Our schoolchildren are learning firsthand what it's like to be criminal suspects.
The one news analyst who is persistently researching and reporting on how members of this generation (and, most likely, subsequent generations) are being relentlessly tracked throughout their school years is John Whitehead, a practicing constitutional attorney who is also founder and president of the Rutherford Institute in Charlottesville, Va.
Recently, he wrote about the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, where about 4,200 students at Jay High School and Jones Middle School are compelled “to carry ‘smart’ identification cards embedded with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tracking devices.”
This, in the land of the free and home of the brave?
“These tags,” Whitehead explains, “produce a radio signal that is tied to the students’ Social Security numbers, allowing the wearer’s precise movements to be constantly monitored.”
Already there are 290 surveillance cameras in these schools. But these ID cards, “which the students are required to wear, will make it possible for school officials to track students’ whereabouts at all times.”
Dig this, Moms and Dads: “Teachers are even requiring students to wear the IDs when they want to use the bathroom.”
As for those who choose not to follow the rules? Whitehead writes: “Those who ... refuse to wear the SmartID badge will also be forced to stand in separate lunch lines (and) denied participation in student government and activities ...”
Have schools in Iran, China and Zimbabwe become this advanced in their service to the all-knowing state?
Back in the Northside Independent School District, “Officials plan to eventually expand the $500,000 program to the district’s 112 schools, with a student population of 100,000.”
Like Paul Revere, who kept alerting us to raids on our liberties as we were moving to become an allegedly self-governing republic, Whitehead keeps ringing this country’s warning bell. He continues:
“Other student tracking programs are currently being tested in Baltimore, Anaheim, Houston and the Palos Heights School District near Chicago. Some cities already have fully implemented programs, including Houston, Texas, which began using RFID chips to track students as early as 2004.
“Preschoolers” — yes, tots! — “in Richmond, Calif., have been tagged with RFID chips since 2010.”
Whitehead writes, “These tracking devices are not being employed to prevent students from cutting classes or foster better academics. It’s a money game. Using the devices to account for the students’ whereabouts on campus, whether in class or not, school administrators can ‘count’ students as being ‘in school’ and thereby qualify for up to $1.7 million from the state government.”
As for nongovernmental pressures, Whitehead reminds us of “the financial interest of the security industrial complex, which has set its sights on the schools as ‘a vast, rich market’ — a $20 billion market, no less — just waiting to be conquered. Indeed, corporations stand to make a great deal of money if RFID tracking becomes the norm across the country.
“A variety of companies, including AIM Truancy Solutions, ID Card Group and DataCard, already market and sell RFID trackers to school districts throughout the country, and with big names such as AT&T and IBM entering the market, the pressure on school districts to adopt these systems and ensure compliance will only increase.”
As for whatever other tracking ingenuities are ahead, John Whitehead (does he ever sleep?) finds that “RFID is only one aspect of what is an emerging industry (with government involvement) in tracking, spying and identification devices.”
He writes: “Schools in Pinellas County, Fla., now use palm reading devices to allow children to purchase lunch. The (palm) reader takes an infrared picture of the palm’s vein structure, and then matches that information with the child’s identity. (Fifty-thousand) students in the country are using the readers, and another 60,000 are expected to soon join the program. Palm scanning identification devices are spreading to hospitals and schools across the country.”
http://elkodaily.com/news/opinion/commentary-teaching-schoolchildren-to-be-suspects/article_e11d8088-6b49-11e2-bcd8-0019bb2963f4.html?comment_form=true
School to prison pipeline:
In Meridian, Miss., police routinely arrest and transport youths to a juvenile detention center for minor classroom misbehaviors. In Jefferson Parish, La., according to a U.S. Department of Justice complaint, school officials have given armed police “unfettered authority to stop, frisk, detain, question, search and arrest schoolchildren on and off school grounds.” In Birmingham, Ala., police officers are permanently stationed in nearly every high school.
In fact, hundreds of school districts across the country employ discipline policies that push students out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system at alarming rates—a phenomenon known as the school-to-prison pipeline.
Last month, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., held the first federal hearing on the school-to-prison pipeline—an important step toward ending policies that favor incarceration over education and disproportionately push minority students and students with disabilities out of schools and into jails.
In opening the hearing, Durbin told the subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, “For many young people, our schools are increasingly a gateway to the criminal justice system. This phenomenon is a consequence of a culture of zero tolerance that is widespread in our schools and is depriving many children of their fundamental right to an education.”
The school-to-prison pipeline starts (or is best avoided) in the classroom. When combined with zero-tolerance policies, a teacher’s decision to refer students for punishment can mean they are pushed out of the classroom—and much more likely to be introduced into the criminal justice system.
Students from two groups—racial minorities and children with disabilities—are disproportionately represented in the school-to-prison pipeline. African-American students, for instance, are 3.5 times more likely than their white classmates to be suspended or expelled, according to a nationwide study by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. Black children constitute 18 percent of students, but they account 46 percent of those suspended more than once.
For students with disabilities, the numbers are equally troubling. One report found that while 8.6 percent of public school children have been identified as having disabilities that affect their ability to learn, these students make up 32 percent of youth in juvenile detention centers.
The racial disparities are even starker for students with disabilities. About 1 in 4 black children with disabilities were suspended at least once, versus 1 in 11 white students, according to an analysis of the government report by Daniel J. Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA.
A landmark study published last year tracked nearly 1 million Texas students for at least six years. The study controlled for more than 80 variables, such as socioeconomic class, to see how they affected the likelihood of school discipline. The study found that African Americans were disproportionately punished compared with otherwise similar white and Latino students. Children with emotional disabilities also were disproportionately suspended and expelled.
In other studies, Losen found racial differences in suspension rates have widened since the early 1970s and that suspension is being used more frequently as a disciplinary tool. But he said his recent study and other research show that removing children from school does not improve their behavior. Instead, it greatly increases the likelihood that they’ll drop out and wind up behind bars.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the number of school resource officers rose 38 percent between 1997 and 2007. Jerri Katzerman, SPLC deputy legal director, said this surge in police on campus has helped to criminalize many students and fill the pipeline.
One 2005 study found that children are far more likely to be arrested at school than they were a generation ago. The vast majority of these arrests are for nonviolent offenses. In most cases, the students are simply being disruptive. And a recent U.S. Department of Education study found that more than 70 percent of students arrested in school-related incidents or referred to law enforcement are black or Hispanic. Zero-tolerance policies, which set one-size-fits-all punishments for a variety of behaviors, have fed these trends.
http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-43-spring-2013/school-to-prison