WIXLIB

NASBE.ORGBYOD program, schools are monitoringstudent property that is more likely to havenoneducation-related materials and perhaps sensitive information, raising privacyconcerns.13violence harms students psychologicallyand compromises their “feelings of safetyand connectedness.”14 The internet posesmany dangers, as do malicious texts ormalware that arrives on student devices.Ensuring Student SafetyPerhaps the most compelling impetusfor school surveillance is the desire tokeep students safe, not only online, butalso in the physical school environment.Broad “safety” and “security” concernsare cited as chief reasons for many schoolsurveillance techniques. In 2012, 749,200US students ages 12 to 18 were “victimsof nonfatal school violence.” Schools anddistricts naturally feel compelled to act.Numerous studies show that school-basedRecently, one of the most legislated areasof student safety has been cyberbullying.Unlike traditional school bullying, wherestudents could at least escape it by goinghome, cyberbullies can follow children viathe device in their backpacks.News reports relate numerous examples:A sixth grade boy came to school one dayto find out that another sixth grader hadposted a Facebook status the previousnight asking his friends to “like” it if theyhated the boy. As of that morning, 57people had liked the status. A 13-year-oldgirl’s Facebook photo was adorned withanother girl commenting “hideous” and“this pic makes me throwup a lil.” The girlstated that, if she had to choose betweenthe life of an animal and that of the girl inthe photos, she would choose the animal’s because “yeah, at least they’re worthsomething.” A 12-year-old girl committedsuicide in 2013 by jumping off a cementplant platform after being cyberbullied forover a year. A survey in 2011 found thatwhile two-thirds of the teenagers surveyedwere “mostly kind” to each other on socialnetworks, 88 percent of them said they hadwitnessed “people being mean or cruel,”and one in five said they had been one of[ B OX 1 ]Filters and MonitoringThe Children’s Internet Protection Act requires that all publiclibraries and schools receiving E-rate funds—approximately 95percent of schools—implement an internet safety policy that includes “protection measures [that] must block or filter Internetaccess to pictures that are: (a) obscene; (b) child pornography;or (c) harmful to minors.” While “child pornography” is fairlywell-defined, what is “obscene” or “harmful to minors” will varyfrom community to community.a There is no preordained list offilters. Consequently, schools have been pinged for overfilteringstudent internet access, with some students unable to accesswebsites for school projects on topics such as breast cancer.In a report on the impacts of CIPA 10 years later, the AmericanLibrary Association noted that “the over-filtering that occurstoday affects not only what teachers can teach but also howthey teach, and creates barriers to learning and acquiring digitalliteracy skills that are vital for college and career readiness, as wellas for full participation in 21st-century society.”b Another reporton youth and the internet compared the internet to a swimmingpool: “Swimming pools can be dangerous for children. To protectthem, one can install locks, put up fences, and deploy pool alarms.All of these measures are helpful, but by far the most importantthing that one can do for one’s children is teach them to swim.”c Tohelp students learn how to navigate the internet, an amendment toCIFA in 2008 requires schools to address students’ digital literacy.ties, and how they do so must be referenced in schools’ internetsafety policies. Schools do not need monitoring software tofulfill the requirement—it can be satisfied through in-personsupervision—but most schools use a “keyword” system, whichflags certain inappropriate words used on a device or in studentemails and sends an alert to school administrators. The FederalCommunications Commission, which oversees CIPA compliance, has yet to offer guidance on schools’ responsibilities tomonitor student one-to-one devices, particularly when thosedevices are used at home.a. The E-rate program provides participating schools and libraries withdiscounts on “telecommunications, telecommunications services andInternet access,” as well as for “internal connections, managed internalbroadband services and basic maintenance of internal connections.” Thediscounts that libraries and schools receive are significant, ranging from“20 to 90 percent, with higher discounts for higher poverty and morerural schools and libraries.” (FCC, “FAQs on E-Rate Program for Schoolsand Libraries,” viceprogram-schools-and-libraries-e-rate; John Harrington, “The InternetIs Speeding Up—and Schools Are Demanding Faster Connections,”Commentary, Edscoop.com (August 2, 2016).b. Kristen R. Batch, “Fencing Out Knowledge: Impacts of the Children’sInternet Protection Act 10 Years Later,” Policy Brief No. 5 (Washington,DC: American Library Association, June 2014).c. Dick Thornburgh and Herbert S. Lin, eds., Youth, Pornography, andthe Internet (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2002).CIPA also requires schools to monitor students’ online activi-October 20165

SCHOOL SURVEILLANCE: THE CONSEQUENCES FOR EQUITY AND PRIVACYthose mean people. Victims of cyberbullying tend to be more unwilling to attendschool, are more likely to experience adrop in self-esteem, and are more likely touse drugs and alcohol.15Forty-six states and the District ofColumbia have passed laws prohibitingcyberbullying, many of which give schoolsresponsibilities for identifying instancesof bullying.16 At a minimum, schools willface community criticism and scrutinyif they miss an instance of bullying thatresults in suicide or attempted suicide,particularly if the bullying occurred ontheir network or a school-owned device.They may also see federal consequences: A2010 “dear colleague” letter from the Officefor Civil Rights in the US Department ofEducation (ED) noted that bullying may,under certain circumstances, “triggerlegal responsibilities for schools underthe civil rights laws enforced by OCR andthe Department of Justice that prohibitdiscrimination and harassment based onrace, color, national origin, sex, disability,and religion.”17Another online area where student safetycomes into play is sexting. Generallydefined as “the sending of sexually explicitmessages or images,” sexting has increasingly become an issue in schools.18 In a2014 survey, 54 percent of respondents re-ported sexting as a minor, and 71 percentreported knowing others who had experienced negative consequences becauseof sexting.19 Because the law considerssexting by children under 18 to be distribution of child pornography, sexting hasserious consequences for the sender.Some states have chosen to prosecuteminors to the law’s fullest extent, includingregistering those convicted as sex offendersfor life.20As of 2015, 20 states had passeda law that addressed minors sending andreceiving sexts, 21 but, in many other states,punishments are subject to a prosecutor’sdiscretion (map 2).22 Because studentsmay use school networks or devices tosend or receive these sexts, share photosduring the school day with classmates, ortake the photos while on campus, schoolsmay choose to add keywords or use othermethods that could identify sexts whilemonitoring student devices or internetaccess.A third safety reason for monitoringonline behavior is to predict and avoidschool violence. Many school shooterstelegraph their plans directly or indirectlythrough social media or on the internetsites they access. One district noted thattheir program “monitors keywords thatcould present threats, for example ‘gun’ or‘attack’ or ‘kill’ or words of that nature.”23[ B OX 2 ]Apple Classroom App for iPadMany schools try to balance the need for device monitoring with the need toensure privacy. Some companies are helping schools maintain this balance. Apple,for example, this year launched an app called Classroom, which allows teachers to“guide learning, share work, and manage student devices.” There are two innovative privacy elements to the app. While in class, teachers can see any student’siPad screen from the teacher’s device to ensure that students are on task. But oncestudents leave the Bluetooth range of the teacher devices, they can no longer bemonitored. In addition, students receive a notification at the top of their deviceswhen teachers are looking at their iPads.6“Administratorsoften hope that visiblesecurity measures, such asvideo surveillance, can beused to make students feelmore secure and perhapsalso deter bad behavior.”A January 2016 report from the FBI notedthat “targeted violence is the end resultafter a process of thinking and behavior,”and “[u]naccountable or unobserved spaceprovides a window of opportunity forstudents engaging in activities contrary totheir family norms or desires, thus creatingadditional vulnerabilities and opportunities for exposure to violent extremistsor violent rhetoric.”24 Schools often usethe same internet and device monitoringtechnologies to detect these behaviors thatthey use to keep students on task.Some districts also monitor students’social media accounts. While some schoolshave employees “friend” students onlineto monitor their social media activity, agrowing number of schools employ companies like Geo Listening to monitor theirstudents’ social media accounts.25 GeoListening aggregates and saves “a recordof publicly available social media information,” which it then “filters” and providesto “participating schools or school districtswith an accurate and timely report of poststhat can help them intervene on behalfof students with regard to their specificneed.”26 The company collects “a username,date and timestamp, geolocation dataand the full content of the public post”from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Vine,Ask.fm, YouTube, and Google , and itprovides the information it collects onlyto participating school or school districtclients. Orange County Public Schools

NASBE.ORGin California began using another socialmedia monitoring company, SnapTrends,as an early-warning system after the 2012Sandy Hook Elementary School shootingin Newtown, Connecticut.27However, online surveillance may notbe sufficient to keep students safe.Administrators often hope that visible security measures, such as video surveillance,will make students feel more secure andperhaps also deter bad behavior. Studentswho feel safe at school “have higher attendance rates, better academic performance,and may experience fewer classroomdisruptions from other students.”28Most K-12 school districts around thecountry are employing some sort of videosurveillance monitoring system to protect students and secure the campus.29 Bythe 2013–14 school year, 75 percent ofschools were using one or more securitycameras to monitor in-school activity, upfrom 61 percent in 2009.30 After the SandyHook shooting in 2012, state legislaturesin 2013 introduced 62 school safety billsthat included safety upgrades, includinginstallation of video surveillance cameras,31 and state laws passed in 2016 continueto authorize spending for a range of schoolsecurity measures.32 In one district, videosurveillance was used when a student ranaway, allowing the school to tell the police“every car she visited and every person shespoke with [after leaving her last class],up until she got into a car to leave thepremises.”33Few districts have added cameras inclassrooms versus school hallways, but thenumber is growing. Texas, for example,passed a law in 2015 mandating that allschools video- and audio-record classroominteractions between special educationstudents and their teachers if requested todo so.34 The primary purpose of the lawis to protect special education studentsfrom abuse in the classroom, but advocatesclaim it should also be praised as a toolfor both teachers and students who facefalse accusations of inappropriate conduct:They will be able to point to the camerarecording as evidence.35 For example, inone school, a music teacher who taughtin a separate building from many of hiscolleagues requested the school install acamera in his classroom as a safeguard:“[E]ven an accusation, whether it’s true ornot, can end my career.”36In Iowa, one school district bought bodycameras for administrators. Inspired byan incident where a principal was wrongfully accused of kicking a student, schooladministrators from this Iowa districtasserted that recording can be a valuabletool for “personal accountability.”37The utility for staff protection notwithstanding, advocates say student safety isthe primary motivation for video recordings. However, some concerns have beenraised about whether this is a step too far.One commentator asks, “If a principalis wearing a body camera, will a studentbe more or less likely to discuss abuseor bullying?. . . Students need to feel likethey can confide in principals and viceprincipals without the conversation beingrecorded.”38Many schools also have video surveillanceon school buses: As of 2015, two-thirds ofschool buses were equipped with interiorsurveillance systems.39 Student safety is theprimary purpose—25 percent of bullyingis done on school buses—but bus camerasare also used to reduce student disciplinaryincidents and protect staff. In HarfordCounty, Maryland, a committee foundthat there was a 61 percent decrease inthe number of referrals given to studentsfor behavioral problems after surveillancewas installed on some school buses in thedistrict.40 Video surveillance on buses canreveal staff malfeasance as well, as oneNew York school district discovered whena bus driver accused of slapping a studentwas caught on camera.41Some school systems have installed audiorecording devices in their buses as well.[ MAP 2 ]20 States Have Laws Addressing Sexting by Minors********DC*Has law addressing sending/receiving by those under 18Law specifies “sexting”*Source: Cyberbullying Research Center (updated July 2015).October 20167

SCHOOL SURVEILLANCE: THE CONSEQUENCES FOR EQUITY AND PRIVACYIn 2014, for example, Boston equipped its750 school buses with both cameras andmicrophones to address and investigate“reports of bullying, other disciplinaryissues, and even traffic accidents.”42Allowing Auditing and EfficiencySchools also use surveillance for auditingand efficiency. For example, surveillanceis used to prevent or catch cheating ormonitor for inappropriate content (suchas looking at pornography on a schooldevice). Tracking school buses (and thosewho ride them) not only increases studentsafety, it also improves efficiency. Toolswith GPS capabilities and automated routing systems allow districts to streamline anoften inefficient system by tracking howmany students board buses at particularstops and comparing these numbers to busroute maps.While transportation efficiency is thedriving purpose, districts using these toolsare not-so-incidentally tracking whetherand where students are getting on buses.43Some schools employ radio-frequency identification technology (RFID) todocument and manage student movementand campus access. Schools in Georgia,for example, are using RFID badges totrack children as they board their bus andare informing parents of where and whentheir kids got on or off and whether theyeventually made it into the school. Thecompany providing the badges noted in aTimes Free Press interview that the badgescould be used to track student whereabouts during emergencies, such as thelarge snowstorm that stranded hundredsof Atlanta students on school buses oneday in January 2014 as road conditionsdeteriorated.44A few schools have begun to use biometric technologies to increase efficiency andprotect students. The US Department ofEducation defines a “biometric record”as “one or more measurable biologicalor behavioral characteristics that canbe used for automated recognition of8“Surveilled studentsmay feel they are in a lessnurturing, comfortable learningenvironment.”an individual.” For example, Blinkspot,a leading company in “pupil pupils,”has developed iris scanners for schoolbuses. The reader scans students’ eyesand sounds an alert to indicate whetherthey got on the right bus. Blinkspot’sscanner also syncs with a mobile app thatupdates parents. As with other tools usedto track students’ movements, biometrictechnology could be key to reassuring oraiding parents and school administrators,especially in emergency situations suchas natural disasters or school shootings,or ensure student safety by, for example,keeping children from being accidentallyleft on a bus.POTENTIAL PRIVACY AND EQUITYCONSEQUENCESClearly, school districts are using surveillance for many good reasons. However,just as with surveillance measures inbroader society, there are several ways thatthe technologies in schools can be abused.Speaking about the dilemma in society atlarge, two highly regarded privacy scholarsnoted, “There is a line between surveillance that is essential for the public goodand invasive total-information awareness technologies, and that line is easy tocross if unattended.”45 If schools continueto embrace the potential benefits thataccompany surveillance technology, statepolicymakers must be prepared to confront, and potentially regulate, the privacyconsequences of that surveillance.The Surveillance EffectWhen Edward Snowden met with reportersto discuss the National Security Agency’spublic monitoring practices, he notoriouslyinsisted on everyone putting their cellphones in the hotel fridge to block radiosignals that could activate the devices’ microphones or cameras.46 While high schoolstudents are unlikely to take such extrememeasures, decisions about whether to usesurveillance should weigh the potentialnegative consequences of students becoming accustomed to surveillance or takingextreme measures to avoid it.An obvious potential consequence is thatsurveilled students may feel they are in aless nurturing, comfortable learning environment. Security measures can interferewith the trust and cooperation learning requires by creating barriers among students,teachers, and officials, and casting schoolsin a negative light in students’ eyes.47As some commentators have pointed out,private is not the opposite of public.48 Forexample, a bench in a city park may be“public,” but the conversation you havewith a friend while sitting on it may beconsidered “private.” Likewise, while thetypical school campus environment isconsidered public, many private momentsoccurred in the pre-surveillance age. Butstudents’ awareness of surveillance maymake them act differently than they otherwise would in the absence of surveillance.Not everyone reacts to surveillance thesame way, however: It “can evoke anger,embarrassment, guilt, shame, fear, but alsoa sense of security and safety.”49In some cases, the purpose of video cameras on buses or in school hallways is tohave students act differently. They should,for example, be deterred from vandalizingproperty or bullying others. Several studiessuggest that being aware of surveillancecan improve behavior.50 One study foundthat placing a mirror behind an unguardedbowl of candy led children to select fewerpieces of candy.51 In another, a poster ofstaring human eyes in a cafeteria causedlunch-goers to clean up after themselves attwice the rate as before the introduction ofthe poster.52

NASBE.ORGDespite the potential benefit of deterringbad behavior, surveillance in schools alsoposes a threat to intellectual privacy andencroaches on the space to voice opinionsand challenge convention. According toprivacy expert and law professor NeilRichards, surveillance can cause “ourthoughts and beliefs [to] get driven to theboring, the bland, and the mainstream.”53When Ernest Hemingway discovered theFBI was monitoring him, he reportedlyfound it impossible to write.54 Risk takinglies at the heart of inquisi

reading comics (box 2)."Th e whole point of this soft ware is to free up time for teach-ers to do what they do best, which is to teach," said Marcus Kingsley, NetSupport's CEO.9 Such monitoring is not possible without digital devices for all students. "One-to-one" device programs provide each student