Nametags That Track Students

On October 6, 2012, in an article titled, “Student IDs That Track the Students” from The New York Times Maurice Chammah and Nick Swartsell reported about how having plastic nametags became a personal issue in schools. Nametags are used by the administration as a device that allows them to use radio frequency technology with scanners tucked behind walls and ceilings to locate students. The program is implemented to ensure the safety of students in a school by locating a child quickly in an emergency. Most importantly they are used to keep count of students so that the state supplies the district with an entitled amount of money. For instance, in Texas school financing is a number game. The state provides money for the schools based on the number of students counted in homeroom classes each morning. Since most students were at school but not in their homeroom classes, the teachers did not count them. Therefore, the school lost money. Even though this program benefits not only the safety of the students, but also the finance of an entire school, some students and parents have privacy concerns. Tira Starr, an eighth grader at Anson Jones Middle School, and her mother complained that her privacy was taken away because she was tracked down everywhere she went. This student has a legitimate point because what the school is doing can be considered a form of stalking. The student may feel uncomfortable knowing that her school is informed of her whereabouts. However, a different parent from the same school said, “It gives the kids a little bit more responsibility, knowing that we as a faculty are keeping up with them” (The New York Times).