Tracking Students: Remember Parkway School District and the Polar Go Fit Bracelets?

We wrote a story last year about Parkway Schools wanting to use student tracking devices to measure sleep patterns and academic achievement via Polar Go Fit bracelets.

We highlighted a video from the school board where a district employee explains the tracking and the information to be gathered from the data obtained while the students wore them home.  The video has now been pulled from the internet and "made private by the owner".

This video is from a school board meeting.  Would someone from the Parkway School District contact the superintendent/board members and ask why a video from a public meeting has been pulled from the district website?  Aren't the owners of this video the taxpayers?

Here's the link showing the video has been pulled:

http://web.archive.org/web/20120118111401/http://www.pkwy.k12.mo.us/boe/archive/boe120711.cfm

Here's the rough transcript I typed from the speaker's presentation:

Notes from the video:

Video of the School Board Meeting December 7, 2011 http://www.pkwy.k12.mo.us/boe/archive/boe120711.cfm
48:45 starts the discussion of the bracelet. Rough transcript of the conversation. Parenthesis denotes questions from the Board.
**********************************************
So kids can "self-monitor" moderate to vigorous exercise. Teachers took a class this summer and the teachers wore them through the fall.

Henry, Ross Elementary, Shenandoah Elementary Schools.

Kids see it as a cool gadget.

Goals. Health, fit, active kids ready to learn.
Kids were "jealous" so bracelets will be shared.
Used as much as they can during PE classes.

Ideally, let the kids wear the monitor an entire week 24/7 and look at sleep patterns as well as physical activity patterns. Interested in seeing the results of that and identity correlation between sleep patterns and academic achievement. **MEW comment: Is this the governmental "nudge" touted by Cass Sunstein and our Commissioner of Education Chris Nicastro?**

Start with one grade level and then add grades one at a time.

In physical education for the longest time we've just been looking at fitness data.

We don't want to just assess fitness we want to assess behavioral change w/regard to physical activity patterns with our students and then we know we've done our job and this tool here will help us do that.

(How do you follow this?)

Each day there is a graph and they try to fill up the tube with moderate to strenuous activity. Keeps 7 days worth of data. Teachers download the information in a graph to the parents.

Idea: get them into the hands of the elementary students at the beginning of the new year.

(How do you plan to use the data and how will you run the data)
We are uploading data--body strength, muscle strength--into PARS. Correlate fitness levels to MAP scores, SAT score. Hope to do the same with physical activity.

Will do individually. Sure we will have school data, entire 5th grade, we'll have the ability to track individual students.

(Question about GPS, school cameras, tracking kids. Laughter)

No, they won't be able to track our students.
Ends at 58:14

Check out this link of the checks written in the district in February 2012: 

 http://www.boarddocs.com/mo/pkysd/Board.nsf/Public

It shows $37,584.00 was paid in 2012 to Polar Electro for tracking bracelets that Parkway pulled after parental concern.   $209.80 was paid to the company in 2011.

When Did Physical Education Become An Issue of Social Justice? Do School Districts Using Polar Bracelets Understand the Goals of Producing Fit Workers for the System?

The Suburban Journal  wrote about Polar bracelets in use at the Parkway School District (suburban St. Louis area) and questioning privacy issues involved in wearing them not only in PE classes, but also about the plan to have the students wear them 24/7 for one week and tracking activity from home.  We followed up on the story and included the video from the School Board meeting in December where the district representative said to the Board members:

We don't want to just assess fitness we want to assess behavioral change w/regard to physical activity patterns with our students and then we know we've done our job and this tool here will help us do that.


Other news services and bloggers wrote about Polar bracelets and their use became more widely known and researched.  As we wrote in the previous posting about the Polar bracelets, we wondered where the line was drawn between better health and surveillance.  Subsequent articles by the Revered Review included information about Polar's ability and data sets available to track health of students, including information about sexual history, diabetes and drug use. 


In one Iowa school district, apparently the use of data gathered from Polar bracelets echoes what the parkway District representative said in the Board meeting, except this behavioral change is not restricted to just Parkway or Iowa students, it is directed to all children on a global scale. As a result of a global forum held in Grundy and subsequent statement from the forum, schools should be:

“establishing physical education and health programs as models of social justice which foster a safe learning environment, promote the joyful participation of physical activity with appreciation of cultural, racial, ethnic and social and economic differences.”

So now physical education is to be looked upon as data driven and leveling the playing field (no pun intended) in terms of cultural, racial ethnic, social and economic differences.  The Revered Review ("TRR Investigates, Part 2: Rural Iowa-A Decade of Polar Monitor Use") has an excellent article on what it found in Grundy, Iowa and the research provided from its students for the last several years on a global scale:

The Grundy Center School District, located in the American Heartland, has 700 students who have been using Polar monitors for a decade. The small town of Grundy, Iowa, is where 2,700 residents call home and the county of Grundy has a total population of 12,500—a small rural community by any measurement.

However, its school district is on the leading edge of technology: All students have school-issued laptops, and its physical education department has used Polar monitors for years. In fact, Grundy is where Polar Electro researched its monitors in a school setting, according to Superintendent Cassandra Murra.

School Garners International Attention

This small school district has even garnered both national and international attention. Politicians and delegates from around the world have visited the school, many looking to the school as a possible role model for physical education, using the monitors, and the fight against childhood obesity........

Read more here from the Revered Review on the decade long use of Polar bracelets and how this research has attracted international attention and visits from researchers and educators.


Parkway School District agreed to pull the bracelets from their programs due to privacy concerns.  If the Parkway District or other school districts institute the Polar bracelet in the future, they might want to review the Grundy Iowa school district's use of data.  It has been used not only for individuals to track their physical progress, but its ultimate use points to providing data to achieve social justice via physical education programs. 


Is this the main reason for this increased use of technology in PE classes and the tracking of data on students?  From a 1998 paper, Social Justice in Education in 'new times', delivered to the Australian Association for Research in Education:

What we see within schools is that most of what is done is drawn into the production of the 'flexible' worker. Parent participation is seen as good, not in relation to the happiness of the child but for the way it can improve a child's performance in school. Social skills are taught so the child will become a better worker. Physical Education is important as it will produce a fitter healthier worker. In such a curriculum all areas of school life are attuned to the 'production' of a 'flexible' worker who can stake a claim for the individual or corporation in the market place.


Parkway District may have just dodged a bullet in terms of providing sensitive physical information of their children to unknown research organizations in the quest for social justice.  When the Parkway District employee was explaining to the School Board about tracking students and effecting behavioral changes, did he know that these behavioral changes were to "produce a fitter, healthier worker"?  Did he think or know that most of what is done in schools is for the "production of the 'flexible' worker"?

Here are some agencies in Missouri for the years 2002-2010 receiving funding for physical education outreach from the Carol M. White Physical Education Fund via the Department of Education.  However, you might want to check with your district if it purchased (as my district did) Polar bracelets with funding from its regular budget:

2010:

About Our Kinds, Inc. (MO) – $750,000
Serving 1, 205 rural, high-need students, the mission of this project is to wrap students in a blanket of wellness strategies by integrating physical activity into a child’s day at school and in the community. WAVE’s philosophy is that physical education and activity is not just an event or a class that you attend but a cardinal part of a healthy, happy life. This approach not only assigns value to engaging in regular physical activity but also challenges students to “Catch the WAVE.” WAVE is designed to expand and improve PE programming to make progress toward meeting State PE standards by providing (1) equipment and support to enable students to participate actively in PE and physical activity and (2) funds for professional development. The collaboration joins a community-based organization, About Our Kinds( AOK), Inc with three schools, two local governments and nine community groups. AOK is an experienced federal grantee. Under this leadership, staff and coordination is in place.


Chilhowee R-IV School District (MO) - $202,561
The Commit to be Fit program will help the district and rural community develop a fitness-oriented PE programs for K-12 that meets PE state standards and improves the instructional skills of PE teachers, Specialists, classroom teachers and after-school program staff.  Additionally, this program will implement nutrition components of the Comprehensive School Health Plan and Wellness Policy to promote health eating habits and good nutrition.  Through the Commit to be Fit program, the district will integrate outdoor activities into the PE program that motivate students to increase the number of hours that they spend in physical activity out of school.

The schools listed below are previous PEP winners and the entire list including other states may be found here.

2009: 

MISSOURI

Q215F090560
Wentzville R-IV School District
P.O. Box 311
Wentzville, MO 63385
Contact: Gregg Klinginsmith

$484,105

2007:

MISSOURI

Q215F070072

Kansas City # 33                                                                              $459,868

1211 McGee Street

Kansas City, Missouri  64106

Contact:  Nancy Bailey

(816) 418-1272

Q215F070108

Ferguson-Florissant School District                                             $283,086

1005 Waterford Drive

Florissant, Missouri  63033

Contact:  Laura Beckmann

(314) 506-9052

2006:

St. Louis--Support a Child International  (no amount provided)

2005:

Young Women's Christian Association-St. Louis
Webb City R-7 Schools-Webb City
Dunklin R-5 School District-Herculanuem

(no amounts provided)


2004:

Excelsior Springs School District #40-Excelsior Springs
Cornerstones of Care-Kansas City
Maternal and Child health Coalition-Kansas City
Lamar Community Betterment-Lamar
Twin pike Family YMCA-Louisiana
Ozark R-VI School Distirct-Ozark
Pierce City R-VI School District-Pierce City

(no amounts provided)


2003:


Kansas City-Kansas City #33
Sullivan-Sullivan Public Schools
St Louis-St Louis Public Schools
St Joseph-St Joseph School District
Lamar-Lamar Community Betterment


(no amounts provided)

The Sunday Education Weekly Reader 01.08.12

Welcome to the Sunday Education Weekly Reader for January 8, 2012.  This week's articles include:

• Question for the education political junkies regarding the latest Republican debate
• Privacy concerns raised and lawsuit filed...but not regarding education privacy invasion
• An update on student tracking bracelets
• Parents should be careful what they wish for

**********************************************

Are you concerned about the state of American education?  Do you disagree with the increasing nationalization and centralization of standards constitutionally left to the states?  Are you hoping the Republican presidential candidates will take a stand against this tightening of the Federal noose?

I've received reports from two sources about the intriguing discussion of education between the candidates during the Republican debate on January 7, 2012:

• One source says there was NO discussion of education by the moderator or candidates
• Another source:   "The debate was two hours long.   Number of references to education = 1 (Ron Paul accused Rick Santorum of supporting NCLB), discussion time: about 15 seconds. There was not one question on education from the moderators."

Regardless if the educational debate lasted 0 seconds or 15 seconds, the federal takeover of education creating a system with no taxpayer accountability continues without serious debate.

************************************************************

 

A lawsuit has been filed against the Department of Homeland Security over its plans to monitor social media sites.

Where's the outrage over the Department of Education's circumvention of FERPA privacy laws gutting protection of the usage of student/family private data?  When did the act of walking into a public school allow the government to gather and share personal data of its citizens with agencies and private entities?

************************************************************ 

We wrote about the tracking bracelets used in the Parkway District in gym class and the future plans of the district to send them home with the students to measure behavior 24/7 for one week. The company manufacturing these bracelets, polargofit, is located in Finland, but China is ready to jump on the bandwagon as well.

The Chinese version may be more versatile and the school district might want to expand its tracking ability on students. There are tags for clothing, key fobs, etc which opens up a world of possibility for expanded tracking information. 

 From the product website:

UHF Access Control Tags & Wristbands

860~960 MHz ISO 18000-6B, ISO 18000-6C and EPC Gen 2 tags and wristbands for building security, personnel access control, student attendance, bag and equipment tagging, logistics, inventory and manufacturing management systems, toll collection, parking and vehicle access control and laundry management.

It's important to keep track of the human capital (and the physical data) needed for the workforce.  Yes, it's all for the children, right?

********************************************

 

Should children from birth should be tracked by the government?

"In its successful Early Learning Challenge application, Massachusetts committed to establishing a system of developmentally appropriate assessment of young children, birth to third grade, including kindergarten entry assessment."


Maybe Ritalin can be prescribed for a squirmy 6 month old who doesn't fit into the standard data set for that age group.


***********************************************************

 

Educational thought for the week:

 How Fathers Influence Academic Achievement

‎"The way fathers play with their children also has an important impact on a child's emotional and social development. Fathers spend a much higher percentage of their one-on-one interaction with infants and preschoolers in stimulating, playful activity than do mothers. From these interactions, children learn how to regulate their feelings and behavior. Rough-housing with dad, for example, can teach children how to deal with aggressive impulses and physical contact without losing control of their emotions."

Why Does the Parkway School District Want to Monitor Physical Activity 24/7 on Students? Is it a "Nudge"? (Video)

We wrote yesterday about children wearing bracelets home in the near future (provided by the Parkway School District) to track their physical activity and sleep patterns.  The plan is to have the children wear them 24/7 for one week and to extract the data on the activity level and sleep information.   The school apparently believes it needs this data to make the correlation between physical activity (one hour of moderate to vigorous activity a day), sleep hours, and academic achievement.

This data will be noted individually and could be applied to an entire class, according to the district from the video on the Parkway's website.  (At the end of this article are notes I typed from the video).  The information on the polargofit bracelets given to the Board members begins around 48:40 and ends at 58:14.  


What is bothersome to me is there is no serious discussion about possible the legality of what the school is proposing in gathering student data, and no mention of parental permission either being sought by the school or given by the parents.   Near the end of the information given by the district employee on the bracelets, there is some laughter (the conversation is muffled) about tracking kids and using GPS's on students. 

I could not determine how much these devices would cost the district in total and I did not see it listed on the published agenda.  Here is a press release about polargofit and its mission:

"Polar Active will forever change the ways teachers educate and students learn PE" said Padovan. "With the activity monitor, students exercise based on their individual fitness level, so it shifts the focus from athletic ability to personal improvement, which is key to developing positive lifelong habits around exercise." PolarGoFit.com PolarGoFit.com is an online web service for teachers and students to monitor and track student activity. This time-saving and flexible portal allows for easy documentation of all activity data, tracking daily and long-term progress and sharing reports with students, parents and school administrators. The ability to evaluate tangible activity data helps to assess students objectively for their effort and results. This also helps encourage and motivate students to stay active for longer periods of time and maintain a healthy weight. 

About Polar Headquartered in Lake Success, NY, Polar USA is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Finland-based Polar Electro OY, which invented the first wireless heart rate monitor (HRM) in 1977. Polar now operates internationally in more than 80 countries. Polar heart rate and fitness assessment technology delivers unparalleled insight into the human body from valuable training guidance and feedback, to enabling individuals to improve their fitness level and sports performance. Polar technology is key to the success of leading fitness facilities, athletic teams, corporate wellness facilities, health insurance providers and thousands of physical education programs around the world. "

Notes from the video:

Video of the School Board Meeting December 7, 2011
http://www.pkwy.k12.mo.us/boe/archive/boe120711.cfm

48:45 starts the discussion of the bracelet. Rough transcript of the conversation. Parenthesis denotes questions from the Board.
**********************************************
So kids can "self-monitor" moderate to vigorous exercise. Teachers took a class this summer and the teachers wore them through the fall.

Henry, Ross Elementary, Shenandoah Elementary Schools.

Kids see it as a cool gadget.

Goals. Health, fit, active kids ready to learn.

Kids were "jealous" so bracelets will be shared.

Used as much as they can during PE classes.

Ideally, let the kids wear the monitor an entire week 24/7 and look at sleep patterns as well as physical activity patterns. Interested in seeing the results of that and identity correlation between sleep patterns and academic achievement. **MEW comment: Is this the governmental "nudge" touted by Cass Sunstein and our Commissioner of Education Chris Nicastro?**

Start with one grade level and then add grades one at a time.

In physical education for the longest time we've just been looking at fitness data.

We don't want to just assess fitness we want to assess behavioral change w/regard to physical activity patterns with our students and then we know we've done our job and this tool here will help us do that.

(How do you follow this?)

Each day there is a graph and they try to fill up the tube with moderate to strenuous activity. Keeps 7 days worth of data. Teachers download the information in a graph to the parents.

Idea: get them into the hands of the elementary students at the beginning of the new year.

(How do you plan to use the data and how will you run the data)

We are uploading data--body strength, muscle strength--into PARS. Correlate fitness levels to MAP scores, SAT score. Hope to do the same with physical activity.

Will do individually. Sure we will have school data, entire 5th grade, we'll have the ability to track individual students.

(Question about GPS, school cameras, tracking kids. Laughter)

No, they won't be able to track our students.
Ends at 58:14

Related links:


http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/01/local-st-louis-schools-use-bracelets-to-monitor-children-at-school-and-at-home/


http://hotair.com/archives/2012/01/04/new-psa-you-should-feel-very-very-badly-about-your-obese-child-you-know/

Are Parkway Parents Paying Attention??!

It looks like Parkway parents didn't catch this at the last couple of school board meetings when it was being budgeted for and approved, but hopefully they caught it today in St Louis Today's Suburban Journal.  The Parkway school district will outfit all their elementary students with a "health meter" that they will be required to wear 24/7 for a week (for now). Read the full article below.

Parkway's use of fitness monitors raises privacy questions

When is the line crossed between better health and surveillance?

In early 2012, wristwatch-like devices called Polar active monitors will be used by older students in PE classes at all 18 Parkway elementary schools. District officials say the devices should help improve the students' fitness and academic achievement. 

Later this school year, the district plans to collect data about activity levels and even sleep patterns for a week at a time. It will have the students wear the devices round the clock.

Some parents and legal experts are raising privacy concerns about at least that aspect of the program.

The project
Ron Ramspott, coordinator of health, outdoor and physical education for Parkway, said a pilot project started in Aprilprovided the monitors during physical education classes to students at Henry and Ross elementary schools. Shenandoah Valley Elementary School in Chesterfield joined the pilot in August.

At the district's Dec. 7 Board of Education meeting, the board approved expanding the project beyond the pilot phase. For the program starting this year at all elementary schools, the district will target grades four and five initially, Ramspott said.The monitors measure activity by tracking every movement of the person wearing them. They display steps taken, calories spent and time spent at various levels of activity. An animated figure on the monitor indicates the activity level. A bar shows the target time for doing moderate to vigorous activity and the amount of time achieved at that level.

Under the pilot program, the three schools each received 25 monitors, which cost $90 apiece. The monitors have been rotated among third-, fourth- and fifth-graders in physical education classes.

Each of the district's elementary schools will receive 25 monitors in January and begin using them in PE class. However, the focus of the monitors' use will change gradually, so that by the end of the year students will continually wear the monitors for a full week at a time to assess activity levels.

"We want to be able to look at both physical activity and sleep patterns," Ramspott said. "We also want to see how various activity levels correlate to student achievement and behavior."

Concerns of parents
Ramspott said Parkway will require parental consent to participate largely because of the responsibility of caring for the monitors. (Really!!? They only want parental consent to care for the monitors - MEW question.)

--> "We haven't had any parents refuse to participate at this point as we have only used them in PE classes," Ramspott said. But some parents and others insist they have concerns.

Beth Huebner, PTO co-president at Ross and mother of sons in first and fourth grades, said she wasn't aware of her older child wearing one of the devices and she was never asked for consent

"I'd want to see data generated to help me understand calories burned and sleep patterns," said Huebner, a professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. "I would ask the district tell me about it particularly if the information would be used for district analysis."

Cara Bauer, PTO president at Shenandoah Valley and mother of a son in first grade and a daughter in fifth grade, said she's heard about the monitors from her daughter, Caroline. She said her daughter doesn't like wearing one and calls them "the funny watch."

"I wish Parkway would let parents know what's going on with the program," Bauer said. "I feel they're getting into privacy issues, into people's personal lives, when they have to be worn at home. That kind of makes me a little leery, and, though I think the monitors are a fantastic idea in school, I don't want that at
home." She questioned how the data will be used.

"What will they do with all this information they'll glean from my kid?" Bauer asked. "I'd be curious to see what information they're getting off these contraptions. They're OK in PE, but they make me question why the district isn't being up front with parents about what the program will be at home."

Neil Richards, a professor of law with Washington University in St. Louis who teaches privacy and civil liberties courses, said he  feels the plan for the devices constitutes "a major privacy issue."

"The school district eventually will be engaging in surveillance of kids' sleep and exercise patterns outside the school day," he said. "Though physical activity is important and obesity is a problem, the district could not require kids to wear them because I think it would be a violation of their and their families' Fourth
Amendment rights, which is pretty easily unconstitutional."

And wearing them voluntarily doesn't eliminate privacy concerns, Richards said.

"They'll create a record of medical information about children around the clock," he said. "Even if it serves laudable public health goals, it's a fairly Orwellian step for a school district to engage in."

Benefits of monitoring

--> Ramspott said the current focus in physical education in schools has been on the benefits of especially moderate to vigorous activity. Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity is tied to the intensity of movement, he said. Examples include brisk walking, light jogging, biking, skating and dancing.

 It's recommended by the U.S. Surgeon General that people get 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity on most days of the week for obesity prevention, muscle and bone growth, stress
management and cardiovascular fitness, Ramspott said.

 "The monitors, by showing their progress, allow students to be accountable for reaching moderate to vigorous physical activity," Ramspott said

He said past research shows kids in physical education class are getting the best health benefits only 6 percent to 10 percent of the time. He said the monitors help teachers more accurately assess that percentage of time.

"So teachers can use the data to figure how to design class time to maximize physical activity," Ramspott said.

He called the devices "a much more fair way of evaluating students with regards to level of participation and physical activity in PE class, which is something that is evaluated on most if not all days in PE."
Ramspott said the district plans to share all physical activity and sleep reports with parents and begin exploring correlations between physical activity, sleep patterns, health risk factors and academic performance.

"Our goal is to reduce risk factors for obesity and encourage higher student achievement," Ramspott said.
Data from both the California Study of 2003, 2005, 2007 and from Parkway show a correlation between increased levels of fitness and higher academic achievement, he said.

"Students who pass more of the fitness proficiency levels on the Parkway Fitness Test score higher on reading and math on both the MAP and SAT-7 tests," he said. "It is a positive linear correlation between fitness levels and math/reading scores on these two tests. It does not prove that fitness makes us smarter, but (it) does bring a strong case for increased fitness and the increased capacity to learn.

Laura Beckmann, physical education and health teacher at Shenandoah Valley Elementary School, said her students can watch the monitors and see their physically active minutes climb up. The school also started a web-based program so she can download each monitors's data and come up with group and individual activity summaries, to track up to three weeks of time.

"These reports will go into portfolios to let kids examine their own behaviors and set goals," Beckmann said.

Amy Sydnor, physical education and health teacher at Ross Elementary School in Creve Coeur, said her students that do not wear the monitors wear pedometers instead. Ramspott said the district uses several methods including pedometers for measuring activity levels in PE class.

Sydnor called the activity monitors "a great resource to ensure kids are getting the amount of activity they need to be healthy.

In the Rockwood School District, staff is completing setting up Polar active monitors to track the activity of fifth-grade students at Blevins Elementary School in Eureka through polargofit.com, said Ed Mathison, health and physical education content facilitator for the district.

Privacy and research

Still, parents should be asking what data is being collected from those devices and when, Richards said. They should ask what rights they have to control the data, whether data is anonymous, what safeguards will be in place to protect data, whether the district is going to give it or sell it to anyone, when data will be destroyed, and whether the district has a privacy policy available to parents.

"If a university would do this study, they'd need to have lots of approval and consent from our internal review board, because this is a form of human subject research," Richards said. "Though the district should be applauded for ensuring kids are healthy, this kind of biological surveillance seems to go far beyond what they should be concerned with."

He wonders what's next.

"Will they start monitoring kids' nutrition at home or how many hours they spend reading at home?" Richards asked.

[end Suburban Journal piece]

Questions parents should be asking:

• Is it the job of the school to track student health data?
• Once it's uploaded onto a web-based program, can the district really promise its confidentiality?
• Why does the school want information on activity at home? Is that any of their business?
• What "corrective" actions will children whose activity falls below some set point be required to take? How will that be enforced?

We will have more on this story tomorrow. In the mean time parents should begin thinking about the ramifications of collecting this kind of data.

The Top 100 Millionaire Teachers and Administrators in St. Louis County

Kirkwood School District has the highest paid superintendent in the state but is number 2 when it comes to the amount of pensions paid out in the state according to this St. Louis Today article quoting information from Taxpayers United of America:

At least 100 former or current St. Louis County school district leaders will make more than $4.3 million after retirement in taxpayer-supported pensions, and another 100 workers for the State of Missouri will make more than $2.3 million over their lifetimes in pension earnings, according to lists released here today by an anti-pension advocacy group.

The Taxpayers United of America, in the middle of its Midwest tour, stopped in St. Louis this afternoon for a press conference before heading on to Jefferson City, Springfield, and Kansas City this week, then California, Virginia and Kentucky later this year.

Taxpayers United Vice-President Christina Tobin and Director of Outreach Rae Ann McNeilly said the lists expose "the top government salaries and pensions" for public school and state workers.

"St. Louis County public school teachers and Missouri government employees are pulling in huge salaries and will have lavish, gold-plated pensions when they retire," Tobin said in a prepared statement. "Meanwhile, Missouri taxpayers are suffering through the worst economic climate since the Great Depression."

Just how large are some of these pensions?

The Parkway School District topped the educators list, with 15 employees - mostly or all administrators - making the top 100, at an estimated annual cost of $1.7 million, or $73 million over the lifetimes of the workers.

Kirkwood schools came in next, with 13 employees on the list at a cost of $1.5 million per year, or $63 million over their lifetimes.

In total, the top-100 educators averaged about $115,000 each annually.

The study's top overall payout went to Parkway's former superintendent, Robert Malito, who is collecting an estimated $175,448 in retirement, or about $7.5 million over his lifetime.

Wow. Can you believe this? Look at this list of teachers and administrators and be prepared to be amazed at the amount of tax payer dollars that are being spent for pensions that a private industry worker cannot even believe to expect through his/her 401K. Wouldn't most privately employed retirees be eager to retire at $175,000 a year in his/her retirement?

The next time your school district comes to you for a tax increase and tells you it's "all for the children", take along this list and determine how much some of your district employees are being paid out over their lifetimes. No wonder public education costs so much these days.

For a detailed report on how teacher pensions are fast becoming a trillion dollar taxpayer liability, read the Forbes article "The Teacher Pension Nightmare".

What Does The Global Citizen Think About

In life, it's important to ask questions. But even more important than that, it’s critical to ask the right questions, because if you don't ask the right question, the answer you get may be meaningless. This is especially true considering the subject of teacher accountability. The question currently being asked is, “Are teachers teaching students well enough to meet some standard?” In order to answer this question, Race To The Top has proposed a daunting series of assessments of student performance and plans to use those assessments as a measuring tool of teacher performance. Almost any study designer worth their weight will tell you that it is dangerous to use an associative value to determine another parameter’s actual value. Whether a child is learning the material is only partially attributable to how well the teacher is teaching it, but RTTP places an almost 1:1 correlation between the two.

Certainly, we all want to make sure our children are learning and don't want to discover when they graduate from public school that they have not learned anything that will either get them a job or into college. But there are very few parents out there who are lamenting, “My eighth grader can’t do a quadratic equation. What are they teaching at that school?” Yet that is lament RTTP is designed to answer.

The accountability parents are often looking for is; Is that teacher available before the big test in order to help answer my child's questions? Does that teacher belittle my child in front of the classroom? Does a teacher share his or her personal political beliefs with the class instead of teaching the subject material? Does the teacher lie to the students or bully them? Does the teacher refer to her students as parasites? Does the teacher play power games by telling students that their grade will be determined by whether the teacher likes the questions they ask, rather than by the actual work they do? Does the teacher require the students to participate in his/her pet projects as a part of their grade?

This type of accountability is almost never addressed and we therefore have teachers like the one at Parkway West Middle School who put this poster on her classroom door (it's been there for two years so far) without challenge, approval or explanation. A friend, who is also a teacher, passed this on to me because it bothered her so much. She was afraid to say anything at school since no one else had said anything, giving the impression of tacit approval.

How To Build A Global Community

Think of no one as "them"
Don't confuse your comfort with your safety
Talk to strangers
Imagine other cultures through their poetry and novels
Listen to music, you don't understand -- dance to it
Act locally
Notice the workings of power and privilege in your culture
Question consumption
Know how your lettuce and coffee are grown: wake up and smell the exploitation
Look for fair trade and union labels
Help build economies from the bottom up
Acquire few needs
Learn a second (or third) language
Visit people, places, and cultures -- not tourist attractions
Learn people's history -- redefine progress
Know physical and political geography
Play games from other cultures -- watch films with subtitles
Know your heritage
Honor everyone's holidays
Look at the moon and imagine someone else somewhere else looking at it too
Read the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Understand the global economy in terms of people, land, and water
Know where your bank banks
Never believe you have the right to anyone else's resources
Refuse to wear corporate logos: define corporate domination
Question military/corporate connections
Don't confuse money with wealth, or time with money
Have a pen/e-mail pal -- honor indigenous cultures
Judge governance by how well it meets all peoples’ needs
Be skeptical about what you read
Eat adventurously -- enjoy vegetables, beans and grains in your diet
Choose curiosity over certainty
Know where your water comes from and where your wastes go
Pledge allegiance to the earth; question nationalism
Think South, Central, and North -- there are many Americans
Assume that many others share your dreams
Know that no one is silent, but many are not heard
Work to change this

By Syracuse Cultural Workers Community, 2002. Bringing you their message since 1982. You really must visit their website. They have so much to offer. As opposed as they seem to be to corporate money grubbing, they are more than happy to take yours for all their products. This gem is available in bookmark and postcard form. Also available for purchase is the book We Want Freedom, a collection of memories of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Philadelphia Black Panther who shot a police officer point blank and is currently serving a life sentence. The book gives the history of black liberation struggles. But then again, this teacher may merely be lending her support to fellow California union teachers who recently passed a resolution reaffirming their support for Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Where is this teacher’s accountability for posting this tripe on her door? I keep asking this every time I meet a school board candidate, an education reformer or a school administrator. When will teachers be held accountable for this type of propagandizing? So far I have only been met with blank stares.

There are so many pearls of wisdom in this poster I can hardly pick my favorite one. Maybe you can share your favorite one in the comment section.