Predicting H.S. Dropouts With Pervasive Databases

rhadamanthus writes "As seen on the Houston Chronicle: 'With a new computer database available at every campus this fall, teachers can keep a virtual eye on every student and identify those at risk of leaving. For the first time, educators can look up a student's attendance, discipline, immigration status, grades, and test scores at one source and use that information to predict dropouts. ... "All students will know someone is watching them, tracking them, and is interested in their success," school board member Laurie Bricker said at a press conference today.' Hooray for surveillance in the HISD."

Nobody's interested in my success..

Somebody sure is watching and tracking individual students, but they're definitely not interested in the student's success -- collecting all this data together and using it to generate mass "trends" will likely end up in having various kids who are doing well being sat down and had a talking-to by the school's guidance counsellors about not dropping out, merely because they don't fit the trend. Same thing happened with kids who may fit the "school shooter" profile.

There's no excuse for this data collection -- but hey, schools and prisons are the two places where new privacy invasion is tried out before being installed in mainstream society.

Re:Nobody's interested in my success..

Somebody sure is watching and tracking individual students, but they're definitely not interested in the student's success -- collecting all this data together and using it to generate mass "trends" will likely end up in having various kids who are doing well being sat down and had a talking-to by the school's guidance counsellors about not dropping out, merely because they don't fit the trend. Same thing happened with kids who may fit the "school shooter" profile.

Nice FUD here. But assuming you're looking at say attendance and grades (or test scores), how can this information be improperly used? If Johnny has had 100% attendance, and suddenly it drops to 50%, why wouldn't you want to call Johnny in and ask him if everything is ok? Or if Sue's test scores drop suddenly, why wouldn't you want to talk to her to ask her if anything is wrong. Your "shooter" profile is completely off target here (forgive the pun). These are very tangible and reasonable criteria they're using to make these determinations. Now if they said that they were going to track how much a student ate, or if their clothes suddenly fit into some "radical" category, then I might have agreed with you. By your argument, we should'nt test and grade, because after all, these mechanisms "profile" students.

Re:Nobody's interested in my success..

"These are very tangible and reasonable criteria they're using to make these determinations."

As a part time university teacher I found out when one student was giving me trouble that he had been giving others trouble as well. I was not told of the trouble because that information would have biased my perseption of and treatment of that student. That is an important principle that may be violated here if "teacher" were to get ahold of that data.

Schools administrations would use the data for those things that were most important to them. This may include avoiding lawsuits, eliminating trouble makers. With limited budgets and overcrouded classrooms the insentives would be to diminish classroom size and be able to apply budget to where it would be most effective. You know the current political envirionment is one to privatize or business-tize all activity.

Now with that information would be very useful to at tracking teachers. Lets see, at teacher that has mass defections, well lets get rid of them. Or classes that have certain individuals attending, show scores dropping (trouble makers and cultural disruptors). The data mining capabilities are endless. But of course the adminsitrators would never think of using the data in these ways.

I am reminded of a story where a friend had a meeting with their boss. The boss offered them a project. They said they would like it. It was given to someone else. The reason was the boss said that even though she said yes, her body language said no. The same danger is here with the interpretation or "profiling" of individuals from scan data.

Kill them all and let God sort it out.

They already do this crap.

If you dont act a certain way schools and teachers go out of their way to label you.

Theres a whole array of labels, the most popular? ADD, then theres Bipolar, then theres Manic Depression, they basically have a label for anyone who doesnt act in the "normal" way.

Re:Nobody's interested in my success..

They're not creating any data that's not already there, they're just centralizing it so the teachers can spend more time on helping the students that might be heading toward problems instead of spending all their time trying to figure out which ones those students are. Trust me, the school already has all of this information on you, and no, they probably don't erase it.

Most anything that makes it easier for a teacher to do their job is OK in my book. (yeah, yeah, someone is going to take this to some extreme and say I'm advocating guns in classrooms or something. piss off in advance.)

Dismissiveness is recpipe for a totalitarian state

They're not creating any data that's not already there, they're just centralizing it...the school already has all of this information on you, and no, they probably don't erase it.

A quick HOWTO in turning a democracy into a plutocratic fascist state:

1. Allow the collection and of private data by private institutions on whatever scale they wish (insert standard libertarian reference to the Constitution only restricting the behavior of the federal government, not private enterprise).

2. Allow institutions to trade unfettered in said data amongst themselves (lack of legislation insuring integrity and accuracy of data optional [USA does not select this option, c.f. any credit reporting agency])

3. Increase data reporting requirements by individuals to banks, for job background checks, and for security screening at airports. Retain said data.

4. Encourage aggregation of data by private business interests for resale to interested parties.

5. Pass legislation allowing government unfettered access to said data aggregation. (Make use of data quietly and extralegally if legislation doesn't pass). Allow "goodwill" use initially (e.g. Schools collecting data on students to lower dropout rates).

6. Outsource any data collection requirements for identifying suspected terrorists, dissidents, and collecting targets for the next Pogrom de Jour.

The outcry was initially the collection of the data. We were told not to worry, it is for private industry's use and, besides, we don't have a constitutional right to privacy in business.

Now the outcry is the use of data mining and aggregation to take the data thus collected and use it to profile our private lives in minute detail, effectively creating a defacto, if hybrid, police-surveillence state. And you dismiss it as "they're not creating any data that's not already there", as though that somehow negates the consiquences of such behavior.

The initial public outcry against the collection of private data on private individuals was right then, and it would be right today were it not for the deafening silence of those who have recognize a battle long since lost.

The public outcry against the sale and exchange of data between private corporations (and government agencies) was right then, and it is right today, even if the number of voices has declined over the years.

And the outcry against aggregating and mining this data to microanalyze our individual lives is justified, appropriate, and dismissed at our own peril. This isn't the start of a slippery slope we're talking about here, this is another in a long series of runs down it we're skiing ... and one of the last, before we hit the bottom and do find ourselves in a very unpleasant surveillance society and police state.

Re:Nobody's interested in my success..

Somebody sure is watching and tracking individual students, but they're definitely not interested in the student's success -- collecting all this data together and using it to generate mass "trends" will likely end up in having various kids who are doing well being sat down and had a talking-to by the school's guidance counsellors about not dropping out, merely because they don't fit the trend.

Back in my senior year of high school, we had some sort of tracking system that was based primarily on attendance. It flagged me as a student that was going to fail out, never mind my 3.9 GPA and my acceptance to Stanford based upon the entrance exams (untimately did not go to Stanford because I could not afford the $25k/year). I had a meeting with our vice principal telling me I was in serious trouble with my attendance. What a joke.

alternative

instead of surveilance, they could just use the market. Say maybe a government-funded futures market on who's going to drop out...

Disturbing

Heaven forbid that a student get out of the wretched public school system and actually try to take his/her education in her own hands.

Public school, while good for some, has held me back due to the lack of qualified teachers, and terrible textbooks. Those of us who want a real education get nothing out of it.

programming

I always stayed up until a few hours before I had to go to school last semester. I nearly failed French.

At the same time, I was working on an extremely educational (to me at least) programming project and some web sites.

Would my school's system see my drop in French test scores as a sign of impending doom? Would it correlate that with the departure of Jane Doe, who dropped out due to a pregnancy and accuse me of being the father?

Had I been sidetracked, I never would have had this site [osnippets.org] of mine on this slasdot article [slashdot.org]. I wouldn't have gotten a local computer store to invest time/money in my first commercial program.

You can't reduce anything as complex as a human being to mere comprehendable numbers. Anyways, this new system sounds like it'll be great fun to mess with.

(On another note, it's hilarious how schools are scared to put a picture of a student on the school's website without a notorized rights waver, yet they jump at the chance to make a national database of students.)

Nothing to see here, move along

Basically this looks like they're beefing up their data controls, and centralizing existing data - as opposed to invasively gathering more data and infringing on privacy. What exactly is the problem, then???

Re:Nothing to see here, move along

You know...
If all the databases with personal information were merged some really really interesting things could be derived asbout you. Think about it. What if your bank thought that you were going to die in 15 years and wouldn't give you a home loan?

Some documents are declared top secret because they combine information available to the puplic in creative ways.

Re:Nothing to see here, move along

Disillusionment.

The intention of predictive models is to find underperformers and work harder to engage them before it's too late.

The reality of predictive models is that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If any of the counselors, teachers, receptionists, principals, or aides approach an underperformer with a speech about how they need to buck up before they drop out, all that many kids will hear is, "they know I'm a failure, so why try?"

For a small minority of kids, this gets even worse. We have discussed the profiling it takes to predict violence. This sounds a lot like the same arguments raised which lead to flame-out sentiments like "they know I'm violent, so I've got nothing to lose."

Looks good, gotta catch em young you know.

Get those kids used to the fact that everything they do will be under a government microscope.

Will kids that grow up in a situation like this mind at all that it doesnt really end when they leave HS for the 'real world'?

Useful, yet frightening.....

I can understand the fact that schools do need to track such information, but my question is do they erase the data afterwards? I really don't want those records floating around after A. I graduate, or B. I do drop out.... granted I've allready graduated, but this is for the people who will be going into this system.

nice spin

"All students will know someone is watching them, tracking them, and is interested in their success,"

Anyone else read this as "and is waiting for them to drop out"?

1984

"All students will know someone is watching them, tracking them, and is interested in their success"

Remember, children, "Big Brother loves you."

and this is new how?

Come on guys. It doesn't take a giant computer and wonderous code to tell which kids are likely to drop out of school. Anyone that cares to notice could say. If teachers and parents don't care enough now to notice, a big blinking computer light isn't going to help any.

Re:and this is new how?

But with this system, they won't have to care. The computer will flag at-risk students for them based on known behavior patterns, and send them to a cookie-cutter behavior modification program that fits the criteria of the special interests that elected the political leadership. This way we'll guarantee the next generation of Stepford Consumers.

If you have a problem with this, then you must be a terrorist.

oxymoron

I don't think that telling students that you're watching their every single move is the way to build their trust. Teen angst can easily tranform the noblest intention into an invasion of privacy.

I can see the dialogue going like this:

Teacher: Our extensive data indictates you may be thinking of dropping out--

Student: FUCK YOU, BIG BROTHER! I'M OUTTA HERE!

Funny...

They didn't mention race as one of the features in the equation, even though there is (unfortunately) by no means an equal drop-out rate among the various races represented in US schools. Is this to sanitize the article, or is race really ignored in the database (surely making its predictions less accurate than what would be possible)?

Wont help everyone

I don't think "knowing someone cares about their grades" is going to be a big factor in affecting whether students drop out or not.
From the people that I've met in this situation, they either don't understand the benefits of a quality education, or they just don't care about how important it is. There are still others that both know and care, but may have a lot of other problems in life to deal with.
The first two groups can only be helped by convincing them how an education can help them later on in life. But the latter group is the one that this system might help if a person can be identified and they can get help with whatever other problems might be holding them back in school.
The only problem I have is, why the hell does it track immigration status? What does that have to do with the quality of their education; apart from language barriers, but even that has nothing to do with immigration status.

Dropout rates

I can speak to this a little bit, as I actually used to teach high school...

You see, schools make money based on the number of students that attend every class period. If a student drops out, that's less money the school is getting. The school at which I taught went nuts looking for dropouts. School-wide PA announcements were made regularly asking if anyone had heard from various students, or even seen them around town. They don't care if the kid is in class getting educated... it's all about the money.

Also, if too many students dropout, your school gets flagged as low performing and you lose money that way, too. Any tactic the school can use that is inexpensive and provides an easy, scattershot approach to keeping as many kids in classrooms as possible will be used.

The great thing to administrators is that they can keep the kids in class, get all the money, and they still don't have to spend it on teachers. School administration generally uses budget surplus to control departments and hammer teachers into submission or force them into retirement.

might work?

Sounds like they're not collecting any information they haven't always had -- just putting it together into a predictive model. And unlike some of the poorly-thought-out "school shooter" type of models, this is (a) predicting an event with a high enough prior probability that it might work decently (from a Bayesian perspective), and (b) targeting kids for extra help instead of punishment. At least if they end up implementing it the way they say they will.

I can see the hacked data now....

Student Attendance: Frequent Mental Absence
Discipline: KUNG-FU, Monkey Style ...

Couldn't resist...

Immigration status?

[quote]
For the first time, educators can look up a student's attendance, discipline, immigration status, grades, and test scores at one source and use that information to predict dropouts. ...
[/quote]

What does immigration status have to do with dropping out of school? Also, what business is it of the schools?

Not anything new

I work for a company [e-selex.com] that does candidate selection and succes prediction work for Fortune 50 companies.

This really isn't anything new, it's been used in the work force for many years now. Surveys my company cranks out, based on validated information can predict sales performance, turnover, likelihood of theft and other tid-bits of information about possibly employees.

It's all based on statistics and (in my field) I/O Psychology (Industrial/Organizational). The whole idea of reading habits in students and predicting their likelihood of drop out is no difference than what companies like ours use to predict turnover.

I'm just surprised it's taken this long to be put into use in other fields.

Here [e-selex.com] is a link for information regarding Biodata use and how it all works, for those who are interested.

double standard?

Ya know, it's funny. We here on slashdot are always talking about privacy at home and at work, but when it happens to a group of people that we consider to be in a lower status (eg in high school instead of college), we are all for the big brother concept.

I'm going to give an example, but let me put it in perspective first. In school, you don't get paid. It's not your job. It's your daily life. You meet new people and make friends there. For the sake of being evenly sided I won't go into saying that you're forced by society to go there. This compares nicely to an adult's social life and what places they frequent, so let's go from there.

This would be the same thing as the owner of the (insert hangout place here, club, diner, bar, etc) having a declared record of everything you do thewre, when you do and don't go, where you're from, what you like to do with your time, and assorted other things. Said owner then uses said information as demographics to, instead of changing the service to suit whatever new styles might be going in and out, predict when you are going to leave and give you a small reason to stay. Nothing so great that you want to stay, just barely enough so you don't check out the competition.

But wait a minute, isn't that like invasion of privacy and all those mega corporations tracking your every move to attack you with the ads they want you to see, when they want you to see them? It is. And if you rationalize the use of this system on others, it's only a stone's throw away from coming back to bite you in the ass.

Not all the truth...

Schools aren't interested in keeping kids from dropping out for purely selfless reasons. My old high school didn't give a damn what went on as long as you showed up to be counted and didn't drop out. It, like most other public schools, got state and federal funding based on its attendance and drop out rates. I'm sure a few people genuinely want to help, but parading around like philanthropy is your only concern will help people not to trust you.

I graduated a year after the columbine fiasco, and my senior year I too was put on a list. Every time a bomb threat was called in, or 'random' locker search came time... I was on the list. Except for a few incidents in middle school I had a spotless record. The reason was because I stood up to the knee-jerk stupidity of new policy after everyone became afraid of their children. One example is, with the exception of the dock and the main doors, all doors were locked from both directions until an alarm was triggered. We also had to wear ID badges at all times. If we didn't, or interfered with lasers scanning us in the halls, we were suspended for a day. It's really useless, because the two at columbine would have had all the security to get in without a problem. The moral of the story: Most kids don't like being labeled or put on a list and respond poorly to it.

Unbelievable...

This is terrible. Our kids should be free to drop out of school and seek their own path in life, whether it's cleaning out the grease traps at Jack In The Box, schlepping lumber at Home Depot, driving a garbage truck, or even selling pharmaceuticals on street corners, without nosy school administrators trying to force them to "learn" or "go to college". Where are our priorities?

Is this really going to help?

I dropped out of high school (yes, I went back for my GED), and I can remember 2 distinct teachers that pulled me aside from the rest of the class to talk to me about class activities and participation, and they were worried that I would drop out. But why didn't the others do it? Did I do anything different in there classes? No. The reason these two pulled my aside, was that they were good teachers, and they cared. Now that doesn't show that the others were bad teachers, but most of them were overworked, or didn't have time. Maybe if we had a higher teacher/student ratio, or increased the class time so they could manage better, we wouldn't need databases of behavior profiles on students. A good teacher doesn't/shouldn't need a database to find a troubled student.

Just my $0.02

Less money for teachers...

From the Houston Chronicle article:
[quote]
District officials also are considering a plan to assign an adult to each student.
[/quote]

I've got news for the district: the plan is already in existance. They're called "parents".
Besides, can you imagine the expense of paying a salary for each person who is watching a single child? Thousands and thousands of salaries for adults!

Get them used to it at a young age..

Then when the REALLY invasive stuff happens as they reach adulthood ( and when true rights and freedoms kick in ) they will be used to it and accepting of the practice. Give it 2 generations and it will just be 'normal' to be watched 24/7. Why not RFID tag them while we are at it.

Predicting School Failures

As a taxpayer and member of the community, I too am concerned with underperformance: schools that are not delivering quality education.

Where is the database I can monitor to provide me with accurate, timely information to predict which schools are failing?

My idea was to keep a virtual eye on every school administrator and identify those at risk of reducing the quality of education at the school. I'd like to be able to look up the measurements of that person's effectiveness from one source and at a glance: test scores, attendence, discipline, and so on for all students that he or she is responsible for.

My idea was not to punish low performing administrators, but identify high-risk ones so that early intervention can be used.

My god....

And this is how it starts.

This isn't some prediction or slightly uncomfortable future, this is going to happen next year...and there's nothing anyone can do.

So what happens once this has been running for a few years? Right; students (the people most likely to become 'leaders') get used to it, and find this kind of 'oversight' normal. And once that happens, goodbye privacy due to the "if it's good enough for us/didn't harm us, it's good enough for everyone".

Be slightly uncomfortable.

Wait. It Gets Worse.

Word on the street is that at some schools, there are even more powerful computers tracking the students. From time-to-time, these computers are brought together in a closed-door kind of LAN party. There, information about the students is exhchanged and processed, and determinations are made as to whether or not the student is doing OK or if remedial action is necessary. IIRC, they call the computers "brains" and the meetings are "parent-teacher conferences". Very spooky.

Your Permanent Record

The urban legend lives? Do we really need to pidgeonhole unlikeable kids as stupid kids?

Theres more genious out there than you think. I have friends that are very smart, but the school system didn't work for them.

School needs to change, but not like this.

Keeping losers in school doesn't make them winners

It really irks me how so much attention is being put on people for whom education is a waste of taxpayer's money.

The reason for this attention is the simple statistic that says high school graduates are better off than people who dropped out. The belief is that by keeping would-be dropouts in school their lives can also be improved. Unfortunately things just don't work that way. The reason why high-school graduates are better off has everything to do with their character and intelligence and virtually NOTHING to do with whether they have a high school diploma or not. These educators, in no small part because of their own need to feel important, have got the cause and effect reversed.

Spending time and energy trying to keep these people in school does nothing but worsen the educational environment for students who might actually stand to benefit from an education. The money would be better spent providing more challenging or comprehensive classes for gifted students since they are the ones who benefit the most from an education. Society itself has more to gain by investing in our best and brightest than it does from trying to rescue losers from their own self-destruction.

If only foolishness and stupidity were fatal, imagine how much better our gene pool would be.

Lee