The Privacy and Equity Implications of Using Self-Harm Monitoring Technologies

The Privacy and Equity Implications of Using Self-Harm Monitoring Technologies

As educators and school leaders return to campus after two years of significant upheaval and loss, many are prioritizing efforts focused on students’ well-being, including ensuring that students receive adequate mental health support. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, some experts suggest that the stressors associated with the pandemic and learning from home may have impacted students’ mental health, potentially increasing students’ risks of self-harm and suicide.1 Given this increased concern about student mental health, many school districts have recently and rapidly adopted self-harm monitoring systems.

Self-harm monitoring systems are computerized programs that can monitor students’ online activity on school-issued devices, school networks, and school accounts to identify whether students are at risk of dangerous mental health crises. These monitoring systems identify individual students by processing and collecting personal information from their online activities and sending alerts about individual students and their flagged content to school officials. In some cases, these systems or school policies facilitate sharing this information with parents or third parties, such as law enforcement agencies.

Despite their increased use, self-harm monitoring systems are an unproven technique for effectively identifying and assisting students who may be considering self-harm simply based on their online activities.

School districts may overestimate the ability of self-harm monitoring systems to identify students and underestimate the importance of developing comprehensive policies and processes for using the systems. Due to the inherent limitations in a computer system’s ability to interpret context, these systems often inaccurately or mistakenly flag student content and over-collect confidential data.2

The increased and rapid adoption of these systems raises important questions about the effectiveness and consequences of self-harm monitoring systems for students’ mental health, privacy, and equity. Monitoring systems can scan and monitor students’ searches, emails, documents, and online activities including social media and online communications on school-issued devices. Education leaders must carefully weigh the risks and harms associated with adopting monitoring technologies, implement safeguards and processes to protect students who may be identified, establish a strong communications strategy that includes school staff, students, parents,3 and caregivers, and ensure that their schools’ and districts’ monitoring programs and service-delivery systems do not exacerbate inequities. Further, schools must have the necessary mental health resources and professionals (school-based psychologists, counselors, and social workers) in place to support students identified by the program, which most schools across the country do not have.4

Merely adopting monitoring systems cannot serve as a substitute for robust mental health supports provided in school or a comprehensive self-harm prevention strategy rooted in well-developed medical evidence. Identifying students alone does not equate to supporting their mental health.

Absent other support, simply identifying students who may be at risk of self-harm—if the system does so correctly—will, at best, lead to no results. At worst, it can violate a student’s privacy or lead to a misinformed or otherwise inappropriate response. Schools must have robust mental health response plans in place to effectively support any students who may be identified before adopting monitoring systems.

Without proper planning and recognition of monitoring systems’ limitations, using monitoring software as a self-harm detection tool can trigger unintended consequences. In particular, using self-harm monitoring systems without strong guardrails and privacy-protective policies is likely to disproportionately harm already vulnerable student groups. Potential harmful outcomes include:

  • Students being mistakenly flagged, 
  • Students being unfairly treated once flagged as a result of improper sharing of this status and bias or stigma around mental illness,
  • Students being subject to excess scrutiny by the school in ways that can be stigmatizing and alienating,
  • Students having mental health details or their status-as-flagged inappropriately disclosed,
  • Students being needlessly put in contact with law enforcement and social services, or facing school disciplinary consequences as a result of being flagged,
  • Students having sensitive personal information, such as gender identity, sexual orientation, citizenship status, religious beliefs, political affiliations, or family situation revealed or shared, and
  • Students experiencing a chilling effect, making them hesitant to search for needed resources on school devices out of fear of being watched by school officials or flagged by the monitoring system.

All of these outcomes could ultimately undermine the primary goal of improving students’ mental well-being.5 To mitigate this, schools must:

  • Ensure they have sufficient school-based mental health resources and appropriate processes in place to support any students with mental health needs if they are accurately identified through self-harm monitoring technology,
  • Develop a robust mental health response plan beyond simply identifying students through a monitoring system, and 
  • Have well-developed policies governing how schools will use monitoring systems, respond to alerts, and protect student information before they acquire the technology. 

To help education leaders understand and weigh these risks, this report describes self-harm monitoring technology and how schools use it, details the privacy and equity concerns introduced by these monitoring systems, points out challenges that undermine the accuracy and limit the usefulness of these systems for addressing student mental health crises, outlines legal considerations related to monitoring students for self-harm, provides crucial questions that school and district leaders should consider regarding monitoring technologies, and offers recommendations and resources to help schools and districts protect students’ privacy in the context of monitoring for self-harm. 

Box 1. Monitoring Inflicts Particular Harms on Systemically Marginalized Groups of Students

Beyond understanding the risk of criminalization and potential for referral to law enforcement, school districts should carefully consider the uniquely harmful impacts of monitoring on various systemically marginalized groups of students. Below are some examples of groups of students that may experience unique harms as a result of self-harm monitoring.

Students from low-income backgrounds may not have a personal computer or internet access outside of the school campus or school-issued devices, leaving students without the ability to engage online free from their school’s monitoring system. Students without personal devices face more monitoring and associated harms; educators report that while 71 percent of schools who use monitoring do so on school-issued devices, only 16 percent monitor students’ personal devices.73 Students without personal devices may be especially uncomfortable using school devices to seek support, if they know that these devices are subject to monitoring. These disparate impacts may be especially pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic: while learning remotely, students have limited opportunities to seek more information or professional assistance beyond the internet and school-issued devices because they may have limited access to in-person resources. A survey in 2020 found that 8 percent or 4.4 million households do not have a computer always available. In households where a computer was always available, 60 percent received devices from the child’s school or school district.74 Similarly, students experiencing homelessness are unlikely to have access to personal devices and may heavily rely on school-issued devices, while especially needing to use them to search for non-academic resources or supports. These contextual factors suggest that self-harm monitoring programs require clear and transparent boundaries, protocols, and appropriate privacy protections. Otherwise, such programs risk harming the students they intend to protect. 

Almost 5 million students in schools across the country are English Language Learners, comprising 9 percent of all public school students.75 Students who are English Language Learners or multilingual, as well as students with disabilities, may be at especially high risk of false, inequitable flagging and of experiencing harm76 from being flagged by a monitoring system. Students who are English Language Learners may often use or interact with content in languages that school officials or a monitoring company do not understand or may interpret negatively.77 Deeply ingrained biases against students who are English Language Learners can especially influence suspicious and negative interpretations of their writing and activities.78 Similarly, students who are English Language Learners may sometimes lack the proficiency or cultural nuance to express themselves as non-English Learners would and may mistakenly use words or phrases that a monitoring program may flag or school officials may misinterpret as a threat to self. As a result, there is a high risk that intent and meaning may get lost in translation, and these students will end up flagged or penalized for innocuous language that school staff fail to accurately decipher. Language barriers or miscommunications and misunderstandings based on differential language use can also surface when monitoring technology scans the content of some students with disabilities. 

In addition, monitoring systems may utilize automatic, computerized translations when scanning student content in non-English languages. These computerized translations are frequently inaccurate and fail to account for idiomatic language use or cultural nuance.79 For example, direct translation of a phrase meaning, “You’re annoying me,” from Korean to English resulted in widespread use of the phrase, “Do you wanna die?” in Korean-American communities.80 These inherent shortcomings of monitoring systems risk disproportionately targeting students who are English Language Learners. For more information on legal protections for students who are English Language Learners, see Legal Implications.

In addition to disproportionate risks of stigmatization and criminalization, students with disabilities may be especially harmed by the ways self-harm monitoring systems analyze student content and writing. Some students with disabilities may interact with online content or use speech differently than their non-disabled peers and may consequently face risks of disproportionate flagging because of the limitations of these systems in interpreting context. Speech that is a manifestation of a disability may be misinterpreted as a threat to self-harm by the monitoring software or by untrained school staff who are unfamiliar with the intersection of disability and mental health. This misinterpretation often occurs with students who have developmental or learning disabilities.81 School district leaders should be aware that disparate treatment of students with disabilities, including disproportionately and needlessly flagging them due to typical manifestations of their disabilities, can constitute discrimination and invite potential legal challenges under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). For more information on legal anti-discrimination protections for students with disabilities, please see Legal Implications.

In addition to harms stemming from sharing student information with law enforcement and referring mental health-related issues to law enforcement, students of color may disproportionately experience other harms from self-harm monitoring.

For example, natural language processing algorithms, which are used by monitoring systems, have been shown to analyze and interpret Black dialects of English used online less accurately than writing by white individuals online.82 Likewise, research at MIT shows many common automated tools that scan online content using natural language processing disproportionately flag writing from Black users.83 These examples demonstrate the technological shortcomings, and inequities, inherent in accurately monitoring online content. Such technological inaccuracies lead to racial disparities in students mistakenly flagged by monitoring systems and can cause students of color to disproportionately experience the harms related to mismanaged and privacy-violative monitoring.

Additionally, low-income youth of color and other vulnerable young people may have a very different relationship with school-based and medical-based systems of formal mental healthcare. These student populations may often look to community-based resources and peer social networks as their preferred sources of care and wellness.84 While many monitoring technologies proceed from the assumption that school-based systems of care are best positioned to support young people, that may not be the case for many youth. For many students, state-based systems of mental health screenings and services can trigger harmful episodes where they, or their caregivers, have had to deal with the child welfare system, criminal legal system, juvenile justice system, etc.85 School districts should keep the different needs and preferences of various student groups in mind and recognize that a one-size-fits-all approach to responding to student self harm will not equally benefit all students.

Another important consideration is the effect of high-surveillance schools86 on the academic outcomes and well-being87 of Black students and other structurally disadvantaged racial groups. These students may experience monitoring more as a form of surveillance and control of student behavior than as a mental health support tool, due to the greater prevalence of schools with harsh security and zero-tolerance policies in communities of color.88 In these cases, implementing a monitoring system can add to an atmosphere of surveillance and criminalization, thereby compromising students’ sense of comfort and support in their school environment. Research from John Hopkins University and Washington University shows that high surveillance schools can lead to lower test scores and graduation rates for Black students, as well as greater disciplinary disparities.89

Besides facing the risks of discipline and criminalization described in Box 2, LGBTQ students face unique additional harms from having their digital activities monitored. These unique harms can be exacerbated depending on students’ school and home environments. 

Research shows that LGBTQ students who experience victimization or bullying in school face detrimental psychological outcomes, such as higher instances of depression, low self-esteem, increased isolation, and increased suicidal ideation, compared to non-LGBTQ peers.90 The American Psychological Association has reported91 that 64 percent of LGBTQ students feel unsafe in schools because of prejudice and harassment. Sixty percent of these students did not report these incidents to school officials due to fear the situation would be made worse or that the school would take no action to help them. Self-harm monitoring technologies that flag incidents of harassment and prejudice may result in these very fears for LGBTQ students, particularly in unsupportive school environments or without thoughtful protocols for handling flags. 

LGBTQ students have a unique interest in controlling who has information about their sexual orientation and gender identity to prevent incidents of harassment, particularly in situations of unsafe home or school environments.

Nonprofit suicide-prevention organization The Trevor Project reports that about 50 percent of LGBTQ youth selectively and carefully decide which family members and teachers and in which contexts they disclose their sexual orientation or gender identity.92 In a national survey conducted by The Trevor Project, less than half of LGBTQ youth had disclosed their identity to an adult at school.93 Research has also found that LGBTQ youth are more likely than their peers to seek identity-related resources and help online.94 Monitoring systems may discourage youth from seeking LGBTQ-affirming resources online if they fear surveillance, repercussions, or reporting or being outed to school staff, other students, or even their parents through the monitoring program.

This ability to decide when and how to come out is a critical right that supports mental well-being, particularly when students are in situations where they may feel unsafe or unsupported. This includes school environments where students do not feel confident that their school leaders would support their identities if they were to report bullying or harassment. Consequently, exposing LGBTQ students as a result of monitoring, even with the good intention to help them, can in fact undermine their mental health and safety by damaging this important protective strategy.

School leaders concerned about the mental health of LGBTQ youth should work to create actively affirming and supportive school climates that respect students’ boundaries and privacy, and to provide resources and information in school related to sexual orientation and gender identity, rather than engage in monitoring that would invasively and forcefully expose these students.

Even if schools do not explicitly regard students experiencing mental health challenges as threats or target them for discipline, monitoring can impact students’ natural exploration, academic freedom, or ability to find online communities and resources that are important for their well-being and mental health.

Research has shown that school surveillance can corrode learning environments by instilling an implicit sense that children are untrustworthy.95

Many organizations have noted that surveillance technologies such as social media monitoring and facial recognition can harm students by stifling their creativity, individual growth, and speech. The sense that “Big Brother” is always watching can destroy the feelings of safety and support that students need to take intellectual and creative risks—to do the hard work of learning and growing. In one study of Texas high school students whose district monitored their social media accounts, students reported that even if they had nothing to hide, they nonetheless found it chilling to be watched.96 A recent national survey found that 80 percent of students who were aware of their schools using monitoring software reported being more careful about what they search online because of knowing that they are being monitored.97

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Box 2. Intersections with Mental Health: Vulnerable students are likely to face disproportionate criminalization and harm from referral to law enforcement

In many cases, law enforcement officers, including school resource officers (SROs), are more common resources than counselors or school psychologists on school campuses. In 2019, the American Civil Liberties Union found that almost two million students attend schools with police officers but no counselors, three million attend schools with police officers but no school nurses, six million are in schools with police officers but no school psychologists, and ten million are in schools with police officers but no school social workers.105 In such contexts, schools may be more likely to frame and treat mental health needs as threats or disciplinary issues for law enforcement to handle, simply because they may lack access to school employed mental health professionals. 

For example, in some states, police officers, including SROs, are statutorily authorized to submit students to involuntary psychiatric examinations.106 A study by civil rights groups in Florida found that schools routinely refer “school children who make jokes, act out, exhibit normal manifestations of a known disability, or express ordinary sadness” for police-initiated psychiatric confinement, rather than connecting them to long-term, community-based care.107 This practice takes children away from their families without their consent, confines them in a psychiatric facility alone, and may lead to “devastating results, including trauma and abuse, for these children, as young as 6.”108 Florida is unfortunately not unique in over-involving law enforcement in issues related to student mental health to the detriment of students.109

In addition to creating stigma, this approach of framing potential mental health needs as a disciplinary problem to be handled by law enforcement often prevents students from receiving necessary medical treatment and unnecessarily entangles them in the criminal justice system. Needlessly referring students who may benefit from mental health services to law enforcement instead furthers existing inequities and perpetuates the school-to-prison pipeline

This means student groups who are already marginalized and vulnerable are the ones most likely to be flagged by monitoring systems, seen as at-risk or dangerous by school staff, disproportionately referred to law enforcement, and most likely to be harmed by this referral. Students who are minoritized or marginalized in terms of race/ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or socioeconomic status are known to be disproportionately criminalized in this way and, in turn, are most likely to suffer additional harm if monitoring technologies lead to contact with law enforcement rather than mental health support.110 As discussed above, students who are English Language Learners or immigrants may be more likely to be mistakenly flagged by monitoring systems due to mistranslations or lack of cultural context. When this occurs, their safety or residency may be endangered through law enforcement contact.

Consider the following statistics:

Black students and other students of color are especially harmed by disciplinary actions and law enforcement interactions:

  • Black students are suspended and expelled from school at three times the rate of their white peers.111
  • Approximately one-third of all students arrested at school are Black, despite only comprising 16 percent of the nation’s student population.112
  • Black children are more than 5 times more likely to be detained or incarcerated than white children.113
  • Native American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students are arrested in school at 2 times the rate of white students.114
  • Black and Latino boys with disabilities comprise 3 percent of all students but 12 percent of all school arrests.115
  • Native American girls are arrested in school 3.5 times more than white girls.116

Harsh exclusionary discipline, criminalization, and law enforcement interactions already disproportionately harm students with disabilities, as schools often mistakenly view them as threats.

  • Children with learning and behavioral disabilities are arrested nearly three times more often than other students.117
  • Children with disabilities comprise up to 85 percent of youth in juvenile detention centers,118 while only 37 percent of them receive educational accommodations and services for their disability in school.119
  • Students with disabilities are suspended from school approximately twice as often as students without disabilities.120
  • A quarter of all children arrested at school are children with disabilities.121

LGBTQ students are already disproportionately criminalized and at risk of negative law enforcement interactions; referrals from monitoring programs to SROs and other law enforcement could increase this existing harm. LGBTQ students flagged through monitoring may face more likely referral to law enforcement, compared to non-LGBTQ students. Researchers have estimated 20 percent of youth involved in the juvenile justice system are LGBTQ, compared to 4–6 percent of youth in the general population.122

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Box 3: Spotlight on COVID-19: Additional Considerations and Barriers to Effectiveness During Remote Learning

Context increasingly matters, as the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting shift to remote learning have placed both physical and emotional distance between students, educators, and other school staff. Many schools have turned to self-harm and suicide monitoring technologies in an attempt to fill any potential rifts created by remote learning126 and in response to growing concern about the impact of the pandemic on student mental health.127 For example, the number of users of the provider GoGuardian (across all its monitoring services, not just its self-harm monitoring product) has rapidly expanded by 60 percent during the pandemic128 and it is now used by 23 of the 25 largest school districts in the country.129 Some reports have suggested that this expanded monitoring is necessary, as educators may have felt better equipped to understand when a student required mental health assistance and intervene by using in-person cues, such as a student’s demeanor and appearance, and may struggle to understand when their students may need help as they learn remotely.130

In reality, it is difficult to trace how precisely the pandemic has impacted student mental health.131 Some students’ mental health may have declined during the pandemic due to combined factors such as the pressures of isolation, the stress and challenges of trying to learn without direct access to teachers in person, anxiety about the pandemic generally, technology problems, COVID-related loss and illness in the family, and unstable home environments.132 However, these increased mental health-related concerns must be balanced with protecting student privacy.

Some well-meaning school administrators may consider these increased pandemic-related stressors as all the more reason to instate self-harm monitoring technology, regardless of whether teachers were previously able to pick up on in-person signs of mental health crisis accurately. However, it is important for school administrators to remember that self-harm monitoring technology is not evidence-based, and its implementation in the absence of privacy-protective practices and thoughtful implementation policies can in fact harm students, regardless of any greater mental health needs during the pandemic. School administrators should remember that these technologies should only be deployed as part of a multi-pronged program of well-developed mental health supports.

For more information on supporting student mental health during the pandemic, see our recent blog on the topic.

In addition to understanding the privacy and equity risks, school and district leaders should also be aware of the many practical challenges involved in implementing self-harm monitoring. As discussed above, the efficacy of monitoring technologies for reducing self-harm has not been fully evaluated and the technologies have not been substantiated by mental health professionals or clinicians as an effective tool for addressing mental health crises. Beyond questions about the initial accuracy of identifying students in need of support, there are practical challenges to this identification actually leading to the students receiving support, including the widespread lack of qualified mental health personnel in schools. Flagging at-risk students can only be useful if effective follow-up plans and mental health resources are in place for the identified students.

  1. Rhitu Chatterjee, Child Psychiatrists Warn That The Pandemic May Be Driving Up Kids’ Suicide Risk, KQED (February 2, 2021), https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57343/child-psychiatrists-warn-that-the-pandemic-may-be-driving-up-kids-suicide-risk.Stephanie L. Mayne, Chloe Hannan, Molly Davis, Jami F. Young, Mary Kate Kelly, Maura Powell, George Dalembert, Katie E. McPeak, Brian P. Jenssen and Alexander G. Fiks, COVID-19 and Adolescent Depression and Suicide Risk Screening Outcomes, Pediatrics (2021), 148(3).
  2. Aaron Leibowitz, Could Monitoring Students on Social Media Stop the Next School Shooting?, The New York Times, (September 6, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/06/us/social-media-monitoring-school-shootings.html.
  3. For the purposes of this report, we use the term “parent” expansively to also imply other legal guardians or caregivers that students may have.
  4. ALCU, Cops and No Counselors: How the Lack of Mental Health Staff is Harming Students, (2019), https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/030419-acluschooldisciplinereport.pdf.
  5. Jacqueline Ryan Vickery, “I don’t have anything to hide, but…” The Challenges and negotiations of social and mobile media privacy for non-dominant youth, Journal of Information Communication, and Society (2014), 18: 281–294.
  6. Erica L. Green, Surge of Student Suicides Pushes Las Vegas Schools to Reopen, The New York Times, (January 24, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/us/politics/student-suicides-nevada-coronavirus.html.
  7. US Department of Education Office of Educational Technology, Power up and bring your own device, DOE, (n.d.), https://tech.ed.gov/stories/power-up-and-bring-your-own-device/.
  8. Caroline Knorr, What to Ask When Your Kid Brings Home a School-Issued Laptop, Common Sense Media, (August 26, 2019), https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/what-to-ask-when-your-kid-brings-home-a-school-issued-laptop.
  9. Sean Cavanagh, School Districts Using Mobile Hotspots to Help Students Connect at Home, EdWeek Market Brief, (February 14, 2014), https://marketbrief.edweek.org/marketplace-k- 12/school_districts_help_students_connect_outside_classroom_with_portable_wi-fi/.
  10. Mark Keierleber, Minneapolis School District Addresses Parent Outrage Over New Digital Surveillance Tool as Students Learn Remotely, The 74, (October 28, 2020), https://www.the74million.org/minneapolis-school-district-addresses-parent-outrage-over-new-digital-surveillance-tool-as-students-learn-remotely/.
  11. FCC, FCC Announces Over $5 Billion in Funding Requests Received in Emergency Connectivity Fund Program,  (August 25, 2021), https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-375210A1.pdf.
  12. Techcrunch, Another banner quarter as Chromebook shipments grow 75% YOY, Brian Heater, https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/29/another-banner-quarter-as-chromebook-shipments-grow-75-yoy/.
  13. Bark’s chief parenting officer said in The Guardian in 2019 that, “‘Some parents want technology that will give them an exact record of every single text, every single email…[But Bark doesn’t offer that.] We only alert parents and schools when there is a real issue that they need to know about.’”Lois Beckett, Under digital surveillance: how American schools spy on millions of kids, The Guardian, (October 22, 2019) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/22/school-student-surveillance-bark-gaggle.
  14. Florida House of Representatives, HB 3217 (2021) – K-12 Suicide Prevention & Mental Health Early Notification Pilot Program, (February 4, 2021), https://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Bills/billsdetail.aspx?BillId=71455.
  15. NCASA, NCGA Passes “Coronavirus Relief Act 3.0” Providing Additional COVID-19 Funding and Policy Relief For K12 Schools, https://www.ncasa.net/cms/lib/NC02219226/Centricity/ModuleInstance/9/REVISED_H1105%20Summary%20Article_rev.pdf.
  16. Edward Burch, Wilson County Schools using technology to help at-risk students, WSMV News4 Nashville, (February 12, 2019), https://www.wsmv.com/news/wilson-county-schools-using-technology-to-help-at-risk-students/article_8b608058-2f0d-11e9-9b46-df5432650424.html.
  17. LightSpeed Systems, K-12 Solutions Catalog, (2021), https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.lightspeedsystems.com/collateral/K-12%20Solutions%20Catalog%202021%20%281%29.pdf.(Lightspeed also has the related product “Lightspeed Alert,” which “scans virtually everywhere students interact online for indicators of suicide, self-harm, and school violence”).
  18. Tiffany Lane, Young student’s suicide attempt shows reality of mental health crisis amid pandemic, KSNV, (November 12, 2020), https://local12.com/news/nation-world/young-students-suicide-attempt-shows-reality-of-mental-health-crisis-amid-pandemic-11-12-2020.
  19. Anya Kamenetz, Software Flags ‘Suicidal’ Students, Presenting Privacy Dilemma, National Public Radio, (March 28, 2016), https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/03/28/470840270/when-school-installed-software-stops-a-suicide.
  20. Specifically, CIPA requires that schools adopt an internet safety policy that must “include monitoring the online activities of minors.”
  21. 47 U.S.C. § 254.
  22. How does Auditor work, https://support.securly.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015796427-How-does-Auditor-work.
  23. Lois Beckett, Under Digital Surveillance: How American Schools Spy on Millions of Kids, The Guardian, (October 22, 2019) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/22/school-student-surveillance-bark-gaggle.
  24. “Securly…offers a free app for parents in the districts that use its technology that allows them to see exactly what websites their children have visited, what Google searches they have made, and what videos they are watching on YouTube, Jolley, Securly’s safety director, said… [Gaggle’s spokesperson said that the company’s] bright line was offering monitoring of only students’ official school emails and school documents. ‘We shouldn’t be looking at their private email. We shouldn’t be looking at their private social media posts. But in the school, with school-issued tools, we should protect them.’”Lois Beckett, Under Digital Surveillance: How American Schools Spy on Millions of Kids, The Guardian (Oct. 22, 2019), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/22/school-student-surveillance-bark-gaggle.In marketing material, Lightspeed Systems, which offers web filtering and a specific self-harm and threat monitoring tool, claims that “Our patented device-level filtration creates more comprehensive cross-device security compared to the web crawlers deployed by competing solutions, and allows for visibility into all online activity, from web searches to activity in Google docs to web-based email.”LightSpeed Systems, K-12 Solutions Catalog, (2021), https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.lightspeedsystems.com/collateral/K-12%20Solutions%20Catalog%202021%20%281%29.pdf.(Lightspeed also has the related product “Lightspeed Alert,” which “scans virtually everywhere students interact online for indicators of suicide, self-harm, and school violence”).In a case study of Lightspeed Filter, a district using the product said that it allows them to see “all the videos the kids watched, and all the searches they made,..[and there is] also an option for creating reports that showed you an overview of internet usage to see exactly what particular students are doing online.”https://www.lightspeedsystems.com/case-study/dallastown-area-school-district/https://www.lightspeedsystems.com/media-release/lightspeed-systems-wins-remote-learning-awards-2021/.
  25. How does Auditor work, https://support.securly.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015796427-How-does-Auditor-work.
  26. FPF, The Spectrum of Artificial Intelligence, https://fpf.org/blog/the-spectrum-of-artificial-intelligence-an-infographic-tool.
  27. How Smarter Filtering Means Safer Learning, https://cdw-prod.adobecqms.net/content/dam/cdw/on-domain-cdw/brands/goguardian/how-smarter-filtering-means-safer-learning.pdf.
  28. Securly Inc., 24, https://www.securly.com/24/?utm_term=Securly_Brand_Search_Securly_Brand&utm_source=Securly_Brand_search_2021&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Securly_Brand_search_2021.
  29. Caroline Haskins, Gaggle Knows Everything About Teens and Kids In School, BuzzFeed News, (November 1, 2019), https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/gaggle-school-surveillance-technology-education.
  30. Ibid.
  31. Lightspeed Systems, Lightspeed Alert™, https://www.lightspeedsystems.com/solutions/lightspeed-alert/.
  32. LightSpeed Systems, K-12 Solutions Catalog, (2021), https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.lightspeedsystems.com/collateral/K-12%20Solutions%20Catalog%202021%20%281%29.pdf (p6).Securely, Home Page,(n.d.)https://www.securly.com/home-admin + “[Securely] created an ‘emotionally intelligent’ app that sends parents weekly reports and automated push notifications detailing their children’s internet searches and browsing histories”.Benjamin Herold, Schools Are Deploying Massive Digital Surveillance Systems. The Results Are Alarming, Education Week, (May 30, 2019),https://www.edweek.org/leadership/schools-are-deploying-massive-digital-surveillance-systems-the-results-are-alarming/2019/05.Bark, Parent Portal, (n.d.),https://www.bark.us/schools/parent-portal-alerts.
  33. John Harrington, E-rate Supports 95% of K-12 Students, Funds for Learning, (December 24, 2020), https://www.fundsforlearning.com/news/2020/12/e-rate-supports-95-of-k-12-students/.
  34. Hugh Grant-Chapman, Elizabeth Laird, Cody Venzke, Student Activity Monitoring Software: Research Insights and Recommendations, Center for Democracy & Technology (September 21, 2021) https://cdt.org/insights/student-activity-monitoring-software-research-insights-and-recommendations/.
  35. GoGuardian, See what others are saying about GoGuardian, GoGuardian, (n.d.),  https://web.archive.org/web/20201129173238/https://www.goguardian.com/success-stories/.
  36. Gaggle, Home Page, Gaggle, (n.d.),  https://web.archive.org/web/20210915151304/https://www.gaggle.net/.
  37. Caroline Haskins, Gaggle Knows Everything About Teens and Kids In School, BuzzFeed News, (November 1, 2019), https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/gaggle-school-surveillance-technology-education.
  38. Lightspeed Systems, Lightspeed Alert™, https://www.lightspeedsystems.com/solutions/lightspeed-alert/.
  39. Ibid.
  40. GoGuardian, Beacon 24/7 Now Available, GoGuardian, (March 2, 2020), https://www.goguardian.com/blog/news/beacon-24-7-now-available/.
  41. ManagedMethods, Student Self-Harm Detection, ManagedMethods, (2021), https://managedmethods.com/use-cases/self-harm-detection/.
  42. Could Monitoring Students on Social Media Stop the Next School Shooting?(2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/06/us/social-media-monitoring-school-shootings.html.
  43. Todd Feathers, Schools Spy on Kids to Prevent Shootings, But There’s No Evidence It Works, VICE (2019), https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xwze4/schools-are-using-spyware-to-prevent-shootingsbut-theres-no-evidence-it-works.There are significant gaps in the data surrounding the effectiveness of internet monitoring programs as a school-based intervention method. The limited research that does exist tends to focus on suicide-related internet searches and school-based intervention methods generally. For example, a 2015 review by Katherine Mok, Anthony F Jorm, and Jane Pirkis concluded that the internet is in fact used to search for suicide-related information and to discuss related matters. In a similar study, Hajime Sueki, Naohiro Yonemoto, Tadashi Takeshima, and Masatoshi Inagaki identified a corollary between suicidal ideation and internet searches relating to suicide or mental health help. Finally, research from Jianhong Luo, Jingcheng Du, Cui Tao, Hua Xu, and Yaoyun Zhang identified potential risk factors that can be deduced from social media patterns. While these studies offer insight about internet searches relating to suicide and potential mental health indicators, they do not address the impact of monitoring such searches or online behavior, nor do they discuss monitoring in school settings. With regard to school intervention methods generally, a 2019 article by Ida Sund Morken, Astrid Dahlgren, Ingeborg Lunde, and Siri Toven acknowledges that there exists some evidence that school-based intervention methods can have short-term and potentially long-term impacts in suicide prevention, but that the research and data in this space is ultimately lacking.  While some evidence-based school interventions may certainly be preventative, evidence is currently lacking or nonexistent with regard to school-based monitoring technology as an intervention technique.Katherine Mok, Anthony F Jorm, and Jane Pirkis, Suicide-related Internet use: A review, The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry (2015), 49 (8): 697-705, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25698810/.Hajime Sueki, Naohiro Yonemoto, Tadashi Takeshima, and Masatoshi Inagaki, The impact of suicidality-related internet use: a prospective large cohort study with young and middle-aged internet users, PloS one (2014), 9 (4), https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24740115/.Jianhong Luo, Jingcheng Du, Cui Tao, Hua Xu, and Yaoyun Zhang, Exploring temporal suicidal behavior patterns on social media: Insight from Twitter analytics, Health Informatics Journal (2020), 26 (2):738-752, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30866708/.Ida Sund Morken, Astrid Dahlgren, Ingeborg Lunde, and Siri Toven, The effects of interventions preventing self-harm and suicide in children and adolescents: an overview of systematic reviews, F1000Research (2019), 8, 890,  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32148757/.
  44. Lois Beckett, Under Digital Surveillance: How American Schools Spy on Millions of Kids, The Guardian (Oct. 22, 2019), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/22/school-student-surveillance-bark-gaggle.
  45. Mark Keierleber, Exclusive Data: An Inside Look at the Spy Tech That Followed Kids Home for Remote Learning — and Now Won’t Leave, The 74, (September 14, 2021), https://www.the74million.org/article/gaggle-spy-tech-minneapolis-students-remote-learning/.
  46. Lois Beckett, Under Digital Surveillance: How American Schools Spy on Millions of Kids, The Guardian (Oct. 22, 2019), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/22/school-student-surveillance-bark-gaggle.
  47. Benjamin Herold, Schools Are Deploying Massive Digital Surveillance Systems. The Results Are Alarming, Education Week, (May 30, 2019), https://www.edweek.org/leadership/schools-are-deploying-massive-digital-surveillance-systems-the-results-are-alarming/2019/05.
  48. The 74 reported in September 2021 that “only about a quarter of incidents reported to [Minneapolis Public School] officials [took place on] school days between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.”Mark Keierleber, Exclusive Data: An Inside Look at the Spy Tech That Followed Kids Home for Remote Learning — and Now Won’t Leave, The 74, (September 14, 2021), https://www.the74million.org/article/gaggle-spy-tech-minneapolis-students-remote-learning/.
  49. Mark Keierleber, ‘Don’t Get Gaggled’: Minneapolis School District Spends Big on Student Surveillance Tool, Raising Ire After Terminating Its Police Contract, The 74, (October 28, 2020), https://www.the74million.org/article/dont-get-gaggled-minneapolis-school-district-spends-big-on-student-surveillance-tool-raising-ire-after-terminating-its-police-contract/.Mark Bergen, Tiger Global Plows $200 Million Into EdTech Firm GoGuardian, Bloomberg, (August 5, 2021), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-05/tiger-global-plows-200-million-into-edtech-firm-goguardian.
  50. Erica Green, Surge of Student Suicides Pushes Las Vegas Schools to Reopen, The New York Times, (January 24, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/us/politics/student-suicides-nevada-coronavirus.html.Lisa Railton, Students and the Pandemic: What is Gaggle Seeing?, Gaggle, (April 20, 2021), https://www.gaggle.net/blog/students-and-the-pandemic-what-is-gaggle-seeing.Isabelle Barbour, Surveillance Won’t Save Our Kids, Humane Public Policy Can, Student Privacy Compass, (September 17, 2021), https://studentprivacycompass.org/surveillance-wont-save-our-kids-humane-public-poliy-can/.
  51. A CDC study found that “from 1991 to 2017, suicide attempts by Black adolescents rose by 73 percent, while for young Black males, injury from suicide attempt rose by 122 percent.”National Center for Health Statistics, Increase in Suicide Mortality in the United States, 1999–2018, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, (April 2020), https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db362.htm.In 2020, a survey conducted by The Trevor Project found that in 2020, 40 percent of LGBTQ respondents seriously considered attempting suicide, with more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth seriously considering suicide. Nearly half of LGBTQ youth reported engaging in self-harm in the past year, with over 60 percent of transgender and nonbinary youth reporting the same.The Trevor Project, 2020 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, The Trevor Project, (2020), https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2020/?section=Introduction.In 2017, a study found that “school-age children and youth who are homeless are three times more likely to attempt suicide than students who live at home with a parent or guardian.”National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Suicide and Homelessness – Data Trends in Suicide and Mental Health Among Homeless Populations, National Health Care for the Homeless Council, (May 2018), https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/suicide-fact-sheet.pdf.
  52. Teddy Hartman, 4 principles school leaders can follow when balancing student safety and privacy, District Administration, (August 27, 2021), https://districtadministration.com/4-principles-school-leaders-balance-student-safety-privacy-goguardian-tact/.
  53. The American Civil Liberties Union, Cops and No Counselors, ACLU, (March 4, 2019), https://www.aclu.org/issues/juvenile-justice/school-prison-pipeline/cops-and-no-counselors.
  54. Support at Securly, How does Securly use AI across its products?, Securly, https://support.securly.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026432394-How-does-Securly-use-AI-across-its-products-.
  55. Ana-Maria Bucur and Liviu P. Dinu, Detecting Early Onset of Depression from Social Media Text using Learned Confidence Scores, arXiv preprint (2020), https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.01695.Ajay K. Gogineni, S. Swayamjyoti, Devadatta Sahoo, Kisor K. Sahu, and Raj kishore, Multi-Class classification of vulnerabilities in Smart Contracts using AWD-LSTM, with pre-trained encoder inspired from natural language processing, (2020), IOP SciNotes, 1(3), 035002.
  56. Aditya Joshi, Samarth Agrawal, Pushpak Bhattacharyya and Mark Carman, Expect the unexpected: Harnessing Sentence Completion for Sarcasm Detection, In International Conference of the Pacific Association for Computational Linguistics (2017): 275-287.
  57. Aaron Leibowitz, Could Monitoring Students on Social Media Stop the Next School Shooting?, The New York Times, (September 6, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/06/us/social-media-monitoring-school-shootings.html.This is the case with the self-harm monitoring system provided by Gaggle, which flags keywords such as “bomb,” “glock,” and “going to fight,” and sends alerts to school administrators when a student uses these terms.Mark Keierleber, Minneapolis School District Addresses Parent Outrage Over New Digital Surveillance Tool as Students Learn Remotely, The 74, (October 28, 2020), https://www.the74million.org/minneapolis-school-district-addresses-parent-outrage-over-new-digital-surveillance-tool-as-students-learn-remotely/.
  58. Valerie Steeves, Priscilla Regan and Leslie Regan Shade, Digital Surveillance in the Networked Classroom, The Equality Project, (May 7, 2017), http://www.equalityproject.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/7-Digital-Surveillance-in-the-Networked-Classroom.pdf.
  59. Nasser Eledroos & Kade Crockford, Social Media Monitoring in Boston: Free Speech in the Crosshairs, Privacy SOS (2018), https://privacysos.org/social-media-monitoring-boston-free-speech-crosshairs.Jonathon W. Penney, Whose Speech Is Chilled by Surveillance?, Slate (July 07, 2017), https://slate.com/technology/2017/07/women-young-people-experience-the-chilling-effects-of-surveillance-at-higher-rates.html.
  60. Lois Beckett, Under digital surveillance: how American schools spy on millions of kids, The Guardian, (October 29, 2019), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/22/school-student-surveillance-bark-gaggle.
  61. Caroline Haskins, Gaggle Knows Everything About Teens And Kids In School, Buzzfeed, (November 1, 2019), https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/gaggle-school-surveillance-technology-education.Todd Feathers, Schools Use Software that Blocks LGBTQ+ Content but not White Supremacists, Motherboard, Tech by Vice, (April 28, 2021), https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7em39/schools-use-software-that-blocks-lgbtq-content-but-not-white-supremacists.Mark Keierleber, Exclusive Data: An Inside Look at the Spy Tech That Followed Kids Home for Remote Learning — and Now Won’t Leave, The 74, (September 14, 2021), https://www.the74million.org/article/gaggle-spy-tech-minneapolis-students-remote-learning/.Lois Beckett, Under Digital Surveillance: How American Schools Spy on Millions of Kids, The Guardian (Oct. 22, 2019), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/22/school-student-surveillance-bark-gaggle.
  62. Todd Feathers, Schools Use Software that Blocks LGBTQ+ Content but not White Supremacists, Motherboard, Tech by Vice, (April 28, 2021), https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7em39/schools-use-software-that-blocks-lgbtq-content-but-not-white-supremacists.
  63. Support at Securly, How does Auditor work?, Securly, https://support.securly.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015796427-How-does-Auditor-work-.
  64. Betsy Morris, Schools Wrestle with Privacy of Digital Data Collected on Students, The Wall Street Journal, (July 10, 2019), https://www.wsj.com/articles/one-parent-is-on-a-mission-to-protect-children-from-digital-mistakes-11562762000.
  65. Mohit Varshney, Ananya Mahapatra, Vijay Krishnan, Rishab Gupta and Koushik Sinha Deb, Violence and mental illness: what is the true story?, Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, (2016), 70(3).
  66. Ibid.
  67. Perpetual Baffour, Counsel or Criminalize?, Center for American Progress, (September 22, 2016), https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2016/09/22/144636/counsel-or-criminalize/.
  68. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act of 2018, Florida CS/SB 7026, (2018).
  69. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission, Initial Report Submitted to the Governor, Speaker of the House of Representatives and Senate President, (January 2, 2019), http://www.fdle.state.fl.us/MSDHS/CommissionReport.pdf.
  70. Julio Ochoa, Parents Are Leery Of Schools Requiring ‘Mental Health’ Disclosures By Students, NPR (2018) https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/09/21/648828034/parents-are-leery-of-schools-requiring-mental-health-disclosures-by-students.
  71. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, Nott v. George Washington University, Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, (n.d.), http://www.bazelon.org/nott-v-george-washington-university/.
  72. The American Civil Liberties Union, Cops and No Counselors, ACLU (March 4, 2019), https://www.aclu.org/issues/juvenile-justice/school-prison-pipeline/cops-and-no-counselors.
  73. Hugh Grant-Chapman, Elizabeth Laird, Cody Venzke, Student Activity Monitoring Software: Research Insights and Recommendations, Center for Democracy & Technology (September 21, 2021) https://cdt.org/insights/student-activity-monitoring-software-research-insights-and-recommendations/.
  74. USA Facts, 4.4 million households with children don’t have consistent access to computers for online learning during the pandemic, USA Facts, (September 28, 2020), https://usafacts.org/articles/internet-access-students-at-home/.
  75. Department of Justice, United States Departments of Justice and Education Release Joint Guidance to Ensure English Learner Students Have Equal Access to a High-Quality Education, United States Department of Justice, (January 7, 2015), https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-departments-justice-and-education-release-joint-guidance-ensure-english-learner.
  76. Jennifer Keys Adair, The Impact of Discrimination on the Early Schooling Experiences of Children from Immigrant Families, Migration Policy Institute, (September 2015), https://www.scribd.com/document/279980674/The-Impact-of-Discrimination-on-the-Early-Schooling-Experiences-of-Children-From-Immigrant-Families.
  77. Corey Mitchell, Discrimination at Schools Harms Development of Young ELLs, Study Says, Education Week, (September 10, 2015), https://www.edweek.org/leadership/discrimination-at-school-harms-development-of-young-ells-study-says/2015/09.
  78. Larry Ferlazzo, Don’t Make Assumptions About Your ELL Students, Education Week, (November 2, 2020) https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-dont-make-assumptions-about-your-ell-students/2020/11.
  79. Clara Vania, Moh. Ibrahim and Mirna Adriani, Sentiment Lexicon Generation for an Under-Resourced Language, IJCLA (2014) 59-72.Mehrnaz Siavoshi, The Importance of Natural Language Processing for Non-English Languages, Towards Data Science, (September 21, 2020), https://towardsdatascience.com/the-importance-of-natural-language-processing-for-non-english-languages-ada463697b9d.
  80. 90 Day Korean, Korean Drama Phrases – Top 28 Words & Expressions for K-Drama Fans, (n.d.) https://www.90daykorean.com/korean-drama-phrases/.The Junkie, Top 40 Korean Conversational Phrases You Need To Know Part 4, (August 9, 2013), https://www.linguajunkie.com/korean-language/top-40-korean-conversational-phrases-you-need-to-know-part-4.
  81. Southern Poverty Law Center, Costly and Cruel: How Misuse of the Baker Act Harms 37,000 Florida Children Each Year, SPLC, (2021), https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/com_special_report_baker_act_costly_and_cruel.pdf.
  82. Su Lin Blodgett and Brendan O’Connor, Racial Disparity in Natural Language Processing: A Case Study of Social Media African-American English, Presented as a talk at the 2017 Workshop on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in Machine Learning (2017), https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.00061.
  83. Anna Woorim Chung, How Automated Tools Discriminate Against Black Language, Civic Media, (January 24, 2019), https://civic.mit.edu/2019/01/24/how-automated-tools-discriminate-against-black-language/.
  84. Nia West-Bay and Stephanie Flores, “Everybody Got Their Go Throughs”: Young Adults on the Frontlines of Mental Health, CLASP, (June 2017), https://www.clasp.org/sites/default/files/publications/2017/08/Everybody-Got-Their-Go-Throughs-Young-Adults-on-the-Frontlines-of-Mental-Health.pdf.
  85. Ibid.
  86. High-surveillance can include a host of different school policies and practices premised on suspicion in students and the perceived need to exert law and order. These measures can be structural, such as having security cameras, metal detectors, barred windows, and automatically locking doors. They can also include practices such as subjecting students to random drug testing, wand sweeps, and dog sniffs. High-surveillance schools may also have policies that further enshrine a culture of surveillance, such as barring students from leaving campus for lunch or entering class buildings during lunch, enforcing strict dress codes, requiring students to carry transparent book bags, and requiring identification badges for students. For more, see: Sarah D. Sparks, ‘High-Surveillance Schools Lead to More Suspicions, Lower Achievement, Education Week, (April 21, 2021), https://www.edweek.org/leadership/high-surveillance-schools-lead-to-more-suspensions-lower-achievement/2021/04.
  87. Whitney Bunts, Defund Police in Schools and Expand School-Based Mental Health, The Center for Law and Policy, (July 2, 2020), https://www.clasp.org/blog/defund-police-schools-and-expand-school-based-mental-health.
  88. Melinda D. Anderson, When School Feels Like Prison, The Atlantic, (September 12, 2016), https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/09/when-school-feels-like-prison/499556/.
  89. Sarah D. Sparks, ‘High-Surveillance Schools Lead to More Suspicions, Lower Achievement, Education Week, (April 21, 2021), https://www.edweek.org/leadership/high-surveillance-schools-lead-to-more-suspensions-lower-achievement/2021/04.
  90. Ibid.
  91. American Psychological Association, School-Based Risk and Protective Factors for Gender Diverse and Sexual Minority Children and Youth: Improving School Climate, American Psychological Association, (2015), https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/programs/safe-supportive/lgbt/risk-factors.pdf.
  92. The Trevor Project, Research Brief: Fostering the Mental Health of LGBTQ Youth, The Trevor Project, (2019), https://www.thetrevorproject.org/2019/05/30/research-brief-fostering-the-mental-health-of-lgbtq-youth/.
  93. The Trevor Project, National Survey on LGBTQ Youth  Mental Health, The Trevor Project, (2019), https://www.thetrevorproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/The-Trevor-Project-National-Survey-Results-2019.pdf.
  94. Ibid.
  95. Bryan Warnick, Surveillance Cameras in Schools: An Ethical Analysis, Harvard Educational Review (2007) 77 (3): 317–343., as cited in National Association of School Psychologists, Research Summaries: School Security Measures and Their Impact on Students, Accessed September 21, 2021, https://www.nasponline.org/Documents/Research%20and%20Policy/Research%20Center/School_Security_Measures_Impact.pdf.
  96. Jacqueline Ryan Vickery, “I don’t have anything to hide, but…” The Challenges and negotiations of social and mobile media privacy for non-dominant youth, Journal of Information Communication, and Society (2014), 18: 281–294, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2535998.
  97. DeVan Hankerson, Cody Venzke, Elizabeth Laird, Hugh Grant-Chapman, Dhanajar Thakur, Online and Observed: Student Privacy Implications of School-Issued Devices and Student Activity Monitoring Software, Center for Democracy & Technology, (September 21, 2021), https://cdt.org/insights/ report-online-and-observed-student-privacy-implications-of-school-issued-devices-andstudent-activity-monitoring-software/.
  98. In one research study, teachers were found to falsely identify approximately 16 percent of students with depression and 17 percent of students with anxiety.  The researchers noted that “these findings suggest teachers can identify approximately half of children who experience at-risk levels of depression and anxiety, but substantial miss rates call into question this method for use as either an alternative to universal screenings or as an initial step (gatekeeper role) in a multi-modal identification process.”Jennifer M. Cunningham and Shannon M. Suldo, Accuracy of Teachers in Identifying Elementary School Students Who Report At-Risk Levels of Anxiety and Depression, School Mental Health (2014) 6: 237-250.Sharon Ward, Judith Sylva, and Frank M. Gresham, School-Based Predictors of Early Adolescent Depression, School Mental Health (2010), 2: 125-131.
  99. Several states have model protocols (e.g. Virginia Board of Education, Suicide Prevention Guidelines for Virginia Public Schools, https://www.doe.virginia.gov/support/prevention/suicide/suicide-prevention-guidebook.pdf) which are implemented at the district level in policies and guidance such as that of Albemarle County Public Schools (Albemarle County Public Schools, Self‐Harm / Suicide Intervention Guidance Document, (2019), https://inside.k12albemarle.org/dept/instruction/schoolcounseling/Documents/Suicide%20Intervention%20Guide%204_2019.pdf).
  100. Mark Keierleber, ‘Don’t Get Gaggled’: Minneapolis School District Spends Big on Student Surveillance Tool, Raising Ire After Terminating Its Police Contract, The 74, (October 28, 2020), https://www.the74million.org/article/dont-get-gaggled-minneapolis-school-district-spends-big-on-student-surveillance-tool-raising-ire-after-terminating-its-police-contract/.
  101. Gaggle, Home Page, Gaggle, (n.d.), https://web.archive.org/web/20210915151304/https://www.gaggle.net/.
  102. Ibid.
  103. Amanda Ripley, How America Outlawed Adolescence, The Atlantic, (November 2016), https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11/how-america-outlawed-adolescence/501149/.
  104. Southern Poverty Law Center, Costly and Cruel: How Misuse of the Baker Act Harms 37,000 Florida Children Each Year, SPLC, (2021), https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/com_special_report_baker_act_costly_and_cruel.pdf.
  105. ACLU, Cops and No Counselors: How the Lack of Mental Health Staff is Harming Students, (2019), https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/030419-acluschooldisciplinereport.pdf.
  106. ACLU of Florida, Equality Florida, Florida Social Justice in Schools Project, Southern Poverty Law Center, & League of Women Voters of Florida, The Cost of School Policing, ACLU (September 3, 2020), https://www.splcenter.org/presscenter/new-study-reveals-floridas-school-policing-mandate-has-increased-negative-outcomes.
  107. Ibid.
  108. Ibid.
  109. Gi Lee and David Cohen, Incidences of Involuntary Psychiatric Detentions in 25 U.S. States, Psychiatric Services (2021), 72(1): 61-68, https://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ps.201900477.
  110. Christopher A. Mallett, The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Disproportionate Impact on Vulnerable Children and Adolescents, Education and Urban Society, (April 19, 2016), 49 (6): 563-592.
  111. Julianne Hing, Race, Disability, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline, Colorlines (May 13, 2014), https://www.colorlines.com/articles/race-disability-and-school-prison-pipeline.
  112. Ibid.
  113. Molly Knefel, Youth Incarceration in the United States, by the Numbers, Teen Vogue (October 4, 2017), https://www.teenvogue.com/story/youth-incarceration-in-the-united-states-by-the-numbers.
  114. ACLU, Cops and No Counselors: How the Lack of Mental Health Staff is Harming Students, (2019), https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/030419-acluschooldisciplinereport.pdf.
  115. Ibid.
  116. Ibid.
  117. Daja E. Henry and Kimberly Rapanut, How Schools and the Criminal Justice System Both Fail Students with Disabilities, Slate, (October 21, 2020), https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/students-disabilities-criminal-justice-system.html.
  118. National Council on Disability, Breaking the School-to-Prison Pipeline for Students with Disabilities, National Council on Disability, (June 18, 2015), https://ncd.gov/publications/2015/06182015.
  119. Rachel Anspach, Disabled Youth Are More at Risk of Being Incarcerated, Teen Vogue, (October 9, 2017), https://www.teenvogue.com/story/why-disabled-youth-are-more-at-risk-of-being-incarcerated.
  120. Daja E. Henry and Kimberly Rapanut, How Schools and the Criminal Justice System Both Fail Students with Disabilities, Slate, (October 21, 2020), https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/students-disabilities-criminal-justice-system.html.
  121. Valerie Strauss, Why are we criminalizing behavior of children with disabilities?, (April 25, 2017), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/04/25/why-are-we-criminalizing-behavior-of-children-with-disabilities/.
  122. Angela Irvine and Aisha Canfield, The Overrepresentation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Questioning, Gender Nonconforming and Transgender Youth Within the Child Welfare to Juvenile Justice Crossover Population, Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law, (2016), 24 (2): 242–61. https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1679&context=jgspl.
  123. Mark Keierleber, Exclusive Data: An Inside Look at the Spy Tech That Followed Kids Home for Remote Learning — and Now Won’t Leave, The 74, (September 14, 2021), https://www.the74million.org/article/gaggle-spy-tech-minneapolis-students-remote-learning/.
  124. GoGuardian, Trust & Privacy Center, Commonly Asked Questions, “When does GoGuardian operate on my child’s device or account?, Accessed September 22, 2021, https://www.goguardian.com/privacy-information.
  125. See Cal. Educ. Code §49073.6 (“ [A] school district, county office of education, or charter school that considers a program to gather or maintain in its records any information obtained from social media of any enrolled pupil shall notify pupils and their parents or guardians about the proposed program and provide an opportunity for public comment at a regularly scheduled public meeting of the governing board of the school district or county office of education, or governing body of the charter school, as applicable, before the adoption of the program.”)
  126. Erica L. Green, Surge of Student Suicides Pushes Las Vegas Schools to Reopen, The New York Times, (January 24, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/us/politics/student-suicides-nevada-coronavirus.html.
  127. Mark Keierleber, Exclusive Data: An Inside Look at the Spy Tech That Followed Kids Home for Remote Learning – and Now Won’t Leave, The 74, (September 14, 2021), https://www.the74million.org/article/gaggle-spy-tech-minneapolis-students-remote-learning/.
  128. Caitlin Cook, EdTech Start-Up GoGuardian Raises $200 Million, Despite Privacy Concerns, dot.LA, (August 5, 2021), https://dot.la/goguardian-raise-2654471296/particle-2.
  129. Mark Bergen, Tiger Global Plows $200 Million Into EdTech Firm GoGuardian, Bloomberg, (August 5, 2021), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-05/tiger-global-plows-200-million-into-edtech-firm-goguardian.
  130. Donna St. George and Valerie Strauss, Partly hidden by isolation, many of the nation’s school children struggle with mental health, The Washington Post, (January 21, 2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/student-mental-health-pandemic/2021/01/21/3d377bea-3f30-11eb-8db8-395dedaaa036_story.html.
  131. Isabelle Barbour, Surveillance Won’t Save Our Kids, Humane Public Policy Can, Student Privacy Compass, (September 17, 2021), https://studentprivacycompass.org/surveillance-wont-save-our-kids-humane-public-policy-can/.
  132. Sarah D. Sparks, Data: What We Know About Student Mental Health and the Pandemic, EducationWeek, (March 31, 2021), https://www.edweek.org/leadership/data-what-we-know-about-student-mental-health-and-the-pandemic/2021/03.
  133. US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, Parent and Educator Resource Guide to Section 504 in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools, US DOE, (2016), https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/504-resource-guide-201612.pdf.
  134. Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute, 42 U.S. Code § 12102 – Definition of Disability, Cornell Law School, (n.d.), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/12102.
  135. Sharan E. Brown, What Does It Mean to Be “Regarded as Having an Impairment” Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADAAA), ADA National Network, (2021), https://adata.org/legal_brief/regarded-as-having.
  136. ADA National Network, Mental Health Conditions in the Workplace and the ADA, ADA National Network, (n.d.), https://adata.org/factsheet/health.ADA National Network, Disability Rights Laws in Public Primary and Secondary Education: How Do They Relate?, ADA National Network, (n.d.), https://adata.org/factsheet/disability-rights-laws-public-primary-and-secondary-education-how-do-they-relate.
  137. Mark Keierleber, Exclusive Data: An Inside Look at the Spy Tech That Followed Kids Home for Remote Learning – and Now Won’t Leave, The 74, (September 14, 2021), https://www.the74million.org/article/gaggle-spy-tech-minneapolis-students-remote-learning/.
  138. DeVan Hankerson, Cody Venzke, Elizabeth Laird, Hugh Grant-Chapman, Dhanajar Thakur, Online and Observed: Student Privacy Implications of School-Issued Devices and Student Activity Monitoring Software, Center for Democracy & Technology, (September 21, 2021), https://cdt.org/insights/ report-online-and-observed-student-privacy-implications-of-school-issued-devices-andstudent-activity-monitoring-software/.
  139. J. William Tucker and Amelia Vance, School Surveillance: The Consequences for Equity and Privacy, NASBE Education Leaders Report, (October 2016), https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED582102.
  140. 42 U.S.C. 2000d et seq.
  141. Learning for Justice, ELL 101, (2017), https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/spring-2017/ell-101.The United States Department of Justice, United States Departments of Justice and Education Release Joint Guidance to Ensure English Learner Students Have Equal Access to a High-Quality Education, (2015), https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-departments-justice-and-education-release-joint-guidance-ensure-english-learner.
  142. 20 U.S.C. §§ 1681-1688.
  143. Bostock v. Clayton County, 520 U.S. ___ (2020).
  144. For example, “lesbian,” “gay,” and “queer” are included among Gaggle’s  keywords that would trigger a flag for questionable content. Caroline Haskins, Gaggle Knows Everything About Teens and Kids In School, BuzzFeed News, (November 1, 2019), https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/gaggle-school-surveillance-technology-education.
  145. Aaron Leibowitz, Could Monitoring Students on Social Media Stop the Next School Shooting?, The New York Times, (September 6, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/06/us/social-media-monitoring-school-shootings.html.

 

 

Acknowledgments

FPF thanks the following individuals and organizations for contributing their time, insight, and work in providing feedback on the information in this report:

  • Nic Albert
  • Elijah Armstrong
  • Isabelle Barbour, MPH, Truthteller Consulting
  • Sam Boyd, Senior Staff Attorney, Southern Poverty Law Center
  • Caitlyn Clibbon, Disability Rights Florida
  • Tony DePalma, Disability Rights Florida
  • Juliana Cotto
  • Maritza Gallardo-Cooper, PhD, NCSP, School Safety and Crisis Response Committee of the National Association of School Psychologists
  • Ahuva Goldstand
  • Ashleigh Imus
  • Dr. Sara Jordan
  • Dr. Carrie Klein
  • Lindsay Kubatzky, National Center for Learning Disabilities
  • Jennifer Mathis, Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law
  • Clarence Okoh, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.
  • David Sallay, Utah State Board of Education and FPF consultant
  • Zoe M. Savitsky
  • Todd A. Savage, Ph.D., NCSP, School Safety and Crisis Response Committee of the National Association of School Psychologists
  • The Children’s Rights Practice of the Southern Poverty Law Center
  • Gretchen M. Shipley, Fagen Friedman & Fulfrost LLP
  • Jim Siegl
  • Alexis Shore
  • John Verdi
  • Scott A. Woitaszewski, Ph.D., NCSP, School Safety and Crisis Response Committee of the National Association of School Psychologists

Disclaimer

This report provides general information, not legal advice, and following the recommendations or tips within does not guarantee compliance with any particular law.