
Batavia school board disciplines teacher after Fifth Amendment survey flap - mcallan83
http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20130529/news/705299912/
======
fmstephe
I worry that sitting here and reading the articles which turn up in HN each
day that I am getting a very particular impression about life in America.
Between this and Kiera Wilmot I feel genuinely horrified.

Am I just seeing outliers here? Am I seeing frightening trend where children
are needlessly criminalised (Kiera) or willfully (even if well intentioned)
manipulated (my interpretation of this survey debacle)?

Other things I see include judges imprisoning children to increase revenues in
private prison systems they have shares in.

How does it feel to actually live there?

~~~
smutticus
Something happened in the past 10-20 years where teachers became the scape
goats of the failing American education system. It might be related to the
attacks on their unions and the privitization of education. I'm not totally
sure. But regardless of your opinions on education privitization teachers are
not regarded with the same reverence in American society that they once were.

~~~
oneandoneis2
Every teacher I know (and that's quite a few) shared this cartoon on FB
recently:

[http://www.coreyshepherd.com/wp-
content/uploads/Grades_Carto...](http://www.coreyshepherd.com/wp-
content/uploads/Grades_Cartoon.jpg)

Sad but true..

~~~
talmand
I can see both of those being true in previous years and today if one cares to
look at what's going on. I can even provide an example.

My older daughter has problems with math. She doesn't like it and doesn't want
to do it. Therefore, most of the problems she has with it I relate to her more
than her teacher. I view it as a problem for both us as parents and her
teacher to figure out ways to motivate her to try harder and to discover what
problems she may have that we can work on.

On the other hand, she's a really good reader. She loves to read books and
often does so without any outside motivation. When we moved to our current
school district my daughter was tested for reading on a computer using
software she had never seen before and was rated as a poor reader. We
disagreed with this result and told the teacher that likely the problem lay
with the system that she had never seen before. In her previous year in
another school and at home she's a self-motivated reader that is slightly
above average for her age group. The teacher stuck with the results and placed
her in a lower reading group, where she quickly outpaced the other students in
the group. Thankfully, after a few months, she was moved up into an
appropriate group for her reading level. In that case I fully fault the
teacher in that because she went with an automated system telling her what to
do, didn't do an informal test of her own, and ignored her parents on the
matter. Later the teacher even suggested that the sudden and large improvement
in her reading was due to their reading programs at the school. The conspiracy
theory part of me thinks it was intentional so that her reading scores would
show a huge improvement through the school year.

You do have to keep that cartoon in mind as a general kind of thing because
otherwise it suggests that there is no such thing as a bad teacher.

------
jentulman
"And students cannot incriminate themselves because, even if the district
shared the information with police, police can't prosecute based on that, he
said. They are only allowed to arrest students if they are harming other
students, such as in a fight, or if the student is in possession of drugs or
alcohol, Barshinger said."

I'm not saying that the school had anything but the best intentions, but It
does give them a bit of a head start in targeting certain pupils should the
school wish find a reason to remove a few bad apples.

~~~
nsxwolf
And we're all just taking his word for it, and it's not the only potential for
abuse of this information. Why should we trust the school or the private
company is handling these non-anonymized surveys properly? What's the chain of
custody?

Could these surveys ever come up in any kind of background check?

Their answer is don't worry about it, trust us.

------
itafroma
Previous, very lively discussion on HN:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5777578>

------
akama
I find this whole deal very amusing because I suspect that most answers on
this survey is wrong. I think we are not giving the students enough credit. I
know that I was given surveys like this when in high school and I never
answered them correctly, nor did any of my friends. Although the issues with
punishing the teacher who is looking out for students is a problem, we should
also be looking at why this survey was given in the first place. It seems like
a complete waste of money and time by the school district.

------
tokenadult
I am on record in the earlier thread about this incident

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5777578>

saying that the first news report sounded like John Dryden is an unusually
thoughtful social studies teacher, and that he was just relating the general
concepts that he is hired to teach his students to a real-world situation
facing the students. Even after reading the follow-up report submitted to open
this thread, I'm not at all sure that Dryden was trying to undermine the
survey process. Here's a key passage from the middle of the story submitted
here:

"Dryden, a social studies teacher, told three of his classes that they had a
Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate themselves when they took a social-
emotional learning survey April 18. Some of the 34 questions asked students
about their drug and alcohol use, as well as about their emotions. Their names
were on the surveys, as it was intended to identify students who could use
help, according to school district officials. Those whose answers raised red
flags were called in to the school's student services workers, including
social workers and counselors.

"Barshinger said there was no Fifth Amendment issue, for several reasons. Once
students' names were on them, he said, they would have become student records
and subject to student privacy laws. And students cannot incriminate
themselves because, even if the district shared the information with police,
police can't prosecute based on that, he said. They are only allowed to arrest
students if they are harming other students, such as in a fight, or if the
student is in possession of drugs or alcohol, Barshinger said.

"Board president Cathy Dremel, speaking on behalf of the board, said Dryden
'mischaracterized' the efforts of fellow teachers and administrators, some of
who had worked on a committee for a year to find a survey instrument that
would assess students' risky behavior.

"'The board will not support any employees giving students false impressions
about those who come here every day' to work for their best interests, she
said."

I am a lawyer by training. I don't actively practice law currently, but I stay
alert to the law related to K-12 education, which was my motivation for
studying law. In my experience, school district officials are often VERY BADLY
advised on what the law is, and their default assumption is that they can do
what they want, and hide what they are trying to do from parents who have the
actual legal authority to guide their children's educations. I wouldn't take
these kinds of statement from the district superintendent or from the school
board president as the last word on what the legal consequences of the student
survey might be.

I think another Hacker News participant said in the earlier thread that he
lives in the district and would report on what he observed at the school board
meeting about the survey. I'm not completely sure that this latest news story,
which fills in more details that weren't reported in the first story, settles
the issue of whether or not teacher Dryden's behavior was appropriate under
the circumstances.

~~~
ctdonath
_it was intended to identify students who could use help_

"We're from the government and we're here to help you" coupled with "you have
nothing to hide, right?" seems an unwise combination.

~~~
rayiner
The skepticism is mostly inappropriate in the context of public education. It
is the purpose of public school educators to help their kids, and that often
requires disclosure of information that would not be required of an adult in
the same situation.

~~~
crusso
_It is the purpose of public school educators to help their kids_

Well, that's what they say. Looking at the way that the public school systems
are run -- the way they fight school choice, the way they fight merit systems,
the way they resist all efforts to measure teacher competence, the way they
fight firing criminally bad teachers -- it seems that the purpose of public
school educators is to protect their jobs and power base.

It's no coincidence that the NEA is the largest union in the country.

Naturally, there are some great teachers out there... but if you're going to
generalize, at least cover the most obvious purpose of those you're
generalizing. As a whole, the public education system itself is a self-serving
disaster.

------
mwexler
Source article actually points out that the teacher didn't do anything wrong
in the warning, but that the warning was unnecessary and that the survey
instrument was designed to protect students and give them a less risky way to
get help than by talking to the police.

If the survey designers had communicated with the "administrators" of the
survey (the teachers and aides), this whole flap could have been avoided.

------
bcariveau
Video of school board vote: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Is_Awj4Pvg>

------
stfu
What I was wondering is this: Are there any good tutorials teaching kids their
basic rights of freedom/privacy?

With the right framing this could become really popular ("How to avoid your
parents snooping on you"). I guess most kids have some phase of freedom-
seeking and I would be happy to donate to a campaign encouraging this mindset
even more.

~~~
njharman
> good tutorials teaching kids their basic rights of freedom/privacy?

Social Studies class, depending on teacher. ACLU, EFF, and the internet in
general.

------
squozzer
Teachers should probably not dispense legal advice, but school admins should
not take on the role of pop psychologists.

Were I a parent, I would expect the school system to secure my permission to
ask my child questions of a personal nature. Which I probably would grant
after a discussion with my child.

------
steamer25
To me the act of disciplining the teacher makes the very case they're alleging
that he portrayed. I.e., "the administration around here is kinda jumpy and
will crack down on the slightest appearance of infraction--even if the right
course of action is unclear or controversial."

------
bcariveau
Regarding privacy concerns:

[http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/hottopics/ht10-28-02...](http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/hottopics/ht10-28-02.html)

In specific:

Sec. 1061 Student Privacy, Parental Access to Information, and Administration
of Certain Physical Examinations to Minors.

The No Child Left Behind Act contains a major amendment to PPRA that gives
parents more rights with regard to the surveying of minor students, the
collection of information from students for marketing purposes, and certain
non-emergency medical examinations. PPRA has been referred to as the "Hatch
Amendment" and the "Grassley Amendment" after authors of amendments to the
law. Now, school officials may hear the law referred to as the "Tiahrt
Amendment" after Congressman Todd Tiahrt, who introduced the changes regarding
surveys to the PPRA. The statute is found in 20 U.S.C. § 1232h and the
regulations (not yet updated) are found in 34 CFR Part 98.

U.S. Department of Education Surveys

Subsection (a) of the legislation was not changed. Subsection (b) added an
additional category (see bold below) and made minor changes to the existing
seven categories. This provision applies to surveys funded in whole or part by
any program administered by the U. S. Department of Education (ED). PPRA
provides:

-that schools and contractors make instructional materials available for inspection by parents if those materials will be used in connection with an ED-funded survey, analysis, or evaluation in which their children participate; and

-that schools and contractors obtain prior written parental consent before minor students are required to participate in any ED-funded survey, analysis, or evaluation that reveals information concerning:

1.political affiliations or beliefs of the student or the student's parent;

2.mental and psychological problems of the student or the student's family;

3.sex behavior or attitudes;

4.illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating, or demeaning behavior;

5.critical appraisals of other individuals with whom respondents have close
family relationships;

6.legally recognized privileged or analogous relationships, such as those of
lawyers, physicians, and ministers;

7.religious practices, affiliations, or beliefs of the student or student's
parent; or

8.income (other than that required by law to determine eligibility for
participation in a program or for receiving financial assistance under such
program).

Subsections a and b of PPRA generally apply when a survey is funded, at least
in part, by any program administered by the Secretary of Education.

~~~
belorn
Can _written parental consent_ be twisted to mean silent consent from not
replying to an email? I remember a cookie law in EU that had some harsh
consent requirement being turned to mean "silent consent by continue staying
on the website". Maybe the act of letting the kid continue go to school was
interpreted as consent.

------
andyl
Many/most of the comments here reflect a general mistrust towards the
administration, questioning motives or competence.

I've been the parent of a troubled kid. In that time, I worked closely with
our school administration, who could not have been more helpful and smart.

If I lived in that school district, I would welcome efforts to address
drug/alcohol/emotional issues. Maybe the survey wasn't perfectly done. But I
don't see evidence that anyone was actually harmed by it.

In my experience working with sensitive information, educators have generally
done the right thing, for the right reasons.

