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Batavia school board disciplines teacher after Fifth Amendment survey flap

110 points by mcallan83 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
fmstephe 13y ago
I worry that sitting here and reading the articles which turn up in HN each day that I am getting a very particular impression about life in America. Between this and Kiera Wilmot I feel genuinely horrified. Am I just seeing outliers here? Am I seeing frightening trend where children are needlessly criminalised (Kiera) or willfully (even if well intentioned) manipulated (my interpretation of this survey debacle)? Other things I see include judges imprisoning children to increase revenues in private prison systems they have shares in. How does it feel to actually live there?
- smutticus 13y ago
  Something happened in the past 10-20 years where teachers became the scape goats of the failing American education system. It might be related to the attacks on their unions and the privitization of education. I'm not totally sure. But regardless of your opinions on education privitization teachers are not regarded with the same reverence in American society that they once were.
  - fmstephe 13y ago
    Yeah, I have the impression this is true in a number of places. It does appear to be particularly pronounced in the US (from the view from my bubble). I worry that reducing the respect given to teachers will result in fewer outstanding people choosing teaching as a career path. From the smattering of events I noted above I do get the impression that teachers are operating scared. That they perceive that they are reluctant to make judgement calls that involve any kind of bureaucratic risk (as in the Kiera case). That zero tolerance approach seems to be a symptom of this fear and I have a lot of sympathy for both the teachers and the students. Its seems like a real shame :(
  - oneandoneis2 13y ago
    Every teacher I know (and that's quite a few) shared this cartoon on FB recently: http://www.coreyshepherd.com/wp-content/uploads/Grades_Cartoon.jpg http://www.coreyshepherd.com/wp-content/uploads/Grades_Carto... Sad but true..
    - talmand 13y ago
      I can see both of those being true in previous years and today if one cares to look at what's going on. I can even provide an example. My older daughter has problems with math. She doesn't like it and doesn't want to do it. Therefore, most of the problems she has with it I relate to her more than her teacher. I view it as a problem for both us as parents and her teacher to figure out ways to motivate her to try harder and to discover what problems she may have that we can work on. On the other hand, she's a really good reader. She loves to read books and often does so without any outside motivation. When we moved to our current school district my daughter was tested for reading on a computer using software she had never seen before and was rated as a poor reader. We disagreed with this result and told the teacher that likely the problem lay with the system that she had never seen before. In her previous year in another school and at home she's a self-motivated reader that is slightly above average for her age group. The teacher stuck with the results and placed her in a lower reading group, where she quickly outpaced the other students in the group. Thankfully, after a few months, she was moved up into an appropriate group for her reading level. In that case I fully fault the teacher in that because she went with an automated system telling her what to do, didn't do an informal test of her own, and ignored her parents on the matter. Later the teacher even suggested that the sudden and large improvement in her reading was due to their reading programs at the school. The conspiracy theory part of me thinks it was intentional so that her reading scores would show a huge improvement through the school year. You do have to keep that cartoon in mind as a general kind of thing because otherwise it suggests that there is no such thing as a bad teacher.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    Something happened in the past 10-20 years where teachers became the scape goats of the failing American education system. The reason for this is simple deduction. If you believe teacher quality is the primary drivers of educational outcomes and outcomes are not as you desire, it must be caused by low teacher quality. (Personally I don't accept the premise that teacher quality affects educational outcomes much, but my views are way outside the mainstream...)
    - flyinRyan 13y ago
      Your views are likely outside the mainstream in the same way Alex Jones' views are outside the mainstream. Your "simple deduction" would better be labeled "uneducated guessing based on nothing". The reasons behind the dramatic decline in the American education system are obvious and known very well to any public school teacher: "No child left behind".
      - yummyfajitas 13y ago
        I'm confused - which part of my deduction is a guess? I'll ignore your ad hominem attacks.
        flyinRyan 13y ago
        > If you believe teacher quality is the primary drivers of educational outcomes and outcomes are not as you desire, it must be caused by low teacher quality. Wrong. If you believe teacher quality is the primary driver of educational outcome then anything effecting teacher performance could effect those outcomes. It does not follow that only teacher quality plays the only role unless the teachers are completely empowered.
      - betterunix 13y ago
        Education was on the decline as far back as I can remember. In the 90s, New York City's public school system was embroiled in scandals -- overcrowding, converting bathrooms into classrooms, illiterate teaching assistants, illiterate high school graduates, etc. This was long before No Child Left Behind (and in fact, NCLB was meant to address the concerns people had about American education), and it was not unique to New York. NCLB is a bad law, but it is not the cause of our education problems. Teachers like to point to it because it is an easy scapegoat and it allows them to evade all responsibility.
  - Jare 13y ago
    It's not an American phenomenon, most people who care about education (parents, students and educators alike) in Spain believe exactly the same thing. We haven't (yet) undergone a massive privatization of our education system, so privatization is not the core issue. (I think this is the result of many factors conspiring to undermine the ability, energy and willpower of parents to be truly engaged with their kids' education, but that's material for an entire book)
  - tokenadult 13y ago
    People generally respect professionals more when they have the choice of shopping for the professionals who fit their needs. You would respect plumbers less if every time you needed a pipe fixed, you were assigned a plumber by your "plumbing district" and the plumbing district received revenues from your taxes whether your pipes leak or not. Teachers should take advantage of the opportunity to be treated like real professionals by supporting education reforms that give learners (and the adult guardians of minor learners) more power to shop for providers of education. (By the way, I can tell that I am a good bit older than you are by the short time frame of your comment. Commentary about government-operated oligopoly schools not being staffed by teachers who are able to do their best for the learners in their care goes back many more decades than you guess.) Something that HAS changed about teaching, as an occupation, in the United States in my longer lifetime is that now women have many more employment opportunities besides schoolteaching. When a woman can become a medical doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer, she may decide to take her talents into other labor markets besides the labor market for staffing schools. http://www.personal.kent.edu/~cupton/Senior%20Seminar/Papers/hoxbyleigh_pulledaway.pdf http://www.personal.kent.edu/~cupton/Senior%20Seminar/Papers... Again, I think if schools were more client-responsive, because learners had more power to shop, that would change management practices of schools and allow schools to reward better the teachers who do the best work. A teacher who does a good job is worth her weight or his weight in gold. http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/teacher-quality http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/teacher-quality But the incentives in the current system, in which most schools get the bulk of their revenues from taxes, results or not, don't set up incentives for schools to value teachers who do well as schools should.
  - talmand 13y ago
    It varies from district to district though. In most districts I would assume things move along just fine and has been that way for years. In some districts teachers resign in protest because of the constraints placed on them due to emphasis on standardized tests which forces them to alter their teaching plans to the detriment of the students. In other districts teachers go to jail for allowing students to cheat on standardized tests or skip the middle-man to do the cheating themselves. Much like most things in life, sometimes teachers deserve the criticisms they receive and sometimes they don't. Personally, I feel the most likely culprit is a combination of the government and education administrators.
  - jessaustin 13y ago
    Perhaps we're supposed to revere them ("reverence", really, like for the Baby Jesus?), but I'm not so sure we ever did. The 19th- & early 20th-C fiction I read as a child that included teachers, seemed full of examples of "one-room schoolhouse" teachers who were routinely physically attacked by students and parents, widely derided by less-violent community members, and frequently paid late or not in full. (I'm sorry I don't have access to my childhood book collection at this time so I don't have any cites.) I can see how respect would contribute to the goal of education at younger ages, but in high school the successful teacher will have more resources upon which to draw than just "reverence".
- venomsnake 13y ago
  You are getting it wrong (disclosure - I do not live in the US). Everything you read in the news is outlier in a sort. With 30 million kids in tens of thousands of schools you are guaranteed to get a few cases of something "stupid and abusive from the administrators" daily. After all - a normal school day with no events hardly makes a headline. And with the power of the internet some local news get much more national visibility than decades prior. Same is with TSA - you will hear of something bad daily, but a lot of people pass checks without problems. You have to aggregate the news about school authorities, police and federal behavior over a very long time to try and find some meaningful trends (there seem to be some, and not comforting at least)
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - JonnieCache 13y ago
    >Everything you read in the news is outlier in a sort. Indeed. Otherwise it wouldn't be news. Anything you see in the news is automatically not worth being afraid of. Your life will be ruined by something mundane, car accidents, cancer etc.
    - talmand 13y ago
      A good example of this irrational fear of what's in the news is the recent studies showing that many people in the US think the crime and/or murder rate is up when in fact it's down. Too many times I see people from other countries, and the US too come to think of it, assume that every street corner in the US is a scene from a wild west movie with everyone shooting it out because someone said the wrong thing. Well, maybe parts of Chicago. I guess they get this from what they hear on the news from the US and their own countries. Seems to me that today is likely the safest I have ever been in my lifetime in the US. As you say, my biggest fear for myself and my family is a car accident.
    - greenyoda 13y ago
      "Anything you see in the news is automatically not worth being afraid of." That's true on average, but, for example, if your child happens to live in one of the school districts that's run by irrational, power-hungry administrators, then you do have something to be afraid of.
- mcherm 13y ago
  To me it feels much as you have described. These sorts of incidents, while the extreme cases are still rare, are increasingly common. And separate from the extreme incidents, the overall culture of infantalizing children feels quite harmful. I am expected not to send my children four houses down and across a street at the light to play by themselves at the park. My children are 10 and 7.
- unimpressive 13y ago
  It's basically random, depending on where you live. (Another thing that hasn't changed since Paul Graham was in high school.[0]) I think that the shitty things you see on places like HN are on an upward trend, but it's always been kind of bad. If you want to get an education into how long this sort of thing has been going on, try one of the reddit threads that pops up every so often with a title like "Did you ever get expelled? What for?" http://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/1dksjq/16_year_old_kid_accidentally_leaves_his_gun_in/ http://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/1dksjq/16_y... I especially like the anecdote about the guys school experience "77 years ago". http://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/1dksjq/16_year_old_kid_accidentally_leaves_his_gun_in/ca56fr5 http://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/1dksjq/16_y...
  - samolang 13y ago
    That "77 years ago" guy says he's 25 years old in another post.
    - unimpressive 13y ago
      Yeah, I actually went and checked that out after posting. By then though noprocrast had kicked in and I couldn't fix it. I'd append the relevant post here, but somebody already did it to the OP. So instead I'll complete that footnote: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html In case there was any doubt, he also says he graduated high school in 2006. http://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPsychology/comments/1d0kdf/does_your_undergrad_research_experience_have_to/c9mx4gk http://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPsychology/comments/1d0kdf/d...
    - nitrogen 13y ago
      It looks like "77" was a typo for "7" (2013 - 7 == 2006).
- rbanffy 13y ago
  I believe we see them because they are outliers. If such events were the norm, they'd disappear in the background. We don't read much about privacy violations in China after all.
- davidw 13y ago
  > Am I just seeing outliers here? They are 'outrage posts' - stuff that gets attention because it makes you angry. I do not think they are very healthy for the focus of this community because the number of outrageous injustices in the world far outweighs the number of good posts about startups and hacking. Also, they attract pretty much anyone because it's not hard to have an opinion about them, whereas "Clojure vs Erlang for a distributed system" is likely to attract a far more restricted group of people.
- samolang 13y ago
  You have to remember that America is a large country. With so many people there are more likely to be these outrageous events that draw a lot of media attention.
- rayiner 13y ago
  I went through public school here, and never suffered through anything worse than the general pettiness that is endemic to teachers and school administrators. There are problems with the American school system, but these outliers are not those problems. Heck, I remember in high school there was a huge protest over attempts to introduce minimum dress standards (e.g. no wife beater shirts, no spaghetti straps) in which the teachers participated in the protest. And I don't see how this is an example of kids being "manipulated." At best this is an example of a school district not consulting its lawyer before giving a well-intentioned survey. The purpose was to try and identify kids who needed additional psychological support, not get kids to cop to their drug use so they could be prosecuted. And you know what? It's not even clear the teacher was factually correct here. The school administrator argued that once the surveys were filled out, they would become student records (which are protected by a law called FERPA). I haven't done a close analysis of the issue, but if FERPA kept the documents from being obtained by the police, there was no 5th amendment privilege against incrimination because there was no real and tangible threat of disciplinary action. Moreover, there was no "custody" by the police which would invoke certain requirements for the purposes of the 5th amendment. At best, the teacher was teaching his speculation about what is still unsettled law as actual fact about the 5th amendment.
  - carbocation 13y ago
    1. FERPA information can be released in a "health" or "safety" emergency. 2. Records created by a designated official for the purpose of referring violations to police are not subject to FERPA. 3. Institutions have relatively broad power to designate people as school officials with legitimate educational interests, and thereby to designate who may receive FERPA-protected records. Some sources recommend to schools that they designate police or security personnel as "school officials with legitimate educational interests" for this reason [a]. a = http://www.campussafetymagazine.com/Channel/University-Security/articles/2011/01/FERPA-and-Campus-Public-Safety.aspx http://www.campussafetymagazine.com/Channel/University-Secur...
    - rayiner 13y ago
      These cut in favor of the school, though. 1. FERPA information can be released in a "health" or "safety" emergency, but only for the immediate duration of the emergency, and only to "appropriate parties." Moreover, FERPA has a specific carve out for disclosing student health records to parents in the case of drug or alcohol abuse. Read together, the provision can be interpreted to imply that drug use is by itself not a "health" or "safety" "emergency" because otherwise the specific carve-out would be superfluous and statutes are interpreted to avoid making any parts superfluous. 2. Right, but this survey was created for the express purpose of evaluating student psychological health, not for referring violations to police. 3. The same advice notes that police with access to private student information can only disclose that information pursuant to FERPA. Moreover, in the case law there is an emphasis on keeping the separate "hats" of student resource officers separate.
- speeder 13y ago
  Those are extreme examples of normal stuff, and that have been normal since schools (not educational institutions) were invented. The idea for schools (with that name) came from Prussia (ie: Germany when they had a king), they noticed that their soldiers were not keen in defending their government, not patriotic, and fled from the battlefield upon hearing gunfire. Someone then invented the "Prussian Model" of education, that was named "Volksschol" (pronounced volks school), that had as objective to make children believe more into the government and turn into adults more willing to go to war for it and even impose its beliefs on other countries. The EUA (and several other countries) quickly copied the system, all of them (including Prussia original) making it mandatory, and to the people made the justification that it was for the good of the children (and who would refuse? school in greek means "leisure", and how would you dare refuse your children to have fun with other children, learn and get some social skills?), but internal government communication always made clear the intention was prepare kids to war, the report made to the US used some phrases (I do not remember the exact quote) like: "It might be harmful to children, but we can teach them to defend republic always." And of course, none of this is lost to the UN (that state that is a human right to mandatory schools exist, and that those schools should teach about UN as institution to foster peace and about UN interests). EDIT: fixed word that commenter pointed (I knew the greek meaning in portuguese and translated that to english... pardon me for the lost in translation meaning)
  - mwcampbell 13y ago
    Citation needed.
    - tokenadult 13y ago
      Citation needed. I'm glad you asked. Schooling and Society: The Politics of Education in Prussia and Bavaria 1750-1900 Karl Schleunes (Oxford: Berg, 1989). (ISBN 0-85496-267-0). There are more good citations on the foundations of the current state-controlled school system where that citation came from. http://learninfreedom.org/school_state.html http://learninfreedom.org/school_state.html
      - 13y ago
- RyanMcGreal 13y ago
  > Am I just seeing outliers here? The news is by definition a daily compendium of outliers. If it happened all the time, it would not be news.
- marmot1101 13y ago
  This teacher is as middle America as it comes. I actually went to that school although I had a different teacher for history unfortunately. Some of this is a personality conflict as Mr. Dreyden was always a boat rocking kind of guy. Some of this is ineptitude by the school district. They weren't always the most organized bunch, and certainly not accustomed to the level of scrutiny they have now. I don't think that the district was looking to harm to any student, but there is definitely a culture of paranoia in that particular town and within the schools. The town is located next to a small city that has had drug and gang problems in the past. As such, they've taken (often misguided) measures for years to try to prevent problems from creeping over the town line. This would be one such attempt. The real root of many of Batavia and really all of America's internal issues are uneducated attitudes towards drugs and the drug trade. There is a huge black market going on all over the nation because of the drug laws and it fuels petty crime on up to organized crime. It brings about new 'Education' initiatives as well as a focus on school security that makes for untrusted environments. It also makes it quite easy to put children in jail for profit. All the while more and more parents call for more and more laws because they hear horror stories of loosing Junior to a drug habit. These problems will continue to pop up until we change the underlying problem.
- DanBC 13y ago
  > Am I just seeing outliers here? Am I seeing frightening trend where children are needlessly criminalised (Kiera) Zero tolerance means that often police are involved much earlier than they need to be, and for minor things. This is a political area, and so care needs to be taken when reading the following stories. Here's a young child who took Lego toys to school, and who was threatened with suspension. Luckily the principal called the education board who recommended confiscation of the toy and no further action (http://gothamist.com/2010/02/03/student_nearly_suspended_over_lego-.php http://gothamist.com/2010/02/03/student_nearly_suspended_ove...) Here's another story about a 5 year old child who made a gun out of Lego. This child got a written warning. (http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/02/5-year-old-boy-threatened-with-suspension-over-lego-toy-gun/ http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/02/5-year-old-boy...) We don't always know the full story. For example, there might be more to the story of a child suspended for 10 days (reduced to 2) and given psychological assessment after she wanted to play with bubbles. (http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/kindergartner-suspended-over-bubble-gun-threat-174618051--abc-news-topstories.html http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/kindergartner-suspended...) Here's a 7 year old suspended for pretending his pencil was a gun (https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/va-7-year-old-suspended-gun-play-article-1.1337342 https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/va-7-year-old-susp...) A boy wore a t-shirt with NRA slogans. He was suspended and arrested. (http://www.rightwingnews.com/education/after-student-is-suspended-and-arrested-for-wearing-nra-protect-your-rights-100-students-wear-shirt-to-school-read/ http://www.rightwingnews.com/education/after-student-is-susp...) Here's a deaf child who must change his name, because the sign language for his name "looks like a gun" (or maybe a gang sign?) (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/nebraska-school-3-year-old-deaf-boy-sign-language-gesture-guns-change-video-article-1.1146024 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/nebraska-school-3-y...) Here's a teacher given a 4 day suspension without pay for endangering students by "displaying weapons". The weapons were garden tools. (http://cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/teacher-sues-school-over-suspension-weapons-charge-showing-students-garden http://cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/teacher-sues-school-...) Here's an example of children being arrested for minor scuffles. (http://www.change.org/petitions/children-should-not-be-arrested-for-doing-the-right-thing http://www.change.org/petitions/children-should-not-be-arres...) LA is reviewing zero tolerance policies (http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/03/local/la-me-citations-20120904 http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/03/local/la-me-citation...) (http://www.lewrockwell.com/whitehead/whitehead26.1.html http://www.lewrockwell.com/whitehead/whitehead26.1.html)
itafroma 13y ago
Previous, very lively discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5777578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5777578
stfu 13y ago
What I was wondering is this: Are there any good tutorials teaching kids their basic rights of freedom/privacy? With the right framing this could become really popular ("How to avoid your parents snooping on you"). I guess most kids have some phase of freedom-seeking and I would be happy to donate to a campaign encouraging this mindset even more.
- njharman 13y ago
  > good tutorials teaching kids their basic rights of freedom/privacy? Social Studies class, depending on teacher. ACLU, EFF, and the internet in general.
akama 13y ago
I find this whole deal very amusing because I suspect that most answers on this survey is wrong. I think we are not giving the students enough credit. I know that I was given surveys like this when in high school and I never answered them correctly, nor did any of my friends. Although the issues with punishing the teacher who is looking out for students is a problem, we should also be looking at why this survey was given in the first place. It seems like a complete waste of money and time by the school district.
squozzer 13y ago
Teachers should probably not dispense legal advice, but school admins should not take on the role of pop psychologists. Were I a parent, I would expect the school system to secure my permission to ask my child questions of a personal nature. Which I probably would grant after a discussion with my child.
mwexler 13y ago
Source article actually points out that the teacher didn't do anything wrong in the warning, but that the warning was unnecessary and that the survey instrument was designed to protect students and give them a less risky way to get help than by talking to the police. If the survey designers had communicated with the "administrators" of the survey (the teachers and aides), this whole flap could have been avoided.
jentulman 13y ago
"And students cannot incriminate themselves because, even if the district shared the information with police, police can't prosecute based on that, he said. They are only allowed to arrest students if they are harming other students, such as in a fight, or if the student is in possession of drugs or alcohol, Barshinger said." I'm not saying that the school had anything but the best intentions, but It does give them a bit of a head start in targeting certain pupils should the school wish find a reason to remove a few bad apples.
- nsxwolf 13y ago
  And we're all just taking his word for it, and it's not the only potential for abuse of this information. Why should we trust the school or the private company is handling these non-anonymized surveys properly? What's the chain of custody? Could these surveys ever come up in any kind of background check? Their answer is don't worry about it, trust us.
- vaadu 13y ago
  The administrator that said this is naive. Admitting to a crime is self-incrimination regardless if it can be held against you or not. Maybe the county or school system won't hold it against you but what stops the state or feds from prosecuting you? You should always talk to a lawyer before admitting anything incriminating.
bcariveau 13y ago
Regarding privacy concerns: http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/hottopics/ht10-28-02.html http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/hottopics/ht10-28-02... In specific: Sec. 1061 Student Privacy, Parental Access to Information, and Administration of Certain Physical Examinations to Minors. The No Child Left Behind Act contains a major amendment to PPRA that gives parents more rights with regard to the surveying of minor students, the collection of information from students for marketing purposes, and certain non-emergency medical examinations. PPRA has been referred to as the "Hatch Amendment" and the "Grassley Amendment" after authors of amendments to the law. Now, school officials may hear the law referred to as the "Tiahrt Amendment" after Congressman Todd Tiahrt, who introduced the changes regarding surveys to the PPRA. The statute is found in 20 U.S.C. § 1232h and the regulations (not yet updated) are found in 34 CFR Part 98. U.S. Department of Education Surveys Subsection (a) of the legislation was not changed. Subsection (b) added an additional category (see bold below) and made minor changes to the existing seven categories. This provision applies to surveys funded in whole or part by any program administered by the U. S. Department of Education (ED). PPRA provides: -that schools and contractors make instructional materials available for inspection by parents if those materials will be used in connection with an ED-funded survey, analysis, or evaluation in which their children participate; and -that schools and contractors obtain prior written parental consent before minor students are required to participate in any ED-funded survey, analysis, or evaluation that reveals information concerning: 1.political affiliations or beliefs of the student or the student's parent; 2.mental and psychological problems of the student or the student's family; 3.sex behavior or attitudes; 4.illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating, or demeaning behavior; 5.critical appraisals of other individuals with whom respondents have close family relationships; 6.legally recognized privileged or analogous relationships, such as those of lawyers, physicians, and ministers; 7.religious practices, affiliations, or beliefs of the student or student's parent; or 8.income (other than that required by law to determine eligibility for participation in a program or for receiving financial assistance under such program). Subsections a and b of PPRA generally apply when a survey is funded, at least in part, by any program administered by the Secretary of Education.
- belorn 13y ago
  Can written parental consent be twisted to mean silent consent from not replying to an email? I remember a cookie law in EU that had some harsh consent requirement being turned to mean "silent consent by continue staying on the website". Maybe the act of letting the kid continue go to school was interpreted as consent.
tokenadult 13y ago
I am on record in the earlier thread about this incident https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5777578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5777578 saying that the first news report sounded like John Dryden is an unusually thoughtful social studies teacher, and that he was just relating the general concepts that he is hired to teach his students to a real-world situation facing the students. Even after reading the follow-up report submitted to open this thread, I'm not at all sure that Dryden was trying to undermine the survey process. Here's a key passage from the middle of the story submitted here: "Dryden, a social studies teacher, told three of his classes that they had a Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate themselves when they took a social-emotional learning survey April 18. Some of the 34 questions asked students about their drug and alcohol use, as well as about their emotions. Their names were on the surveys, as it was intended to identify students who could use help, according to school district officials. Those whose answers raised red flags were called in to the school's student services workers, including social workers and counselors. "Barshinger said there was no Fifth Amendment issue, for several reasons. Once students' names were on them, he said, they would have become student records and subject to student privacy laws. And students cannot incriminate themselves because, even if the district shared the information with police, police can't prosecute based on that, he said. They are only allowed to arrest students if they are harming other students, such as in a fight, or if the student is in possession of drugs or alcohol, Barshinger said. "Board president Cathy Dremel, speaking on behalf of the board, said Dryden 'mischaracterized' the efforts of fellow teachers and administrators, some of who had worked on a committee for a year to find a survey instrument that would assess students' risky behavior. "'The board will not support any employees giving students false impressions about those who come here every day' to work for their best interests, she said." I am a lawyer by training. I don't actively practice law currently, but I stay alert to the law related to K-12 education, which was my motivation for studying law. In my experience, school district officials are often VERY BADLY advised on what the law is, and their default assumption is that they can do what they want, and hide what they are trying to do from parents who have the actual legal authority to guide their children's educations. I wouldn't take these kinds of statement from the district superintendent or from the school board president as the last word on what the legal consequences of the student survey might be. I think another Hacker News participant said in the earlier thread that he lives in the district and would report on what he observed at the school board meeting about the survey. I'm not completely sure that this latest news story, which fills in more details that weren't reported in the first story, settles the issue of whether or not teacher Dryden's behavior was appropriate under the circumstances.
bcariveau 13y ago
Video of school board vote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Is_Awj4Pvg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Is_Awj4Pvg
andyl 13y ago
Many/most of the comments here reflect a general mistrust towards the administration, questioning motives or competence. I've been the parent of a troubled kid. In that time, I worked closely with our school administration, who could not have been more helpful and smart. If I lived in that school district, I would welcome efforts to address drug/alcohol/emotional issues. Maybe the survey wasn't perfectly done. But I don't see evidence that anyone was actually harmed by it. In my experience working with sensitive information, educators have generally done the right thing, for the right reasons.
steamer25 13y ago
To me the act of disciplining the teacher makes the very case they're alleging that he portrayed. I.e., "the administration around here is kinda jumpy and will crack down on the slightest appearance of infraction--even if the right course of action is unclear or controversial."

110 points by mcallan83 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

I worry that sitting here and reading the articles which turn up in HN each day that I am getting a very particular impression about life in America. Between this and Kiera Wilmot I feel genuinely horrified. Am I just seeing outliers here? Am I seeing frightening trend where children are needlessly criminalised (Kiera) or willfully (even if well intentioned) manipulated (my interpretation of this survey debacle)? Other things I see include judges imprisoning children to increase revenues in private prison systems they have shares in. How does it feel to actually live there?

smutticus 13y ago
Something happened in the past 10-20 years where teachers became the scape goats of the failing American education system. It might be related to the attacks on their unions and the privitization of education. I'm not totally sure. But regardless of your opinions on education privitization teachers are not regarded with the same reverence in American society that they once were.
- fmstephe 13y ago
  Yeah, I have the impression this is true in a number of places. It does appear to be particularly pronounced in the US (from the view from my bubble). I worry that reducing the respect given to teachers will result in fewer outstanding people choosing teaching as a career path. From the smattering of events I noted above I do get the impression that teachers are operating scared. That they perceive that they are reluctant to make judgement calls that involve any kind of bureaucratic risk (as in the Kiera case). That zero tolerance approach seems to be a symptom of this fear and I have a lot of sympathy for both the teachers and the students. Its seems like a real shame :(
- oneandoneis2 13y ago
  Every teacher I know (and that's quite a few) shared this cartoon on FB recently: http://www.coreyshepherd.com/wp-content/uploads/Grades_Cartoon.jpg http://www.coreyshepherd.com/wp-content/uploads/Grades_Carto... Sad but true..
  - talmand 13y ago
    I can see both of those being true in previous years and today if one cares to look at what's going on. I can even provide an example. My older daughter has problems with math. She doesn't like it and doesn't want to do it. Therefore, most of the problems she has with it I relate to her more than her teacher. I view it as a problem for both us as parents and her teacher to figure out ways to motivate her to try harder and to discover what problems she may have that we can work on. On the other hand, she's a really good reader. She loves to read books and often does so without any outside motivation. When we moved to our current school district my daughter was tested for reading on a computer using software she had never seen before and was rated as a poor reader. We disagreed with this result and told the teacher that likely the problem lay with the system that she had never seen before. In her previous year in another school and at home she's a self-motivated reader that is slightly above average for her age group. The teacher stuck with the results and placed her in a lower reading group, where she quickly outpaced the other students in the group. Thankfully, after a few months, she was moved up into an appropriate group for her reading level. In that case I fully fault the teacher in that because she went with an automated system telling her what to do, didn't do an informal test of her own, and ignored her parents on the matter. Later the teacher even suggested that the sudden and large improvement in her reading was due to their reading programs at the school. The conspiracy theory part of me thinks it was intentional so that her reading scores would show a huge improvement through the school year. You do have to keep that cartoon in mind as a general kind of thing because otherwise it suggests that there is no such thing as a bad teacher.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  Something happened in the past 10-20 years where teachers became the scape goats of the failing American education system. The reason for this is simple deduction. If you believe teacher quality is the primary drivers of educational outcomes and outcomes are not as you desire, it must be caused by low teacher quality. (Personally I don't accept the premise that teacher quality affects educational outcomes much, but my views are way outside the mainstream...)
  - flyinRyan 13y ago
    Your views are likely outside the mainstream in the same way Alex Jones' views are outside the mainstream. Your "simple deduction" would better be labeled "uneducated guessing based on nothing". The reasons behind the dramatic decline in the American education system are obvious and known very well to any public school teacher: "No child left behind".
    - yummyfajitas 13y ago
      I'm confused - which part of my deduction is a guess? I'll ignore your ad hominem attacks.
      - flyinRyan 13y ago
        > If you believe teacher quality is the primary drivers of educational outcomes and outcomes are not as you desire, it must be caused by low teacher quality. Wrong. If you believe teacher quality is the primary driver of educational outcome then anything effecting teacher performance could effect those outcomes. It does not follow that only teacher quality plays the only role unless the teachers are completely empowered.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      Education was on the decline as far back as I can remember. In the 90s, New York City's public school system was embroiled in scandals -- overcrowding, converting bathrooms into classrooms, illiterate teaching assistants, illiterate high school graduates, etc. This was long before No Child Left Behind (and in fact, NCLB was meant to address the concerns people had about American education), and it was not unique to New York. NCLB is a bad law, but it is not the cause of our education problems. Teachers like to point to it because it is an easy scapegoat and it allows them to evade all responsibility.
- Jare 13y ago
  It's not an American phenomenon, most people who care about education (parents, students and educators alike) in Spain believe exactly the same thing. We haven't (yet) undergone a massive privatization of our education system, so privatization is not the core issue. (I think this is the result of many factors conspiring to undermine the ability, energy and willpower of parents to be truly engaged with their kids' education, but that's material for an entire book)
- tokenadult 13y ago
  People generally respect professionals more when they have the choice of shopping for the professionals who fit their needs. You would respect plumbers less if every time you needed a pipe fixed, you were assigned a plumber by your "plumbing district" and the plumbing district received revenues from your taxes whether your pipes leak or not. Teachers should take advantage of the opportunity to be treated like real professionals by supporting education reforms that give learners (and the adult guardians of minor learners) more power to shop for providers of education. (By the way, I can tell that I am a good bit older than you are by the short time frame of your comment. Commentary about government-operated oligopoly schools not being staffed by teachers who are able to do their best for the learners in their care goes back many more decades than you guess.) Something that HAS changed about teaching, as an occupation, in the United States in my longer lifetime is that now women have many more employment opportunities besides schoolteaching. When a woman can become a medical doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer, she may decide to take her talents into other labor markets besides the labor market for staffing schools. http://www.personal.kent.edu/~cupton/Senior%20Seminar/Papers/hoxbyleigh_pulledaway.pdf http://www.personal.kent.edu/~cupton/Senior%20Seminar/Papers... Again, I think if schools were more client-responsive, because learners had more power to shop, that would change management practices of schools and allow schools to reward better the teachers who do the best work. A teacher who does a good job is worth her weight or his weight in gold. http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/teacher-quality http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/teacher-quality But the incentives in the current system, in which most schools get the bulk of their revenues from taxes, results or not, don't set up incentives for schools to value teachers who do well as schools should.
- talmand 13y ago
  It varies from district to district though. In most districts I would assume things move along just fine and has been that way for years. In some districts teachers resign in protest because of the constraints placed on them due to emphasis on standardized tests which forces them to alter their teaching plans to the detriment of the students. In other districts teachers go to jail for allowing students to cheat on standardized tests or skip the middle-man to do the cheating themselves. Much like most things in life, sometimes teachers deserve the criticisms they receive and sometimes they don't. Personally, I feel the most likely culprit is a combination of the government and education administrators.
- jessaustin 13y ago
  Perhaps we're supposed to revere them ("reverence", really, like for the Baby Jesus?), but I'm not so sure we ever did. The 19th- & early 20th-C fiction I read as a child that included teachers, seemed full of examples of "one-room schoolhouse" teachers who were routinely physically attacked by students and parents, widely derided by less-violent community members, and frequently paid late or not in full. (I'm sorry I don't have access to my childhood book collection at this time so I don't have any cites.) I can see how respect would contribute to the goal of education at younger ages, but in high school the successful teacher will have more resources upon which to draw than just "reverence".
venomsnake 13y ago
You are getting it wrong (disclosure - I do not live in the US). Everything you read in the news is outlier in a sort. With 30 million kids in tens of thousands of schools you are guaranteed to get a few cases of something "stupid and abusive from the administrators" daily. After all - a normal school day with no events hardly makes a headline. And with the power of the internet some local news get much more national visibility than decades prior. Same is with TSA - you will hear of something bad daily, but a lot of people pass checks without problems. You have to aggregate the news about school authorities, police and federal behavior over a very long time to try and find some meaningful trends (there seem to be some, and not comforting at least)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- JonnieCache 13y ago
  >Everything you read in the news is outlier in a sort. Indeed. Otherwise it wouldn't be news. Anything you see in the news is automatically not worth being afraid of. Your life will be ruined by something mundane, car accidents, cancer etc.
  - talmand 13y ago
    A good example of this irrational fear of what's in the news is the recent studies showing that many people in the US think the crime and/or murder rate is up when in fact it's down. Too many times I see people from other countries, and the US too come to think of it, assume that every street corner in the US is a scene from a wild west movie with everyone shooting it out because someone said the wrong thing. Well, maybe parts of Chicago. I guess they get this from what they hear on the news from the US and their own countries. Seems to me that today is likely the safest I have ever been in my lifetime in the US. As you say, my biggest fear for myself and my family is a car accident.
  - greenyoda 13y ago
    "Anything you see in the news is automatically not worth being afraid of." That's true on average, but, for example, if your child happens to live in one of the school districts that's run by irrational, power-hungry administrators, then you do have something to be afraid of.
mcherm 13y ago
To me it feels much as you have described. These sorts of incidents, while the extreme cases are still rare, are increasingly common. And separate from the extreme incidents, the overall culture of infantalizing children feels quite harmful. I am expected not to send my children four houses down and across a street at the light to play by themselves at the park. My children are 10 and 7.
unimpressive 13y ago
It's basically random, depending on where you live. (Another thing that hasn't changed since Paul Graham was in high school.[0]) I think that the shitty things you see on places like HN are on an upward trend, but it's always been kind of bad. If you want to get an education into how long this sort of thing has been going on, try one of the reddit threads that pops up every so often with a title like "Did you ever get expelled? What for?" http://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/1dksjq/16_year_old_kid_accidentally_leaves_his_gun_in/ http://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/1dksjq/16_y... I especially like the anecdote about the guys school experience "77 years ago". http://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/1dksjq/16_year_old_kid_accidentally_leaves_his_gun_in/ca56fr5 http://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/1dksjq/16_y...
- samolang 13y ago
  That "77 years ago" guy says he's 25 years old in another post.
  - unimpressive 13y ago
    Yeah, I actually went and checked that out after posting. By then though noprocrast had kicked in and I couldn't fix it. I'd append the relevant post here, but somebody already did it to the OP. So instead I'll complete that footnote: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html In case there was any doubt, he also says he graduated high school in 2006. http://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPsychology/comments/1d0kdf/does_your_undergrad_research_experience_have_to/c9mx4gk http://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPsychology/comments/1d0kdf/d...
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    It looks like "77" was a typo for "7" (2013 - 7 == 2006).
rbanffy 13y ago
I believe we see them because they are outliers. If such events were the norm, they'd disappear in the background. We don't read much about privacy violations in China after all.
davidw 13y ago
> Am I just seeing outliers here? They are 'outrage posts' - stuff that gets attention because it makes you angry. I do not think they are very healthy for the focus of this community because the number of outrageous injustices in the world far outweighs the number of good posts about startups and hacking. Also, they attract pretty much anyone because it's not hard to have an opinion about them, whereas "Clojure vs Erlang for a distributed system" is likely to attract a far more restricted group of people.
samolang 13y ago
You have to remember that America is a large country. With so many people there are more likely to be these outrageous events that draw a lot of media attention.
rayiner 13y ago
I went through public school here, and never suffered through anything worse than the general pettiness that is endemic to teachers and school administrators. There are problems with the American school system, but these outliers are not those problems. Heck, I remember in high school there was a huge protest over attempts to introduce minimum dress standards (e.g. no wife beater shirts, no spaghetti straps) in which the teachers participated in the protest. And I don't see how this is an example of kids being "manipulated." At best this is an example of a school district not consulting its lawyer before giving a well-intentioned survey. The purpose was to try and identify kids who needed additional psychological support, not get kids to cop to their drug use so they could be prosecuted. And you know what? It's not even clear the teacher was factually correct here. The school administrator argued that once the surveys were filled out, they would become student records (which are protected by a law called FERPA). I haven't done a close analysis of the issue, but if FERPA kept the documents from being obtained by the police, there was no 5th amendment privilege against incrimination because there was no real and tangible threat of disciplinary action. Moreover, there was no "custody" by the police which would invoke certain requirements for the purposes of the 5th amendment. At best, the teacher was teaching his speculation about what is still unsettled law as actual fact about the 5th amendment.
- carbocation 13y ago
  1. FERPA information can be released in a "health" or "safety" emergency. 2. Records created by a designated official for the purpose of referring violations to police are not subject to FERPA. 3. Institutions have relatively broad power to designate people as school officials with legitimate educational interests, and thereby to designate who may receive FERPA-protected records. Some sources recommend to schools that they designate police or security personnel as "school officials with legitimate educational interests" for this reason [a]. a = http://www.campussafetymagazine.com/Channel/University-Security/articles/2011/01/FERPA-and-Campus-Public-Safety.aspx http://www.campussafetymagazine.com/Channel/University-Secur...
  - rayiner 13y ago
    These cut in favor of the school, though. 1. FERPA information can be released in a "health" or "safety" emergency, but only for the immediate duration of the emergency, and only to "appropriate parties." Moreover, FERPA has a specific carve out for disclosing student health records to parents in the case of drug or alcohol abuse. Read together, the provision can be interpreted to imply that drug use is by itself not a "health" or "safety" "emergency" because otherwise the specific carve-out would be superfluous and statutes are interpreted to avoid making any parts superfluous. 2. Right, but this survey was created for the express purpose of evaluating student psychological health, not for referring violations to police. 3. The same advice notes that police with access to private student information can only disclose that information pursuant to FERPA. Moreover, in the case law there is an emphasis on keeping the separate "hats" of student resource officers separate.
speeder 13y ago
Those are extreme examples of normal stuff, and that have been normal since schools (not educational institutions) were invented. The idea for schools (with that name) came from Prussia (ie: Germany when they had a king), they noticed that their soldiers were not keen in defending their government, not patriotic, and fled from the battlefield upon hearing gunfire. Someone then invented the "Prussian Model" of education, that was named "Volksschol" (pronounced volks school), that had as objective to make children believe more into the government and turn into adults more willing to go to war for it and even impose its beliefs on other countries. The EUA (and several other countries) quickly copied the system, all of them (including Prussia original) making it mandatory, and to the people made the justification that it was for the good of the children (and who would refuse? school in greek means "leisure", and how would you dare refuse your children to have fun with other children, learn and get some social skills?), but internal government communication always made clear the intention was prepare kids to war, the report made to the US used some phrases (I do not remember the exact quote) like: "It might be harmful to children, but we can teach them to defend republic always." And of course, none of this is lost to the UN (that state that is a human right to mandatory schools exist, and that those schools should teach about UN as institution to foster peace and about UN interests). EDIT: fixed word that commenter pointed (I knew the greek meaning in portuguese and translated that to english... pardon me for the lost in translation meaning)
- mwcampbell 13y ago
  Citation needed.
  - tokenadult 13y ago
    Citation needed. I'm glad you asked. Schooling and Society: The Politics of Education in Prussia and Bavaria 1750-1900 Karl Schleunes (Oxford: Berg, 1989). (ISBN 0-85496-267-0). There are more good citations on the foundations of the current state-controlled school system where that citation came from. http://learninfreedom.org/school_state.html http://learninfreedom.org/school_state.html
    - 13y ago
RyanMcGreal 13y ago
> Am I just seeing outliers here? The news is by definition a daily compendium of outliers. If it happened all the time, it would not be news.
marmot1101 13y ago
This teacher is as middle America as it comes. I actually went to that school although I had a different teacher for history unfortunately. Some of this is a personality conflict as Mr. Dreyden was always a boat rocking kind of guy. Some of this is ineptitude by the school district. They weren't always the most organized bunch, and certainly not accustomed to the level of scrutiny they have now. I don't think that the district was looking to harm to any student, but there is definitely a culture of paranoia in that particular town and within the schools. The town is located next to a small city that has had drug and gang problems in the past. As such, they've taken (often misguided) measures for years to try to prevent problems from creeping over the town line. This would be one such attempt. The real root of many of Batavia and really all of America's internal issues are uneducated attitudes towards drugs and the drug trade. There is a huge black market going on all over the nation because of the drug laws and it fuels petty crime on up to organized crime. It brings about new 'Education' initiatives as well as a focus on school security that makes for untrusted environments. It also makes it quite easy to put children in jail for profit. All the while more and more parents call for more and more laws because they hear horror stories of loosing Junior to a drug habit. These problems will continue to pop up until we change the underlying problem.
DanBC 13y ago
> Am I just seeing outliers here? Am I seeing frightening trend where children are needlessly criminalised (Kiera) Zero tolerance means that often police are involved much earlier than they need to be, and for minor things. This is a political area, and so care needs to be taken when reading the following stories. Here's a young child who took Lego toys to school, and who was threatened with suspension. Luckily the principal called the education board who recommended confiscation of the toy and no further action (http://gothamist.com/2010/02/03/student_nearly_suspended_over_lego-.php http://gothamist.com/2010/02/03/student_nearly_suspended_ove...) Here's another story about a 5 year old child who made a gun out of Lego. This child got a written warning. (http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/02/5-year-old-boy-threatened-with-suspension-over-lego-toy-gun/ http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/02/5-year-old-boy...) We don't always know the full story. For example, there might be more to the story of a child suspended for 10 days (reduced to 2) and given psychological assessment after she wanted to play with bubbles. (http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/kindergartner-suspended-over-bubble-gun-threat-174618051--abc-news-topstories.html http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/kindergartner-suspended...) Here's a 7 year old suspended for pretending his pencil was a gun (https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/va-7-year-old-suspended-gun-play-article-1.1337342 https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/va-7-year-old-susp...) A boy wore a t-shirt with NRA slogans. He was suspended and arrested. (http://www.rightwingnews.com/education/after-student-is-suspended-and-arrested-for-wearing-nra-protect-your-rights-100-students-wear-shirt-to-school-read/ http://www.rightwingnews.com/education/after-student-is-susp...) Here's a deaf child who must change his name, because the sign language for his name "looks like a gun" (or maybe a gang sign?) (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/nebraska-school-3-year-old-deaf-boy-sign-language-gesture-guns-change-video-article-1.1146024 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/nebraska-school-3-y...) Here's a teacher given a 4 day suspension without pay for endangering students by "displaying weapons". The weapons were garden tools. (http://cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/teacher-sues-school-over-suspension-weapons-charge-showing-students-garden http://cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/teacher-sues-school-...) Here's an example of children being arrested for minor scuffles. (http://www.change.org/petitions/children-should-not-be-arrested-for-doing-the-right-thing http://www.change.org/petitions/children-should-not-be-arres...) LA is reviewing zero tolerance policies (http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/03/local/la-me-citations-20120904 http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/03/local/la-me-citation...) (http://www.lewrockwell.com/whitehead/whitehead26.1.html http://www.lewrockwell.com/whitehead/whitehead26.1.html)

itafroma 13y ago

Previous, very lively discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5777578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5777578

stfu 13y ago

What I was wondering is this: Are there any good tutorials teaching kids their basic rights of freedom/privacy? With the right framing this could become really popular ("How to avoid your parents snooping on you"). I guess most kids have some phase of freedom-seeking and I would be happy to donate to a campaign encouraging this mindset even more.

njharman 13y ago
> good tutorials teaching kids their basic rights of freedom/privacy? Social Studies class, depending on teacher. ACLU, EFF, and the internet in general.

akama 13y ago

I find this whole deal very amusing because I suspect that most answers on this survey is wrong. I think we are not giving the students enough credit. I know that I was given surveys like this when in high school and I never answered them correctly, nor did any of my friends. Although the issues with punishing the teacher who is looking out for students is a problem, we should also be looking at why this survey was given in the first place. It seems like a complete waste of money and time by the school district.

squozzer 13y ago

Teachers should probably not dispense legal advice, but school admins should not take on the role of pop psychologists. Were I a parent, I would expect the school system to secure my permission to ask my child questions of a personal nature. Which I probably would grant after a discussion with my child.

mwexler 13y ago

Source article actually points out that the teacher didn't do anything wrong in the warning, but that the warning was unnecessary and that the survey instrument was designed to protect students and give them a less risky way to get help than by talking to the police. If the survey designers had communicated with the "administrators" of the survey (the teachers and aides), this whole flap could have been avoided.

jentulman 13y ago

"And students cannot incriminate themselves because, even if the district shared the information with police, police can't prosecute based on that, he said. They are only allowed to arrest students if they are harming other students, such as in a fight, or if the student is in possession of drugs or alcohol, Barshinger said." I'm not saying that the school had anything but the best intentions, but It does give them a bit of a head start in targeting certain pupils should the school wish find a reason to remove a few bad apples.

nsxwolf 13y ago
And we're all just taking his word for it, and it's not the only potential for abuse of this information. Why should we trust the school or the private company is handling these non-anonymized surveys properly? What's the chain of custody? Could these surveys ever come up in any kind of background check? Their answer is don't worry about it, trust us.
vaadu 13y ago
The administrator that said this is naive. Admitting to a crime is self-incrimination regardless if it can be held against you or not. Maybe the county or school system won't hold it against you but what stops the state or feds from prosecuting you? You should always talk to a lawyer before admitting anything incriminating.

bcariveau 13y ago

Regarding privacy concerns: http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/hottopics/ht10-28-02.html http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/hottopics/ht10-28-02... In specific: Sec. 1061 Student Privacy, Parental Access to Information, and Administration of Certain Physical Examinations to Minors. The No Child Left Behind Act contains a major amendment to PPRA that gives parents more rights with regard to the surveying of minor students, the collection of information from students for marketing purposes, and certain non-emergency medical examinations. PPRA has been referred to as the "Hatch Amendment" and the "Grassley Amendment" after authors of amendments to the law. Now, school officials may hear the law referred to as the "Tiahrt Amendment" after Congressman Todd Tiahrt, who introduced the changes regarding surveys to the PPRA. The statute is found in 20 U.S.C. § 1232h and the regulations (not yet updated) are found in 34 CFR Part 98. U.S. Department of Education Surveys Subsection (a) of the legislation was not changed. Subsection (b) added an additional category (see bold below) and made minor changes to the existing seven categories. This provision applies to surveys funded in whole or part by any program administered by the U. S. Department of Education (ED). PPRA provides: -that schools and contractors make instructional materials available for inspection by parents if those materials will be used in connection with an ED-funded survey, analysis, or evaluation in which their children participate; and -that schools and contractors obtain prior written parental consent before minor students are required to participate in any ED-funded survey, analysis, or evaluation that reveals information concerning: 1.political affiliations or beliefs of the student or the student's parent; 2.mental and psychological problems of the student or the student's family; 3.sex behavior or attitudes; 4.illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating, or demeaning behavior; 5.critical appraisals of other individuals with whom respondents have close family relationships; 6.legally recognized privileged or analogous relationships, such as those of lawyers, physicians, and ministers; 7.religious practices, affiliations, or beliefs of the student or student's parent; or 8.income (other than that required by law to determine eligibility for participation in a program or for receiving financial assistance under such program). Subsections a and b of PPRA generally apply when a survey is funded, at least in part, by any program administered by the Secretary of Education.

belorn 13y ago
Can written parental consent be twisted to mean silent consent from not replying to an email? I remember a cookie law in EU that had some harsh consent requirement being turned to mean "silent consent by continue staying on the website". Maybe the act of letting the kid continue go to school was interpreted as consent.

tokenadult 13y ago

I am on record in the earlier thread about this incident https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5777578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5777578 saying that the first news report sounded like John Dryden is an unusually thoughtful social studies teacher, and that he was just relating the general concepts that he is hired to teach his students to a real-world situation facing the students. Even after reading the follow-up report submitted to open this thread, I'm not at all sure that Dryden was trying to undermine the survey process. Here's a key passage from the middle of the story submitted here: "Dryden, a social studies teacher, told three of his classes that they had a Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate themselves when they took a social-emotional learning survey April 18. Some of the 34 questions asked students about their drug and alcohol use, as well as about their emotions. Their names were on the surveys, as it was intended to identify students who could use help, according to school district officials. Those whose answers raised red flags were called in to the school's student services workers, including social workers and counselors. "Barshinger said there was no Fifth Amendment issue, for several reasons. Once students' names were on them, he said, they would have become student records and subject to student privacy laws. And students cannot incriminate themselves because, even if the district shared the information with police, police can't prosecute based on that, he said. They are only allowed to arrest students if they are harming other students, such as in a fight, or if the student is in possession of drugs or alcohol, Barshinger said. "Board president Cathy Dremel, speaking on behalf of the board, said Dryden 'mischaracterized' the efforts of fellow teachers and administrators, some of who had worked on a committee for a year to find a survey instrument that would assess students' risky behavior. "'The board will not support any employees giving students false impressions about those who come here every day' to work for their best interests, she said." I am a lawyer by training. I don't actively practice law currently, but I stay alert to the law related to K-12 education, which was my motivation for studying law. In my experience, school district officials are often VERY BADLY advised on what the law is, and their default assumption is that they can do what they want, and hide what they are trying to do from parents who have the actual legal authority to guide their children's educations. I wouldn't take these kinds of statement from the district superintendent or from the school board president as the last word on what the legal consequences of the student survey might be. I think another Hacker News participant said in the earlier thread that he lives in the district and would report on what he observed at the school board meeting about the survey. I'm not completely sure that this latest news story, which fills in more details that weren't reported in the first story, settles the issue of whether or not teacher Dryden's behavior was appropriate under the circumstances.

bcariveau 13y ago

Video of school board vote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Is_Awj4Pvg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Is_Awj4Pvg

andyl 13y ago

Many/most of the comments here reflect a general mistrust towards the administration, questioning motives or competence. I've been the parent of a troubled kid. In that time, I worked closely with our school administration, who could not have been more helpful and smart. If I lived in that school district, I would welcome efforts to address drug/alcohol/emotional issues. Maybe the survey wasn't perfectly done. But I don't see evidence that anyone was actually harmed by it. In my experience working with sensitive information, educators have generally done the right thing, for the right reasons.

steamer25 13y ago

To me the act of disciplining the teacher makes the very case they're alleging that he portrayed. I.e., "the administration around here is kinda jumpy and will crack down on the slightest appearance of infraction--even if the right course of action is unclear or controversial."