is done all the time, and it's popularity is increasing. You frequently will hear it being referred to as "Home Schooling".
Here in California, there is actually no such thing as "Home Schooling". We have mandatory education laws, and kids are required to go to school. So, when you hear someone is "Home Schooling" that is just a euphemism for "They are not sitting in a public, or large private school". Starting a private school in CA is free, and takes about 20 minutes to fill out a form on line with the state. So, my child for example is enrolled in a private school with a student body of 1, and a 2:1 teacher to student ratio.

Many schools see home "Home Schooling" as siphoning money away from them, and for a while we saw pretty aggressive behavior from public schools. As the popularity of home schooling has increased, many school districts have started to give up fighting it, and work it to steer more money into their coffers. Many districts have started what they call "Umbrella Programs". This means that the students are technically enrolled in the school, and are assigned to their homes as their classroom. Usually this involves a weekly meeting at the school to track the students work. In exchange for signing their kids up, the parent usually will get some supplies from the school. Those of us that open private schools pay 100% of the cost for schooling. By having the student technically enrolled in the school, the school get their paycheck from the state. I recently found out that some schools are even going so far as redefining a student that is out sick for more than 3 days as being "Home Schooled", and thus they report them as being in attendance. While I consider that to be highly unethical, from a pragmatic stand point, it is better than the school failing the student for getting sick.

Re:Great plan there

[silentphate]

If a student is passing there classes, who gives a damn if they show up all the time.

Re:Great plan there

[HeronBlademaster]

Agreed. Removing kids' privacy is obviously the goal -- hence the requirement to check in at 8pm. Schools should not know or care where kids are after school.

Conditioning

[betterunixthanunix]

All this will do is to condition these children to accept invasive tracking and surveillance. This is not a question of children's rights, it is a question of what those children will think is normal or acceptable in a decade, when they are adults.

Re:Conditioning

[tophermeyer]

...so it's not a bug, it's a feature?

Re:Conditioning

[garcia]

You're joking right? Those students who do this are already truants. They have little interest in actually responding properly to authority and I'd be absolutely and utterly shocked if, in a decade when they're adults, if they have any more respect for the laws of society.

I am not saying it's not an invasion of privacy, it is, but those outfitted with these tracking devices aren't exactly the types you're making them out to be.

Re:Conditioning

[lowtekk]

This fits well with the boiling a frog metaphor. Indoctrination not only has to occur at an early age, but it has to be implemented incrementally across generations. By the way, where are all the hippie protesters fighting the 'man'? Now they are the 'man' and they don't like kids doing things they did when they were that age. I guess civil liberties aren't as important as they once though.

Re:Conditioning

[BigT]

Yeah, how's that working out for ya?

Re:Conditioning

[faedle]

I actually grew up in Anaheim. And I often ditched class. If I was a kid today in Anaheim, I'd probably have one of these devices.

Funny. I'm a fully functional member of society, making a good wage and don't have so much as a traffic ticket on my record.

This has more to do with revenue, I'd gather. I understand that in California school districts get so much money for each student that's in class each day. Kid doesn't come to school, school doesn't get paid.

Training for the future

[ATMAvatar]

This, like so many other school programs, is an egregious violation of the students' rights. Yet, we allow it under the all to used "think of the children" guise. What it really results in is a bunch of people who are trained from childhood that violating their rights is OK if the right circumstances present themselves.

Re:Training for the future

[theY4Kman]

You say this as if it wasn't their intention.

Re:Training for the future

[Eevee]

From the fine article

Students and their parents volunteer for the monitoring as a way to avoid continuation school or prosecution with a potential stay in juvenile hall.

So this is to keep children from getting in legal problems. It's not all kids, just those at risk of getting dragged into the court system.

Police Investigator Armando Pardo reminded parents that letting kids skip school without a valid reason is, in fact, a crime.

The entering of the codes isn't just to verify the child has the unit, but also to assist them in planning to get to school. (8PM code entry? Reminder to get stuff ready for the next school day.) In addition, it involves coaching the children to work on their attendance habits.

So it's voluntary, has less impact on the students than the alternatives, and is designed to work with the students to improve their performance. Yep, that sounds like a violation of their rights.

Re:Training for the future

[jeffmeden]

No, i am pretty sure the guise here is "think of the fuckups" who will be carrying the trackers; maybe after they spend their freshman year of high school doing so and feeling what its like to be treated like a criminal they will decide they need to start earning trust (by not skipping school). Sure there are other ways to punish, this is just a slightly more convoluted way to do it that has the side effect of maintaining discipline whilst the punishment is being carried out (as opposed to suspension/expulsion which often leads to more delinquency). This is nothing more than a virtual (and MUCH MUCH cheaper) form of juvenile detention. The rest of the population will have no problem since they wont be required to carry the trackers at all.

Perfect? Not at all, but in a perfect world parents would be keeping their kids in line so the schools didnt have to.

Re:Training for the future

[DarkOx]

So much for due process. What this comes down to is a bullying tactic to deny these people due process. Its threat. Accept punishment or we are going to drag you into a supposedly fair process which will all know is stacked heavily in our favor and the result no matter what you say is that you will be assigned a harsher punishment. That is the threat anyway, as to if the truancy hearing in California would be fair or not I can't say.

Re:Training for the future

[sabt-pestnu]

> not having to go through truancy charges.

Ah, governmental blackmail. "You can go ahead and not do this, but you'll be subject to this shit we just whipped up to punish you."

Even governments are subject to this sort of shit.Consider federally mandated speed limits. Consider WIPO and ACTA.

Re:Big Brother

[Wolvenhaven]

Threatening someone with jail time or fines if they don't volunteer is like saying there is a mandatory donation required to attend a free event.

extracurricular

[strack]

8pm? what goddamn business is it of the government where your child is at 8pm? not that the rest of it isnt bad enough.

8 PM?

[dragonsomnolent]

WTF? If this is about them skipping school, what does their location at 8PM have anything to do with whether or not they are at school?

GPS isn't a solution

[sheehaje]

Maybe instead of treating students like cattle, schools should become more interesting and figure out why kids are actually skipping school.

I did all the time, until I was old enough to drop out, get a GED and head to college. I never missed classes in College because I was able to determine for myself what interested me and what goals I wanted to achieve.

This was because I had moved into a new school district that didn't really evaluate my needs, and instead stuck be in classes that were beneath the level of work I was doing in my previous school. I went from doing algebra and trigonometry to doing long division.

I'm sure that's not why all students skip school. I sure some are getting bullied, some are on drugs, and others are overwhelmed with their homework. Whatever the case, GPS won't solve the problems.

Re:GPS isn't a solution

[Confusador]

Sorry, no. Just like I'm not one of Google's clients, I'm their product. The client is always the one who pays the bills. For a public school the client is the taxpayers, for a private school it's the parents. Children are their raw material, and their product is (supposed to be) educated citizens.

I won't claim to agree with the message, but in that light "conform with authority, or be penalized" makes a lot more sense.

Re:8PM?

[AVee]

By requiring an 8pm check-in it ensures the kids are actually at home and not out causing problems.

Wouldn't that be the parents responsibility?
A better system would probably be to call their parents every evening and ask where their kids are.

Re:What happens when you put it in a faraday cage?

[Attila Dimedici]

It doesn't report that you are where you are supposed to be at the appropriate times and the police come around and you get to serve whatever the alternate sentence (fine and/or jail time) was that you accepted this in lieu of.

Re:Big Brother

[WrongSizeGlass]

Threatening someone with jail time or fines if they don't volunteer is like saying there is a mandatory donation required to attend a free event.

They're not picking random kids off the street for this. These kids are already facing juvenile hall. They a had a choice: go to school or get in trouble. Now they have another choice: go to school and be tracked or go to juvenile hall. These kids already made the first choice so now they (and their parents) are forced to make the second choice.

I'm not thrilled with the program - I think they should just lock the kids up in reform school/juvenile hall/whatever. They have free will and they made their choice so let them live with the consequences. Maybe they'll learn from their mistakes, or maybe not.

Re:Big Brother

[Arccot]

Threatening someone with jail time or fines if they don't volunteer is like saying there is a mandatory donation required to attend a free event.

So should they also scrap community service and probation options and stick everyone with pure jail-time instead? If you've done something you can be jailed for but they think you'll reform with some minimal oversight I don't see the issue with offering it as an option.

He didn't say that. He's just pointing out, correctly, that "volunteering" means there is little to no incentive to do something, but you do it anyways. Convicted criminals don't "volunteer" to accept community service or probation, they choose it as an alternative to options they consider worse. Just like I don't "volunteer" to go to work every day.

These kids are the same. To call it voluntary is a joke.

Re:Optional?

[Attila Dimedici]

Yes, but before this program, it was, if you miss school, you go to jail.

Re:Such negative backlash...

[Arccot]

How many of you guys are actually teachers? As an educator, I actually this is a great idea. Students under 16 are required to be in school, so if they are truant we have to spend resources to sends truancy officer after them, then the kids have to show up in court, etc. This seems it would reduce those costs, both financial and educational.

It would only reduce costs if the child complies with the terms of the tracking or it causes the child to attend school instead of skipping. I honestly can't see why it would. If the threat of going to juvie didn't stop the kid from cutting in the first place, why would it stop them from not using their tracker?

Re:8PM?

[bluefoxlucid]

I live next to a prison school in Baltimore. No joke. Bars on the doors, I never see any kids come in or out... I think it's a middle school, maybe an elementary school. It's across the street from me. I didn't realize it was a school until one year i saw school busses at the beginning of the school year, and then NO MORE. There's never any kids around, nobody comes in or out, but in the morning you can hear prison-yard-style bullhorns blaring the morning announcements out around the whole school.

Re:Cell Phone Solution!

[bluefoxlucid]

Do you live in PA?

Re:8PM?

[somersault]

Are you enquiring of the dictionary definition, or making a joke about fellatio in prison?

Re:And this will stop what?

[Attila Dimedici]

If a student skips beyond a certain number of classes/days, they or their parents are subject to fines and/or jail time (laws vary by state). School attendance is mandatory in every state in the U.S., isn't it in your country?

Re:8PM?

[SecurityGuy]

A better system would probably be to call their parents every evening and ask where their kids are.

No, it wouldn't. This parent would respond "It's 8pm in the evening, not during school hours, and it's none of your business where my children are."

My thoughts exactly. One problem though...

[crovira]

I doubt that kids have enough folding dough to make this truly profitable, unless you count pre-tit poontang from the girly-truants. (If inept sex is all you can manage; go for it. :-)