Putting An Ankle Bracelet On Ferris Bueller

I think it is a good idea to have a gps on the students to track where they are, but how can you prove that they are NOT taking the device off when you aren't with them or that they aren't just putting the device in someone elses backpack?

Sent by Julie | 2:52 PM | 5-15-2008

I think its great as a school nurse I am one of the many people brought in with parents trying to find any time that their child may have been sent home sick,which I have to research back through all of my student logs taking valuable time out of my day because of their child's chronic absences, to keep them from going to court.

Sent by Brian R.N. | 2:52 PM | 5-15-2008

Yikes. Why does the school feel it's their role to do this? Mark the kid absent, mark him absent again, etc. and move on. Do the parents have a say? As someone who thought buying donuts was more fun than P.E. and still ended up graduating from high school (with 13 absences in P.E.) and from Wellesley College, I see no benefit coming from treating kids like zoo animals. We should recognize their autonomy and free will and stop trying stamp it out.

Sent by Jane | 2:57 PM | 5-15-2008

thank you for this program.....your discussion brings to mind an expression used by a speaker during a lecture i attended at a university in kansas. the lecture concerned our understanding of the world and environment that enables underachieving students....the expression is :if it's not on their menu, they can't pick it. This was applied to an understanding of parents and what we see as their responsibilities as well as the students themselves. i see this program as an attempt to put the option of success and commitment "on the menu" of parents and students in order that they may choose to "pick it" as a new way to approach and live life...i find i've used this expression in many different situations in the years since i first learned of it! thanks!

Sent by susan pachuta | 3:02 PM | 5-15-2008

The monitoring system is not taking rights away from parents to parent their children. Usually, the whole reason a child is not in school to begin with has to do with his parents' inability to set and enforce rules for him to follow. It's all fine and well to say that parents SHOULD do more, but as a former high school teacher it has been my experience that parents either cannot do more, will not do more, or simply don't know how to do more. So, as long as public education is going to continue to hold itself accountable for leaving no child behind, no matter how much the child wants to be left behind, then schools need to have programs like this monitoring system to ensure that students are in the classrooms where teachers, principals, and counselors can actually help them.

Sent by Melissa Mulvaney | 3:03 PM | 5-15-2008

As usual, I didn't think of something to call or write about until the program was almost over. I think there are already cell phones with GPS capabilities so schools and judges could impose the requirement that the truant obtain one or put a refundable deposit on one for the duration of their time in the program. They wouldn't have to be functional for calls or texting (unless the parents chose to pay for same) but they would remove the stigma occasioned by the monitor being used now which, as Neal pointed out, is instantly recognizable by other students for what it really is.

Sent by Daniel Wagner | 3:05 PM | 5-15-2008

As a single father, I tried everything I knew to make my son attend school, but I was unsuccessful. I would deliver him to school and watch him walk in the front door, but didn't see him immediately walk out the back. I gave all of his teachers self-addressed stamped envelopes and all of my phone numbers. I never received a letter or a call. I did, however, receive a letter from the principal threatening jail if I didn't make my son attend school! I transferred my son to another school that had a strong truancy prevention program. It wasn't strong enough. I sent him to an alternative school. It was close, but it didn't win out either. He eventually dropped out after his 17th birthday. If I would have had the GPS available then, he would have been happier, I have no doubt. He got his GED one month after he dropped out of school, so he wasn't a dummy. He was and is a good son in most every other respect. Anyone that thinks that parents just need to do a better job and worry that it's a Big Brother world emerging just have no idea of what they're talking about. Since when were we not supposed to be "Big Brother" over our children anyway? This device just helps parents do they job many of them already have been trying to do.

Sent by Mike | 3:12 PM | 5-15-2008

While I understand the controversy, I think many children would welcome the decision to have the choice to cut school or not taken out of their hands. Also, it sends a message that the parents care, the courts care. Also, the mandatory parenting classes is a wonderful idea--as a parent in this day and age I'm lost as how to keep my children safe while giving them freedom.

Sent by Susan A. | 3:14 PM | 5-15-2008

I think this is a wonderful idea and a great resource for parents who are struggling with older teenagers who are refusing to go to school. My husband and I are having this problem with our 17 year old son. He is 6' and 225lbs. We cannot physically force him to go to school and he has stopped listening to us. My husband and I are both college educated and value education. We thought we had passed this on to our children but they still try to make their own choices. A GPS monitor would make him aware that we are not the only ones who are concerned and aware of his truancy, and make him accountable to others besides us.

Sent by April S. | 3:15 PM | 5-15-2008

I used to teach at the high school level and have a comment about kids who skip class. For some of them, I say, do us all a favor and DON'T come to class.

I had one student who was such a nuisance not only to me as an authority figure, but also to his classmates. My other students actually expressed regret when this kid, whom I'll call J.B., attended class. (Example: I had a group project planned one day. I had put him into a group of mixed-ability students. One girl who was trying to do the assignment with J.B. suddenly started arguing with him and called me over to the group. J.B. had snatched her half-done assignment from her desk, spit on it, crumpled it up and threw it on the floor. He then grabbed her pencil and snapped it over his knee and threw it across the room. He'd been in the classroom less than half the period, and had created such a ruckus that he had to be sent out to the office for discipline.)

His parents had given up by the time he reached 8th grade, and so when I contacted them about his ditching habit, they said they couldn't do anything about it. Eventually I stopped calling.

Frankly, it was a Catch-22 for me anyway. If I did my job (notifying parents that their kid is skipping class) and when I was "successful" in getting J.B. back to class once or twice, he would come in with such a rotten attitude and immediately behave so incorrigibly, I'd wish I had never called the parents in the first place!

I guess this kid needed to be assessed for special education services or therapy, but I have no doubt that he would ditched that sort of help too, if it were offered. (It might have been, prior to my knowing him.)

Three years later I saw this kid in the audience watching his classmates as THEY (not he) graduated. Too bad for him, but I think it's all about personal choices made repeatedly, and the consequences or reward those choices carry.

If electronic/GPS monitoring is to be used with chronically truant kids, I think it is IMPERATIVE that such behavioral problems be addressed within the system. "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." Even the best teachers have students that will NOT respond to their stellar efforts at inclusion, enthusiasm, creativity, and intriguing lessons!

Sent by Cathy | 3:18 PM | 5-15-2008

The proponents of gps-assisted tracking of "truants" should be advised that the gizmos will tell them only the location of the bodies, not of the kids who inhabit them. My 20-plus years in the classroom suggests that they might be found withdrawn somewhere, perhaps wondering why people ingenious enough to devise the tracking system are not smart enough to wonder what it is about school that is so hateful as to make it worthwhile to deal with the hassle in order to skip. Most of them also know that you don't have to actually be away from the schoolhouse in order to drop out. Sad, really.

Sent by D.R. Miller | 3:27 PM | 5-15-2008

Sometimes I can't believe the way our country, indeed the world is evolving.

I was a sophomore in 1979. I grew up in a time without police stationed in the corridors, police searches of lockers and metal detectors. In the increasing fight to enforce the law and (we are told) protect our individual rights and body we are subjected to a seemingly never ending barrage of new laws, surveillance, restrictions and the like.

What are legislated laws anyway. They are certainly not innate and and don't always take our well being into account. Laws can be levied for political reasons, reactionary reasons. Laws can be bigoted and racist and might favor a particular socioeconomic group or corporation.

So do I occasionally break the law. Yes, and everyone I know, including my conservative, baptist grandmother does. All of us weigh the law against our evolving goals or desires and make a decision whether or not to observe the law. Sometimes we obey the law because we deem the consequences too great and sometimes we respect and honor the law. Politicians themselves break the very laws they make on a regular basis. Laws are made by people and people are selfish and fallible. So to are laws.

Sure we can more successfully enforce the law via surveillance. We're doing so more and more with video cameras, "the patriot act" ankle bracelets, and so forth. Stiff penalties detour the would be "criminal." After all the state only want's to enforce the law and we should all be good, law abiding citizens. You trust you're government, right?

But at what cost do we succumb to this kind of law enforcement. The proponents of such tactics say "don't worry" They will be careful to use good judgment. They are after all only trying to enforce the law.

If, (as in the book 1984), my every move and voice is monitored by the state, I will more likely follow the letter of the law and if I don't, consequences will be forthcoming. But what happens when the laws become increasingly strict. What happens when a terrorist bomb goes off in some city. Individuals will as has happened in the past forfeit some of their rights. Just imagine what high tech increased surveillance would have meant in the McArthy era or the whole of the cold war. What happens when the state can listen into my private conversations or is able to read my mind. Is this so far fetched?

It's clich?? to bring up "1984." There are other literary and filmic illustrations but the overriding message is the same, BIG BROTHER. And if you don't see it coming, then you're nieve. Increased surveillance by the state represents increased power over us and if we don't do something about soon, it may be too late.

Be careful. You may support the current flavor of laws and believe, selfishly that they will benefit you, but this is incramentalism. What happens when a particular law conflicts with your vision of government or of liberty. What happens when a machine or a computer assesses guilt and levies fines or worse. This actually occurs today with traffic cameras.

Sent by Don Manley | 4:23 PM | 5-15-2008

I wonder if we really should be placing kids into the criminal category due to truancy. True, the statistics show that it may work, but it reminds me of something I have read in George Orwell's 1984.

If schools and the government were concerned about kids staying in school, a drop out age of 16 would not be acceptable. Perhaps these devices will only increase the desire to drop school.

Sent by Jordan | 6:56 PM | 5-15-2008

A gross infringement on human rights. Some students are just not cut out for school conformism, even bright ones. They should not be punished but explored for their virtues, and let those be capitalized on. Many people succeed in spite of the 'system', but we have to allow for those that don't and assume it is a "character defect" or "IQ" problem.

Sent by Terry L. Hill, PhD | 3:46 PM | 5-16-2008

About a year ago, my boyfriend's sister moved in to our 2 bedroom apartment with us. Shortly after that she began attending her senior year of high school. Or should i say pretending to do so. Now almost at the end of the school year after missing so much school that she won't even have a high school degree, i wonder if this might have saved her. It's not that she wasn't bright. It was easy to fall into a habit of just not going. Especially considering no one was able to find where she was. She no longer lives with us, but if she had i would wish Indiana would take some steps to fix it's public school systems. With 2 high schools in Muncie, In on academic probation, can they afford not to?

Sent by Jackie | 10:44 PM | 5-16-2008

I work in the school highlighted in this segment. I have personally taught students who had to wear these devices. This is NOT an infringement of their rights, since they have not complied with state laws on attendance. If you don't want to wear one, then go to school.

This device is necessary because many parents will not, cannnot or do not know how to parent effectively. I have had parents throw up their hands when the child hits age 15. Say what? That child still needs guidance. That child needs a new direction.

Go to any prison and ask the inmates if their first rule infraction was truancy, and watch the hands go up. This program is a retooling of behavior.

Many of us at Bryan Adams HS in Dallas hope this program will continue, and it should be expanded. It is literally changing lives while it is still possible.

Sent by Diane Birdwell | 11:27 PM | 5-16-2008

Can you say "slippery slope"? Sure, I knew you could.

Perhaps employers should start GPS tracking their employees to make sure of where they are on sick days...

Sent by Janine Murdock | 5:07 AM | 5-19-2008

I think it is easy to blame parents for children's absences, but I know first hand that this is not always the case. I was chronically late for school when I was a junior and senior in high school and for the most part my parents had no idea. My friends and I figured out how to avoid having our parents called. I think that these gps systems for students who are at the point where the courts are called in to regulate these students is a great idea. There is only so much a parent can do. When these students get called in to court it also affects the parents, who may be doing everything they can think of to make their children go to school.

Sent by Amy Russell | 4:54 PM | 5-19-2008