School Suspends Students For Playing With Airsoft Guns In Their Own Yard

from the a-new-high-in-low dept

How did we get to the point where activities conducted on someone's private property can somehow fall under the jurisdiction of a public school? The short version is this: concerns about actual criminal activity on school grounds led to tighter controls being built into policies. A few school shootings upped the ante and provoked disproportionate reactions from several legislators. And just in case no one felt the new weapon and violence policies erected to prevent the unpreventable weren't being taken seriously enough, the government "helpfully" tied these new rules to federal funding.

"Playing it safe" just isn't good enough anymore. Every administrator is compelled to err on the (uber-ridiculous) side of caution because to do otherwise might result in angry parents, or worse, the loss of federal funding. Anything that bears a slight resemblance to a gun is treated as the real thing -- a weapon powerful enough to kill someone -- even if that "weapon" is a Pop Tart, four fingers and a thumb or drawn on a piece of paper.

The illogical extremes seen in these earlier incidents has been surpassed by Larkspur Middle School of the Virginia Beach School District. Apparently, you don't even have to bring your "weapon" onto school property to be suspended for "possession, handling and use of an Airsoft gun."

Three Virginia Beach seventh graders learned their fates Tuesday morning when they were suspended for shooting airsoft guns on private property.

During a hearing with a disciplinary committee Tuesday morning, Aidan Clark, Khalid Caraballo and a third friend were given long-term suspensions in a unanimous vote. The suspensions will last until June, but a hearing will be held January 27 to determine if they will be allowed back in school sooner.

Here's a little backstory:

Like thousands of others in Hampton Roads, Caraballo and Clark play with airsoft guns. The boys were suspended because they shot two other friends who were with them while playing with the guns as they waited for the school bus September 12.

The two seventh graders say they never went to the bus stop with the guns; they fired the airsoft guns while on Caraballo's private property.

The bus stop in question is 70 yards away. Three days before the above incident (Sep. 9), a parent of one these students' friends placed a 911 call to report her concern about Caraballo's use of a fake gun on his own property.

A neighbor saw Khalid shooting the airsoft gun in his front yard. She told the dispatcher, "He is pointing the gun, and it looks like there's a target in a tree in his front yard". [The "target" the caller referred to is an actual target that comes with the Airsoft gun -- not a "target" as in "the person being shot at."]

The caller also knew the gun wasn't real and said so, "This is not a real one, but it makes people uncomfortable. I know that it makes me (uncomfortable), as a mom, to see a boy pointing a gun," she told the 911 dispatcher.

Issue #1: Who the fuck calls 911 to report being "uncomfortable?" Everyone knows, even children, that 911 is for emergencies only and not for reporting that you strongly feel a neighbor's kid shouldn't be playing with a fake gun on his own property. What's even worse about this busy-bodied, overweening "concern" is that her personal Neighborhood Watch & Comfortability Patrol didn't even keep her own child from playing with the (fake) gun-toting neighbor neighbors.

Ironically, that 911 caller's son was playing with Khalid and Aidan in the Caraballo front yard on September 12. There were six children playing in an airsoft gun war. "We see the bus come. We put the gun down. We did not take the airsoft gun to the bus stop. We did not take the gun to school," Khalid explained.

Aidan admits shooting the caller's son in the arm, and Khalid admits shooting another friend in the back.   "He knew we had the airsoft gun. He knew we were playing. He knew people were getting shot. We were shooting at the tree, but he still came and even after he was shot he still played," referring to the son of the 911 caller.

This 911 caller seems better suited to parenting other people's children, seeing as her son wandered into the "war zone" unattended.

Despite her call to 911, the police department found there was nothing much to get excited about, according to this statement from Virginia Beach police sergeant Adam Bernstein:

We understand that a number of juveniles possess air soft guns and have “airsoft gun” wars with each other, but as it relates to the city code referenced above, they are in violation of the code if the juveniles are not exercising “reasonable care”. Also keep in mind that this is not something that we proactively seek out to enforce. If we receive a complaint (such as in the case for which you are doing the story on), we will investigate the call for service and enforce it appropriately, i.e. warning or prosecution…

However, a few days later (Sep. 12), a "passing motorist" called the police to report a child with a gun chasing another child down the street "near a Larkspur bus stop." This call confirms that at least one of the students (Khalid Caraballo) did not leave his yard while playing with his airsoft gun.

" ... the white child appeared to have a gun, and he was chasing the other child ... when he saw me he kind of stuck it in his pants. I don't know if it was a toy or if they were playing," said the 911 caller in the Sept. 12 call.

The caller was speaking about 12-year-old Aidan Clark, who admits he ran off Caraballo's property into the street in front of Khalid's house.

"I ran and chased him. I aimed to shoot, and I saw a car on the right," Clark said.

"He looked directly at me and the black child kept on running," the 911 caller said.

Aidan was chasing a third child, who is African American and who was also suspended. Aidan says Khalid never left his property and none of the boys shot the guns while in the street.

Despite this being clearly out of its jurisdiction, the administration at Larkspur Middle School leapt into action, according to a letter sent to parents by principal Matthew Delaney.

In the course of the investigation, conducted in concert with a police officer and the school division Office of Safety and Loss Control, we identified the children who were firing pellet guns at each other and at people near the bus stop. Several students verified that they had been hit by pellets and had the marks to support their claims. In one instance, a child was only 10 feet from the bus stop and ran from the shots being fired but was still hit. Another student claimed to be shot in the back while running away during a previous incident Wednesday, Sept. 11. This child was also shot in the arm and head during Thursday’s incident. I contacted the school division’s Office of Student Leadership and School Board Legal Counsel for guidance. Because students were on their way to or at a school bus stop when they were struck by pellets, the school division has jurisdiction to take disciplinary actions against those students responsible for the disruption. There is an expectation that all students should be able to travel to and from school in the safest environment possible.

This statement leaves out a whole lot of details and relies heavily on Delaney's punishment-n-seriousness depiction of the events. According to the students, they were playing together. Delaney's wording makes it appear as though students were ambushed on their way to school. Either if they were, what happens outside of school isn't the school's jurisdiction, no matter what the legal counsel for the school board thinks. A school cannot assure that children are able to travel back and forth to school safely. The only environment it can even possibly control is the school bus.

Is the school actually taking the position that it's responsible for students' safe transit at any point between school and home? If so, then every parent whose kid is injured in any way while walking or biking to school has a valid claim against the school. That surely can't be what Delaney or his legal counsel want.

This should have been left where it was originally -- with the police if they felt like following up on the situation. The public streets are theirs to police. If it happened entirely in someone's yard, this should have been left up to the parents/property owners. Instead, administration decided to extend its territory solely for the purpose of enforcing its own stupid policies.

More from Delaney:

As the principal of Larkspur Middle School, I am responsible for the safety of students and will take all appropriate actions to ensure that the students using the pellet guns are appropriately disciplined and held responsible for their conduct. It is my sincere hope that they will learn important life lessons; the most important being that there will be consequences when they do things that can result in harm to another person.

This isn't the lesson you're teaching, Mark. You're teaching that every action a students takes, whether truly harmful or not, has the possibility of being severely punished by self-appointed, state-sponsored "saviors" like yourself, people who think nothing of damaging children's futures in order to assert and extend their authority.

Khalid and two other students have been suspended for possibly an entire year for shooting pellets at other students -- students that may have been actively and voluntarily playing with the suspended "shooters." Does adding a damaging long-term suspension to their transcripts seems like a fair tradeoff for some ultimately harmless pellet gunplay that occurred entirely off-campus (and on private property)? If so, your sense of proportion is severely out of whack, Mark.

Even more:

This was a dangerous situation that involved the intervention of law enforcement, the Office of Safety and Loss Control and our school administration.

Bullshit, Matthew. You're lying. Nothing was "dangerous." No one "intervened." Someone reported something to the police who reported it to you. The incident was over. It occurred before school, off school grounds and was entirely over by the time you decided to teach these students some "life lessons." This is you adding some spin in order to make it sound as though you've somehow averted a future tragedy with your swift, harsh overreaction. But the only thing you've done is shown everyone that you have no fear of extending your reach and expanding your jurisdiction.

The school board has issued a statement backing Principal Delaney's decision while going out of its way to take a swing at the press and detail Khalid Caraballo's disciplinary record (and has been "helpfully" provided in jpeg format).

We live and work in an era when school safety is foremost in everyone's mind. Yet somehow student safety has taken a back seat in the intense media coverage of this case. This is not an example of a public educator overreaching. This was not zero tolerance at all. This was a measured response to a student safety threat. A school principal took firm steps to ensure weapons didn't make their way into his school and that children didn't have to endure being shot at with a pellet gun as they walked to their bus stop...

All of that might be considered to be true if the final decision from the school board didn't state that the students were being suspended for "possession, handling and use of an Airsoft gun" -- something that did not occur on school property. So, it was definitely overreach, and the possibility of being suspended for an entire year for something that occurred outside of school sure sounds like an overreaction.

The school board's letter continues, detailing Khalid Caraballo's disciplinary record (which includes "increasingly aggressive behavior including harassment, bullying and fighting that resulted in injuries") in order to justify its decision to claim public streets and private yards as its jurisdiction. While this lends more credence to the suggestion that these kids were ambushing students on their way to the bus stop, it doesn't change the fact that the location where these events occurred is the jurisdiction of local law enforcement -- and ultimately, a problem to be handled by the police and parents of the children.

Daniel Edwards, chairman of the school board, states that he can discuss Caraballo's previous discipline problems because his parents signed a waiver. (None of the other students are mentioned by name in this report.) But his parents maintain they never gave him the permission to do so.

His parents told 10 On Your Side they are upset by that and said they signed a waiver for the school system to talk to WAVY about the airsoft incident only.

Edwards wraps up the letter by bemoaning the press and its "sensational" coverage of the incident.

Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt in this latest incident, but they could have been. Had a child been injured either by a weapon or as a result of fleeing the scene, the school may have been the subject of a different kind of news story; one that included accusations of turning a blind eye toward student safety. We hope that people will look beyond the sensational media reports and recognize that fact.

If you think you're going to be roasted no matter what decision you make, maybe you should make fewer lousy decisions. Kicking these students out of school doesn't change the fact that they live close to the bus stop and could easily return to attacking other students (if that's what actually happened). All this decision has done is made these three kids "not your problem," at least not until next January. And all that means is they're right back where they started -- in public streets and private property -- not your problem. If the media chooses to excoriate you because someone got injured on private property or public walkways, that says more about the media than anything else. But their overreaction doesn't justify one of your own.

Filed Under: overreaction, private property, schools, suspension

Student's Free Speech Victory Is A Victory For Everyone Even If You Disagree With His Speech

from the your-right-to-say-it dept

As strong proponents of free speech, we've made the point in the past that protecting the freedom of speech is going to necessitate protecting it for the kind of speech you wouldn't typically like to exist. Put another way, it's quite easy to be in favor of free speech when you aren't the one offended. It takes much more mental courage to stick up for the protected speech of a Nazi, a bigot, a sexist, or an idiot.

Or, as in this case, someone who ascribes to religious thoughts with which you may not agree. The story of then high school student Daniel Glowacki, who was kicked out of class simply for saying that his Catholicism didn't allow him to accept homosexuals, acts as a lesson in protecting the speech of others. It began, as you'd never expect, in a Michigan classroom, with a child wearing confederate flag belt. When the teacher, Johnson McDowell asked her to remove the belt, Glowacki pointed out that the teachers were all wearing purple for "Anti-Bullying Day." That's when things took a turn:

The teacher testified that he gave Glowacki an explanation on the difference in symbolism between the confederate and rainbow flag, to which Glowacki responded, "I don't accept gays because I am Catholic." Glowacki was instructed to leave and another student who shared the same belief asked to leave with him. According to affidavits from other students in the classroom, McDowell told them that "students cannot voice an opinion that creates an uncomfortable learning environment for another."

Which, for those of you who may not remember what school was like, is complete and utter nonsense. More to the point, speech is absolutely protected. That's why the fact that McDowell then kicked the students out of the class was a massive misstep. Despite the myth, students do not leave their constitutional rights at the doorway of their public school.

Now, it would be quite easy for me, and many like me, to say that Glowacki's beliefs are bigoted, homophobic, wrong, and outdated. And I do say every single one of those things. But I'd be damned before I allow his right to say exactly what he said to be infringed upon. The thing about insisting that free speech is afforded the right to offend, regardless of any discomfort for those around us, is it cuts both ways. If we're going to insist that we keep any sort of mandatory religion out of public schools (and we should), and if we're going to insist the curriculum be secular (and we should), then we also have to afford those that don't agree their right to voice their opposition.

Here's the good news: it seems like nearly everyone involved in this case agrees, and they even did so without resorting to over-the-top punitive nonsense.

However, the school district disagreed with his reason of reprimand, stating that it was based on McDowell's own personal offense [and] Judge Duggan held that the teacher violated the student's First Amendment rights by engaging in viewpoint discrimination.

"As a reasonable teacher, McDowell should have known that Daniel's protected speech could not serve as the basis for discipline or as the basis for believing a school district policy was violated," the judge said.

McDowell's punishment? $1 in damages to Glowacki. It might seem like a small amount for having violated a child's constitutional right to speech, but come on, this ended perfectly. The lesson isn't in the punishment. The lesson is that the enlightened position on speech is the protection of unenlightened speech.

Filed Under: daniel glowacki, free speech, religion, schools

Chicago School System On FOIA Requests: Stonewalling, Obfuscation, & Paper-Shredding

from the now-you-see-it,-now-you-don't dept

If you're a government with something to hide, there are plenty of shady ways to handle Freedom of Information Act requests. You can make sure your organization is legally allowed to carry guns and simply refuse, like the NYPD. You can also make a big deal about how requests are only honored for in-state residents, as if that were the spirit of the legislation. Or, if you're as big as the federal government, you can play a sort of bureaucratic hackey-sack game with the request for years before releasing the most non-useful information possible. The problem with all of these methods, however, is that they make those using them look petty, but they don't really cement their position in the corrupt jackasses category that I believe all government agencies secretly want to obtain.

Which is why we'll go to the Chicago city government, since they're the obvious experts in the matter. Here, Rahm Emanuel's administration has taken responding to FOIA requests to a whole new level, not only providing nothing in response to such requests, but then answering questions from the Attorney General with non-responses indicating they might just have proactively destroyed the documents being requested. This story begins with our vaunted public school system, the CPS. Glenn Krell wanted to get his hands on what research had been done when CPS put in a longer school day without bothering to give schools any resources to actually do anything with the extra time.

Krell figured CPS had done research on the longer school day because, like every parent in the system, he'd received a letter from Jean-Claude Brizard, then the CEO, claiming that "our elementary school students are receiving 22 percent less instruction time than their peers across the country." So he sent CPS a FOIA request asking for "the reports, statistics, comprehensive city-by-city analysis and other documents that back up the statement by Mr. Brizard."

CPS responded that "the district does not maintain any documents responsive to your request."

Got that? CPS cites a statistic justifying the longer school day, Krell asks for the basis of that statistic, and CPS says there is no document for that. In internet terms, Krell asked for a citation and CPS was unable to provide one. In addition, Krell asked for information on how the city decided to achieve what it calls "selective enforcement tiers", by which high-performing schools are made available to lower-income families as a method for integration. This was another matter about which CPS had indicated its offices were just overflowing with research.

He knew CPS had lots of information on this matter because he'd read about it in the Tribune. In that article, CPS officials boasted about how they'd left no stone unturned in their effort to make the selection process as fair and objective as possible. They said the process considers data such as home-ownership rates in the students' census tracts and the share of homes where English isn't the primary language.

The response to that request? CPS claimed there too it had no documents to turn over. But why? Had Brizard and CPS simply made the statistics and research claims up? To find out, Krell appealed to AG Lisa Madigan, which is exactly what the law indicates you're supposed to do if you get a fishy response to a FOIA request. Madigan's office dutifully asked CPS if such documents had never existed, or if they'd simply been destroyed. CPS responded that they had never maintained those records and they do not exist. The result of that non-answer was for Madigan's office to declare the matter closed.

And that's a problem, because CPS didn't actually answer the AG's question. They do not answer whether or not the documents ever existed at all, only that they never maintained them and they don't exist currently. One way to achieve that answer is for the research to never have actually been done, which would make CPS liars on multiple items it had addressed to parents and the press. Another way is for those documents to have been proactively destroyed instead of maintained, quite possibly so that they'd never have to be revealed for a FOIA request. Either way, that's crappy government. Add to that Madigan's shirking of her responsibility and it's difficult to take Emmanuel seriously when he claims his administration is "the most open, accountable, and transparent government Chicago has ever seen."

Filed Under: chicago, foia, schools

Counter-Strike Map Of School Causes Outrage

from the conflicted dept

On the heels of our last story about someone who raised the public's ire over a "real-world" Counter-Strike map, it seems these stories may only become more prevalent. This seems particularly likely given that the threat of legal action doesn't seem to serve much of a deterrance against those that wish to be creative with game maps in this respect. You had to know that this gaming envelope was only going to be pushed further. Such is the way of things. It's something of a one-up culture. In addition, I should note that I tend to think that punishing this kind of creation is generally wrong. It's a game map, nothing more.

However, I will admit to being heavily conflicted when I came across the story of another Counter-Strike map controversy, this one resulting from the creation of a map based on a local secondary school in Port Moody, British Columbia. The reaction from the locals upon discovering a video of the map on YouTube was, understandably, negative.

"We have rainbow-colored lockers, and it's our field of dreams... and then to watch the video game, and see people shooting up our field of dreams, it was just so disturbing," Alex Devlin, a teacher at Port Moody Secondary School, told CBC News. "I believe it's just a game, it's not reality... but a lot of kids don't live in reality, right," another local said.

Let me start off by saying that I get it. Given recent tragedies suffered on the North American continent, I completely understand the discomfort locals, especially parents, might feel discovering a map of their school being built in a game that is all about shooting. I won't begrudge them their animosity. However, I am extremely pleased that cooler heads prevailed in this case.

The map's creators helped their causes greatly when they published their own website to respond to their critics. Far from antagonizing, they decided to explain why they had chosen the school to serve as inspiration for their game map.

The map was this because it's architecture and design is rather ideal for the game's tactics. Furthermore, this is a location we are quite familiar with already. Additionally, supporters and fellow alumni are also likely familiar with this location, which makes it an ideal common ground for this game and its intended audience.

When you push the admittedly understandable emotional response to the side, their explanation makes a great deal of sense. Local gamers wanting to play a game they love in a fictional representation of a place they know. Once I took a deep breath, I realized that some of the games I love most, and some of those I'm looking forward to the most, feature real locations that I'm familiar with. Any game, for instance, that features the city of Chicago, regardless of the game's genre, is likely going to get a look from me, because I love the idea of playing out a fictional game in the city I love. This is no different, even if the game in question is one that involves weapons and shooting. More importantly, it certainly isn't something that should require legal action. Fortunately, the police in the area agree, saying so in what I would consider to be a surprisingly reasonable response.

Although the creation of such a video game is likely ill-conceived in the current climate, it does not constitute an offence. Investigators from the Port Moody Police Department have interviewed the developer of this game and have concluded that he does not pose a danger to the staff or students of Port Moody Secondary.

In the end, that's all that matters. There is no safety concern in making a map of a school for a game. It's just a map.

Filed Under: counter-strike, schools, shootings, students, worries

7-Year-Old Student Suspended For Waving Around A 'Gun' Made From A Pastry

from the 'always-be-a-good-boy/don't-ever-play-with-buns' dept

So, it's come to this. Oh, wait. I've already used that opening, back when I thought the pinnacle of guns-n-schools overreaction had been approached, if not actually surmounted. Let's start again.

So, NOW it's come to this. A seven-year-old suspended from school for crudely fashioning his breakfast pastry into a gun-like shape and brandishing it in the most menacing fashion a gun-shaped pastry can be wielded.

A 7-year-old Anne Arundel County boy was suspended for two days for chewing a breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun and saying, “Bang, bang”— an offense the school described as a threat to other students, according to his family.

The pastry “gun” was a rectangular strawberry-filled bar, akin to a Pop-Tart, that the second-grader had tried to nibble into the shape of a mountain Friday morning, but then found it looked more like a gun, said his father, William “B.J.” Welch.

Yes. A Pop Tart knockoff makes a handy makeshift weapon, perhaps explaining why pastries are no longer served in prisons. When I say "it's come to this," it really has, but it's been a long time coming and there's plenty of precedent.

- Feb. 5, 2013 - A ten-year-old Virginia student was suspended for bringing an orange-tipped toy gun on a bus.

- Feb. 1, 2013 - A 9-year-old student was suspended for bringing a 2-inch toy gun on a key fob to school.

- Jan. 29, 2013 - A 5-year-old student could be suspended for crafting a Lego gun during an after-school program. Not only that, but he'd crafted his fingers into a gun mere weeks earlier.

- Jan. 22, 2013 - A 5-year-old is suspended for discussing her Hello Kitty bubble gun, saying, "I'll shoot you, you'll shoot me and we'll all play together."

- Jan. 2, 2013 - A 6-year-old in a Washington D.C. school was suspended for making a gun gesture with his hands.

- August 28, 2012 - A deaf 3-year-old preschooler is asked to change the sign he uses for his name -- Hunter -- which he signs by forming a gun with his hands. Apparently, "saying" his name violates the school's weapon policy.

- Feb. 24, 2012 - A drawing of a gun by a four-year-old resulted in the arrest of her father when he came to pick her up from school. He was detained by police and strip-searched while his children were questioned by social services. The gun his child depicted? A plastic toy that belonged to his kids.

That's just a sampling. There are many more stories like these out there. There are many that are underreported or never reported, where parents just deal with the ridiculous outcome of zero-tolerance policies. For some reason, many schools still labor under the delusion that "zero tolerance" equals "tough, but fair." It's neither, and utilizing zero tolerance policies simply prunes the whole process back to a disfigured stump devoid of logic, perspective or context.

So, a child eats something and starts playing with his food because it resembles something other than the RDA-approved Pop Tart knockoff. And his school responds by twisting its own weapons policy into a parody of itself. The actual wording pertaining to prohibited items, courtesy of Lowering the Bar, reads like this:

Any gun of any kind, loaded or unloaded, operable or inoperable, including any object other than a firearm which is a look-a-like of a gun. This shall include, but is not limited to, pellet gun, paintball gun, stun gun, taser, BB gun, flare gun, nail gun, and air soft gun.

How does this policy apply to the pastry? That's a great question, and Lowering the Bar doesn't have an answer:

Josh's gun was not a firearm, because it was a pastry, and it seems highly unlikely that it qualified as a gun "look-a-like," again because it was a pastry. It certainly is nothing like any of the "look-a-like" items set forth in the list, largely because those items are not pastries.

The school's logic apparently is that if it vaguely resembles a gun and someone is pretending it's a gun, then it's a gun look-a-like. Case closed.

This, in and of itself, would be pathetic enough. But it gets worse. The school sent home a letter regarding the (non) incident, which hilariously offers the assistance of staff counselors for anyone "troubled" by the weaponized pastry.

Dear Parents and Guardians:

I am writing to let you know about an incident that occurred this morning in one of our classrooms and encourage you to discuss this matter with your child in a manner you deem most appropriate.

During breakfast this morning, one of our students used food to make inappropriate gestures that disrupted the class. While no physical threats were made and no one [was] harmed, the student had to be removed from the classroom.

* * *

As you are aware, the ... Code of Student Conduct and appropriate consequences related to violations of the code are clearly spelled out in the Student Handbook, which was sent home during the first week of school and can be found on our website, www.aacps.org....
If your children express that they are troubled by today's incident, please talk with them and help them share their feelings. Our school counselor is available to meet with any students who have the need to do so next week. In general, please remind them of the importance of making good choices.

Kevin Underhill at LTB adds:

Pretty sure that if your children are "troubled" by another kid biting a pastry into something that looks sort of like a gun and waving said pastry around, you have already failed as a parent.

And I'd add that if you've done even a merely passable job as a parent, the only "feeling" your children might want to "share" is that their school is run by officious asshats, even if they haven't quite developed the vocabulary to say that in so many words. (Don't kid yourselves, parents: they're quite capable of swearing well above their grade level.)

This is the nadir of the education system's zero tolerance weapon policies. Zero tolerance does nothing more than relieve the administrative staff from the possibility of having blood on their hands. No situtation is too ridiculous to be taken seriously -- and punished harshly. Reducing every incident to binary ensures that no school employee can ever be held responsible for overreacting to any perceived "threat," no matter how innocuous. In many ways, the education system is a reflection of our current "homeland security" ecosystem where the endless pursuit of "safety" has become the impetus for thousands of terrible policies, all enforced inflexibly.

There's a way to pull out of this nosedive but it involves many, many people being willing to make judgement calls on the fly and able to face the heat should their judgement falter. Unfortunately for many in the system, the risk is much higher than the reward. For many in these positions, the possibility of being wrong is incapacitating and zero tolerance policies relieve this pressure. Trying to steer the system back towards a greater reliance on common sense won't be easy, but continuing to let it drift in its current direction will do nothing to improve the safety and security of our schools, much less our country.

Filed Under: children, guns, overreaction, pastries, schools, zero tolerance

DailyDirt: Educating Adults

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Elite schools aren't getting any cheaper, and college tuition seems to be rising faster than a lot of other goods (though the net price may not be). So what are aspiring university students to do? Here are just a few interesting links on the future of education.

• One proposal for college students to try to pay for rising tuition fees is for schools to take a cut of their students' future earnings in lieu of upfront tuition. Indentured servitude 2.0 might kill the classical liberal arts education, but oh well. [url]
• Baby boomers might be able to take college-level classes via iPads and chatrooms, but do they really want to? Mobile classes sound useful for students of any age, so why target just the baby boomers? (This exercise left to the reader.) [url]
• Sal Khan discusses the future of credentialing -- and how schools might be separated from the role of providing proof of proficiency. The future of microcredentials could offer a way for anyone to obtain proof of expertise in a narrowly-defined domain. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: college, credentialing, education, expertise, khan academy, microcredentials, schools, tuition, universities

Court Temporarily Blocks School District From Suspending Student For Refusing To Wear Student ID/Tracking Device

from the maybe-someone-should-ask-the-administration-to-wear-one-during-the-work-day dept

A few months back, Tim Geigner covered the story of a Texas school district's efforts to track its students' whereabouts using student ID cards with embedded RFID chips. The district attempted to paint this "students-as-livestock/prisoners" effort as being there for the safety of students and staff. But underneath all the "safety" talk was a large pile of money that the school district hoped to pocket. The so-called "Student Locator" project Texas' Northside Independent School District was implementing put school officials within handout distance of nearly $1.7 million in state government funds.

Although many students and parents have expressed their displeasure with the new program, it wasn't until a student at John Jay High School's Science and Engineering Academy opted out that any punishment had been handed out in connection with the RFID cards. Andrea Hernandez has refused to wear the ID card, citing religious and privacy reasons. In response, the school district has suspended her indefinitely, moving her to another high school in the same district that has not yet implemented the Smart ID policy.

Despite all the talk about "safety," the school district was more than happy to undercut the entire stated purpose of the Smart ID in order to keep Hernandez and her family from speaking out against the program.

The school offered a special lanyard with the RFID tag removed, in the hopes to put a damper on the whole situation. The student’s father refused the deal, however, because it came with strings attached.

“He told me in a meeting that if my daughter would proudly wear her student ID card around her neck so everyone could see, he would be able to quietly remove her chip from her student ID card,” Steve Hernandez told WND. “He went on to say as part of the accommodation my daughter and I would have to agree to stop criticizing the program and publicly support … it. I told him that was unacceptable because it would imply an endorsement of the district’s policy and my daughter and I should not have to give up our constitutional rights to speak out against a program that we feel is wrong.”

Apparently, the ID cards are so essential that the school district is willing to suspend a student for not wearing one, but not essential enough that the ID card needs to be fully functioning. Any stated concerns about "safety" are completely laughable if the district is willing to let students wander the school grounds untracked, sporting only plastic badges.

It's pathetic that this attempt was even made. The school district's main concerns seem to be a) having students appear to support the program, b) using the RFID cards to provide proof of attendance in exchange for funding and c) shutting down criticism.

Unfortunately for the school, the attempted suspension is now on hold.

The Hernandez family decided to take action against the school with the help of the Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties and human rights group which immediately took the view that the school district is looking for more public funding, which it can only receive if there is proof of positive student attendance rates. Rutherford attorneys filed a petition for the aforementioned TRO, as well as immediate injunctive and declaratory relief alleging that the school’s actions violate Hernandez’s rights under Texas’ Religious Freedom Act, the First Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment.

“The court’s willingness to grant a temporary restraining order is a good first step, but there is still a long way to go—not just in this case, but dealing with the mindset, in general, that everyone needs to be monitored and controlled,” John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, said in a statement. While the TRO has been granted, a hearing on the preliminary injunction will take place next week.

The Rutherford Institute's filing (PDF) states that the district currently has no policy or procedure in place that deals directly with the RFID badges, much less one stating that students can be suspended for failing to wear the new IDs. It also points out that requiring Hernandez to wear a nonfunctioning ID as a "show of support" for the Student Locator Project violates her First Amendment rights by compelling her to convey a message she does not agree with. The filing also claims that the school district's ID program clearly violates both her Fourteenth Amendment rights as well as Texas Freedom of Religion Act. According to Hernandez, many other students have refused to wear the ID cards, but none of them have been punished to the extent that she is, prompting claims of religious persecution.

All in all, this doesn't look good for the school district, which has pushed through an intrusive student surveillance program in order to secure additional government funding. The "safety" of the student body is just the sales pitch. Any supposed "concern" for student safety went out the window, along with the legitimacy of the program, the moment the district offered to remove the tracking chip. The audacity of the district's actions is breathtaking -- both the implementation of such a controversial program, and its response to this student's refusal to participate.

The only other situation in which human beings might need to be constantly surveilled at an individual level is at a maximum security prison. But if you're willing to treat minors looking for an education like dangerous convicted criminals, there's no telling what your next "bright idea" might be. Here's hoping this early effort leads to the entire program being scrapped before it can do any more damage.

Filed Under: rfid, schools, students, texas, tracking

School Administrator Brushes Off 'Constitutional Niceties' Like Fifth Amendment Rights For Students

from the granting-rights-means-ceding-control----can't-have-that dept

For many school administrators, the default mode is to limit the rights of students while enforcing very broadly-worded policies. The default mode may start shifting, though, as more courts are reminding administrators that, while students' rights may be more constrained than those of adults, they're not nonexistent.

Recently, a court reminded a Minnesota school district that demanding a student's Facebook password was a violation of her First and Fourth Amendment rights. The judge stated:

For more than forty years, the United States courts have recognized that students do not check their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse door.

In an on-going case in Kentucky, the state supreme court is trying to determine whether students are entitled to Fifth and Sixth Amendment protections, specifically those related to "Miranda rights." (via Reason)

The Kentucky Supreme Court is considering a case from Nelson County that could require school officials to give the Miranda warning – You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you ... – when questioning a student with a school resource officer present.

Miranda warnings are required when a subject is in custody – when a suspect thinks he’s not free to leave – and at issue is whether a student grilled in the principal’s office inherently fits that description.

This is an interesting question. Students being detained in principals' offices are generally granted "release" at the discretion of the administrator. It's certainly not a formal detainment, like being placed in a holding cell, but it certainly isn't optional either. The U.S. Supreme Court has said that a person is in custody when "the circumstances would lead a reasonable person to conclude he was not free to leave." This would seem to be the normal conclusion a student would draw from a mandatory visit to the principal's office.

In a brief for N.C., assistant public advocate Robert Strong says that when a student is sent to the principal’s office, “He is not allowed to leave until the principal says so.” In other words, a reasonable student would conclude he was in custody, “given the coercive nature of the principal’s office,” Strong says.

This case sprung out of an incident at a Nelson County school in which a student gave another student some prescription painkillers. The "school resource officer" (actually an armed deputy sheriff) charged the student with illegally dispensing a controlled substance. The student was sentenced in a juvenile court to 45 days in an adult prison (?). His appeal (which was denied) argued that his statement should have been suppressed because he wasn't read his Miranda rights before being questioned.

There's actually some related precedent for this case. The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling on students and Miranda warnings last year in a case from North Carolina, stating that the student's age must be considered when determining whether they have a right to a Miranda warning.

The facts of that case, in which a 13-year-old was interviewed by police at school about a series of neighborhood thefts, were “eerily” similar to N.C.’s case, Strong said. The boy was escorted by an armed school resource officer to an office, where he was interviewed by the officer with an assistant principal present. Neither gave him a Miranda warning.

The U.S. Supreme Court noted the purpose behind Miranda is to keep subjects from being coerced into giving false confessions, to which children are particularly prone. “A reasonable child subjected to police questioning will sometimes feel pressured to submit when a reasonable adult would feel free to go,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the court.

Most students are probably unaware of their rights and administrators seem mostly unwilling to pass on that information. It's easier for adminstration if the students operate under the assumption that their rights are limited to whatever the school policies grant them. When students are being interrogated like suspected criminals, with an armed officer present, it would seem they should be granted the same rights as other criminals (especially if the end result is a stay at an adult prison) and be given a Miranda warning before any questioning occurs. This seems like the least the school could do. But, as statements by the administration director show, the district has no interest in granting students these rights.

Simple investigations would be hamstrung and schools would be less safe if principals, every time they question a student, “must look into a crystal ball and predict, ‘This could lead to criminal charges, I have to Mirandize this child,’ ” said Wayne Young, executive director of the Kentucky Association of School Administrators.

If you're bringing an armed member of law enforcement into the room, it would seem that you've already made that determination, or have gathered enough evidence to warrant their presence. But schools with law enforcement on staff have been known to bring them along for nearly any reason, possible criminal offense or no. The case mentioned above dealt with some supposedly "bullying" statements made on Facebook about a member of the school's staff and that interrogation involved three members of administration and a law enforcement officer armed with a taser. To handle one teenage girl.

And as for the feeling that "simple investigations" would be "hamstrung" by the Miranda warning? Too bad. The police have to do it and their investigations usually concern something more threatening to safety than Facebook status updates and painkiller distribution.

Young isn't done, though. He takes the same hardline many in law enforcement and various intelligence agencies do. Alleged criminals don't deserve rights.

“If a crime is being committed in school, if somebody is handing out pain medication, I don’t think we should be troubled with constitutional niceties.”

He said courts have given schools leeway on student free-speech issues and searches, which don’t require warrants in schools, because of the importance of maintaining safety and order on campus. “The goal is to protect all children, and it doesn’t bother me if a child’s constitutional protections are limited, if it is to protect all children,” he said.

That's the same excuse used by everyone from the local school to the NSA: "safety" trumps "constitutional protections." The fact that Young refers to Constitutional rights as "niceties" reveals the condescending and dismissive attitude he has for those under his control. It's little wonder he believes that students shouldn't be read the Miranda warning, as "niceties" like the Fifth and Sixth Amendment simply get in the way of "safety" and "order." (Without Godwin-ing anything, it's a bit chilling to hear someone openly value "order" over "personal freedoms.")

Young's fears that apprising students of their Miranda rights will upset order or compromise safety are irrational. Paul Holland, dean at Seattle University Law and a Youth Advocacy Clinic instructor, believes that if school administration is going to collaborate with law enforcement when questioning students, they should "err on the side of advising students of their rights."

Holland said the fear that safety would be compromised is ill-founded because the Miranda doctrine already contains an exception when there is an imminent threat – such as for questions about the existence or location of weapons on school grounds.

Even if a student’s answers are suppressed because of a Miranda violation and couldn’t be used in a criminal case, they still could be used to suspend or expel a student, he points out in “Schooling Miranda: Policing Interrogation in the 21st Century Schoolhouse.”

It is also likely that most students will waive their right to remain silent or to an attorney, he said. “Thus, the amount of information lost to Miranda would be slight.”

Advising students of their Miranda rights is granting them a modicum of control, something Nelson County's administrators seem loathe to do. This sort of atmosphere pervades many school districts, thanks to overreaching anti-bullying policies and a general push for greater control of every aspect of their students' actions, on or off campus. If actual dangerous suspects are granted this right, however begrudgingly, why is it such a problem to extend it to students?

Filed Under: constitution, fifth amendment, schools

Common Sense For School Internet Safety Policies

from the less-irrational-fear,-more-education dept

We talk quite a bit here about the growing pains of various institutions when faced with upstarts like the internet and social media. The usual suspects like the recording industry and newpapers come to mind first, but one of our oldest institutions continues to painfully stumble its way into the future: the educational system.

The institution's deep-seated mistrust of the most used encyclopedia in the world is already well known. But as email has given way to texting and social networks have expanded past the confines of the schoolyard, those seeking to somehow control the seeming chaos have worked steadily to bang out reactionary policies and ever-tightening guidelines. Rather than temper their actions with some common sense or a bit of perspective, educators (and some parent groups) have often decided to deploy terrible "zero tolerance" policies or overly-broad "guidelines," relying on a variety of tech-related boogiemen (online predators, cyberbullying, sexting, porn... um... Wikipedia vandals?) to keep questions to a minimum.

Fortunately, someone is actually attempting to inject some common sense into school internet safety policies, tackling many of the issues that seem to go hand-in-hand with attempting to provide analog guidance in a digital era. Via Bruce Schneier comes "26 Internet Safety Talking Points," compiled by Scott McLeod at Dangerously Irrelevant.

McLeod, founder of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), runs through the whole alphabet (and adds a few corollaries) detailing talking points he uses when discussing internet safety with principals and superintendents. The entire piece is definitely worth reading. Here's a few selections from McLeod's list.

First off, bad things will happen. But it's not the tool being used. It's the user.

C. Mobile phones, Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube, blogs, Wikispaces, Google, and whatever other technologies you’re blocking are not inherently evil. Stop demonizing them and focus on people’s behavior, not the tools, particularly when it comes to making policy.

In addition to school administrators, members of our government and various security agencies should be presented with a copy of this talking point.

F. You never can promise 100% safety. For instance, you never would promise a parent that her child would never, ever be in a fight at school. So quit trying to guarantee 100% safety when it comes to technology. Provide reasonable supervision, implement reasonable procedures and policies, and move on.

Another thing our government and its affiliated agencies do well: use fear to acquire and maintain control.

G. The ‘online predators will prey on your schoolchildren’ argument is a false bogeyman, a scare tactic that is fed to us by the media, politicians, law enforcement, and computer security vendors. The number of reported incidents in the news of this occurring is zero.

There's a lot of buck-passing and "our hands are tied" gestures made when these policies are questioned. Often, it's simply not true.

H. Federal laws do not require your draconian filtering. You can’t point the finger somewhere else. You have to own it yourself.

This should be obvious. You're educators, after all.

K. There’s a difference between a teachable moment and a punishable moment. Lean toward the former as much as possible.

What is the rationale behind policies like this? That if it's online, it's automatically inappropriate? It's such an obvious double standard and yet, it's deployed so often.

N. If you’re prohibiting teachers from being ‘friends’ with students online, are you also prohibiting them from being ‘friends’ with students in neighborhoods, at church, in volunteer organizations, at the mall, and in other non-school settings?

Streisand.

S. Unless you like losing lawsuits, remember that students and staff have speech and privacy rights, particularly off-campus. Remember that any dumb decision you make is Internet fodder and has a good chance of going viral online. Do you really want to be the next stupid administrator story on The Huffington Post?

The more you block, the more energy gets expended by attempts at circumvention. Wouldn't you rather focus this energy on something positive, rather than trying to extinguish every flame you see? 

Z. Educating is always, always more powerful than blocking.

This the correct way to "think about the children." A list like this is a handy thing to keep close at hand for the inevitable moment when school adminstrators declare "something must be done. " Tossing a little common sense cold water on heated, reactionary plans is always a good idea.

Filed Under: culture, safety, schools

DailyDirt: Wuzzle Means To Mix. Sculch Is Junk. Alate Means To Have Wings. A Baloo Is A Bear....

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are a lot of standardized tests for kids to take, but it's not always clear what the results of the tests actually mean. If society wants to create a huge population of adults who can memorize some facts or fill out circles with no.2 pencils, then we're doing a pretty good job of it. Here are a few links that question the usefulness of certain kinds of tests.

• The New York state Education Department recently threw out standardized test questions related to a nonsensical story about talking animals and a sleeveless pineapple. Apparently, a lot of 8th graders were confused about the moral of this story, but the larger lesson might be that standardized tests shouldn't be taken too seriously. [url]
• The headmaster of one of NYC's top private schools (Riverdale) doesn't have a high opinion of standardized IQ tests for admissions. "This push on tests ... is missing out on some serious parts of what it means to be a successful human." [url]
• In Florida, it looks like 5th graders are getting their answers marked wrong even when they're correct. Science is so subjective these days. [url]
• Finnish schools don't administer standardized tests until the last year of high school, but somehow Finnish students seem to do well on the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) exams. Is there something to be learned from the Finnish school system? [url]
• To discover more interesting education-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: education, exams, finland, schools, students, teachers, tests
Companies: riverdale