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Texas Schools Using Electronic Chips To Track Students; Parents In Uproar
An anonymous reader writes "Two Schools in San Antonio are using electronic chips to help administrators count and track students' whereabouts. Students at Anson Jones Middle School and John Jay High School are now required to wear ID cards using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology embedded with electronic chips in an effort to daily attendance records. The article said the Northside Independent School District receives about $30 per day in state funding for each student reporting."
Just saying.
Really... parents caring about what the school does? Unheard of.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Hey, why not just embed the RFID tags in them subdermally, in their ear, like cattle? There must be a fair bit of expertise for that sort of thing in Texas.
In other news, the last kid in John Jay High School to figure out they could just leave their ID card in their locker and stay in bed all day was mercilessly mocked and bullied by his peers.
Wow, it's just like the teacher taking attendance! Except that it uses technology to automate the task, saving valuable lesson time. Clearly this is another example of government oppression.
Or does it work like patent law, where adding 'on a computer' to a well-established procedure turns it into something completly different?
I guess I should RTFA, but:
I don't know what that means...
I hope there is one of those Pinko-Liberal-Commie-Democrat-Basterds teachers on the faculty making the kids read 1984 and Fahrenheit 451.
And who says English Lit is worthless.
in my day the schools never took attendance. home room was for a quick break with friends. teachers couldn't care less if you were in class and never took attendance either
Given that the system knows where in the building students are and were, I imagine the parents will likely change their minds and praise the system if a student goes missing. They'll know when and where the student was the last time they were on campus, and I would assume through which door the student left.
Keeping tabs of 1200 students you are responsible for is a daunting task, as an adult, I wouldn't want to be tracked in this way, but I don't have a problem with my kids school ID cards being tracked while on the school's campus.
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
Somewhere in this school there's an Honor Roll student with a couple of dozen ID tags hanging around his neck and a wallet full of cash...
The relevant data: did they learn valuable skills?
The irrelevant data: did they attend every class, and take three (3) or fewer dumps a day, numbering fewer than 15 minutes each and not more than 42.3 minutes total?
Our society is in love with metrics, but in its mad dash, produces lots and lots of data that is actually not relevant to the task at hand.
If they said they were using these RFIDs to figure out exactly when and where pedophiles are snatching their kids, I might consider that relevant data, but emphasizing attendance is a surrogate for emphasizing learning.
Tie the RFID chip to a rat, and leave out rat treats on the floor in your favorite classes. You'll get a perfect attendance award.
(Adults are dumb.)
Somehow I think the students have turned in the product and are no longer the consumer in this case.
Brought to you by Team SPAM! where we believe: "Information in the noise!"
Another baby step along the road to condition us to accept permanent RFID tagging from birth and constant tracking and surveillance by the State, for our own good and safety, of course.
This doesn't seem unreasonable does it? When the kids are at school, the staff are in loco parentis, and so keeping tabs on the little bastards doesn't sound crazy. After all if one of them goes AWOL and turns up in a suitcase, the school's likely to be sued.
Of course if it's being used for data collection for behavioural profiling or resale, that's another matter, but if it's just for "this kid was here earlier but didn't answer roll call, where the hell is he?" or "it's recess and we need to get a message to this kid, where the hell is he?" that seems fine.
Steve Hernandez, whose daughter is a sophomore, objects to the tags, saying they are similar to the "mark of the beast."
"My daughter should not have to compromise (her) religion just because Northside Independent School District wants to get paid," Hernandez said.
are used in their parents badges when they go to work. Its how they open doors and clock in. Recalling from my youth, kids have had ID badges since about 1996, theyve had to be visually verified in most cases before you can leave the lobby and enter your class at the start of the day. somehow the texan that wrote this article thinks by saying "electronic chips" and "children" in the same sentence, im supposed to get outraged.
Good people go to bed earlier.
We are entering an era where children are raised more to the standards of "society" (i.e. government) than the parents themselves. My kind -- people who dare to think for themselves and reject coercive authority by default -- aren't wanted or needed in this kind of world. It probably sounds cynical to some people, but I think it's best that my genetic line ends right here. Good luck to the rest of you who continue the human race -- you're going to need it.
How does kids not being in attendance cost the school money? Is funding somehow tied to attendance?
From the article: "Pascual Gonzalez, Northside's communications director told NBC that he estimates the district has been losing about $1.7 million a year because of underreported attendance"
When these kids grow up, it's not outside the realm of probability that employers will want this kind of nonsense. Do you want your employer to even think about having this much information about you? Beyond certain security clearances, this sort of tracking could make sense, but this seems like another avenue to automatically detect non-compliance and bludgeon people with a zero-tolerance policy.
100% accountability is not necessarily a good thing, especially if it discourages people from learning how to hold themselves accountable. Isn't that part of what school is supposed to teach you?
Cheaper. Easier. Same effect. Teaches children their true place in our new social order.
Me and my co-workers have RFID-enabled badges to access our workplace and PCs, and it leaves logging trails for sure. No-one around here seems to be in an uproar about it.
Of course, here they have proprietary company property to protect.
Even with public schools, there are schools where truancy is a BIG problem, schools where there's a conflict between creationism and evolution, and schools where the administrators work to get as many students into the top colleges as possible.
Let's guess which type of schools are tagging the students. Does that affect your opinion?
Think about it! If we have a tracking chip for every citizen, that data can be linked up with our Screaming Eagle Freedom drones for fast and efficient elimination of those pesky domestic terrorists we keep hearing about!
Glorious efficiency! Saving you taxpayers money!
Did anyone elsed read this and immediately think of Little Brother by Corey Doctorow?
..I laud this public school's initiative to make sure that they are tracking attendance. Obviously it's primarily about funding in this case. But it also provides documented evidence of whether kids are in class or not. This information can (and should) be passed on to parents.
Also, in Iowa back in the 1990's our Governor (R) had proposed a change to the state's welfare system called "learnfare". The idea was that a family's welfare check depended on the child's attendance in school. They received 100% of the check for good attendance and were penalized for poor attendance. The idea was that they wanted kids in 3rd, 4th, 5th generations of welfare families to get a good education and not be the next generation on welfare.
Now obviously school attendance doesn't necessarily mean good grades, or caring about your future. But still, it was a step in the right direction.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Kids will never think of having a friend hold their card while they go off to do whatever it is kids do nowdays.
How hard is it to manually count attendance? You have a degree in education but you cannot to the occasional headcount? After a week you should be able to look at your class and recall the *names* of the faces you do not see and deduct that from your total class size. Don't get me wrong, I love technology, but this sounds like another excuse to spend taxpayer money, in addition to other nefarious motives which will undoubtedly be discussed in this thread.
than what every major employer does in the United States? I know when I go to work, I have to wear and RFID badge that gets scanned when I enter the building. I also have to use it to access certain areas. The last three places I've worked had similar systems.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
30$ a day per student is outrageous from a cost point of view.
Who tracks it, the ATM processors? (- $5.00 to withdraw $20.00 -- theft)
Take ID card, wrap it in a towel, and set it on concrete, liberally beat it with a hammer.
From experience, it breaks the RFID chip and makes it stop working but leaves the card intact. Personally I hate these stupid chips and I have broken a bunch of them!
For all parents who are objecting to this (I would be too if my daughter was subjected to this), simply start up a fundraiser for some Student RFID blocking wallets. After all, we want our children to grow up knowing the responsiblity of owning an actual wallet, right?
Cheaper. Simpler. Effective training for their new roles in our brave new world. Might as well tag 'em too.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I guess in the new version, they'll all just get busted the second they skip out on school. That won't make for a very interesting movie.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
If you have nothing to hide, what are you worried about? *eyeroll*
More and more, I'm wishing there was a sane home schooling alternative... By the time I find a mate, and we breed, I'm pretty sure there won't be a single school left on the planet I'd care to send my kids to...
I've always held that High School was effectively prison. Now even more so.
Attendence in class probabaly is a pretty good indicator or metric of success.
Not saying that RFIDing folks is the right thing to do, however insofar as your arguement that attendence is irrelevent to learning, well I think it sort of falls down. If you don't go to class, it is pretty hard to "learn valuable skills".
You do realize that the school is getting $30 in state funding per day for each student in attendance, not paying $30 per day per student to whatever third party provides the RFID cards, right?
The main problem we parents have is the location the microchips. They are being embedded under the skin in the child's posterior. As this is highly immoral, we are pushing to have the RFID's embedded beneath the skull, with an electrical shock capability.
First thing that comes to mind... 1. RFID sales man tells school they can get extra money from the government by tagging students. 2. RFID sales man lobbies government to show why they must use such devices for the safety of the students. 3. They buy into it hook line and sinker. 4. Profit (For RFID and school) 5. Government goes further into debt..
Whatever happened to having teachers who know the students' names and taking attendance? I don't get why they would do it this way.
in Germany, we worry about educating the children, if they don't want to be there then so be it. We also train children to be more independent.
Examples with photos!
As an adult who fucking hated the education system for trying to destroy my square mind by cramming it through a bunch of round holes, I find this kind of step towards absolute control disgusting. It makes me angry.
I've become psychologically healthy, strong, adaptive and successful in life, whereas both my parents and practically everybody who subscribed to the official control system are complete mental wrecks today. That is not to say they're not good and caring people, but the hard truth of the matter is that anybody who throws in with the authoritarian system winds up completely riddled and rotted with all manner of mind worms, leaving them hopelessly useless if removed from the narrow parameters of the official culture they've been trained to subordinate their thinking to. And of course, such people are incredibly boring and frustrating to try to talk with. Like failed Turning machines.
No wonder such people need RFID tags. They'd be lost otherwise, with no internal authority of their own with which to guide their lives.
Aren't these already in every US passport anyway?
Yeah... my problem with this is the same problem I have with warrantless wiretaps: the only barrier to abuse is the mood they're in. Oh, you're not "interested" in knowing where all of the kids are, today? Well, that lets me sleep well at night.
Before the FBI could do warrantless wiretaps, they'd have to go to a judge and have their evidence weighed, and then they'd get their warrant, and then there'd be a paper-trail. Now, they can skip the warrant and they don't even have to divulge who they tapped or even how many times they've used that power. Then, to calm us down, they assure us that they don't want to tap everybody's phones. Well, what happens when they come to work one day and discover that they now want to? That was they only barrier to abuse of the privilege.
So, how long before everyone accepts "tracking for the sake of getting all of the attendance dollars we've got coming to us"? How long after that until some enterprising individual says "Hey, we could use this to cut down on teen smoking by tracking where/when students go off by themselves to remote parts of the school" or "We can find out when students are taking too long in the bathroom"?
These cards are only as good as the people using them. They do not give live feedback on where someone is, they simply are used to swipe into rooms. If I swipe in to the school in the morning then skip all day, return to swipe out at the last bell, the system thinks I was in school all day. There is no alarm that sounds when the cards are out of range or any nonsense like that. This type of system is used literally everywhere from private to government companies for access control.
They kinda taste like tasty wheat . . . . kinda . . .
I do not know why so many refer to government as if it is this independent god-like entity running around and maniacally laughing as it forces people to do things against their will.
The government *is* the parents. I went to public high school, and went to a district that mandated school uniforms. This wasn't big government forcing it on me; it was my parents' contemporaries. I remember my parents asking at meetings why we needed uniforms (took out individuality, and was expensive!), but many other parents -- not the government -- responded they liked how clean everyone looked, and it kept gang paraphenalia out of schools. Hell, I knew *students* that claimed to enjoy having uniforms because they did not like having to think about what to wear every day.
My point is, do not blame government -- blame the parents. The parents are the ones pushing the standards, and government officials are trying their best (often times anyway) to appease what they think is the majority opinion. My school district holds votes on certain school policies, and it was what parents wanted.
If you are upset about rejecting authority, you should ask why so many parents are so authoritarian toward their own and other children. It is apparently what they want. Personally, I feel this is a phase because of fear of the future in the current economic and foreign policy climate. The youth are not near as accepting as you think. Growing up in this era has given them much different attitudes than their authoritarian parents. They are biding their time until they know for sure how to go about changing it. I would be a little more optimistic.
Where is the outrage? I know this has turned into a forum to practice your online stand-up routine for most posters but how isn't this a gross invasion of a person's rights? /. use to be up in arms over anything that could be linked to invasion of privacy.
First it's schools, than the work place and next thing you know it's in your cars, phones, wallet. Do teachers not take roll call anymore?
I can not believe they have kids wearing id cards that can be tracked!!!! Has anyone thought about the right to privacy, this is inconceivable and goes against everything the US stands for. It's a good thing we let our kids use debit / credit cards and allows them mobile phone / computer access all the time, for a minutes it was almost as if they weren't already being tracked non stop and targeted. Nope thank god, but this id card that is the issue that we need to hear bitched about for weeks now.
If the school wants to improve attendance, why not:
(a) install a high-resolution IP camera with a vandal-proof enclosure in every classroom (above the teacher's head, facing the students),
(b) upload a high-res image every 2 or 3 seconds to a web server (no audio needed),
(c) and email each parent the daily schedule of his / her child, with clickable links so they can look in the appropriate classroom via a web browser, and verify the child is there.
In fact, it would be relatively straightforward to create a web-based interface so that you could enter the student's name, and the video feed would automatically switch over to the correct classroom camera depending on the time of day. Mom or Dad could just open a window on his/her computer desktop and keep an eye on Johnny or Susie all day long.
No doubt some teachers will freak out at the idea of a camera in the classroom, but I can't imagine that cameras would cost more, or be more intrusive, than an RFID system in the long run.
Schools have to cut down on staff, cut down on equipment, supplies, things like monitoring systems, and everything else. When they have to cut back they have to find new ways of doing things cheaply and effectively using the least amount of actual people as possible. And this is an example of that.
Personally I think its a good idea. What with kids becoming more and more unruley as the years go by you need to keep better track of them. And dont tell me they arent. Sure they always fought, cut class and such but in the past 15 years we have seen more over the top bullying, more school shootings, school bombings and other problems than we have in the past 100 years to a worse degree. When every school knows problems like that are a real threat that is quite likely then keeping track of all students with rfid chips is a effective way or helping respond to such problems and deal with them much more effictively.
Then you have the legal side of things. With lawsuits and legal action being a bigger and bigger threat to everyone, especially school, then this is a good way of helping to protect themselves from legal action. Lawsuits make everyone be required to take extra steps to protect themselves. Like nurses for instance used to never get sued, now with myself being a nurse we have to do insane amounts of incredibly ridiculious steps in order to try and protect ourselves. A school is no different. Only a school is in constant very high danger of lawsuits because they house hundreds of peoples children and minors for a large part of the week and are strictly in their hands.
Used to kids didnt have to go to school. Then they had to. Then the schools had to have truant officers. Then the schools had to use students as hall monitors. Then schools had to install security cameras. And now schools are using rfid trackers. It is the most logical and expected progression of a school trying their best to keep the kids under their care under a watchful eye. As technology progresses so will the means in which we deal with eachother.
But most people cant see those things. They just want to knee jerk react in the most hostile, closed minded and ignorant fashion as possible. And when they do in large groups it only makes it worse.
Besides. So what if the school does this? The only time a student will ever have a problem is when they do bad things. Why would someone pay attention to your location specifically unless youre doing something wrong? Its like people who bitch about getting pulled over by the cops, well if you werent speeding or driving like a crazy person you never would have gotten pulled over.If someone is listening to your cell phone calls or tracking your posistion then are doing so because youre doing something wrong.
But the hillarious part is that when something does go wrong then everyone wants to bitch at the cops or the schools for not doing anything to prevent it. Then when they do try to do something to prevent future problems then people will bitch about that. Youre damned if you do and youre damned if you dont because at the end of the day people will always be ignorant with closed minds, always follow the band wagon and will complain about every single thing they possibly can.
Wrap it in tin foil
Running the schools like prisons... don't be surprised when the students start behaving like criminals.
I'm sure most kids will be carrying around some electronic device these days. Whether it's a cell phone, Nintendo DS, or iPod, they call have wireless connectivity. Would the next step be to just track what the kids are carrying anyway? That would be the best way to prevent the "have one kid carry around a bunch of ID's at the same time" trick.
Pascual Gonzalez, Northside's communications director told NBC that he estimates the district has been losing about $1.7 million a year because of underreported attendance. He also said the RFID cost was $261,000 and should pay for itself within one year. Read more at http://www.latinospost.com/articles/5498/20121015/texas-schools-using-electronic-chips-track-students.htm#W4csmiPggMpRrop2.99
This to me is the ridiculous part, the RFID system is sucking $261k plus upkeep out of the budget, the school isn't earning the money it is taken out of education spending! Perhaps the state shouldn't have a ridiculous daily attendance funding mechanism and just pay based on enrolment and the taxpayer wouldn't need to waste $261k per school.
"We're not staffed nor are we interested in knowing where all the kids are at a particular moment."
The sole purpose of this system seems to be to count all the students who showed up on a given day so they can bill the state government for the maximum amount possible. That's where they get this idea that the system will "pay for itself", ignoring that the money comes from taxpayers either way.
Plus, the RFID tags only work on school grounds, so even if some kid is abducted, the school will have no idea where to find them.
With few exceptions the Civil War South is fascist. I'm from Texas and went to school there, until my parents moved to California. I'm a consultant, and will not work in the Southern states, but especially Texas.
I will not work for managers who are proud to be Texans or Southern. I'm ashamed I was born there, and normally try to be Californian.
The Southern Baptists think the end of the world is near, when the population must wear the mark of the beast. If personal RFID isn't a mark of the beast, I don't know what will qualify. BTW, I was a Southern Baptist.
they had a number of kids run late in a band practice, with some others near the school office. They were physically present in the school but not in the "normal" count and so the school wouldn't have gotten money for them.
This is not to say that I agree with it...changing the procedures on how the "normal" count gets done should be sufficient.
I love that this is happening in a red state like Texas.
This is San Antonio we're talking about... one of the most "blue" enclaves in the whole state, almost as "blue" as Austin.
Most of Texas' large cities are "blue" just like in other states.
Also the schools there are all run by die-hard liberals so deeply entrenched in control they'll never be kicked out of power.
The left is the driving force behind the "surveillance state" mentality in this case.
If you don't like living under the thumb of left wing controlled local govt and schools, then get the fuck out of Bexar County.
We don't tolerate that shit out from our elected local officials out here in west Texas, we vote the bastards out of office and run them out of town if they try to pull such shenanigans here.
Why is attendance even required? If I can learn the material without attending, isn't that better all around? Better for class sizes, don't have to feed me lunch, etc.
I guess some requirements are good. Maybe ... have to be there on test days, and like, 30% of the time or something for lectures.
But seriously. The problem with education is not attendance. I was homeschooled. I didn't even attend class. I learned my material from school books. I actually never graduated from High School, officially (took an equivalency test to start college). In college, I attended classes because I was supposed to, but some of them (economics, literature) weren't exactly that profitable uses of my time.
I know, it's cliche to say "I didn't go and I turned out fine" but I did. I'm employed, I double majored in computer science and music theory/composition, graduated summa cum laude, was active in various groups and activities (too many, according to some :) ), etc.
Attendance is not really a measure of educational success. Especially if you can attend perfectly, fail classes, and get moved on to the next grade anyway.
Wrap your ID in it and you can't be tracked. Cracks me up that people put so much trust & money in RFID.
Look at all the nasty things they do down there.
The Bushes ( need I say more ), Lance Armstrong the liar and cheat,
etc.
Texas is an example. An example of how not to do it.
In that respect Texas is perhaps useful. Otherwise, it is
a place which is best avoided, unless you like fascism
and rednecks and awful heat in the summer.
A college (for 16-18 year olds) that one of my friends attended had a simpler version of this system -- student cards had to be swiped into a reader to show attendance. The teachers didn't care much about the system -- they're teaching adults, so there were fewer in loco parentis responsibilities, and the "adults" are supposed to want to be there...
My friend made good money for a while, swiping people's cards for them. At the time, the government paid 16-18 year olds from poor families to go to school once they were 16 (i.e. once school was optional), so for some students it was well worth faking attendance.
This sounds like the kind of committee-logic we can expect from our schools, government, corporations and media. I was amused at first by your example, then realized how likely lowest common denominator thinking ("dumbshit" mode) would be.
If the purpose is to make sure kids are on campus, they might just decide to put them at the front door. Then they could turn around to the parents, shareholders, government, whoever, etc. and claim "mission accomplished."
At which point, I'd find the kid with the best attendance record and bribe him/her to carry around a cloned RFID for me.
Yeah, the $30 per day per student adds up to a lot of money. Probably covers the school's operating costs for the year. But this will be a nice test to see how much hacking can be done to this type of setup. I am thinking the kids will do all kinds of things from planting RFID's in everyroom they are suppose to be in to actually to hacking the computers keeping the data, to hacking the transmitters to have a wider range. Cools stuff for industrious students.
Have gnu, will travel.
so if every kid puts them into a bon fire every morning what happens....gets pretty costly no?
"What kind of lesson does it teach our children if they're chipped like cattle and their every movement tracked?" said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union. "It doesn't create the kind of independent, autonomous people that we want in our democratic society.
Says who? NYC thinks so highly of its "independent, autonomous people" that it wants to dictate how much soda they can buy in a single cup. I'd have a lot more faith in these pronouncements if the people making them applied their standards across the board and not just selectively to those things they dislike.
That's why it *is* important for parents of today...to be against this type of tracking....if kids today think this is normal...well, it then becomes the norm.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
and use their phone, Apple knows where all their iphones are anywhere on the planet, wether their owners like it or not, i dont see hoards of Apple users kicking up a fuss
same goes for Android users
i mean there are hundreds of groups of 40 yo men conspiring right now on how they can follow you and your children better under the names of google, adobe,apple, webtrends, amazon the list is almost endless
... something to be in an amplified uproar about. So take the small percentage of kids who skip and divide the total daily cost of the program (including the cost of the ID cards) and divide that by the number of kids who skip on average for cost per skip student. Take the total cost and ask a Question: How many scholarships would that pay for? I do wonder if the number of kids skipping on average is higher or lower than the number of scholarships....
This is probably for the money. Schools need money, thirty bucks a student, per day, can fund a lot of um, sports ball sticks?
Teach these kids the power of civil disobedience, and show them what happens when everyone agrees to switch ID cards.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I believe the reason parents are so outraged, for those questioning why, is the good old idiom "give someone an inch and they will take it a mile."
It may start out as harmless attendance tracking, but where does it progress from there?
Last numbers I saw show the Seattle school system has more employees than students..
If you're curious what this costs , you can find yearly wage data online, but a couple of years behind.
Freedom of information takes time in Washington.
No brain, no pain.
FTA -- "There's a misconception that somebody's sitting in a room with a bank full of monitors looking at where 1,200 kids are here at Anson Middle School. That's not true," he said. "It's not even feasible. We're not staffed nor are we interested in knowing where all the kids are at a particular moment."
Every time one of these Orwellian surveillance nightmares pops up, one of the defenders says something like this. Constantly look at all the students? "It's not even feasible... we're not staffed [with enough people]".
Well someone needs to get these lackwits into the current millennium and tell them about these amazing fucking "computers" these days that can do all that automatically.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
If you're not popular and noticeable, you don't need to show up to class. Just pay another student to swipe your card for ya.
Wait, I'm going to end up in prison now for suggesting that idea. I didn't type this!
Teacher says: "It's tooooo much woooorrrkk to properly account for attendance. It needs to be 100% automateeeedddddd!"
The 1% who decide these things for the other 99% don't send their kids to public schools, so their kids won't be exposed to forced government surveillance. They probably think the 99% should be grateful that they (the 1%) pay to educate their dumb kids in the first place.
They are not required to be carrying the ID when they aren't at school, so what's the big deal?
They could store it in their locker, and put it in their pocket in the morning and put it back in the afternoon.
It could expedite roll call, and in some cases, might even be able to increase safety of students while they are in the school.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
School administrators aren't what they used to be. Now it's about making money by any means possible. This stunt in Texas is the latest way to achieve maximum revenue.
All the money they get is not going to the classrooms, teachers, or schools btw. That 30 dollars a head will be hoarded by the administration.
Another lazzy school distric not addressing the real problem. Maybe they should ask themselves why our students missing class, maybe their teachers are not that well prepared.
If you treat kids like animals that need monitoring, guess how are they going to respond.
got to use something high tech, when a piece of paper will do...
now if it was part of a security system like it is at most businesses...
How long before the parents start screaming about the mark of the beast?
Can someone explain the reason so many states do this day-by-day attendance accounting?
Shouldn't the budget for a school should be based on annual, or semi-annual plans? If a kid doesn't show up, one day, the class still goes on, the lights are on, the building is heated, the teacher is paid... seems like a lot of make-work do to this level of accounting...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
It's nice to see that everyone had a nice big bowl of them this morning.
This is right up their alley....
...or whatever symbol shuts them up.
First the dogs gets chipped and now they start with the kids at school , get them used to it so we will get a fully chipped population in 15 years .
Bush failed Obama succeeeded
IT HAS STARTED !
And yet in Michigan, we don't even get cheap paper ID's. The school would not be able to afford them.
Define "tracking". If it is an RFID (near field, like HID cards) then this cannot be used to pinpoint some kid walking around town while he should be in school. Likely it is a card reader that must be swiped by the student... so big deal. We used this in university to gain access to labs. The uproar is more likely parents who just don't RTFA. Caveat; I didn't RTFA either :)-
- I stole your sig.
They are very useful to the predators, they know who passes what dark alley and when during each week.
Grab the kid, throw the card onto a passing teacher, bye bye.
This is because teacher unions fight against meaningful testing of the children.
Thats quite a claim, any sources to back it up. Did a quick search and I would have thought if that were the case It would have been major news at some point, but google did not provide me anything that backed your claim up.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
And now I have to call utter bullshit:
1. Seattle Schools and Students
Number of students: 43,752
Number of schools: 97
2. Public School Staffing
Number of employees: 4,914
Number of full-time classroom teachers: 2,056
Number of students per employee: 8.8
Number of students per classroom teacher: 20.9
It's really hard to get away with pulling numbers out of your ass when people are willing to do research.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Okay, so you can speculate on ways that this school's RDIF program can be subverted or otherwise lead to problems, and you can go back and forth on this ad infinitum, but consider this. At some point, maybe not this year, maybe in a couple of years, maybe in five or ten, this school, or perhaps another, will hit upon a recipe for an RFID program that actually works. Once that happens, other schools will start to imitate the program. From that point on, there will be a population of students, growing every year, who will eventually become adults who are accustomed to being tracked. Now, we already have passports with RFID chips. U.S. citizens are not required to have a passport, but imagine that at some point in the future, in the way that Congress actually managed to pass the health care act (something that was considered unlikely by many), a law is passed, and later upheld by the courts, requiring every citizen to carry an ID with an RFID chip or some other tracking mechanism. If such a bill were proposed today, an uproar would instantly arise, but think ahead a generation or two, when a large percentage of the population is already used to being track, via their school IDs. At that point it is conceivable that tracking becomes a reality. Now, because power corrupts, it is inevitable that that the power that comes with tracking data will be misused by governments and other entities, such are corporations and criminal elements, able to obtain access. Accept this as a given, because the history of this country indicates that we will eventually reach that point. Well, what I am telling you is that all of us, the citizens, will be much safer if two things come to pass: A) Tracking is enforced, so that nobody, not a cop, not a judge, not criminal, can escape it. B) Tracking information is made publicly available, to prevent the power differential that occurs when some entities have access to information but others don't. Please read this carefully. IF YOU ASSUME that tracking will occur, eventually, you must realize that it is in your best interests for you to have as much access to tracking data as anybody else, and for you to be able to monitor the authorities and the criminals, rather than the monitoring being just a one-way proposition. To get back to this San Antonio schools, what the parents should be advocating, and insisting, is that all school officials be required to carry the same RFID chips that students carry, as a matter of fairness, and to help mitigate against abuse.
Apologies--I had line breaks throughout that post, but they disappeared.
As long as you want to use liberal numbers try the school district itself:
http://www.seattleschools.org/modules/cms/pages.phtml?pageid=192400&sessionid=bfe5de18d0105a321a2d35db265e56a3&t
District Quick Facts
Our Students 49,870+ students
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Whoah, nearly 50,000 students now!
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Our Schools 95 total schools
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Now the counting gets fuzzy for some reason:
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Our Staff (estimated) 8,000 total staff, 3,000 teachers
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Holy union job batman, that's over 16 students per teacher and over 6 students per employee as listed on the current SPS web site.
There is something interesting about these numbers, a few years 'staff' numbers dropped drastically in the SPS reports.
It seems that a great many not directly working at a school just disappeared. They still have jobs and get paid from taxpayer sources, but it sure makes employee per student numbers look better.
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So take your utter and your bull to some place where you can reconcile the magic staff numbers until they and you aren't taking tax payer money..
No brain, no pain.
Here are a couple more links:
School Employee Salaries http://wwwb.thenewstribune.com/databases/school_pay/
and a site that covers most of WA state type employees http://lbloom.net/
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If I recall correctly the lbloom.net info took a lot of court time to get access to this public data.
No brain, no pain.
The interesting issue with this story is that the reason to track the kids is not to infringe on their privacy, but to ensure where they are so the school can get paid by the federal government!
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As for lunch, seniors are allowed off campus for lunch if they are not failing any classes (except for jocks, who are allowed off campus even as juniors and no one seems to mind or call them on it) and there's enough time to get lunch if you're part of the first lunch period which starts a little past 11:15 am. These people can make it to In 'n' Out before the noon lunch rush. The second lunch period people are screeewed as the lunch rush lines make the burger place packed.
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As for entry onto campus, there's a fence around the campus, and adults entering during school hours are also supposed to be checked in and authorized and not just wandering the halls. Though sometimes you'll see a recent grad (last year or two years ago) wandering in and looking high-schooly and not getting challenged. They don't really check IDs for entering if they think you're a student. Note that if you didn't sign in as a non-student, you won't be able to get back out as a signed-in visitor; they'll think you're a student and you won't be allowed off campus until the school day ends. Speaking of which, I better get going and get to school! ;>)
Reporting attendance is a big deal if talking $30/day in state funding. It will tell if someone doesn't attend or is tardy in a class. Kids can't learn unless they are in class. Teachers can teach to empty chairs, but it doesn't do the kids much good if they aren't there. Still any amount of technology can't get the kids to engage. IMHO, teachers can teach, but the job of students are to learn. Good teacher help, technology is good, but learning can only be done by the student.
Anything that can get the kids to pay attention and buy into their part of the learning is the right thing.
From experience, the student 'wanting to learn' is much more important than technology or teachers ( but better teachers can make a difference compared to teachers that would rather be elsewhere).
But the state has problems with seeing their funding goes where it is used wisely, and Texas has chosen to withhold their funding if kids aren't there.
Historically there has been the golden rule and we haven't found a way around it.
It works in business, personal life, government, and education: The one with the gold, makes the rule.
... "When you pry the source from my cold dead hands."
It is a good idea for having your kids monitored wherever they go. This is for their protection. Kids are kids and very much expose to any danger if they are outside the school premises. Those who are outraged by this idea are parents whose house rules are very weak that is why this country as a whole is going down way way to the bottom of the deepest sea level on earth, the Marianas Trench in the Philippines. If a parent is objecting this idea, go find a school where PDA (public display of affection) is well tolerated and maybe teen pregnancy is not a problem.
You mean that they are not all doing it?
I was watching and episode of 'Numb3rs' on ION and they analyzed the a HS 'Columbine type' attack bymapping
the fleeing students via their RFID signals....
"The article said the Northside Independent School District receives about $30 per day in state funding for each student reporting."
I'm wondering how that $30/day per student gets spent. At my old high school, 1500 students, that would have been $45,000 per day if all the fannies arrived in the seats (which they did, without such measures) ... enough to fund one whole teacher for the year... the school year is what, 150 days or so? for a school of that size, that's $6.75M dollars.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Yes, they are!
It's an extension of the corporate problem. They focus on quarterly results to the detriment of long term goal setting, planning, and investment, which is exactly why we DON"T need a businessman in the Whitehouse.
After posting several comments and not even reading the full original post nor the article, I've now done so and realized the most important questions: who gives the funding they mentioned? Why? Where does it come from and who made the decision? What is it spent on, and who benefits from that?
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
So - Texas, the state of cowboys & leave me the %^&* alone is chipping students now !!! (for the sake of attendance, yeah right) I thought the GOP in that state wanted NO GOVT at all, and certainly nothing pertaining to BIG BROTHER, would ever, ever, ever consider such an invasive, socialist and dictatorial stance??? Perfect example of the GOP taking over education from actual teachers and educators & privatizing the hell out of everything, including the textbook debacle, then to be moving onto consideration of chipping students to track them. Who's in the Senate & House that's also in the back pocket of the tech companies involved for this RFID process? How many textbooks, $$$'s and other needed items were sacrificed to add this to the district budgets? Are they contributing to the current SuperPAC %^&* that basically has put the corrupted nail in our national political system? Why not use cool technology to block cell phone usage in the classroom, which is causing rampant problems in both public and private school? Put the same tech in hospitals that blocks access in certain areas, and do the same in schools. That way, kids can't use cell phones & can't be tracked when they're ON CAMPUS! Goal is attendance, so really, the RFID should only be tracking kids who are truant right??? Scents of a Civil War are already brewing and this does nothing but lend to the fight on either side - now that the GOP has been bought by the wealthiest in the world - what's next? Sniffing dogs that can detect recent sexual activity? I say - Do Not Tread on Me with Chips!!!
How about holding parents accountable to their kids to make sure they're their? Yet another parenting aspect being handed to the schools and teachers - what a joke? This is Texas right? So - Texas, the state of cowboys & leave me the %^&* alone is chipping students? I thought the GOP in that state wanted NO GOVT at all, and certainly nothing pertaining to BIG BROTHER. Perfect example of the GOP taking over education and privatizing the hell out of everything, including the textbook debacle, then to be moving onto consideration of chipping students to track them. Who's in the Senate & House that's in the back pocket of the tech companies involved? Are they contributing to the current SuperPAC %^&* that basically has put the corrupted nail in our national political system? Scents of a Civil War are already brewing and this does nothing but lend to the fight on either side Do Not Tread on Me with Chips!!!
So - Texas, the state of cowboys & leave me the %^&* alone is chipping students now !!! (for the sake of attendance, yeah right) I thought the GOP in that state wanted NO GOVT at all, and certainly nothing pertaining to BIG BROTHER, would ever, ever, ever consider such an invasive, socialist and dictatorial stance??? Perfect example of the GOP taking over education from actual teachers and educators & privatizing the hell out of everything, including the textbook debacle, then to be moving onto consideration of chipping students to track them. Who's in the Senate & House that's also in the back pocket of the tech companies involved for this RFID process? How many textbooks, $$$'s and other needed items were sacrificed to add this to the district budgets? Are they contributing to the current SuperPAC %^&* that basically has put the corrupted nail in our national political system? Why not use cool technology to block cell phone usage in the classroom, which is causing rampant problems in both public and private school? Put the same tech in hospitals that blocks access in certain areas, and do the same in schools. That way, kids can't use cell phones & can't be tracked when they're ON CAMPUS! Goal is attendance, so really, the RFID should only be tracking kids who are truant right??? Scents of a Civil War are already brewing and this does nothing but lend to the fight on either side - now that the GOP has been bought by the wealthiest in the world - what's next? Sniffing dogs that can detect recent sexual activity? I say - Do Not Tread on Me with Chips!!!
Hmmm really??? are you kidding me So - Texas, the state of cowboys & leave me the %^&* alone is chipping students now !!! (for the sake of attendance, yeah right) I thought the GOP in that state wanted NO GOVT at all, and certainly nothing pertaining to BIG BROTHER, would ever, ever, ever consider such an invasive, socialist and dictatorial stance??? Perfect example of the GOP taking over education from actual teachers and educators & privatizing the hell out of everything, including the textbook debacle, then to be moving onto consideration of chipping students to track them. Who's in the Senate & House that's also in the back pocket of the tech companies involved for this RFID process? How many textbooks, $$$'s and other needed items were sacrificed to add this to the district budgets? Are they contributing to the current SuperPAC %^&* that basically has put the corrupted nail in our national political system? Why not use cool technology to block cell phone usage in the classroom, which is causing rampant problems in both public and private school? Put the same tech in hospitals that blocks access in certain areas, and do the same in schools. That way, kids can't use cell phones & can't be tracked when they're ON CAMPUS! Goal is attendance, so really, the RFID should only be tracking kids who are truant right??? Scents of a Civil War are already brewing and this does nothing but lend to the fight on either side - now that the GOP has been bought by the wealthiest in the world - what's next? Sniffing dogs that can detect recent sexual activity? I say - Do Not Tread on Me with Chips!!!
The schools are paid by the fed (for lunch money, whatever else) based on student-days. If the student isn't there on Thursday, the school doesn't get paid for that student on Thursday. But they still have to spend lunch, class space, etc.
Let's track parents, to make sure they're taking their kids to school, and getting them a decent breakfast in the AM, as well as working with them on homework in the evenings! Kids only learn from who they're around most, typically parents - but unfortunately, that's long been replaced by SpongeBob, Halo, and Call of Duty - drilled into their squishy little brains since they were 3. No wonder Jonny is such a great artist, he only sees death and enemies every waking moment and dreams about them when not. Who's to blame (teachers, educators, the bus driver, Obama, GOP, politicians, Jesus?) Cmon - give me a %^&*( break!!! So - Texas, the state of cowboys & leave me the %^&* alone is chipping students now !!! (for the sake of attendance, yeah right) I thought the GOP in that state wanted NO GOVT at all, and certainly nothing pertaining to BIG BROTHER, would ever, ever, ever consider such an invasive, socialist and dictatorial stance??? Perfect example of the GOP taking over education from actual teachers and educators & privatizing the hell out of everything, including the textbook debacle, then to be moving onto consideration of chipping students to track them. Who's in the Senate & House that's also in the back pocket of the tech companies involved for this RFID process? How many textbooks, $$$'s and other needed items were sacrificed to add this to the district budgets? Are they contributing to the current SuperPAC %^&* that basically has put the corrupted nail in our national political system? Why not use cool technology to block cell phone usage in the classroom, which is causing rampant problems in both public and private school? Put the same tech in hospitals that blocks access in certain areas, and do the same in schools. That way, kids can't use cell phones & can't be tracked when they're ON CAMPUS! Goal is attendance, so really, the RFID should only be tracking kids who are truant right??? Scents of a Civil War are already brewing and this does nothing but lend to the fight on either side - now that the GOP has been bought by the wealthiest in the world - what's next? Sniffing dogs that can detect recent sexual activity? I say - Do Not Tread on Me with Chips!!!
Were I one of the students at either of those schools, I would probably go to the head of the school board — or whoever it was that made the decision to use RFID chips in the badges — show them my freshly-melted-in-a-microwave (or paper-shredded) badge, quote a couple of lines spoken by Patrick McGoohan: :|
"I am not a number — I am a free man!"
"I will not make any deals with you. I've resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own. I resign."
And then I would attempt to run home; if I managed to succeed, I would then lock myself somewhere secure, and urge my parents to move and also let me be home-schooled.
The most unfortunate problem with this is that although it'd be awesome to pull off — I'd probably get into quite a spot of trouble with the authorities. :/