Texas Schools Using Electronic Chips To Track Students; Parents In Uproar 540
An anonymous reader writes "Two Schools in San Antonio are using electronic chips to help administrators count and track students' whereabouts. Students at Anson Jones Middle School and John Jay High School are now required to wear ID cards using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology embedded with electronic chips in an effort to daily attendance records. The article said the Northside Independent School District receives about $30 per day in state funding for each student reporting."
Microwaves are fun. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just saying.
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Jimmy, come in, we haven't seen you on our records lately, why yes Mr Tegan did say you were in his 5th form class, but we don't see you. We'll have to refer you to the police regarding truancy. Now I don't like this, but if you just wore this new ID badge, we don't need to get the police involved..."
Re:Microwaves are fun. (Score:5, Insightful)
Jimmy shows Mr. Tegan his ID. Tegan gets deeply confused. when system says Jimmy isn't there. Jimmy says BOO and Tegan drops dead of fright.
More likely, Jimmy is issued a new ID, and so are a growing number of other students week after week until the school system decides the system is too expensive.
Re:Microwaves are fun. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Microwaves are fun. (Score:5, Funny)
Hush yo mouf!
I jus talkin bout Jimmy
Re:Microwaves are fun. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not sure I like Jimmy.
Re:Microwaves are fun. (Score:5, Funny)
"and seeing as it isnt embedded in his arm"
So the obvious answer to this dilema is to embed RFID tags in students arms.
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Ironically, so many are drinking the "corporate" line that they would just blow it off..
On this particular issue, they won't - "mark of the beast" and all that.
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No, I'm sure in this case, he/she is referring to the last chapter of the Bible, which presumably St. John the Evangelist wrote after he had eaten bad mussels or something.. I encourage you to read it even if you're not a christian; it's very mystical and all. "Gyne peribeblene ton helion", and all that stuff (there's translations you don't have to read it in koinè).
Here's the quote; there's also an Iron Maiden song about it, if you're interested. Apokalyps 13 verse 1
Re:Microwaves are fun. (Score:5, Informative)
Then the police look into the alibi and determine that it's just a chip. They talk to the techs just to make sure their suspicions on the validity of chips for tracking is correct; they are not reliable enough to stand up in the court of law.
So they go to the school and ask the teacher and kids if they remember seeing Jimmy on the day of so-and-so. His girlfriend swears he was there, but they find her not to be a reliable witness - being his girlfriend and all. Others, however, only recall his badge sitting lonely at his desk.
The police then review the hallway security cameras, and put the feed next to the badge ID logs. Sure enough, when his girlfriend enters, two IDs are logged; hers, and Jimmy's. When she leaves again, two IDs are logged; hers and Jimmy's.
The police collect the information as evidence, take down formal testimonies, and write up a report as to Jimmy's claimed alibi.
Jimmy is found to have lied to the police, and the police find themselves armed with another argument in an eventual court case, and more leeway in the investigation. His girlfriend will be brought in for further questioning and may eventually be charged with aiding and abetting.
Whether or not Jimmy would be tried, let alone convicted, is another matter altogether. But his alibi would be shot down long before that.
Real life just doesn't always fit with people's idealistic views that all cops are stupid and/or lazy and/or corrupt.
Re:Microwaves are fun. (Score:4, Interesting)
In my fairly rural highschool nearly a decade ago they even had (hidden!) cameras in the bathrooms...
Re:Microwaves are fun. (Score:4, Informative)
God no. Once you're inside the building you can't get outside without first speaking to the attendance officer, being signed out, then taking that to the office. They lock the doors during the day and the only way out is literally through the main office.
Not that it matters -- you get 20 minutes for lunch. If you had a car you'd *maybe* have time for the mcdonalds drive through if you ate on the drive back. And you have four minutes between classes. And no such thing as free periods -- even if it's the first or last class of the day, if you have nothing scheduled they assign you to a room where you sit in complete silence for 40 minutes.
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Granted, High School was many years ago for me...but we'd just hang in the parking lot with our cars, playing music loud, throwing frisbee (some people doing other more *questionable* things)....and lunch was the same as a class period, 50 minutes I think? We had two lunches....half the school on one..half on the other...but we could come and go as we pleased.
This was in the south of the US.
During assemblies...you could often see a procession of cars leaving....usually we ran to get beer and hang o
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Jesus H. Christ -- what you described is PRISON for 8 hours a day!
These kids aren't being trained to become well trained adults, they are being indoctrinated into how to pay for things with cigarettes or hide a shiv from the ever present camera.
Re:Microwaves are fun. (Score:5, Funny)
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Or makes the student's parents pay for it when it breaks, like they do with textbooks.
Eh, at $30/student/day, good luck competing with these numbers...
The article said one recent morning at Anson Jones, where 1,200 attend, the regular roll counted reported 71 students absent. The RFID system corrected that number, showing eight of the 71 were actually in school that day. The map showed several students were in the band hall where practice ran late, while others were near the office. The school would have lost $240 that day if the chips would not have been in effect.
Pascual Gonzalez, Northside's communications director told NBC that he estimates the district has been losing about $1.7 million a year because of underreported attendance. He also said the RFID cost was $261,000 and should pay for itself within one year.
A $1.7M loss because of under reporting means that 56,667 kids were not counted who were actually there. The problem is not that kids are missing school. It is because evidently in Texas, teachers can't count. No wonder why the US keeps falling behind other countries in math and science.
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http://www.nisd.net/schools/ [nisd.net]
It appears it is a large school district. They have 71 elementary schools, 18 middle schools and 15 high schools along with 8 special schools (I'm guessing career and vocational centers and developmental needs facilities). That's 112 schools, if each misses counting 8 students a day because of lateness or some practice causing them not to be counted the one time they take attendance or something, it comes out to a much larger number of 898 students not being counted per day. 315
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Jimmy says "But I have my ID right here!" then pulls his ID out of his wallet [thinkgeek.com] and shows it to the administrator.
Tie it to a rat (Score:5, Interesting)
Tie the RFID chip to a rat, and leave out rat treats on the floor in your favorite classes. You'll get a perfect attendance award.
(Adults are dumb.)
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Tie the RFID chip to a rat, and leave out rat treats on the floor in your favorite classes.
...and then show up to class every day to leave the treats for the rat to eat.... make perfect sense.
(Adults are dumb.)
You're over 18, aren't you?
*Pay* a nerd to carry it. (Score:3)
A college (for 16-18 year olds) that one of my friends attended had a simpler version of this system -- student cards had to be swiped into a reader to show attendance. The teachers didn't care much about the system -- they're teaching adults, so there were fewer in loco parentis responsibilities, and the "adults" are supposed to want to be there...
My friend made good money for a while, swiping people's cards for them. At the time, the government paid 16-18 year olds from poor families to go to school [wikipedia.org] onc
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WWBTD [xkcd.com]?
Story is unbelievable. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well.. only because OMG666 preachersaysThisISbad.
Which is also cognitive dissonant because they want the end of the world to happen anyway because they are perfect and they are going to be magically vacuumed to heaven.
Re:Story is unbelievable. (Score:5, Insightful)
Note: I don't go to church because I don't like organized religion. It's not to my liking... so I don't participate. Simple.
See, that's where you're wrong. You participate. I participate. Every American taxpayer is forced to participate in organized religion, as long as things like this [arstechnica.com] are considered acceptable. Civilization itself is at stake, or soon will be, and the option to "live and let live" has been taken away from us.
Religion fucks up everything, starting with the government. They evidently don't teach history in public schools anymore, or people wouldn't have forgotten that.
A reason to be vigallent.... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why it *is* important for parents of today...to be against this type of tracking....if kids today think this is normal...well, it then becomes the norm.
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It's like what Neil Boortz said. If you send your child to a Catholic school, they will be raised to think Catholocism is great.
Well, you lost me there, because I went to a Catholic school and am agnostic. So maybe sending them to an oppressive high school makes them value their freedoms more once they get out.
Simpler, more permanent (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey, why not just embed the RFID tags in them subdermally, in their ear, like cattle? There must be a fair bit of expertise for that sort of thing in Texas.
In other news, the last kid in John Jay High School to figure out they could just leave their ID card in their locker and stay in bed all day was mercilessly mocked and bullied by his peers.
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They don’t do it subdermally, they do it exdermally (is this a real word?) like people. i.e. they do it like a ear piercing, not under the skin which could muck up the leather or hamburger.
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As they already treat them like cattle and as a commodity this is just the next logical step.
Re:Simpler, more permanent (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Simpler, more permanent (Score:5, Insightful)
Because we need a metric that can be measured with a daily KPI to show progress. This is what happens when you expect to apply "business rules" other places on society not based on monetary results.
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Or house alarm goes off when an unrecognized RFID enters. You get the picture.
OK now i am SURE you are trolling...
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Never underestimate the ability of people to screw up a simple security system. My guess is 99% of those systems will be vulnerable to a simple playback attack, why not, doing a good job means spending more money, right?
Also I've always wondered how RFIDs work in the presence of numerous other RFIDs, per person.
If the mark of the beast existed when I was a kid, I'd currently be tagged with 6 schools, something like 7 jobs, god only knows how many the .mil would insert (just one, or one per unit I served in
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A side effect of this new program might be more educated cows.
Do what with daily records? (Score:5, Informative)
I guess I should RTFA, but:
I don't know what that means...
Re:Do what with daily records? (Score:5, Insightful)
It probably means that the teachers haven't a clue who their charges are and that the writer of the above passed through the system despite not attending.
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Re:Do what with daily records? (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess public education has failed us then. Bad attendance costs schools, money. Bad education, Meehhh!
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It's like when you accidentally 93MB of .rar files.
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Re:Do what with daily records? (Score:5, Funny)
I think somebody accidentally a word.
Re:Do what with daily records? (Score:5, Funny)
Verb.
VERB!!!!
OK, back to work you guys.
suck it kids (Score:2)
in my day the schools never took attendance. home room was for a quick break with friends. teachers couldn't care less if you were in class and never took attendance either
Re:suck it kids (Score:5, Funny)
Let's see here... You don't use capitalization and make use of sentence fragments. Sure, I'll believe that your teachers didn't care!
Re:suck it kids (Score:5, Funny)
Capitals are the oppressors of the lower case. The lOWER cASE has as much rights as the Capital Case.
What his teachers tought him is that all are characters are equal! What you are trying to say is that some characters are more equal than others. Shame on you.
Somewhere... (Score:5, Insightful)
Somewhere in this school there's an Honor Roll student with a couple of dozen ID tags hanging around his neck and a wallet full of cash...
Re:Somewhere... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, if it's done correctly, that would be flagged extremely quickly - a dozen kids constantly going through the same doors at the exact same time is a bit suspicious.
Especially when it's the single occupancy toilet.
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PLUS they know who the mastermind is.
LOL I'd be the guy installing a RFID "fuzzer" that repeats 20 random kids IDs every time my fuzzer detects my frenemy walking thru the cattle gate. Thus my frenemy gets busted. God only knows what he'd do to me to get even after that.
Generating more irrelevant data (Score:5, Interesting)
The relevant data: did they learn valuable skills?
The irrelevant data: did they attend every class, and take three (3) or fewer dumps a day, numbering fewer than 15 minutes each and not more than 42.3 minutes total?
Our society is in love with metrics, but in its mad dash, produces lots and lots of data that is actually not relevant to the task at hand.
If they said they were using these RFIDs to figure out exactly when and where pedophiles are snatching their kids, I might consider that relevant data, but emphasizing attendance is a surrogate for emphasizing learning.
Re:Generating more irrelevant data (Score:5, Insightful)
For the schools it is irrelevant whether students learn valuable skills. Schools are graded on test scores and attendance. The former is improved by teaching the test. The latter is improved by tracking. Funding is determined by those two metrics, so: profit!
Re:Generating more irrelevant data (Score:5, Insightful)
Your point still stands that they are not concerning themselves with education, but the reason isn't a love of metrics. It is a love of money.
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Solution: send your kids to a private school. Now it is up to the parents to make sure the kid is in school so they get their money's worth.
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Education is not a commodity.
Just sayin' (Score:2)
Attendence in class probabaly is a pretty good indicator or metric of success.
Not saying that RFIDing folks is the right thing to do, however insofar as your arguement that attendence is irrelevent to learning, well I think it sort of falls down. If you don't go to class, it is pretty hard to "learn valuable skills".
Consumer vs Product (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Consumer vs Product (Score:5, Insightful)
Please get both of those words out of the discussion. They are neither the consumer or the product. Education is not a product to be consumed.
They are students! They are there to learn, to be curious, to ask questions, make mistakes, and get messy.
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tell that to to the state bureaucracy that mandated these tracking systems.
Reasonable? (Score:5, Insightful)
This doesn't seem unreasonable does it? When the kids are at school, the staff are in loco parentis, and so keeping tabs on the little bastards doesn't sound crazy. After all if one of them goes AWOL and turns up in a suitcase, the school's likely to be sued.
Of course if it's being used for data collection for behavioural profiling or resale, that's another matter, but if it's just for "this kid was here earlier but didn't answer roll call, where the hell is he?" or "it's recess and we need to get a message to this kid, where the hell is he?" that seems fine.
Re:Reasonable? (Score:5, Interesting)
As we grow up most of us seem to forget that even as children and teenagers we were still people.
While children don't (and shouldn't) have all the privileges of an adult I still think they still be treated as humans. I think the march towards public schools treating children as product should stop. People keep pointing to corporate, assembly-line like models for education and it just won't work. The more we put dehumanizing elements into the schools the worse education is going to be.
Here's the best bit in the article right here; (Score:5, Funny)
Steve Hernandez, whose daughter is a sophomore, objects to the tags, saying they are similar to the "mark of the beast."
"My daughter should not have to compromise (her) religion just because Northside Independent School District wants to get paid," Hernandez said.
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A key passage for interpreting Revelations is the right at the start of the book,
Rev 1:1 The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John,
So, I am pretty sure these RFID tags have nothing to do with the "mark of the beast", as almost 2000 years must surely be a stretch for "soon". They are similar in that the mark of the beast was necessary to "buy and sell" (i.e. government approval re
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So, I am pretty sure these RFID tags have nothing to do with the "mark of the beast", as almost 2000 years must surely be a stretch for "soon". All good and well.
Except that 2000 years is nothing, not even the "blink of an eye" in the time scale of the universe.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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As for the comment about their parents having badges... There is a big difference between choosing to work at a job that requires badges, and being implicitly told, "Either carry this tracking device, or we will send the men with guns to round you up and imprison you."
Glad I don't have kids (Score:5, Interesting)
We are entering an era where children are raised more to the standards of "society" (i.e. government) than the parents themselves. My kind -- people who dare to think for themselves and reject coercive authority by default -- aren't wanted or needed in this kind of world. It probably sounds cynical to some people, but I think it's best that my genetic line ends right here. Good luck to the rest of you who continue the human race -- you're going to need it.
I Hate This Attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not know why so many refer to government as if it is this independent god-like entity running around and maniacally laughing as it forces people to do things against their will.
The government *is* the parents. I went to public high school, and went to a district that mandated school uniforms. This wasn't big government forcing it on me; it was my parents' contemporaries. I remember my parents asking at meetings why we needed uniforms (took out individuality, and was expensive!), but many other parents -- not the government -- responded they liked how clean everyone looked, and it kept gang paraphenalia out of schools. Hell, I knew *students* that claimed to enjoy having uniforms because they did not like having to think about what to wear every day.
My point is, do not blame government -- blame the parents. The parents are the ones pushing the standards, and government officials are trying their best (often times anyway) to appease what they think is the majority opinion. My school district holds votes on certain school policies, and it was what parents wanted.
If you are upset about rejecting authority, you should ask why so many parents are so authoritarian toward their own and other children. It is apparently what they want. Personally, I feel this is a phase because of fear of the future in the current economic and foreign policy climate. The youth are not near as accepting as you think. Growing up in this era has given them much different attitudes than their authoritarian parents. They are biding their time until they know for sure how to go about changing it. I would be a little more optimistic.
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Analyzing it as you did is too hard for the lazy thinkers who consider all government to be monolithic and malum in se.
It's easier to piss and moan than it is to reach out and campaign to change peoples' minds. That's a feature of democracy.
Funny (Score:4, Informative)
Me and my co-workers have RFID-enabled badges to access our workplace and PCs, and it leaves logging trails for sure. No-one around here seems to be in an uproar about it.
Of course, here they have proprietary company property to protect.
As a parent... (Score:4, Interesting)
..I laud this public school's initiative to make sure that they are tracking attendance. Obviously it's primarily about funding in this case. But it also provides documented evidence of whether kids are in class or not. This information can (and should) be passed on to parents.
Also, in Iowa back in the 1990's our Governor (R) had proposed a change to the state's welfare system called "learnfare". The idea was that a family's welfare check depended on the child's attendance in school. They received 100% of the check for good attendance and were penalized for poor attendance. The idea was that they wanted kids in 3rd, 4th, 5th generations of welfare families to get a good education and not be the next generation on welfare.
Now obviously school attendance doesn't necessarily mean good grades, or caring about your future. But still, it was a step in the right direction.
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Obviously it's primarily about funding in this case. But it also provides documented evidence of whether kids are in class or not.
When I was at school, the kids would have loved this. No need to turn up, just get a friend to carry your RFID tag.
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Obviously it's primarily about funding in this case. But it also provides documented evidence of whether kids are in class or not.
When I was at school, the kids would have loved this. No need to turn up, just get a friend to carry your RFID tag.
True. This is why the school should also take a look at patterns and walk around with a handheld RFID device that will let them know if one kid has multiple cards. Give them in-school suspensions if caught.
We desperately need accountability in the public school system. It is obvious that the system is failing at multiple levels, including the parents. This is why I went to private schools and my child goes to a private school. There is more accountability.
Hey John, hold this for me (Score:5, Funny)
Kids will never think of having a friend hold their card while they go off to do whatever it is kids do nowdays.
how hard (Score:5, Insightful)
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How hard is it to manually count attendance? You have a degree in education but you cannot to the occasional headcount?
Education degrees don't teach you to count.
How is this different... (Score:2)
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Is the bathroom one of those areas? How about the break room, the water cooler, and your cubicle?
That is the difference between a simple time and attendance system and an Orwellian tracking system.
Simple fix (Score:3)
Take ID card, wrap it in a towel, and set it on concrete, liberally beat it with a hammer.
From experience, it breaks the RFID chip and makes it stop working but leaves the card intact. Personally I hate these stupid chips and I have broken a bunch of them!
Chains and collars... (Score:2)
Cheaper. Simpler. Effective training for their new roles in our brave new world. Might as well tag 'em too.
How are they going to reboot Dazed and Confused?!? (Score:2)
I guess in the new version, they'll all just get busted the second they skip out on school. That won't make for a very interesting movie.
lol ... only in America ... (Score:4, Informative)
in Germany, we worry about educating the children, if they don't want to be there then so be it. We also train children to be more independent.
Examples with photos! [womanaroundtown.com]
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There's more than one person that's supposed to be keeping track of those 1200 students.
I'd reckon probably about 450 people. (Class size of 30, 50 misc people, administrators, campus watch people, etc).
Besides. You stick all those 1200 people in a building, with maybe a dozen entrances/exits, so you don't need to watch each of them individually all the time.
Re:When a student goes missing ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is how surveillance states gain ground in leaps and bounds over generations. Kids that are GPS tracked by their parents get used to being GPS tracked by authority and as adults, don't mind it or are less likely to *actually* fight it from a state/national authority. Same logic here, with RFID chip tracking.
I don't think it will take that long. Tomorrow, some other parent will sue some other school district for their kid being kidnapped because the school should have known kidnappers were out there and done GPS-tracking preemptively.
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Re:When a student goes missing ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm sure a creepy school employee would love to know exactly when they can find your kids all alone. I don't understand why you don't have a problem with your kids being tracked, when you wouldn't like the same system for yourself. Also, if a parent is so worried about their children going missing then they can have their kid wear a tracking device that will track them off school grounds and actually be useful for finding them.
Re:When a student goes missing ... (Score:4, Interesting)
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The problem here is that if your kid's school tracks your kid this way on the school campus, your kid likely won't have a problem being tracked that way all the time when they are an adult. Schools are at least as much about social engineering as they are about education. So, unless your attitude is "I got mine, screw my kids." you should be outraged at a school trying to do this.
You must be a ball at parties...
"Why would I want to play a game that encourages me (and others!) to work out the best way to weaken the structure of a tower, leading to its inevitable collapse? The insanity! When we leave here, someone is probably going to go knock down some buildings on the way home, seeing as how we were all conditioned to believe its normal..."
Just play some fucking Jenga, and get yourself off the slippery slope. Not everyone careens helplessly down it.
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Yes. School funding comes mostly from property and impact taxes in the area. It is distributed to schools according to their population (attendance).
Each child is worth a particular dollar amount per day to the school. Special needs kids are worth more money.
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As an Indiana student from the *1980s* (to '91) it was often drummed into us (even as students) that funding levels were dependent on attendance and absentee levels.
As crazy as administrators and politicians have gotten since then about metrics I'm sure it is ten times worse by now....
Re:Familiar... (Score:5, Insightful)
This was the most important line in the article:
"The article said the Northside Independent School District receives about $30 per day in state funding for each student reporting."
This is the only reason anything gets done at a public school EVER.
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About a year ago, our local parents got their collective panties in a bunch because the same company that provides food to the local prisons also supplies food to the local public schools. The "uproar" part came about because the prisoners' food was better than that delivered to the children. The prisoners had advocates for their diets, where the school administrators were more concerned with budget iss
Re:I hope (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope there is one of those Pinko-Liberal-Commie-Democrat-Basterds teachers on the faculty making the kids read 1984 and Fahrenheit 451.
And who says English Lit is worthless.
When I was young, I thought Fahrenheit 451 was about suppressing books because government was authoritarian.
I read it more recently and realized it was because the people had democratically decided that books were unhealthy and interfered with watching Dancing with the Stars.
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I wish people like you would leave the country.. or at least go live in a socialist country for awhile and see if you like that worthless sardine can lifestyle.
1. Tracking performance negates the need to track attendance.
2. It's just as likely that repressive, overcontrolling environments with extremely passive-aggressive authority structures are what CAUSE school shootings. The amount of pressure in schools grows every day, and most of it is artificially imposed.
3. Over litigiousness is the root problem h