Maybe Your Kid Won’t Be Ear-Tagged After All. Student-Tracking Loses Favor.

They’ve tried monitoring
students with
RFID chips,
video cameras,
intrusive phone apps,
fingerprint scanners, and
demands for social media passwords. And along the road to
clasping school kids in the smothering embrace of complete and
total safety at every single moment (guaranteed!) public school
educrats have managed something extremely impressive: they’ve
freaked normal human beings right the fuck out. Some states now see
a backlash, as parents come to realize that letting bureaucrats
follow their offspring everywhere is both creepy and unwise.

At Stateline, Jeffrey Stinson
writes:

But those tools, which are supposed to make schools safer and
more efficient, have become a flashpoint for controversy. Several
states are now banning or restricting the use of the technology in
schools, as worries over student privacy have risen amid breaches
of government and commercial computer databases.

This year, Florida became the first state to ban the use of
biometric identification in its schools. Kansas said biometric data
cannot be collected without student or parental consent. New
Hampshire, Colorado and North Carolina said the state education
departments cannot collect and store biometric data as part of
student records.

New Hampshire and Missouri lawmakers said schools can’t require
students to use ID cards equipped with radio frequency
identification (RFID) technology that can track them. The new laws
are similar to one Oregon passed last year and what Rhode Island
Iawmakers passed in 2009.

The laws reflect a growing sense of unease among parents and
lawmakers about new technology, how it’s being used, what student
data is being collected and stored and what security protects the
information.

Many school officials and the companies that supply the
technology insist that tracking the little darlings is a swell
idea, and perfectly safe, too. But even people who aren’t
inherently offended by constant monitoring are aware that no
database  completely safe, and that
government databases
leak like sieves even when they’re not being
actively abused by the officials with
access to them.

Nobody really knows how many schools have gone the
total-surveillance route, so whether this is a serious rebellion or
merely a speedbump on the road to panopticon is anybody’s guess. Is
it really necessary to point out that the police state environment
is just one more reason to avoid public schools?

Note: My son is homeschooled. He’s in the front yard. I
think.