In school districts across the St. Louis region, private companies are being handed your child's digital backpack.
Schools are paying tens of thousands in taxpayer dollars to outside tech firms to monitor what students do online.
Is it keeping children safe?
Or is it sacrificing kids' privacy and long-term security?
listen to the conclusion of S is for Surveillance
They're high-tech hall monitors, sweeping through the corridors, alert to students' online movement.
Watching where students go, listening to what's being said, on guard for suspicious behavior.
Listen to part 1 of S is for Surveillance
Many educators are passionate supporters. "A lot of it is helping us put out fires before anything even happens," explains Richard Hirsch, former school resource officer, now Director of Safety and Security for Bloomington, Illinois schools.
Bloomington is home to Gaggle -- one of the major players in online student surveillance. "I have my phone by my bed, every night, and sometimes I'll get Gaggle alerts at three in the morning." Hirsch considers it a safety net, "I can at least name three or four incidents where it was threats of suicide and the kids had plans in place, they had a date, and we were able to get them help."
He tells KMOX it's also been used by the district to flag students who might be a harm to others, "You know we've gotten a couple of kids who've just had an unhealthy passion for guns and they're researching guns on their school computer."
The websites of student monitoring companies are full of banners and bold text showing detection stats and real life stories of tragedies averted.
Listen to Part 2 of S is for Surveillance
"We really emphathise with schools. Schools have a lot going on." Rachel Franz of the non-profit Fairplay, says she's not convinced that online surveillance is the answer. "We really need to rethink this idea that we need to know every single thing that our kids are doing every single moment"
Instead of school being a safe place where kids can learn from mistakes, Franz contends, "It normalizes this idea that if you make a mistake it could haunt you for the rest of your life because it's being recorded and there's record of it."
Franz is concerned about who has access to those records on children. Many of the monitoring platforms say they rely on human moderators or monitors to screen the most sensitive alerts. "There's not really clear safety information about what these moderators can and can't do with this data and with these materials that they're receiving, so there's so much room for a possible leakage."
Privacy was a key concern highlighted in a US Senate investigation of student monitoring platforms. The final report concluded -- parents aren't being given enough information about privacy risks -- not from their school districts and not from the online surveillance companies profiting from taxpayer dollars.
Listen to Part 3 of S is for Surveillance
What does happen to all the data????
KMOX News asked Elizabeth Laird with the Center for Democracy and Technology:
Q: "Should I have to worry as a parent that somewhere on a server or the cloud there's a whole data set on my children about their online activity?
A: I think it is very fair to ask... How long is it kept? What is the utility of keeping this information? Law enforcement? How long do they get to use it?"
We researched questions about data storage:
The short answer -- it depends on the company your district hires. Some say they delete children's sensitive data every 30 days -- more often if requested. Others keep data on students until they graduate.
And as we've told you, beyond your local school officials information about your kids could be shared with law enforcement, third party service providers, and company moderators who don't even know your child.
You've listened to our reports about online student surveillance and you're wondering, what's next for your family?
Can you opt out???
"So we consider that an accommodation," Parkway's Jason Rooks says that's something that would require a lot of discussion, on a case-by-case basis. If your student's curriculum and learning is tied to a device it's going to be tough. "What can we do to make sure that we're not putting the student at a disadvantage in the classroom?"
Rooks maintains, technology is simply a tool, "your scissors, your pencil, your paper, your chromebook, you know, all of those pieces that are part of your learning day."
Critics like former educator Emily Cherkin -- known as "The Screentime Consultant" -- aren't convinced, "so I see it there's a liability cya thing going on for school districts as they're protecting themselves as they knowingly invest in problematic technology."
If you're concerned, or simply want to know more, here are some recommendations:
- Check your school handbook and website for information related to technology and privacy. KMOX News discovered that in many cases, you will have to go to administrators directly to get specifics about the monitoring software in use
- It's also important to ask questions about what happens with your child's data, such as what's being tracked online, what information is saved, and who has access.
How do you talk to your kids about something you likely never dealt with as a student yourself? Even the advocacy groups we spoke with were uncertain how to help famlies navigate. Elizabeth Laird: "How do you know as a parent and how do you help your child know, what is appropriate and inappropriate, what will be flagged and what won't be flagged?
Resouces
Center for Democracy and Technology research on online student monitoring
Popular online student monitoring programs referenced in our reports:
Bark
Gaggle
GoGuardian
Linewize
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