Watching over you: to keep better tabs on students, one Texas district is testing ID badges that track school comings and goings.Outside her home in Spring, Tex., Courtney Payne, 9, exits a yellow school bus. Moments later, her movement is observed by Man Bragg, the local police chief, in a windowless control room more than a mile away. Chief Bragg is not using video surveillance. Rather, he watches an icon on a computer screen. The icon marks the spot on a map where Courtney got off the bus, and, on a larger level, it represents the latest in the convergence of technology and student security. WORRIED PARENTS Hoping to improve safety by keeping better tabs on students, a few schools have begun monitoring student arrivals and departures with technology similar to that used to track livestock and retail shipments. In Spring, a growing suburb north of Houston, 28,000 students have been given ID badges containing computer chips that are read when students get on and off school buses. The information is then fed by wireless phone to police and school administrators. In a variation on the concept, a Phoenix school district is using fingerprint fingerprint, an impression of the underside of the end of a finger or thumb, used for identification because the arrangement of ridges in any fingerprint is thought to be unique and permanent with each person (no two persons having the same prints have ever been technology to track when and where students get on and off buses. And a charter school in Buffalo, N.Y., is automating attendance counts with computerized computerized adapted for analysis, storage and retrieval on a computer. computerized axial tomography see computed tomography. ID badges. In the Spring district, many parents are applauding the $180,000 system. "I'm sure we're being overprotective o·ver·pro·tect tr.v. o·ver·pro·tect·ed, o·ver·pro·tect·ing, o·ver·pro·tects To protect too much; coddle: overprotected their children. , but you hear about all this violence," says Elisa Temple-Harvey, the parent of a fourth-grader. "I'm not saying this will curtail cur·tail tr.v. cur·tailed, cur·tail·ing, cur·tails To cut short or reduce. See Synonyms at shorten. [Middle English curtailen, to restrict it, or stop it, but at least I know she made it to campus." 'TOO BIG BROTHER FOR ME' But there are critics, including some older students and privacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), nonpartisan organization devoted to the preservation and extension of the basic rights set forth in the U.S. Constitution. , who say the system is security paranoia paranoia (pr'ənoi`ə), in psychology, a term denoting persistent, unalterable, systematized, logically reasoned delusions, or false beliefs, usually of persecution or grandeur. . "It's too Big Brother for me," says Kenneth Haines, 15. "Something about the school wanting to know the exact place and time makes me feel kind of like an animal." Others worry that schools may feel compelled to get the most out of their investment--and track where students go after school. Advocates say they don't plan on going that far, but they do see its potential for keeping track of when students cut class. Matt Richtel Matt Richtel writes the syndicated comic Rudy Park under the penname Theron Heir. The strip is illustrated by Darrin Bell. Richtel also works as a reporter for the New York Times, where he writes under his real name. covers technology for The Times. |
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