Parentella

A controversial new one year federal pilot program involving preschoolers has begun in Richmond, CA. At George Miller III Head Start program, over two hundred preschoolers in ten classrooms are being outfitted with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips that electronically track students’ whereabouts and what they eat. The tiny RFID chips are sewn into shirts worn by the children while on campus.

The program cost $50,000 to launch and $1.50 per child per month to maintain. It is funded by a federal grant under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (AKA the Stimulus Bill). If the program goes well, two more schools in Contra Costa County will implement the program.

Karen Mitchoff, spokeswoman for the Contra Costa County Employment and Human Services Department, which oversees the Head Start centers said “When we … came across this technology, it appeared to us that it would free our teachers up from some of (their) administrative tasks so they can teach…”

• Head Start is a federal program providing educational and support services to low-income children and their families.
• Head Start teachers are required to report to the federal government records on hourly attendance and what the children are eating.
• The RFID makes this cumbersome paperwork automated, freeing up more time for teaching. Also, because a computer shows where each child is at all times, Head Start views it as a safety-enhancement tool.

But consumer protection groups view these chips as a threat to children’s safety.

Some concerns:

• RFID tags in documents containing personal information like passports and driver’s licenses has been an ongoing issue of contention since their introduction. Last year opponents concerns were proven valid when security enabled RFID chips in passports were successfully cracked, read and copied from thirty feet away using a device made with $250 worth of parts.

• The chips the preschoolers wear can be read from 300 feet away. It is possible for someone to copy the data onto another chip, walk the child off the campus, and leave the duplicate chip left behind so no one realizes the child is missing. Says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington “If you get into the scenario of stalkers and pedophiles, now it’s possible to determine when a child is outside the classroom and that can pose a real threat. These systems generate location information and they can create audit logs, so the information is not just available in real time but historic information as well.”

• Other concerns include creating permanent records of activity based on RFID’s constant monitoring. Will children be mislabeled as hyperactive or lazy based on how much they move? Will this data become a part of their permanent school records? Also, how much of the children’s personal data is being embedded into the chips, and exactly who has access to it?

Mitchoff rebuff these arguments. She stressed that the tag stores no child-specific data, other than name and activity while on campus and that all the chips are erased each night after the information has been downloaded off them. The downloaded data is stored in an encrypted system accessible only to staff. She said that the tracking system simply enhances teachers’ ability to supervise, it does not replace actual human supervision.

Mitchoff said so far there hasn’t been any resistance from parents to the program. A parent meeting was held before the program was launched where the Head Start staff explained how the tags worked and why they’d be used. Parents had lots of questions, Mitchoff said, but accepted the change. Mitchoff said only one parent was concerned, but not about the privacy issues. “She felt the money could have been better utilized for other things in the community, like cleaning up the garbage next to the site.”

Rebecca Jeschke, Media Relations Director at EFF, however, provided a different perspective.

She said:

“Head Start is a pre-school program, involving children who are too young to understand the implications of this kind of tracking and monitoring. Additionally, it’s not clear what kind of parental notification there was about this program. It’s not clear (how many) parents would have time to be present at a meeting like this. These are some of the reasons that I have concerns about targeting a Head Start school for testing this technology. We are also concerned that any notification and education (given to parents) might not have been extensive enough to really outline the issues and potential dangers.”

This is not the first time RFID tracking students in California schools has been attempted. Five years ago, an elementary school in Sutter, California attempted a similar program. When parents became aware of the potential risk to the children, they demanded the program be dismantled. In 2007, California lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a bill requiring that any RFID program in schools include education campaigns for parents and be completely voluntary. However, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger did not sign the bill into law.

Parentella is interested in knowing how parents and teachers feel about this. Please take a moment to share in the comments section below:

1. Do you think the tracking system makes children safer or more vulnerable?
2. Do you think this is a wise use of federal funds?
3. Do you think it will help teachers to teach better?

We posted this on our page and got the following comments:

Christi also posted this and got the following comments:

References: Program Tracks Preschoolers with Electronic Tags, Don’t Chip Our Rights Away, EFF’s Letter to the Inspector General and Employment and Human Services Department, Privacy and Safety Questions Loom Over Federal Program to Track Preschoolers, Richmond Preschool Kids as Moving Dots, Preschholers Learn About Electronic Privacy First Hand.

Image: http://www.theage.com.au/national/how-a-wire-on-a-bird-keeps-watch-on-food-chain-20080620-2u8u.html?page=-1

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Christi Grab is Parentella’s Editorial Director and author of The Unexpected Circumnavigation: Unusual Boat, Unusual People Part 1 – San Diego to Australia. She is currently working on book two of the series.

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Tags: Head Start, RFID Chips, RFID Security Concerns, Tracking Preschoolers, Tracking Students

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 28th, 2010 at 12:01 am and is filed under Christi Grab, Education Policy, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.