Privacy Advocate Feels Student Radio Tracking System Sets Bad Precedent
by Jim Brown and Jenni Parker
March 22, 2005
(AgapePress) - A privacy rights advocate is criticizing the use of radio frequency identification badges to take attendance in some schools. A school district in Sutter, California, briefly implemented a program that had students carry tags containing what is known as "radio frequency identification" technology, or RFID, in order to help monitor student attendance. The program was a pilot project for a small start-up company called InCom, which had developed its "InClass" system to help elementary and secondary schools automate attendance-taking.
Along with the passive RFID tags attached to student ID card holders, the InClass system uses ultra high-frequency "readers" mounted in the doorways of school classrooms. As students pass through the a doorway, the reader sends the tags' unique ID numbers to a central computer server. A software program installed on the server then collects the tag data and wirelessly uploads a list of present, absent and tardy students (based on when each student enters the classroom) to a personal digital assistance (PDA) device that is issued to the teacher.
The teacher can then perform a visual check on the InClass-generated attendance list. After he or she confirms the information, the list is submitted wirelessly via the same PDA to school administrators, who are required to file attendance records with a state board of education.
InClass was being tested at Brittan Elementary School in Sutter, a small town northeast of Sacramento where InCom is based. According to an article in RFID Journal, Brittan school administrators were interested in the product partly because California bases school aid upon attendance numbers. However, a few parents complained about the use of RFID in the school or expressed other concerns about the ID badge program; and on Feb. 15 at a school board meeting InCom announced it had ended the pilot test. Nevertheless, the pilot test stirred great interest, and InCom has been flooded with calls and e-mail messages from school administrators across the U.S. that are interested in testing the product for themselves.
But Beth Givens with the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse feels school officials should not be too hasty in latching onto InClass, as administrators at Brittan perhaps were. She says instead of fully exploring the ramifications of such a program, the elementary school may have looked to the new technology as a "magic bullet" for an administrative problem without stopping to consider its potential impact on the school and the students themselves.
Givens warns that if systems like InClass are implemented in a school, the social environment there and the way students act within it may change profoundly. "Young people are going to get used to the idea or comfortable with the idea that they are always being watched," she says. "So what kind of adults will they grow up to be? Will they not be as risk-taking as perhaps entrepreneurs of earlier decades have been?"
How, the PRC spokeswoman wonders, would introducing an RFID system affect the communication and self expression of school children? "Will they be cautious about what they say? Will they not speak out? Will they not have a passionate interest in certain things?" she asks.
Some proponents of the RFID badge system argue that it will make tasks like attendance-taking more efficient and that it also offers an effective way to ensure the safety of children. But even though the InClass program at Brittan Elementary may have appealed to many school administrators, teachers, and even some parents as a harmless and potentially very helpful technology, Givens warns that such new technologies can harbor hidden implications and raise unforeseen issues.
"Rarely is an information technology put into place that only is used for that one limited use and nothing else, the privacy rights activist notes. "The word I use is 'function creep' or 'mission creep.' Once you put something in place, it starts to be used for all kinds of other things. It is added onto in future years. There are more variations, more complex developments of that technology."
Before schools install any kind of tracking or monitoring system, Givens advises school administrators to discuss the idea with parents or even with a committee of students. She says together the entire school community should explore whether there might be a less intrusive way to accomplish the goals the members hope to achieve.
