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US student suspended for refusing to wear school-issued tracker (wired.co.uk)

30 points by trendspotter ↗ HN
"A Texas high school student is being suspended for refusing to wear a student ID card implanted with a radio-frequency identification chip. Northside Independent School District in San Antonio began issuing the RFID-chip-laden student-body cards when the semester began in the autumn. The ID badge has a bar code associated with a student's Social Security number, and the RFID chip monitors pupils' movements on campus, from when they arrive to when they leave."

12 comments

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markyc
I am thankful I don't live in the States!
tzs
Where do you live?

edit: down votes? Seriously? He's making an implicit comparison between the US and wherever he lives, and saying that the US comes up short in the comparison. It is quite legitimate and reasonable to ask where he lives so that we can reasonably evaluate this comparison and perhaps discuss it.

nickbarone
Success metric fail.

Then again - What is the success metric for education? Attendance is (IMHO) pretty terrible, and standardized testing hasn't worked out the best - so what is it?

A classic answer (but still, probably not all that great of one) is jobs upon graduation - but that doesn't help in elementary school.

So, how would you go about turning such long-term metrics as "employment in ten years" into short term metrics, to figure out what to do next week?

Caballera
Unfortunately, the school get their money based on how many kids go to their school. They have to keep track, if they don't or if students aren't showing regularly, they lose funding.
nickbarone
What I'm saying is that using attendance as the metric to determine funding sucks and we should find a better way.

Success metrics are how you determine whether a change has worked, and they are how you determine where to put more resources. So if your success metric is attendance, you're going to maximize attendance, not quality of education.

rhizome
The success of the US education system is measured by the highly squishy terms of "perception."
tzs
I don't think they are using attendance is a success metric. They are using it as a cost metric.
meaty
We had swipe cards at university which did this sort of tracking and this was in the early 90s.

It was not uncommon to take 3-4 people's with you to swipe and register. When they worked this out, it was scrapped instantly.

Stuff like this doesn't work, unless you're selling it...

leoedin
"nothing whatsoever to do with academic priorities and everything to do with fattening school coffers,"

I'm not sure this makes sense. If a school gets more funding, they can spend more on academic programmes.

I know that when I was in a fairly under-funded high school in the UK, I'd have supported something that would bring in more funding. The school isn't some sort of evil corporation trying to fuck everyone over and give their profits to already rich bankers - they're a local not-for-profit organisation trying to educate kids.

mhurron
Funding usually goes to either administrators pockets or to making the system look more impressive with devices that no one knows how to use.

Education (looked at as a whole) in the US is pretty well funded, simply throwing money at the problem isn't solving anything.

robotjosh
All of you people are over reacting taking this person's side. She refuses to wear the ID even with the tag removed!