For Immediate Release: October 2o, 2016
Contact: Renee Rybak Lang, renee.lang@nasbe.org, 703-244-9954
States Need to Review School Surveillance Practices to Protect Privacy, Guard against Inequity
Alexandria, VA — Despite introducing more than 400 bills on student data privacy since 2014, states have yet to address privacy protections for school surveillance or its inequitable effects. A new NASBE report examines this important, emerging issue, identifying the benefits and potential problems posed by school surveillance. It suggests six principles to guide state policymakers toward effective, balanced policies.
In “School Surveillance: The Consequences for Equity and Privacy,” NASBE Legal Fellow J. William Tucker and Amelia Vance, NASBE’s director of education data and technology, say the desire to keep students safe is among the top reasons schools use surveillance technologies. But they warn that surveillance can be abused and cause unintended consequences. “Security measures can interfere with the trust and cooperation learning requires by creating barriers among students, teachers, and officials and casting schools in a negative light in students’ eyes,” write Tucker and Vance. As a result, students may feel less nurtured, more uncomfortable in their learning environment, and more fearful of voicing their opinions in class.
But perhaps the biggest concern is the potential of school surveillance to aggravate school discipline disparities, say Tucker and Vance. They point to recent studies that find a correlation between high levels of school security and a higher percentage of minorities being suspended. One study suggests that educators’ implicit biases influence their decisions on disciplinary action and fuel inequities in the classroom.
“The disproportionate use of intense surveillance methods on students of color presents a profound problem. Failure to address the disparate use of surveillance practices sends a signal that white students are privileged and have greater privacy rights while students of color cannot be trusted,” write Tucker and Vance. “It is essential that any discussions about surveillance take into account how it may further discipline disparities and find ways to mitigate and avoid them.”
Toward this goal, Tucker and Vance argue policymakers should adopt six principals to guide their policymaking around surveillance:
- Minimization. Policymakers should weigh the potential consequences of surveillance technologies against other options. Creating state and district-level data governance policies is the first step to ensuring minimization, say Tucker and Vance.
- Proportionality. Policymakers can encourage surveillance practices that are balanced and justifiable by adopting governance policies that cover surveillance practices and contingency plans and clarify when surveillance should occur in the first place.
- Transparency. State policymakers can require schools to publicize their surveillance policies and disclose data that will be collected, how they will be used, and how they will be protected.
- Openness. Policymakers must weigh local attitudes and needs when considering surveillance policies, highlight these topics for the general public, and call for community input. They can also prioritize regular surveillance policy reviews.
- Empowerment. Surveillance policies that serve only to punish or judge students are likely to undermine trust. State policymakers can ensure that policies include equitable principles on which records are available to students, how they can access them, due process protections, and opt-ins or opt-outs where feasible.
- Equity. Fixing broader inequities in school discipline can address many surveillance concerns. As one step in this direction, policymakers may want to consider instituting restorative justice techniques and other nonpunitive alternatives to zero-tolerance policies.
Training is a critical component to implementing these principles, say Tucker and Vance. “Policymakers can create all manner of policies around surveillance, but they can never be implemented with fidelity unless staff members, administrators, and teachers receive training in data, equity, and privacy.”
“Nearly every responsibility that schools shoulder includes an element of surveillance—from ensuring that preschoolers do not wander off, to keeping third graders on task, to stopping bullying and sexting. These responsibilities are not new, but schools’ increased ability to monitor students continuously is,” write Tucker and Vance. “This capability—coupled with schools’ adoption of surveillance technologies, concerns over student privacy, and increased research on major discipline disparities—makes it vital that state policymakers create guardrails around school surveillance to ensure equity and privacy are not undermined.”
Read “School Surveillance: The Consequences for Equity and Privacy.”