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.

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."

Opt-Out Campaign Announced on Protecting the Privacy of Students' School Records

I was asked to retweet the following article. In addition to retweeting, I am reprinting this important information on how to protect your student's privacy even as the DOE is intent on gathering intrusive data so it can track your human capital from birth into the workforce.

Read the following from Education NY, take action, and spread the word to other taxpayers and parents. Learn how to protect the privacy of YOUR child's school record. Visit the website for other important information on how student data is being sold to third parties and other privacy information:

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

National Opt-Out Campaign Informs Parents How to Protect the Privacy of their Children's School Records

Parents have rights under the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act to restrict access to their children's personal information.

New York, N.Y. -- As cases of identity theft, database hacking, and the sale of personal information increase daily, the need to protect children's privacy becomes even more urgent. Schools are a rich source of personal information about children that can be legally and illegally accessed by third parties. That's why Education New York's National Opt-out Campaign is alerting parents to their rights under the federal Family Educational Rights Privacy Act (FERPA) to restrict third-party access to their children's information and encouraging them to review their school's annual FERPA notification at the beginning of the school year.

Parents concerned about their children's privacy should be aware of how easily personally identifiable information can be bought and sold by marketers as well as by identity thieves. The Federal Trade Commission recently issued a Consumer Alert to parents warning of the risk of children's identity theft and urging parents to safeguard their children's school records and directory information. http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt056.shtm

FERPA was enacted in 1974 to protect the privacy of education records and directory information -- which can include name, address, phone number, date of birth, and e-mail address, among other personally identifiable information. However, under FERPA, directory information can be disclosed without parental consent.

Parents should be aware that FERPA protects the privacy of the record and not the child. Kathleen Styles, the Chief Privacy Officer at the U.S. Department of Education, which oversees FERPA, said: "One thing that's important to remember about FERPA is that it's not a confidentiality statute for information about children -- it's a confidentiality statute for information in education records." http://www.educationnewyork.com/files/071211_sess3.pdf

As the new school year gets under way across the country, parents have an opportunity to become proactive by finding out who has access to their children's personal information and "opt out" of allowing the school to share any or all of that information with third parties.

With the Opt Out Campaign, Education New York is informing parents of their rights under FERPA as well as the gaps in the law that have resulted in numerous information privacy breaches around the country and a robust market in children's personal information.

Parents and others interested in children's privacy are encouraged to visit http://www.educationnewyork.com/optout to learn more about:

- The growing problem of child identity theft.
- Current law and legislation protecting children's privacy.
- Who's illegally accessing your children's personal information.
- How opt-out forms can be adapted to give parents more options to protect information.
- What some states are doing to further restrict access to student information.

Education New York is an independent source of education news from around the nation. Education New York was founded in 1995 by Sheila Kaplan, an education and information policy expert and researcher. For more information, visit http://www.educationnewyork.com or e-mail Sheila@EducationNewYork.com. Follow Education New York on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/educationNY