Jim Schultz writes: As the Lockport school district prepares to go live with its controversial facial recognition cameras, the project has become national news. From NPR to the front page of the Washington Post, journalists have been asking the kinds of questions that the school district never did: Will it actually make our kids any…
Category: Youth & Schools
Councils use 377,000 people’s data in efforts to predict child abuse
Niamh McIntyre and David Pegg report: Vast quantities of data on hundreds of thousands of people is being used to construct computer models in an effort to predict child abuse and intervene before it can happen, the Guardian has learned. Amid mounting financial pressure, local councils are developing “predictive analytics” systems to algorithmically identify families…
Parent advocacy results in Toronto District School Board seeking written consent for GAFE
In response to a recent post encouraging parents to ask questions about schools’ data security and data privacy, “Speak up parents, speak up,” one of this site’s regular readers submitted a comment: Parents don’t care. All they want to see are their children’s photos on school Facebook, Instagram or Twitter account pages for the whole…
The Unintentional Ways Schools Might Be Violating FERPA, and How They Can Stay Vigilant
Tina Nazerian writes: Want to throw away old student records? Make sure you don’t just put them in trash cans—shred them first. If you don’t, your institution might get accused of violating the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, which protects student education records in both K-12 and higher education. LeRoy Rooker is…