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Teacher under fire for informing kids of their Fifth Amendment rights

dailyherald.com

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Re: Teacher under fire for informing kids of their Fifth Amendment rights

#31

Post by rdtsc »

coldcode wrote: post #22

Why are questions asked of students copyrighted so as to not allow any visibility to parents? If I had a child required to answer potentially incriminating questions at school I would want public scrutiny, otherwise this becomes a kind of secret inquisition.

Here is how I see it possibly played out.

* School district sees all these school shootings, news reports of troubled teens, suicides, bullying and how badly it reflect on the district.

* School district employs below average intelligence administrators who are easily manipulated and controlled by contractors, lobbyists, salesmen, suppliers. Either an administrator or one such salesperson from the test administration company came up with the idea of providing these proprietary tests.

* Tests are touted as an easy, spray and pray instrument "just give them this test for which we'll charge $500 a pop and you'll easily weed out ones who (wink wink) need help."

* This is how the school district solves its paper problem, computer problems, fixing the cracks in the asphalt in the parking lot problem. They are approached by salesmen and given gifts and dinners and are sold "solutions".

* The more overpriced and expensive the solution the more sleeker the sales pitch. "You don't want to end up like Columbine, OR DO YOU?" maybe stuff like "What if Columbine happened here, could you tell the parents that you DID EVERYTHING YOU COULD?" and so on.

* It is not that hard to scare these people into anything. At best it was a plain ol' sales pitch. At worst there were shady deals going on "We'll buy your son a new car if you buy this package"

* Test instrument comes with strict copyright rules (not that unusual for psych and personality test packets), disclosure rules, but I don't think that is that uncommon.

* Administrators buy in. Cha-ching for the testing company and all is well, ...

* Except for one teacher who actually is doing his job and applies his subject to the real world. So we have this story.

* Now I wonder how frequent this stuff is and how many other school districts are doing this, but which don't have teacher like this who like to "stir the pot".

Re: Teacher under fire for informing kids of their Fifth Amendment rights

#32

Post by [deleted] »

nsxwolf wrote: post #3
tokenadult wrote: post #2

"But John Dryden said he's not the point. He wants people to focus on the issue he raised: Whether school officials considered that students could incriminate themselves with their answers to the survey that included questions about drug and alcohol use." To me, that sounds like an unusually thoughtful social studies teacher. He is relating the general concepts that he is hired to teach his students to a real-world s…

I really want to understand this "proprietary information" excuse the school is using to justify not releasing the survey. Certainly the kids can go home and tell their parents what they saw (and some have). The kids didn't sign an NDA, they saw it, so why can't we see it? This story is happening in my town. There is a public hearing tomorrow night and I plan on attending.

[deleted]

Re: Teacher under fire for informing kids of their Fifth Amendment rights

#33

Post by quantumpotato_ »

nsxwolf wrote: post #6
TallGuyShort wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless it's well-covered by other sources, I would kindly ask you to blog your observations and share them with us :)

I certainly will.

Thank you! Looking forward to it.

Re: Teacher under fire for informing kids of their Fifth Amendment rights

#34

Post by dllthomas »

danso wrote: post #25
coldcode wrote: post #22

Why are questions asked of students copyrighted so as to not allow any visibility to parents? If I had a child required to answer potentially incriminating questions at school I would want public scrutiny, otherwise this becomes a kind of secret inquisition.

The purported reason is because the survey was designed by a private company who claims the survey to be their intellectual property. Similarly, if a school screened a controversial film, a parent could not ask the school for a copy of said film, because the school doesn't own the intellectual rights to it. This is a microcosm of what happens when public institutions, whose records and dealings are considered to be p…

For a while, this included the text of some laws! My understanding is that got overturned, though (thank goodness).

Re: Teacher under fire for informing kids of their Fifth Amendment rights

#35

Post by [deleted] »

ceol wrote: post #27
genwin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not positive but very confident. These surveys are not anonymous, says the article. School administrators are required to adhere to the zero tolerance policy to the letter.

"The letter" being that if a student admits partaking in drug or alcohol use, ever in their lives, they are immediately expelled? Do you have a source for this?

[deleted]

Re: Teacher under fire for informing kids of their Fifth Amendment rights

#36

Post by rdtsc »

readme wrote: post #26
btilly wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that the survey was bought from a private company on a contract that says it is that company's property and not to be shared. Therefore if the school released the form, they could be sued by said private company both for violating copyright and contract. (And the company would want that because they want to resell the survey to other schools.) Stupid, yes. But I think it is likely that the school has a re…

> Stupid, yes. But I think it is likely that the school has a real legal barrier to sharing the survey. It could be. It could also be that the people who dreamed up this survey saw that legal barrier as a convenience. You can administer an unfair and potentially useless, invasive, survey, to your students, AND you have a "reason" not to tell the media, too! Had I been a student at this school, I would have put my sur…

> The idea that a publically funded school is passing out surveys to students, and we cannot read them, makes me rage. I

I bet all that was done was done under the public guise of "protecting the children" (then again what isn't these days...). Privately all that was done was to protect the behinds of the administrator in case some kid does something "crazy" and the school is sued or criticized. They want to have something to point to and say "Aha but we did everything we could, see...! we hired professionals in the field to find troubled teens, if they couldn't don't blame us".

Simple as that.

That is the reason there are so many bullshit business consulting companies. It lets those implementing risky and unsound/unpopular idea to go and point their finger to and say "see we hired professional and they agreed with us, these are world class consultants, if they couldn't predict failure, how could you blame us, simple administrators/executives/board of directors..." stuff like that.

It is all basically about having a scapegoat in the end.

Re: Teacher under fire for informing kids of their Fifth Amendment rights

#37

Post by cdash »

Maxious wrote: post #20
bigiain wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cynical-me thinks this is ideal education - proper preparation for "the real world": Answer every question not with "the truth", but instead work out what "the expected answer" is and give them that...

Which was the whole point the teacher was making - you have a right to not incriminate yourself (by giving a false answer or not answering), even when asked by authority figures (judges, police, teachers) to do so. A lot of people feel that they must fill in every value of every form "or else". While really, if you value your privacy you should ask if every value is really required.

You don't actually have the right to provide false answers in many situations and doing so could actually be a crime.

Re: Teacher under fire for informing kids of their Fifth Amendment rights

#38

Post by ams6110 »

Every such survey that has been given to my kids was always preceeded by a notice sent home, including opt-out instructions if the parent did not wish the student to participate.

When I was in school, I know a fair number of kids just filled in bubbles at random on these things anyway.

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