Big Brother Comes to Dallas Public School

Are your children having trouble making it to school on time? Have you tried everything within your power to curb those excessive absences? Well, perhaps you'd like to try the Dallas Public School approach towards ensuring children with truancy problems are at school on time: the GPS student tracker!

You can't make this up. Under the guise of helping to boost their "No Child Left Behind" statistics on attendance and graduation, one Dallas School has turned to electronic monitoring to ensure the tax dollars keep rolling in.

Predictably, the New York Times makes no attempt whatsoever to balance the story with any kind of discussion pertaining to the gross violation of student privacy. The closest they come is quoting a state senator's opposition to the program, who compares the anklets to "slave chains."

Additionally, the article makes no mention of whether or not the program is voluntary. Students are sent to "truancy court," where (presumably) a judge decides whether or not a student merits enrollment in the program. Out of the 300 students sent to truancy court last year, nine were sentenced to the electronic leash. I'm guessing those "lucky" students selected for the program were chosen at random...free from ulterior motives (yeah, right). It just so happens that the selected students quoted in the article have connections to gang activity. Nope, no conflict of interest there, right?

For the most part, however, reaction to the program has been positive. Parents--as well as students--seem satisfied with the results thus far. One has to wonder, though, what kind of parent would willingly subject his or her child to any form of electronic monitoring, especially one through a school? In addition to violating a student's right to privacy, the electronic monitoring program alleviates parental responsibility for their children. Programs like this not only erode the traditional strength of family relationships, they do those relationships a further disservice by "volunteering" to play the role of surrogate parent.

If electronic monitoring is to become an accepted form of school discipline, where will schools turn to next?