The student who had searched “how to die” did not want to die and showed no indicators of distress, Feby said — the student was looking for information but in no danger. Still, she values the program.

These data points are measured by the number of alerts the systems generate that indicate a student may be very close to harming themselves or others. But there is little evidence that this kind of school safety technology is effective, according to the ACLU report.

Feby said she’s had some false alarms. One student was flagged because of the song lyrics she had looked up. Another one had searched for something related to anime.

A report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group based in San Francisco, illustrates what kinds of keyword triggers are blocked or flagged for administrators. In one example, GoGuardian had flagged a student for visiting the text of a Bible verse including the word “naked,” the report said. In another instance, a Texas House of Representatives site with information regarding “cannabis” bills was flagged.

FlagStatustoday Utah

JavaScript seems to be disabled in your browser. You must have JavaScript enabled in your browser to utilize the functionality of this website.

In 2019, Bark, a content monitoring platform, claimed to have helped prevent 16 school shootings in a blog post describing their Bark for Schools program. The Gaggle company website says it saved 5,790 lives between 2018 and 2023.

“A lot of schools are saying, ‘You know what, we’ve $50,000 to spend, I’m going to spend it on a student surveillance product that doesn’t work, instead of a door that locks or a mental health counselor,’” Marlow said.

Using the chatYou can talk online with us by using the chat box which is displayed in the right bottom corner of each page. This service is available from Monday to Friday, 1am to 10am EST.

While the cost varies, some school districts are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on online monitoring programs. Muscogee County School District in Georgia paid $137,829 in initial costs to install GoGuardian on the district’s Chromebooks, according to the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. In Maryland, Montgomery County Public Schools eliminated GoGuardian from its budget for the 2024-2025 school year after spending $230,000 annually on it, later switching to Lightspeed, according to the Wootton Common Sense.

And the threat of school shootings remains on many educators’ minds. Since the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, more than 383,000 students have experienced gun violence at school, according to The Washington Post’s count.

School districts across the country have widely adopted such computer monitoring platforms. With the youth mental health crisis worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic and school violence affecting more K-12 students nationwide, teachers are desperate for a solution, experts say.

Teddy Hartman, GoGuardian’s head of privacy, taught high school English literature in East Los Angeles and was a school administrator before joining the technology company about four years ago.

That level of pervasive surveillance can have far-reaching implications, Okoh said. For one, in jurisdictions where legislators have expanded censorship of “divisive concepts” in schools, including critical race theory and LGBTQ+ themes, the ability for schools to monitor conversations including those terms is concerning, he said.

Some experts are advocating for more mental health resources, including hiring more guidance counselors, and school policies that support mental health, which could prevent violence or suicide, Jones said. Community engagement programs, including volunteer work or community events, also can contribute to emotional and mental well-being.

Whyare flagsat half mast todayDallas

These data points are measured by the number of alerts the systems generate that indicate a student may be very close to harming themselves or others. But there is little evidence that this kind of school safety technology is effective, according to the ACLU report.

For both professional or personal use, our website is committed to providing its customers an exemplary quality service as well as access to professional products at competitive prices

Feby said she’s had some false alarms. One student was flagged because of the song lyrics she had looked up. Another one had searched for something related to anime.

Teddy Hartman, GoGuardian’s head of privacy, taught high school English literature in East Los Angeles and was a school administrator before joining the technology company about four years ago.

Still, having GoGuardian in the classroom is important, Feby said. Before she became a counselor 10 years ago, she was a school teacher. And after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, she realized school safety was more important than ever.

“We were founded by engineers,” Hartman said. “So, in our slice of this world, is there something we can do, from a school technology perspective that can help by being a tool in the toolbox? It’s not an end-all, be-all.”

Image

West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com. Follow West Virginia Watch on Facebook and X.

Hartman was brought to GoGuardian to help with creating a robust privacy program, he said, including guardrails on its use of artificial intelligence.

Flagshalf mast today Utah2024

Once she’s notified, Feby will decide whether to meet with the student or call the child’s home. If the system flags troubling activity outside of school hours, GoGuardian Beacon contacts another person in the county — including law enforcement, in some school districts.

While available for more than a decade, the programs saw a surge in use during the pandemic as students transitioned to online learning from home, said Jennifer Jones, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute.

While the cost varies, some school districts are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on online monitoring programs. Muscogee County School District in Georgia paid $137,829 in initial costs to install GoGuardian on the district’s Chromebooks, according to the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. In Maryland, Montgomery County Public Schools eliminated GoGuardian from its budget for the 2024-2025 school year after spending $230,000 annually on it, later switching to Lightspeed, according to the Wootton Common Sense.

While available for more than a decade, the programs saw a surge in use during the pandemic as students transitioned to online learning from home, said Jennifer Jones, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute.

Nonprofit, nonpartisan, independent journalism not hidden behind a paywall. Mountaineers are always free, and so is West Virginia Watch.

About a third of the students in Feby’s school come from a home where English isn’t their first language, so students often use worrisome English terms inadvertently. Kids can also be curious, she said.

Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our website. (See full republishing guidelines.)

why is theu.s.flag at half mast today

GoGuardian and Gaggle both also dropped LGBTQ+ terms from their keyword lists after the foundation’s initial records request, the group said.

Years before the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the school district purchased a technology service to monitor what students were doing on social media, according to The Dallas Morning News. The district sent two payments to the Social Sentinel company totaling more than $9,900, according to the paper.

But getting a full understanding of the way these companies monitor students is challenging because of a lack of transparency, Jones said. It’s difficult to get information from private tech companies, and the majority of their data isn’t made public, she said.

Hartman was brought to GoGuardian to help with creating a robust privacy program, he said, including guardrails on its use of artificial intelligence.

Specialized in the production and distribution of flags, our brand put at your disposal since more than 10 years a catalog of more than 12000 items which consists of flags, table flags, flag garland, pennants, banners, car flags, poles and many other products linked the world of flags.

But critics worry about the lack of transparency from companies that have the power to monitor students and choose when to alert school personnel. Constant student surveillance also raises concerns regarding student data, privacy and free speech.

Image

Years before the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the school district purchased a technology service to monitor what students were doing on social media, according to The Dallas Morning News. The district sent two payments to the Social Sentinel company totaling more than $9,900, according to the paper.

“A lot of schools are saying, ‘You know what, we’ve $50,000 to spend, I’m going to spend it on a student surveillance product that doesn’t work, instead of a door that locks or a mental health counselor,’” Marlow said.

GoGuardian CEO Rich Preece told Stateline that about half of the K-12 public schools in the United States have installed the company’s platforms.

According to the most recent youth risk behavior survey from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly all indicators of poor mental health, suicidal thoughts and suicidal behaviors increased from 2013 to 2023. During the same period, the percentage of high school students who were threatened or injured at school, missed school because of safety concerns or experienced forced sex increased, according to the CDC report.

I've gotten into some situations with GoGuardian where I'm really happy that they came to us and we were able to intervene.

But privacy experts are still concerned about just how much access these types of companies should have to student data.

School districts across the country are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on contracts with some of the leading computer monitoring vendors — including GoGuardian, Gaggle and others — without fully assessing the privacy and civil rights implications, said Clarence Okoh, a senior attorney at the Center on Privacy and Technology at the Georgetown University Law Center.

Still, having GoGuardian in the classroom is important, Feby said. Before she became a counselor 10 years ago, she was a school teacher. And after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, she realized school safety was more important than ever.

But that’s in an ideal world, GoGuardian’s Hartman said. Computer monitoring platforms aren’t the only solution for solving the youth mental health and violence epidemic, but they aim to help, he said.

About a third of the students in Feby’s school come from a home where English isn’t their first language, so students often use worrisome English terms inadvertently. Kids can also be curious, she said.

Whether it’s a research project on the Civil War or a science experiment on volcano eruptions, students in the Colonial School District near Wilmington, Delaware, can look up just about anything on their school-provided laptops.

School districts across the country have widely adopted such computer monitoring platforms. With the youth mental health crisis worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic and school violence affecting more K-12 students nationwide, teachers are desperate for a solution, experts say.

In 2021, while many schools were just beginning to see the effects of online learning, The 74, a nonprofit news outlet covering education, published an investigation into how Gaggle was operating in Minneapolis schools. Hundreds of documents revealed how students at one school system were subject to constant digital surveillance long after the school day was over, including at home, the outlet reported.

“I’ve gotten into some situations with GoGuardian where I’m really happy that they came to us and we were able to intervene,” Feby said.

But privacy experts are still concerned about just how much access these types of companies should have to student data.

“I’ve gotten into some situations with GoGuardian where I’m really happy that they came to us and we were able to intervene,” Feby said.

GoGuardian isn’t using any student data outside of the agreements that school districts have allowed, and that data isn’t used to train the company’s AI, Hartman said. Companies that regulate what children can do online are also required to adhere to federal laws regarding the safety and privacy of minors, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule.

As her school’s designee, Feby gets an alert when a student uses certain search terms or combinations of words on their school-issued laptops. “It will either come to me as an email, or, if it is very high risk, it comes as a phone call.”

Some experts are advocating for more mental health resources, including hiring more guidance counselors, and school policies that support mental health, which could prevent violence or suicide, Jones said. Community engagement programs, including volunteer work or community events, also can contribute to emotional and mental well-being.

“We thought, ‘How can we co-create with educators, the best of the data scientists, the best of the technologists, while also remembering that students and our educators are first and foremost?’” Hartman said.

“I think because there are all kinds of issues that school districts have to contend with — like student mental health issues and the dangers of school shootings — I think they [school districts] just view these as cheap, quick ways to address the problem without interrogating the free speech and privacy implications in a more thoughtful way,” Jones said.

The student who had searched “how to die” did not want to die and showed no indicators of distress, Feby said — the student was looking for information but in no danger. Still, she values the program.

Whyare flagsat half mast today inFlorida

“We were founded by engineers,” Hartman said. “So, in our slice of this world, is there something we can do, from a school technology perspective that can help by being a tool in the toolbox? It’s not an end-all, be-all.”

That level of pervasive surveillance can have far-reaching implications, Okoh said. For one, in jurisdictions where legislators have expanded censorship of “divisive concepts” in schools, including critical race theory and LGBTQ+ themes, the ability for schools to monitor conversations including those terms is concerning, he said.

But critics worry about the lack of transparency from companies that have the power to monitor students and choose when to alert school personnel. Constant student surveillance also raises concerns regarding student data, privacy and free speech.

But that’s in an ideal world, GoGuardian’s Hartman said. Computer monitoring platforms aren’t the only solution for solving the youth mental health and violence epidemic, but they aim to help, he said.

A student works on a computer at a K-12 school in Provo, Utah. School districts across the country have adopted computer monitoring platforms that analyze what students are doing on school-issued devices and flag activities that may signal a risk of self-harm or threats to others. (George Frey | Getty Images)

why is the flag athalf-stafftoday2024

Despite the spending, there’s no way to prove that these technologies work, said Chad Marlow, a senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union who authored a report on education surveillance programs.

School districts across the country are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on contracts with some of the leading computer monitoring vendors — including GoGuardian, Gaggle and others — without fully assessing the privacy and civil rights implications, said Clarence Okoh, a senior attorney at the Center on Privacy and Technology at the Georgetown University Law Center.

GoGuardian isn’t using any student data outside of the agreements that school districts have allowed, and that data isn’t used to train the company’s AI, Hartman said. Companies that regulate what children can do online are also required to adhere to federal laws regarding the safety and privacy of minors, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule.

“I think because there are all kinds of issues that school districts have to contend with — like student mental health issues and the dangers of school shootings — I think they [school districts] just view these as cheap, quick ways to address the problem without interrogating the free speech and privacy implications in a more thoughtful way,” Jones said.

Whyare flagsat half mast todayIdaho

In 2021, while many schools were just beginning to see the effects of online learning, The 74, a nonprofit news outlet covering education, published an investigation into how Gaggle was operating in Minneapolis schools. Hundreds of documents revealed how students at one school system were subject to constant digital surveillance long after the school day was over, including at home, the outlet reported.

In 2019, Bark, a content monitoring platform, claimed to have helped prevent 16 school shootings in a blog post describing their Bark for Schools program. The Gaggle company website says it saved 5,790 lives between 2018 and 2023.

As her school’s designee, Feby gets an alert when a student uses certain search terms or combinations of words on their school-issued laptops. “It will either come to me as an email, or, if it is very high risk, it comes as a phone call.”

Once she’s notified, Feby will decide whether to meet with the student or call the child’s home. If the system flags troubling activity outside of school hours, GoGuardian Beacon contacts another person in the county — including law enforcement, in some school districts.

Wisconsin flags half-staff

GoGuardian and Gaggle both also dropped LGBTQ+ terms from their keyword lists after the foundation’s initial records request, the group said.

Despite the spending, there’s no way to prove that these technologies work, said Chad Marlow, a senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union who authored a report on education surveillance programs.

Whether it’s a research project on the Civil War or a science experiment on volcano eruptions, students in the Colonial School District near Wilmington, Delaware, can look up just about anything on their school-provided laptops.

GoGuardian CEO Rich Preece told Stateline that about half of the K-12 public schools in the United States have installed the company’s platforms.

Computer monitoring programs are just one example of an overall increase in school surveillance nationwide, including cameras, facial recognition technology and more. And increased surveillance does not necessarily deter harmful conduct, Marlow said.

“We thought, ‘How can we co-create with educators, the best of the data scientists, the best of the technologists, while also remembering that students and our educators are first and foremost?’” Hartman said.

A report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group based in San Francisco, illustrates what kinds of keyword triggers are blocked or flagged for administrators. In one example, GoGuardian had flagged a student for visiting the text of a Bible verse including the word “naked,” the report said. In another instance, a Texas House of Representatives site with information regarding “cannabis” bills was flagged.

In that case, Meghan Feby, an elementary school counselor in the district, got a phone call through a platform called GoGuardian Beacon, whose algorithm flagged the phrase. The system sold by educational software company GoGuardian allows schools to monitor and analyze what students are doing on school-issued devices and flag any activities that signal a risk of self-harm or threats to others.

But getting a full understanding of the way these companies monitor students is challenging because of a lack of transparency, Jones said. It’s difficult to get information from private tech companies, and the majority of their data isn’t made public, she said.

And the threat of school shootings remains on many educators’ minds. Since the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, more than 383,000 students have experienced gun violence at school, according to The Washington Post’s count.

Computer monitoring programs are just one example of an overall increase in school surveillance nationwide, including cameras, facial recognition technology and more. And increased surveillance does not necessarily deter harmful conduct, Marlow said.

According to the most recent youth risk behavior survey from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly all indicators of poor mental health, suicidal thoughts and suicidal behaviors increased from 2013 to 2023. During the same period, the percentage of high school students who were threatened or injured at school, missed school because of safety concerns or experienced forced sex increased, according to the CDC report.

Image

Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our website. AP and Getty images may not be republished. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of any other photos and graphics.

In that case, Meghan Feby, an elementary school counselor in the district, got a phone call through a platform called GoGuardian Beacon, whose algorithm flagged the phrase. The system sold by educational software company GoGuardian allows schools to monitor and analyze what students are doing on school-issued devices and flag any activities that signal a risk of self-harm or threats to others.