Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research
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Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services // SAMHSA

Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services // SAMHSA | Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research | Scoop.it
Assists behavioral health professionals in understanding the impact and consequences for those who experience trauma. Discusses patient assessment, treatment planning strategies that support recovery, and building a trauma-informed care workforce.


For main website, click on title above or here: http://store.samhsa.gov/product/TIP-57-Trauma-Informed-Care-in-Behavioral-Health-Services/Most-Popular/SMA14-4816?sortBy=4 

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Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research
This collection includes resources for strengthening school climate, and improving health, safety, connectedness, and student engagement.  Readers are encouraged to explore related links for further information. See also http://bit.ly/edpsychtech and http://bit.ly/screen_time and http://bit.ly/DataJusticeLinks
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Healing Together: Community-Level Trauma. Its Causes, Consequences, and Solutions // Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute

Click here to download pdf of document: http://urbanhealth.jhu.edu/_PDFs/SDH_2015_Brief_2.pdf

Creatrixi54's curator insight, August 21, 2015 6:46 PM

This is how #hiphopbasededu #hiphoptherapy will pave the way for new ways to engage and heal the people. 

Fleur Harding's curator insight, November 16, 2017 12:35 AM
This Scoop perhaps best explains why I chose to do this OCHS unit as an elective for my social work degree. As a support worker for young people at risk of homelessness, I am very aware of the mental strain and emotional turmoil that comes from working with people who have experienced trauma. The article discusses the vicarious trauma that human service workers in the justice system can experience through exposure to dangerous and distressing events and situations. This all ties in with the mental disorders discussed during the lecture and my other scoops for mental health OHS and is something I am keen to learn more about in the future.
 
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Virtual Violence Impacts Children on Multiple Levels // American Academy of Pediatrics

Virtual Violence Impacts Children on Multiple Levels // American Academy of Pediatrics | Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research | Scoop.it

Virtual Violence Impacts Children on Multiple Levels

7/18/2016 


Policy and commentary published in Pediatrics detail the impacts of media violence on children, including aggressive behavior and victimization


Virtual violence – violence experienced via media or realistic technologies – is an inescapable component of children's lives, and research shows that without guidance or controls it has the power to make children more aggressive, violent and fearful.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) will publish a policy statement, "Virtual Violence," in the August 2016 issue of Pediatrics (released online July 18), which reviews the evidence of how virtual violence impacts children, and offers guidance to parents, media producers and pediatricians. A related commentary published in the same issue expands on the impacts of social media, smart phones and apps like Instagram and YouTube on virtual violence and teens.

"The American Academy of Pediatrics continues to be concerned about the impact that virtual violence has on children, and we know that parents are also concerned, because it's a question that pediatricians often receive during wellness exams," said Dimitri Christakis, MD, FAAP, lead author of the policy statement. "Pediatricians can let parents know that there are ways to mitigate the impact of media violence, by co-viewing games and movies with their kids, making a media plan for their family and protecting children under age 6 from all violent media."

Media violence is very common. In the year 2000, every G-rated movie contained violence, as did 60 percent of prime-time television shows, according to a study published in JAMA. A comprehensive assessment of screen violence in 1998 estimated that by middle school a typical child would have seen 8,000 murders and 100,000 other acts of violence, including rape and assault. Today, children experience screen violence though an even greater number of devices and platforms.

"With the advent of smart phones and aps like Snapchat and Instagram, children can capture, view and share violent acts in ways that are new to millennials and centennials," said Rhea Boyd, MD, FAAP, a member of the Executive Committee of the AAP Council on Communications and Media and lead author of the Pediatrics commentary, "The Evolution of Virtual Violence: How Mobile Screens Provide Windows to Real Violence."

"Nearly three out of four teenagers have access to a smart phone, and exposure to real-world violence via these devices, often without parental knowledge or control, can create feelings of distress, victimization and even fear," Dr. Boyd said.

In the Pediatrics commentary, Dr. Boyd and her co-author, Wendy Sue Swanson, MD, MBE, argue that portable smartphone cameras can expose young people to real-world violence, which is fundamentally different than the simulated violence depicted in traditional media sources, like television, movies, or video games. This access to real-world violence can result in complex emotions and behaviors in youth that may vary based on the family, community, or cultural group with whom youth identify and process acts of violence. For example, a teenager viewing a video of police violence may be distressed by the images but also moved to social action.

While hundreds of studies have found violent media can raise aggression in children, research has also shown that exposing children to prosocial media content can decrease aggression and improve overall behavior.

The AAP recommends:

  • Pediatricians should consider a child's "media diet" as a part of wellness exams, considering not just the quantity of media but also the quality.
  • Parents should be mindful of their child's media consumption, and should co-view media and co-play games with their children.
  • Protect children under age 6 from all virtual violence, because they cannot always distinguish fantasy from reality.
  • Policy-makers should consider legislation to prohibit easy access to violent content for minors and should create a robust and useful "parent-centric" media rating system.
  • Pediatricians should advocate for and help create child-positive media, collaborating with the entertainment industry on shows and games that don't include violence as a central theme.
  • The entertainment industry should create content that doesn't glamorize guns or violence, doesn't use violence as a punch line and eliminates gratuitous portrayals of violence and hateful, misogynistic or homophobic language unless also portraying the impacts of these words and actions.
  • In video games, humans or living targets should never be shot for points.
  • The news media should acknowledge the proven scientific connection between virtual violence and real world aggression and stop portraying the link as controversial.

 

The policy updates a previous statement published in 2009.

For full post, click on title above or here: https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/Pages/Virtual-Violence-Impacts-Children-on-Multiple-Levels.aspx

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Advocates call on FTC to investigate manipulative design abuses in popular FIFA game // FairPlay 

Advocates call on FTC to investigate manipulative design abuses in popular FIFA game // FairPlay  | Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research | Scoop.it

"Contact:

David Monahan, Fairplay david@fairplayforkids.org
Jeff Chester, Center for Digital Democracy, jeff@democraticmedia.org, 202-494-7100

Advocates call on FTC to investigate manipulative design abuses in popular FIFA game // Groups say FIFA: Ultimate Team Preys on Children's Vulnerability with Loot Boxes, “Funny Money”

BOSTON and WASHINGTON, DC – Thursday, June 2, 2022 – Today, advocacy groups Fairplay and Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) led a coalition of 15 advocacy groups in calling on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate video game company Electronic Arts (EA) for unfairly exploiting young users in EA’s massively popular game, FIFA: Ultimate Team. In a letter sent to the FTC, the advocates described how the use of loot boxes and virtual currency in FIFA: Ultimate Team exploits the many children who play the game, especially given their undeveloped financial literacy skills and poor understanding of the odds of receiving the most desirable loot box items.

Citing the Norwegian Consumer Council’s recent report, Insert Coin: How the Gaming Industry Exploits Consumers Using Lootboxes, the advocates’ letter details how FIFA: Ultimate Team encourages gamers to engage in a constant stream of microtransactions as they play the game. Users are able to buy FIFA points, a virtual in-game currency, which can then be used to purchase loot boxes called FIFA packs containing mystery team kits; badges; and player cards for soccer players who can be added to a gamer’s team.

In their letter, the advocates noted the game’s use of manipulative design abuses such as “lightning round” sales of premium packs to promote the purchase of FIFA packs, which children are particularly vulnerable to. The advocates also cite the use of virtual currency in the game, which obscures the actual cost of FIFA packs to adult users, let alone children. Additionally, the actual probability of unlocking the best loot box prizes in FIFA: Ultimate Team is practically inscrutable to anyone who is not an expert in statistics, according to the advocates and the NCC report. In order to unlock a specific desirable player in the game, users would have to pay around $14,000 or spend three years continuously playing the game.

“By relentlessly marketing pay-to-win loot boxes, EA is exploiting children’s desire to compete with their friends, despite the fact that most adults, let alone kids, could not determine their odds of receiving a highly coveted card or what cards cost in real money. The FTC must use its power to investigate these design abuses and determine just how many kids and teens are being fleeced by EA.” Josh Golin, Executive Director, Fairplay

“Lootboxes, virtual currencies, and other gaming features are often designed deceptively, aiming to exploit players’ known vulnerabilities. Due to their unique developmental needs, children and teens are particularly harmed. Their time and attention is stolen from them, they’re financially exploited, and are purposely socialized to adopt gambling-like behaviors. Online gaming is a key online space where children and teens gather in millions, and regulators must act to protect them from these harmful practices.” Katharina Kopp, Deputy Director, Center for Digital Democracy

“As illustrated in our report, FIFA: Ultimate Team uses aggressive in-game marketing and exploits gamers’ cognitive biases – adults and children alike – to manipulate them into spending large sums of money. Children especially are vulnerable to EA’s distortion of real-world value of its loot boxes and the complex, misleading probabilities given to describe the odds of receiving top prizes. We join our US partners in urging the Federal Trade Commission to investigate these troubling practices.” Finn Lützow-Holm Myrstad, Digital Policy Director, Norwegian Consumer Council

“The greed of these video game companies is a key reason why we’re seeing a new epidemic of child gambling in our families. Thanks to this report, the FTC has more than enough facts to take decisive action to protect our kids from these predatory business practices.” Les Bernal, National Director of Stop Predatory Gambling and the Campaign for Gambling-Free Kids

“Exploiting consumers, especially children, by manipulating them into buying loot boxes that, in reality, rarely contain the coveted items they are seeking, is a deceptive marketing practice that causes real harm and needs to stop. TINA.org strongly urges the FTC to take action.” Laura Smith, Legal Director at TINA.org

Advocacy groups signing today’s FTC complaint include Fairplay; the Center for Digital Democracy; Campaign for Accountability; Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development; Common Sense Media; Consumer Federation of America; Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC); Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling, Inc.; Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health; National Council on Problem Gambling; Parent Coalition for Student Privacy; Public Citizen; Stop Predatory Gambling and the Campaign for Gambling-Free Kids; TINA.org (Truth in Advertising, Inc.); U.S. PIRG"

 

Please visit the following website for original announcement:

https://fairplayforkids.org/june-2-2022-advocates-call-on-ftc-to-investigate-manipulative-design-abuses-in-popular-fifa-game/ 

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Books to Help Kids Understand the Fight for Racial Equality // Brightly

Books to Help Kids Understand the Fight for Racial Equality // Brightly | Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research | Scoop.it

By Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
http://www.readbrightly.com/books-to-help-kids-understand-the-fight-for-racial-equality/ 


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How Big Tech Sees Big Profits in Social-Emotional Learning at School // Telegraf

How Big Tech Sees Big Profits in Social-Emotional Learning at School // Telegraf | Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research | Scoop.it

By Anna Noble

"In June 2021, as students and teachers were finishing up a difficult school year, Priscilla Chan, wife of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, made a live virtual appearance on the “Today” show, announcing that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), along with its “partner” Gradient Learning, was launching Along, a new digital tool to help students and teachers create meaningful connections in the aftermath of the pandemic.

 

According to CZI and Gradient Learning, the science of Along shows that students who form deep connections with teachers are more likely to be successful in school and less likely to show “disruptive behaviors,” resulting in fewer suspensions and lower school dropout rates. To help form those deep connections, the Along platform offers prompts such as “What is something that you really value and why?” or “When you feel stressed out, what helps?” Then, students may, on their “own time, in a space where they feel safe,” record a video of themselves responding to these questions and upload the video to the Along program.

 

CZI, the LLC foundation set up by Zuckerberg and Chan to give away 99 percent of his Facebook stock, is one of many technology companies that have created software products that claim to address the social and emotional needs of children. And school districts appear to be rapidly adopting these products to help integrate the social and emotional skills of students into the school curriculum, a practice commonly called social-emotional learning (SEL).

Panorama Education—whose financial backers also include CZI as well as other Silicon Valley venture capitalists such as the Emerson Collective, founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs—markets a survey application for collecting data on students’ social-emotional state that is used by 23,000 schools serving a quarter of the nation’s students, according to TechCrunch.

 

Gaggle, which uses students’ Google and Microsoft accounts to scan for keywords and collect social-emotional-related data, has contracts with at least 1,500 school districts, Education Week reports.

 

Before the pandemic temporarily shuttered school buildings, the demand for tracking what students do while they’re online, and how that activity might inform schools about how to address students’ social and emotional needs, was mostly driven by desires to prevent bullying and school shootings, according to a December 2019 report by Vice.

Tech companies that make and market popular software products such as GoGuardian, Securly, and Bark claim to alert schools of any troubling social-emotional behaviors students might exhibit when they’re online so that educators can intervene, Vice reports, but “[t]here is, however, no independent research that backs up these claims.”

 

COVID-19 and its associated school closures led to even more concerns about students’ “anxiety, depression and other serious mental health conditions,” reports EdSource. The article points to a survey conducted from April 25 to May 1, 2020, by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California, which found that 68 percent of students said they were in need of mental health support post-pandemic.

 

A major focus of CZI’s investment in education is its partnership with Summit Public Schools to “co-build the Summit Learning Platform to be shared with schools across the U.S.” As Valerie Strauss reported in the Washington Post following the release of a critical research brief by the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, in 2019, Summit Public Schools spun off TLP Education to manage the Summit Learning program, which includes the Summit Learning Platform, according to Summit Learning’s user agreement. TLP Education has since become Gradient Learning, which has at this point placed both the Summit Learning program and Along in 400 schools that serve 80,000 students.

Since 2015, CZI has invested more than $280 million in developing the Summit Learning program. This total includes $134 million in reported contributions revenue to Summit Public Schools 501(c)(3) from 2015 to 2018 and another $140 million in reported awards to Summit Public Schools, Gradient Learning, and TLP Education (as well as organizations that helped in their SEL tools’ development) posted since 2018; a further $8 million has been given to “partner” organizations listed on the Along website—which include GripTape, Character Lab, Black Teacher Collaborative, and others—and their evaluations by universities.

An enticement that education technology companies are using to get schools to adopt Along and other student monitoring products is to offer these products for free, at least for a trial period, or for longer terms depending on the level of service. But “free” doesn’t mean without cost.

As CZI funds and collaborates with its nonprofit partners to expand the scope of student monitoring software in schools, Facebook (aka Meta) is actively working to recruit and retain young users on its Facebook and Instagram applications.

 

That CZI’s success at getting schools to adopt Along might come at the cost of exploiting children was revealed when Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former employee of the company, who made tens of thousands of pages of Facebook’s internal documents public, disclosed that Facebook is highly invested in creating commercial products for younger users, including an Instagram Kids application intended for children who are under 13 years. While Facebook executives discussed the known harms of their products on “tweens,” they nevertheless forged ahead, ignoring suggestions from researchers on ways to reduce the harm. As Haugen explained, “they have put their astronomical profits before people.”

The information gathered from SEL applications such as Along will likely be used to build out the data infrastructure that generates knowledge used to make behavioral predictions. This information is valuable to corporations seeking a competitive edge in developing technology products for young users.

Schools provide a useful testing ground to experiment with ways to hold the attention of children, develop nudges, and elicit desirable behavioral responses. What these tech companies learn from students using their SEL platforms can be shared with their own product developers and other companies developing commercial products for children, including social media applications.

Yet Facebook’s own internal research confirms social media is negatively associated with teen mental health, and this association is strongest for those who are already vulnerable—such as teens with preexisting mental health conditions, those who are from socially marginalized groups, and those who have disabilities.

Although Facebook claimed it was putting the Instagram Kids app “on hold” in September 2021, a November 2021 study suggests the company continues to harvest data on children.

There are legislative restrictions governing the collection and use of student data.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects the privacy of student data collected by educational institutions, and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) requires commercial businesses to obtain parental consent to gather data from “children under 13 years of age.” Unfortunately, if a commercial contract with a school or district designates that business a “school official,” the child data can be extracted by the business, leaving the responsibility to obtain consent with the school district.


While these agreements contain information relating to “privacy,” the obfuscatory language and lack of alternative options mean the “parental consent” obtained is neither informed nor voluntary.

Although these privacy policies contain data privacy provisions, there’s a caveat: Those provisions don’t apply to “de-identified” data, i.e., personal data with “unique identifiers” (e.g., names and ID numbers) that have been removed. De-identified data information is valuable to tech corporations because it is used for research, product development, and improvement of services; however, this de-identified data is relatively easy to re-identify. “Privacy protection” just means it might be a little bit more difficult to find an individual.


What privacy protection doesn’t mean is that the privacy of children is protected from the “personalized” content delivered to them by machine algorithms. It doesn’t mean the video of a child talking about “the time I felt afraid” isn’t out there floating in the ether, feeding the machines to adjust their future.

The connections between the Along platform and corporate technology giant Facebook are a good example of how these companies can operate in schools while maintaining their right to use personal information of children for their own business purposes.

Given concerns that arose in a congressional hearing in December 2021 about Meta’s Instagram Kids application, as reported by NPR, there is reason to believe these companies will continue to skirt key questions about how they play fast and loose with children’s data and substitute a “trust us” doctrine for meaningful protections.


As schools ramp up these SEL digital tools, parents and students are increasingly concerned about how school-related data can be exploited. According to a recent survey by the Center for Democracy and Technology, 69 percent of parents are concerned about their children’s privacy and security protection, and large majorities of students want more knowledge and control of how their data is used.


Schools are commonly understood to be places where children can make mistakes and express their emotions without their actions and expressions being used for profit, and school leaders are customarily charged with the responsibility to protect children from any kind of exploitation. Digital SEL products, including Along, may be changing those expectations.

 

By Anna L. Noble is a doctoral student in the School of Education at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

 

https://telegraf.id/how-big-tech-sees-big-profits-in-social-emotional-learning-at-school/ 


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Understanding, Dismantling, and Disrupting the Prison-to-School Pipeline (2017) 

Understanding, Dismantling, and Disrupting the Prison-to-School Pipeline (2017)  | Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research | Scoop.it

"This volume examines the school-to-prison pipeline, a concept that has received growing attention over the past 10–15 years in the United States. The “pipeline” refers to a number of interrelated concepts and activities that most often include the criminalization of students and student behavior, the police-like state found in many schools throughout the country, and the introduction of youth into the criminal justice system at an early age. The school-to-prison pipeline negatively and disproportionally affects communities of color throughout the United States, particularly in urban areas. Given the demographic composition of public schools in the United States, the nature of student performance in schools over the past 50 years, the manifestation of school-to-prison pipeline approaches pervasive throughout the country and the world, and the growing incarceration rates for youth, this volume explores this issue from the sociological, criminological, and educational perspectives.

 

Understanding, Dismantling, and Disrupting the Prison-to-School Pipeline has contributions from scholars and practitioners who work in the fields of sociology, counseling, criminal justice, and who are working to dismantle the pipeline. While the academic conversation has consistently called the pipeline ‘school-to-prison,’ including the framing of many chapters in this book, the economic and market forces driving the prison-industrial complex urge us to consider reframing the pipeline as one working from ‘prison-to-school.’ This volume points toward the tensions between efforts to articulate values of democratic education and schooling against practices that criminalize youth and engage students in reductionist and legalistic manners."

 

Edited by: Fasching-Varner, Martin, Mitchell, Bennett-Haron, and Daneshzadeh

Publisher: Lexington Books (2017) 

 

For more, see: https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Dismantling-Disrupting-Prison-Pipeline/dp/1498534945/ 

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Sextortion- What Parents Need to Know

The following announcement is from a Screen Time Action Network email update (6/4/22) 

 

"The FBI warns of an increase in incidents involving sextortion of young children, particularly 14-17 year- old boys. Sextortion occurs when criminals lure a social media user into sending explicit photos, then threaten to expose them publicly to friends and family.

 

As the school year winds down and youth gear up to have more time online this summer, it’s important to give preteens and teens tools to recognize how sextortion starts and what they can do before it’s too late. When it happens, teens don’t always understand they are the victim of a serious crime, and often resist turning to trusted adults for help because they are so embarrassed and traumatized about what they have done. 

 

Lisa Honold, of the Center for Online Safety, created this resource, which explains what sextortion is, how to prevent it, and what to do if it has happened. Lisa also co-chairs our Cyberbullying and Online Safety Work Group. We are grateful for her expertise and dedication to protecting children.

 

Read the full article here or visit Lisa’s blog for parents, caregivers, educators, and others who live or work with kids."

 

Document above may be downloaded from clicking title or this link below:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ljsj8p8gh851zzl/Sextortion%20-%20what%20parents%20need%20to%20know.pdf 

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Viral caffeine-heavy drink raises concerns for US kids

Viral caffeine-heavy drink raises concerns for US kids | Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research | Scoop.it

by Lucie Aubourg

"With its extremely high levels of caffeine, a hip new soft drink is raising fears in the United States that it might be dangerous for children, who have been snapping up the beverage since it was launched by famous YouTube personalities.


Prime was created in 2022 by American Logan Paul and Briton KSI, two influential YouTubers whose wacky—and sometimes controversial—videos are devoured by child-heavy audiences.


A first drink, Prime Hydration, did not contain caffeine. But this year, a second line was launched: Prime Energy.

A single can contains 200 milligrams of caffeine—far more than the 30 milligrams in a can of Coca-Cola, for example, or the 80 milligrams in a can of Red Bull.

A launch video showed the two internet stars playing video games and table tennis, very slowly and without enthusiasm at first, then frantically after drinking the beverage.

Since then, many TikTok videos have featured children proudly brandishing the famous bottles, set to a musical background proclaiming "We got Prime, boys!"

However, medical experts warn about the risks of younger children consuming caffeine.


Children under the age of twelve should not consume the chemical at all, according to the American Academy for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP).

 

And between the ages of 12 and 18, a limit of 100 milligrams per day is recommended—or half a can of Prime Energy.

In addition to restlessness, anxiety and headaches, too much caffeine can cause a child to vomit or to suffer from high blood pressure or heart rhythm problems, according to the AACAP. Some children may be more sensitive than others.

'Eye-popping levels of caffeine'

"This product has one true target market: children under the age of 18, and that is why I am sounding the alarm," said top Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer last week.

Prime Energy comes in flavors that might attract younger kids, such as orange-mango and raspberry-melon.


But the drink contains "eye-popping levels of caffeine for a child's body," the Senate majority leader said.

The refreshment is fashionable because "it is born from the reels of social media and the enigmatic world of influencers," the senator said in a statement.

Schumer announced he had written to the head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), demanding an investigation into the levels of caffeine the drink contains and the marketing strategy adopted."...

For full post, please visit: 

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-07-viral-caffeine-heavy-kids.html 

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Help Stop Hate Crimes // Resources from NAACP 

To download flyer above, please click title above or here:

http://www.naacp.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Postcards.pdf 

 

__________________ 

See also: 

NAACP Letter 2016: 
http://www.naacp-mc.org/pdfs/NAACP%20&%20Partners%20stand.pdf

 
 
 
Rising Nazism and Racial Intolerance in the United States: 
http://www.hamptoninstitution.org/Rising-Nazism-and-Racial-Intolerance-in-the-US.pdf
 
 
Preventing Youth Hate Crime: A Manual for Schools and Communities: 
https://www.justice.gov/archive/crs/pubs/prevyouhatecrim.pdf
 
______________

Resource list above provided by Rev. Jethroe Moore, President of the San Jose / Silicon Valley NAACP http://www.sanjosenaacp.org 
 
 
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COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Scams and Tips to Help Prevent Exploitation // Santa Clara County Office of Privacy 

The resource sheet provided above was created by the Privacy Office of the County of Santa Clara, California. To download, please click on title or arrow above or link below: 

https://privacy.sccgov.org/sites/g/files/exjcpb1011/files/covid-19-scams-tips.pdf 

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Sextortion and What Parents Need to Know // Center for Online Safety

Sextortion and What Parents Need to Know // Center for Online Safety | Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research | Scoop.it
 
 
 

"What is sextortion?

Sextortion is when someone coerces you to send explicit videos or photos online then threatens to share them publicly if you don’t give them what they want - either pay them, give them more explicit images or meet in person.


It can happen to any age person, but we’re going to focus on the teen victims. Sextortion is a serious crime and potentially life-threatening issue. Parents need to know how to help their kids avoid it and all of the repercussions that come with it.

The FBI warns that sextortion is hitting US communities hard and is particularly concerned for the teens targeted. The number of sextortion incidents reported to the FBI so far this year is on track to surpass last year's total, reinforcing the need for parents, guardians, and teenagers to be aware of this growing online danger."...

 

 

Please visit Center for Online Safety for original published post and resources for prevention and support here: 
https://www.centerforonlinesafety.com/blog/sextortion-what-do-i-do 

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NYCLU Criticizes Unproven, AI-driven Surveillance of Students // Times Union 

NYCLU Criticizes Unproven, AI-driven Surveillance of Students // Times Union  | Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research | Scoop.it

By Rachel Silberstein
[Selected quotes]

..."cybersecurity and privacy experts warn that school districts are entering uncharted territory by installing unproven, artificial intelligence-driven surveillance devices that raise new questions about student privacy and how minors' images may be stored and shared. School shootings are statistically rare, while the use and potential abuse of private student information presents an imminent risk, experts say.

Last week, the State Education Department (SED) greenlit the state's first school facial recognition systems as a means to prevent intruders from gaining access to school facilities in Lockport, Niagara County, despite objections from parents and civil liberties groups who asked the district to hold off until the state finalizes guidelines on how the images may be used.

After meeting with Lockport school leaders over several months, state education officials approved the cameras' use after the district agreed to revise its privacy policy to ensure that no student data would be retained, according to a letter sent by SED.

“With these additional revisions, the Department believes that the Education Law ... issues it has raised to date relating to the impact on the privacy of students and student data appear to be addressed," said Temitope Akinyemi, chief privacy officer at SED.

Lockport’s software, called Aegis, can recognize weapons and sex offenders as well as a small group of individuals whose images have been placed in the system, such as staff or students who have been suspended or people barred from school property, according to the policy.

 

Experts say there is no way to prevent the tech companies from using the facial impressions of children to fine-tune their algorithms. They warn of potential bias and false positives; studies have found that facial recognition programs tend to disproportionately flag people of color, women and young people.

"We don't think the State Education Department has done its due diligence in really getting a grasp on how this technology works," said Johanna Miller, a civil rights attorney and director at the New York Civil Liberties Union's Education Policy Center. "It seems from the letter that they are not familiar with the technology at all. The concept that no student data will be retained is flawed."

The cameras have been used in settings like airports, stores and sports arenas, but rarely in public schools. The use of biometric technology by a public entity is highly controversial and is being debated nationally.

 

New York recently eradicated the use of fingerprinting — an early use of biometrics — to determine eligibility for programs like food stamps and Medicaid, citing criticism that the process is intrusive and a potential deterrent to applying for services. San Francisco earlier this year passed legislation prohibiting the use of facial recognition cameras by any government entity; there is speculation that the state of California may do the same.

Pending legislation in New York, sponsored by Assemblywoman Monica Wallace, a Democrat from the suburbs east of Buffalo, would create a one-year moratorium on the technology's use in New York schools to allow policymakers time to study its application and issue regulations.

This year, the Legislature and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo enacted the Shield Act, which broadens the legal definition of "private information" to include biometric data, and sets limits on how companies may handle it.

“It is very concerning to me that kids are in the middle of this," said state Sen. Kevin Thomas, D-Long Island, the bill's main sponsor and chair of the chamber's consumer protection committee. "There is too much surveillance going on. We as a society are trading our privacy for security, and this has become the new norm."

Ed-tech boom

A growing education-tech sector is fueled in part by state incentives for schools to invest in high-tech security systems – grants that policymakers tout as a policy response to mass shootings around the nation.

The facial recognition cameras in Lockport were funded by taxpayers through the Smart Schools Bond Act of 2014, which grants schools millions for technological upgrades like whiteboards and internet upgrades, as well as security technologies. Lockport's schools spent the bulk of a $2.7 million grant on the biometric software.

School officials are under pressure from communities to do all they can to keep students safe and are targeted by tech companies looking to capitalize on the unease around school safety, sometimes through hard-selling "security consultants" who act as middlemen.

 

Documents uncovered by the NYCLU through a freedom of information (FOIL) request that the same security consultant urged the Lockport district to utilize facial recognition technology may be benefiting financially from the Aegis and an electrical company that installed the system.

 

"The pattern in schools we are seeing is really technology in search of a market," the NYCLU's Miller said. "These are tech start-ups that see deep pockets ... and school districts are put in a position to go way out of their comfort zone and evaluate these vendors."

 

Other districts, including Courtland City schools, are buying programs that monitor social media or log keystrokes on school-issued devices to flag words associated with bullying or self-harm, despite little evidence that the technology makes schools safer, according to a recent report by the Brennan Center for Justice.

Civil rights groups say these tactics may stifle learning and free speech when school-supplied devices are the only way for some students to access the internet."...

 

https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Schools-monitor-kids-with-vape-sound-detectors-14887298.php 

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‘Thinstagram’: Instagram’s Algorithm Fuels Eating Disorder Epidemic // The Tech Transparency Project

‘Thinstagram’: Instagram’s Algorithm Fuels Eating Disorder Epidemic // The Tech Transparency Project | Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research | Scoop.it

"Instagram says it removes content that encourages anorexia and bulimia. New research finds that the platform still pushes such content to teen and adult accounts."

 

By The Tech Transparency Project

"Instagram continues to promote dangerous eating disorders to vulnerable users including young teenagers, according to new investigation by Reset and the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) that highlights the platform’s role in amplifying unhealthy body ideals.

Researchers found that Instagram recommended accounts full of disturbing images of underweight women to users who showed an interest in getting thin. Many of the recommended accounts explicitly promoted anorexia and bulimia, listing goal weights as low as 77 pounds.

The investigation also revealed just how easy it is to get pulled into Instagram’s “thinfluencer” culture, with anorexia “coaches” reaching out with unsolicited offers to provide weight loss advice.

Meanwhile, Instagram makes it exceedingly easy to search for hashtags and terms associated with eating disorders on the platform.

According to documents leaked earlier this year by Facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen, Instagram executives are acutely aware of the effects of content promoting unhealthy body ideals on young users. An internal presentation by an Instagram employee in 2019 said, “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls.” But the platform continues to amplify content promoting extreme weight loss, failing to enforce its own moderation policies.

The research by Reset and TTP adds to growing questions about Instagram’s impact on users struggling with body image issues, especially young people. Such questions will be front and center for Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, when he testifies before a Senate panel on Wednesday.

“The conclusions of this research are deeply concerning but sadly not surprising,” said Dr. Elaine Lockhart, chair of the Faculty of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the U.K. “I’m seeing more and more young people affected by harmful online content.”

“We need to see tougher regulation and stricter penalties for organizations that promote or amplify this content to users,” she said, adding that “government must compel social media companies to hand over anonymized data to researchers.”

The world of ‘thinspo’

To assess the extent to which Instagram protects users from content that encourages eating disorders, our researchers created an account on Oct. 20, 2021 for a hypothetical user who showed an interest in getting thin, and used that to document the content that Instagram’s algorithm recommended.

The account was for a 29-year-old adult. Over the course of a week, we posted six pictures of thin bodies and used vocabulary in the bio section that is common in thinspiration communities—such as “My thinspo” and “TW,” short for trigger warning. (While originally meant to help people avoid triggering images, the term “TW” has become a signal that can attract users to eating disorder content.) We also subscribed to other “thinspo” Instagram accounts, both private and public.

To examine whether Instagram affords a higher level of protection to minors, we repeated the same experiment with a second account for a 14-year-old. We explicitly stated the age in the bio for that account.

Experimental teen account

During this process, when our hypothetical users followed just one account associated with eating disorders, Instagram started recommending similar accounts.

For example, when our first test user started following a verified account with over 700,000 followers, run by a figure with a fan base in the "thinfluencer" community, Instagram’s algorithm suggested we also follow so-called “pro-ana” accounts. (“Ana” is a common shorthand for anorexia nervosa.) It’s easy to see how this could send a vulnerable person down a rabbit hole that normalizes toxic body images and extreme weight loss.

 

Interestingly, many of the pro-ana accounts recommended by Instagram had smaller follower counts. Accounts like these would normally have a hard time getting traction on the platform, but Instagram’s algorithmic amplification actively promoted them to new users, helping them find a broader audience.

The growth curve of our first test account further illustrates the problem of algorithmic amplification on Instagram. The account’s audience increased by more than seven fold in the three weeks after its last activity, suggesting that Instagram recommended it to other users.

 

Our findings for the 14-year-old account were equally alarming.

In the teen user’s Discovery tab, Instagram recommended a number of large “thinfluencer” accounts that had at least 1,000 followers and featured highly produced content with dangerous body images. At the same time, Instagram’s “Discover people” feature (found in a user's profile) recommended smaller private accounts of young users oriented around extreme weight loss. This all creates a troubling ecosystem: “Thinfluencer” accounts on Instagram promote unhealthy body ideals, while peer communities of young users encourage each other to pursue those ideals.

 

Anorexia ‘coaches’

Within the Instagram communities promoting extreme body images, self-described “coaches” provide weight-loss advice to other users. The media have reported for years on the dangers of these kinds of individuals preying on vulnerable young people, particularly girls, on social media, so it should come as no surprise to Instagram. But it took only four days for a “coach” to contact our first account.

The following are screenshots of the interaction between the “coach” and our test account. The “coach” immediately attempted to shift the interaction to other platforms such as Snapchat or Telegram, where personal conversations between users are harder to track by both the platforms and law enforcement authorities.

 

Unmoderated group chats

During the experiment, our first account received personal messages from other users who likely found our account through the Discovery tab. (Instagram does not provide researchers with the data needed to track amplification patterns.) Those other users asked for tips on “how to get skinny quickly” or whether we wanted to be “ana buddies.” In many cases, it was impossible to verify the users’ authenticity, and we did not respond to any of the messages.  

 

Upon being invited, we did join one group chat called “Supporting starvation,” which had 17 other members. We did not write any messages in that chat, but captured messages from other users documented below: [See article for image]

 

Enforcement loopholes

Instagram’s official policy states: “[W]e’ll remove content that promotes or encourages eating disorders” while allowing people to “share their own experiences and journeys around self-image and body acceptance.” But our investigation showed that the company’s enforcement of this policy is patchy at best.

During our experiment, Instagram blocked the hashtags #ana (short for anorexia) and #mia (short for bulimia), but our researchers found that the fully spelled out hashtags for #аnorexia, #bulimia, and #magersucht (anorexia in German) were still active. What’s more, typing “ana” or “mia” into the Instagram search bar as non-hashtags still yields a significant amount of content promoting eating disorders.

 

Instagram provides some resources to help people suffering from eating disorders. Some pages for hashtags associated with eating disorders include a pop-up message pointing to ways to get support, including a link to reach a helpline volunteer. But there are loopholes in this system. For example, if a user searches for a banned hashtag like #thinspo, they don't get the pop-up message. 

TTP also found discrepancies in how Instagram deploys safety features. Take the page for the hashtag #th1n, a reference to "thin." On the app, Instagram showed a warning on the #th1n page that the content may go against its Community Guidelines. Yet the same #th1n page on the Instagram website included no such warnings, despite the presence of some graphic eating disorder content.

 

Moreover, without a prompt, resources for people suffering from eating disorders are hard to find on Instagram. A user must click on their profile icon, then click "Settings," then click "Help" in the sidebar menu, then click "Help Center," then click on the drop-down menu for "Privacy, Safety, and Security," and finally click "About Eating Disorders."

‘Multiple accounts’ policy

According to Instagram's Help Center, one user can have up to five different Instagram accounts and switch between them without logging out—and our researchers found this feature plays an important role in the “thinspiration” community.

We analyzed thousands of “thinspiration” profiles and found that backup accounts are common, with users often featuring them in their bios. The apparent strategy with these backup accounts is to evade removals or suspensions by Instagram that might cut people off completely from the eating disorder content they seek.

 

We found examples of users arguing that reporting their accounts won’t help them recover. One 13-year-old Instagram user who was engaging with pro-anorexia content said “reporting me won’t make me magically wanna recover, all it does is annoy me.”

 

Conclusion

Our research reveals multiple loopholes in Instagram's product design and safety policies, which make Instagram a danger to the mental health and physical well-being of one its most vulnerable user groups: people with eating disorders.

Instagram not only fails to enforce its own policies, but it also proactively recommends toxic body image content to its adult and teen users. In this way, Instagram fuels the idealization and marketization of dangerous body ideals, while fostering communities of young users prone to eating disorders.

The platform, meanwhile, hasn’t adequately addressed the threat of anorexia “coaches” who prey on young people. These shortcomings greatly increase the risk of users being drawn into communities of self-harm."

 

For original post, please visit:

https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/thinstagram-instagrams-algorithm-fuels-eating-disorder-epidemic 

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Technological School Safety Initiatives: Considerations to Protect All Students // Center for Democracy & Technology and Brennan Center for Justice 

Download by clicking on title or arrow above or at the following link: https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/analysis/20190524schoolsafety.pdf 

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Restorative Practices Guide and Toolkit // Chicago Public Schools

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B18g5ywbF84_bk1nWU96OFdadE0/view 

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When Middle Schoolers Say #MeToo // By Rachel Simmons 

When Middle Schoolers Say #MeToo // By Rachel Simmons  | Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research | Scoop.it

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sexual-harassment-in-schools_us_5a32b145e4b00dbbcb5bb530?txk 

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The Starts and Stumbles of Restorative Justice in Education: Where Do We Go from Here? // National Education Policy Center

The Starts and Stumbles of Restorative Justice in Education: Where Do We Go from Here? // National Education Policy Center | Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research | Scoop.it

Anne Gregory and Katherine R. Evans, January 14, 2020

"Schools are implementing Restorative Justice in Education (RJE) initiatives across the United States, often to reduce the use of out-of-school suspension, which is known to increase the risk for dropout and arrest. Many RJE initiatives also aim to strengthen social and emotional competencies, reduce gender and racial disparities in discipline, and increase access to equitable and supportive environments for students from marginalized groups. This policy brief summarizes research on restorative initiatives, with a focus on implementation and outcomes in U.S. schools. After examining the evidence, the authors offer recommendations for comprehensive RJE models and strategic implementation plans to drive more consistently positive outcomes."

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"How Do You Feel Today?": The Invasion of SEL Software in K-12 // by Shelley Buchanan // 

"How Do You Feel Today?": The Invasion of SEL Software in K-12 // by Shelley Buchanan //  | Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research | Scoop.it

By Shelley Buchanan
"The recent appeal for more mental health services has caused school districts to adopt software touting SEL (social-emotional learning) capabilities. Such programs as GoGuardian, Panorama, and Harmony SEL are now in thousands of schools across the nation. While the need for more mental health supports in schools is evident, the rapid adoption of technology has occurred without adequate scrutiny and parental awareness. Even teachers and district administrators blindly accept these companies’ claims to improve behavior and dramatically drop suicide rates. But such businesses base their product’s effectiveness on few research studies of little value.¹ The valid studies cited may be focusing on the SEL lessons delivered by humans without using the digital program.

One such program called PBIS Rewards touts the benefits of daily student “check-ins.” Students log into the program on their devices and click on an emoji reflecting their current emotional state. This information is then automatically sent to a central database that allows the teacher to track students’ emotions on their computer. The program makers tout the benefits by emphasizing how easy it is to collect and track such student data. Teachers and schools can set goals for students using this data and assign points to desired behaviors. The PBIS Rewards website states, “Students love to see their point totals grow, and to think about which rewards they’ll get with their points.” Parents are encouraged to download the associated app onto their phones to reinforce the program at home. The company assures schools that “Parents enjoy seeing their student’s progress, and are alerted when a referral is given.” ²

 

Within PBIS Rewards and other SEL software, teachers and administrators can use data collected online from students to create reports.³. Schools can refine these reports to gender and race. Let’s say a school compiles a database that shows their Black male students were angry 70% of the time. It is not difficult to imagine how schools could inadvertently use this information to reinforce pre-existing bias and racial stereotyping. Just because we have data doesn’t mean this leads to equity.⁴ It matters what people do with the data.⁵

The school also keeps this information about students throughout the year. If they do not delete it, there’s a potential for future teachers to develop a bias towards a student even before they meet them.⁶ Some will say knowledge is helpful, but are we not giving kids a chance to start over with a new school year? What if they had a parent who went to prison that year and they were depressed or angry because of it? Yet, a teacher merely sees that the particular student was angry 70% of the time. Now consider if the school shares this information with law enforcement?⁶

According to FERPA, school resource officers and other law enforcement cannot access student information without a specified exception, but districts can creatively interpret these limits.⁷

SEL tech providers will often claim their products promote mental health awareness and can be used to reduce the number of suicidal or dangerous students. Even before the pandemic, the Guardian reported that with such technology, “privacy experts — and students — said they are concerned that surveillance at school might actually be undermining students’ wellbeing.” ⁸ Over-reliance upon potentially invasive technology can erode students’ trust.

Reliance on mental health digital applications during distance learning can also lead to several ethical concerns rarely brought up among staff untrained in mental health issues.⁹ Use of such programs such as GoGuardian to monitor students’ screens for concerning websites can lead to legal problems for unaware educators.¹⁰

 
This district website sends parents directly to the company’s site to encourage the download of the app.

In addition to requiring children to use these programs in school, ed-tech companies are now encouraging schools to have students and parents download apps. Such actions can create several privacy concerns. The student is downloading an app on their personal device; therefore, they will be using it outside of school networks and all their security. Thus personal information in these apps could be accessed by outside parties. While companies may claim that they have ensured their software is safe, online apps installed on phones are routinely not secure.¹¹ COPPA guidelines often are not abided by.¹² School districts have even been known to put direct links to these apps on their websites, encouraging parents and students to use apps with privacy issues.¹³

The integration of digital SEL programs with other software platforms like Clever adds another layer of privacy concerns. What if another student hacks into Clever or Google Classroom? What if the SEL screen on a teacher’s computer became visible? Teachers often will display their laptop screen to the class. What if they accidentally had a student’s SEL screen open and projected this? Technical issues occur all the time, and it is easy to see how such an incident could happen.

The potential privacy issues surrounding digital SEL programs abound. For example, a popular app called Thrively shares information with third party users (despite their company privacy statement).¹⁴ Many widely used applications in schools are too new for privacy specialists to know to what extent they violate individual privacy.¹⁵ Therefore, schools using these programs often act as experimental laboratories for the legal limits of data collection and usage. We must keep in mind that just because there are no reported incidences of privacy violations doesn’t mean they don’t occur.

Frequently, companies that produce such online programs will offer their product for free to districts. Let us be clear; no one merely gives away software with no compensation in return. Educational technology companies have routinely taken data as payment for the use of their products¹⁶ Sales of data to third party digital operators is big money. Information is the most expensive commodity there is today.¹⁷

Educational technology companies can trade influence for payment.¹⁸ The student usage of Google or Microsoft products can lead to parents purchasing such products for home use. As adults, former students will also be more likely to buy these brand name products. The free license for school districts ends up paying off in such cases. And it’s not only the big guys like Google that are making such an investment. Organizations like Harmony SEL have a whole line of products for home use geared towards parents. Harmony is also associated with a private university, an online charter school, a professional development company, and a company that sells fundraising training for schools. These programs all rely heavily upon funding by billionaire T. Denny Sanford.¹⁹ Of course, consumers of the Harmony SEL system are encouraged to use these other businesses and organizations’ products.

 

Online educational software does sometimes disregard privacy laws regarding children. In 2020, New Mexico’s attorney general sued Google claiming the tech giant used its educational products to spy on the state’s children and families despite Google’s privacy statement ensuring schools and families that children’s data wouldn’t be tracked.²⁰ The lack of comprehensive and sufficient laws protecting children’s online information makes the ubiquitous use of educational technology all the more troubling.²¹ If schools are not aware of the potential violations, how can parents be? Even more concerning, The State Student Privacy Report Card states, “FERPA contains no specific protections against data breaches and hacking, nor does it require families be notified when inadvertent disclosures occur.” ²²

Educational technology providers can adhere to COPPA guidelines by claiming they require parental consent before children use their products.²³ But frequently, school districts will merely have parents sign a universal consent form covering all digital tools. Although they can, and should, require additional consent for specific applications, they often do not. Besides, if the parental consent form includes all necessary tools such as Google Suite, a student could be denied any devices until a parent signs the form. Such conditions place tremendous pressure on parents to consent.

Equally insidious are the tech marketing claims that feed into school accountability mandates. Makers of SEL software craft their messaging to reflect the mission statements and goals of school districts. For example, Panorama claims that their SEL tracking program can predict “college and career readiness.” Popular terms like “grit” and “growth mindset” are generously sprinkled throughout marketing literature. Other programs claim their products produce a rise in standardized test scores.²⁴ Some even have convinced school districts to do marketing for them, promoting their products for free.²⁵

Underlying many such behavioral programs is the reliance on extrinsic motivators. Yet, the use of rewards for learning is highly problematic.²⁶ Dan Pink found that extrinsic rewards such as gold stars and gift certificates were harmful in the school environment.²⁷ Teachers themselves are even speaking out against the damaging effects of such programs.²⁸

 

These concerns lead us to the larger question: who decides what feelings are acceptable? How does SEL technology discourage the expression of certain feelings? If we reward students for a “positive mind set,” does that mean we actively should try to stifle negative emotions? Evan Selinger, the author of Reengineering Humanity, warns that “technology, by taking over what were once fundamental functions…has begun to dissociate us from our own humanity.” ²⁹ School SEL programs with objectives to produce more positive feelings may have the unintended effect of telling the child that their emotional reactions are something they entirely create, not a reflection of their environment. Suppose a child is frustrated because they don’t understand the curriculum. In that case, the school may emphasize the child controlling their feelings rather than adapting the material to the student’s needs. Students rarely have the ability or courage to tell teachers why they are feeling what they are feeling. In a system where adults advise students that they alone are responsible for their feelings, a child can easily take the blame for adult behaviors. Districts can then use such data to explain away low standardized test scores, asserting that “students with higher social-emotional competencies tend to have higher scores on Smarter Balanced ELA and math assessments.” Therefore, it is easy to assume that student academic failure has little to do with the quality of instruction in the school but rather the student’s emotional competencies.

“Technology, by taking over what were once fundamental functions, has begun to dissociate us from our own humanity.” — Evan Selinger, author of Reengineering Humanity

In our modern western culture, society encourages parents to minimize negative emotions in their children.³⁰ Child psychologists stress children need to be allowed to express negative feelings. Not only does this tell the child that fear, anger, frustration, etc., are normal, but it also allows the child to practice dealing with negative feelings. It is not sufficient or helpful to encourage positive emotions but censor negative ones. Expression of negative feelings is necessary for mental health.³¹ (Take a look at the millions of adults stuffing their anger and sadness away with alcohol, food, and drugs.) Parental discouragement of negative feelings is one thing, though. It’s another to allow a school, and worse yet, a technology company to regulate a child’s emotion. One can only envision a dystopian future where we are not allowed to feel anything but happiness.

“And that,” put in the Director sententiously, “that is the secret of happiness and virtue — liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.” — Brave New World

If we take Huxley’s writings seriously, the intention of societal enforced happiness is the control of the individual. One cannot help but think of this when reading about behavioral programs that reward “good” feelings with happy face emojis, stars, or even pizza parties.

Instead of relying on software to monitor and shape children’s behaviors, teachers should be focusing on improving relationships built on trust. Even if a school uses software to identify a child’s feelings, no change will occur because of mere identification. The difference is in the steps schools take to address student anger, frustration, apathy, and the conditions that create them. Over and over again, the one thing that improves student mental health is teachers’ and counselors’ support. Without such beneficial relationships, destructive behavior occurs. Research consistently finds that poor relationships between teachers and pupils can cause bad behavior.³²

When SEL software is adopted, and there are limited counselors and social workers, the teacher decides the meaning of a student’s emotions and mental health. What does depression look like, and how many days of “sad” is symptomatic of a mental health issue? Teachers are not trained mental health providers. But the reliance on and assumed efficacy of such programs may give teachers the false feeling that they can rely on their perspective without contacting a counselor. Broad adoption of such software could be a money-saving measure to cash-strapped districts pressured to deal with a rising level of child mental health issues. The annual cost of a software license is far less than the salaries of certified school counselors and social workers.

 

Parents and teachers need to be aware of SEL software, its use, and its purpose. The simple addition of a list of licensed applications on a district website is not enough to ensure parental awareness. Often SEL technology is adopted without parent review and feedback. While districts allow parents to review and opt their child out of sex education programs, SEL programs do not have such a requirement in place. This lack of clarity has led to parents (and teachers) voicing their concerns over SEL curriculums and lessons.³³ ³⁴ Rapid adoption without critical voices could lead to school encroachment into families’ values and norms. Whether or not one agrees with the beliefs of individual families, as a society, we need to be aware of how specific policies may negatively impact the civil liberties of individuals.³⁵

 

Technology is changing at a rapid pace never previously experienced. If we are to harness its benefits, we must first take stock of its harmful impact on our institutions. Quick adoption of SEL programs needs reassessment given the risks associated with their misuse. We must first insist upon the humanity from which all good teaching emanates. Only within this framework can we create environments in which children can develop and flourish."...

 

 
  1. García Mathewson , Tara, and Sarah Butrymowicz. Ed Tech Companies Promise Results, but Their Claims Are Often Based on Shoddy Research. The Hechinger Report, 20 May 2020
  2. PBIS Rewards also has a teacher behavior reward system. The PBIS rewards website states that principals can give reward points just like they do for students. Teachers can get rewards points for Bath and Body Works baskets, a dress-down pass, or even a gift card for groceries. (Not making enough money teaching to buy dinner? If you earn enough points, you can too can buy food for your family!) Ironically, principals can even give teachers points for “buying into” the PBIS system. No mention of how such systems can negatively contribute to our teacher attrition problem. Source“Introducing the SEL Check-In Feature with PBIS Rewards.” PBIS Rewards, Motivating Systems, LLC., 4 Sept. 2020
  3. For example, a school district in Nevada used data collected through the Panorama application to create reports of behavioral trends based on gender and race. SourceDavidson, Laura. How Washoe County School District Uses SEL Data to Advance Equity and Excellence, Panorama Education, October 2020
  4. Bump, Philip. Cops Tend to See Black Kids as Less Innocent Than White Kids. The Atlantic, 27 Nov. 2014
  5. Skibba, Ramin. The Disturbing Resilience of Scientific Racism. Smithsonian Magazine, 20 May 2019
  6. An EFF report found few school privacy policies address deletion of data after periods of inactivity, which would allow applications to retain information even after students graduate. Source: Alim, F., Cardoza, N., Gebhart, G., Gullo, K., & Kalia, A. Spying on Students: School-Issued Devices and Student Privacy. Electronic Frontier Foundation, 13 April 2017
  7. Education, Privacy, Disability Rights, and Civil Rights Groups Send Letter to Florida Governor About Discriminatory Student Database. Future of Privacy Forum, 14 Dec. 2020
  8. It is estimated that as many as a third of America’s school districts may already be using technology that monitors students’ emails and documents for phrases that might flag suicidal thoughts. SourceBeckett, Lois. Clear Backpacks, Monitored Emails: Life for US Students under Constant Surveillance. The Guardian, 2 Dec. 2019
  9. D., Florell, et al. “Legal and Ethical Considerations for Remote School Psychological Services.” National Association of School Psychologists (NASP), Accessed 12 February 2021.
  10. Buchanan, Shelley. “The Abuses and Misuses of GoGuardian in Schools.” Medium, Teachers on Fire Magazine, 23 Jan. 2021
  11. COPPA requires that websites and online services directed to children obtain parental consent before collecting personal information from anyone younger than 13; however, many popular apps do not comply. A University of Texas at Dallas study of 100 mobile apps for kids found that 72 violated a federal law aimed at protecting children’s online privacy. Source: University of Texas at Dallas. Tool to protect children’s online privacy: Tracking instrument nabs apps that violate federal law with 99% accuracy. Science Daily, 23 June 2020.
  12. ibid.
  13. For example, Second Step, a program used in many school districts has a link to a children’s app that collects personally identifiable information which is sold to third parties.
  14. “Common Sense Privacy Evaluation for Thrively.” The Common Sense Privacy Program, Common Sense Media. Accessed 12 February 2021.
  15. Tate, Emily. Is School Surveillance Going Too Far? Privacy Leaders Urge a Slow Down. EdSurge News, 10 June 2019
  16. Educator Toolkit for Teacher and Student Privacy: A Practical Guide for Protecting Person al Data. Parent Coalition for Student Privacy & Badass Teachers Association. October 2018.
  17. Jossen , Sam. The World’s Most Valuable Resource Is No Longer Oil, but Data. The Economist , 6 May 2017.
  18. Klein, Alyson. What Does Big Tech Want From Schools? (Spoiler Alert: It’s Not Money). Education Week, 29 Dec. 2020.
  19. T. Denny Sanford also has heavily funded and lent his name to a number of other organizations. Although recently, in late 2020, Sanford Health decided to drop the founders name from their title after reported child pornography investigations of their benefactor. National University (home of the college associated with the Harmony SEL program) also adopted the name of the philanthropist, yet recently reconsidered the change.
  20. Singer, N. and Wakabayashi, D. New Mexico Sues Google Over Children's Privacy Violations. New York Times, 20 February 2020
  21. The State Student Privacy Report Card: Grading the States on Protecting Student Data Privacy. Parent Coalition for Student Privacy & The Network for Public Education, January 2019.
  22. ibid.
  23. COPPA protects children under the age of 13 who use commercial websites, online games, and mobile apps. While schools must ensure the services their students use treat the data they collect responsibly, COPPA ultimately places the responsibility on the online service operator. At the same time, COPPA generally does not apply when a school has hired a website operator to collect information from students for educational purposes for use by the school. In those instances, the school (not an individual teacher) can provide consent on behalf of the students when required, as long as the data is used only for educational purposes.
  24. Such correlation assumes that standardized assessments such as the SBAC are accurate measurements of student’s academic abilities. There are multiple reasons why this is not the case. To blame a student’s success on their emotional state is harmful, considering the tests themselves have serious flaws. If a school decides to use data collected about SEL competencies and sort according to socio-economic status, it would be too easy to assume that poor SEL skills rather than ineffective schools or poverty causes low test scores. It would not be difficult to imagine how this flawed logic could then be used to substantiate a claim that low social-emotional skills cause poverty instead of any societal attributes.
  25. Current WCSD Superintendent Kristen McNeill stated in 2017, “I can’t think of better data to help our 64,000 students on their path to graduation.” SourceServing 5 Million Students, Panorama Education Raises $16M to Expand Reach of Social-Emotional Learning and Increase College Readiness in Schools, Panorama Education, 26 June 2018
  26. Kohn , Alfie. The Risks of Rewards. Eric Digest , 17 Nov. 2014
  27. Truby, Dana. “Motivation: The Secret Behind Student Success.” Scholasticwww.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/motivation-secret-behind-student-success/. Accessed 12 January 2021.
  28. “To monitor students like items on a conveyer belt does more for District PR machine than how to assist real students with real complex emotional and social issues.” SourceRubin, Lynda. “Action Item 16 Contracts with Motivating Systems LLC and Kickboard, Inc.” Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools , 20 Jan. 2021.
  29. Furness, Dylan. “Technology Makes Our Lives Easier, but is it at the Cost of Our Humanity?” Digital Trends, Digital Trends, 28 Apr. 2018.
  30. Denham, S. A. “Emotional Competence During Childhood and Adolescence.” Handbook of Emotional Development, edited by Vanessa LoBue, Vanessa, et al, 2019, pp. 493–541.
  31. Rodriguez, Tori. Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being. Scientific American, 1 May 2013.
  32. Cadima J, Leal T, Burchinal M. “The Quality of Teacher-Student Interactions: Associations with First Graders’ Academic and Behavioral Outcomes. Journal of School Psychology. 2010;48:457–82.
  33. Callahan, Joe. Marion School Board Shelves Sanford Harmony Curriculum Over Gender Norm Themes. Ocala Star-Banner, 24 Oct. 2020.
  34. Bailey, Nancy. “Social-Emotional Learning: The Dark Side.” Nancy Bailey’s Education Website, 6 Nov. 2020.
  35. “Problems with Social-Emotional Learning in K-12 Education: New Study.” Pioneer Institute , 10 Dec. 2020.
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The Activist Dismantling Racist Police Algorithms // Technology Review

The Activist Dismantling Racist Police Algorithms // Technology Review | Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research | Scoop.it

"Hamid Khan is winning his fight for the abolition of surveillance technology used by the LAPD"

 

By Tate Ryan-Mosley and Jennifer Strong 

"Hamid Khan has been a community organizer in Los Angeles for over 35 years, with a consistent focus on police violence and human rights. He talked to us on April 3, 2020, for a forthcoming podcast episode about artificial intelligence and policing. As the world turns its attention to police brutality and institutional racism, we thought our conversation with him about how he believes technology enables racism in policing should be published now.  

Khan is the founder of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, which has won many landmark court cases on behalf of the minority communities it fights for. Its work is perhaps best known for advocacy against predictive policing. On April 21, a few weeks after this interview, the LAPD announced an end to all predictive policing programs

 

Khan is a controversial figure who has turned down partnerships with groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) because of its emphasis on reform. He doesn’t believe reform will work. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Tell us about your work. Why do you care about police surveillance?

The work that we do, particularly looking at the Los Angeles Police Department, looks at how surveillance, information gathering, storing, and sharing has historically been used to really cause harm, to trace, track, monitor, stalk particular communities: communities who are poor, who are black and brown, communities who would be considered suspect, and queer trans bodies. So on various levels, surveillance is a process of social control. 

Do you believe there is a role for technology in policing?

The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition has a few guiding values. The first one is that what we are looking at is not a moment in time but a continuation of history. Surveillance has been used for hundreds of years. Some of the earliest surveillance processes go back to lantern laws in New York City in the early 1700s. If you were an enslaved person, a black or an indigenous person, and if you were walking out into the public area without your master, you had to walk with an actual literal lantern, with the candle wick and everything, to basically self-identify yourself as a suspect, as the “other.”

 

Another guiding value is that there’s always an “other.” Historically speaking, there’s always a “threat to the system.” There's always a body, an individual, or groups of people that are deemed dangerous. They are deemed suspect. 

The third value is that we are always looking to de-sensationalize the rhetoric of national security. To keep it very simple and straightforward, [we try to show] how the information-gathering and information-sharing environment moves and how it’s a process of keeping an eye on everybody.

 

And one of our last guiding values is that our fight is rooted in human rights. We are fiercely an abolitionist group, so our goal is to dismantle the system. We don’t engage in reformist work. We also consider any policy development around transparency, accountability, and oversight a template for mission creep. Any time surveillance gets legitimized, then it is open to be expanded over time. Right now, we are fighting to keep the drones grounded in Los Angeles, and we were able to keep them grounded for a few years. And in late March, the Chula Vista Police Department in San Diego announced that they are going to equip their drones with loudspeakers to monitor the movement of unhoused people.

Can you explain the work the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition has been doing on predictive policing? What are the issues with it from your perspective?

PredPol was location-based predictive policing in which a 500-by-500-square-foot location was identified as a hot spot. The other companion program, Operation Laser, was person-based predictive policing.

 

In 2010, we looked at the various ways that these [LAPD surveillance] programs were being instituted. Predictive policing was a key program. We formally launched a campaign in 2016 to understand the impact of predictive policing in Los Angeles with the goal to dismantle the program, to bring this information to the community and to fight back.

 

Person-based predictive policing claimed that for individuals who are called “persons of interest” or “habitual offenders,” who may have had some history in the past, we could use a risk assessment tool to establish that they were going to recidivate. So it was a numbers game. If they had any gun possession in the past, they were assigned five points. If they were on parole or probation, they were assigned five points. If they were gang-affiliated, they were assigned five points. If they’d had interactions with the police like a stop-and-frisk, they would be assigned one point. And this became where individuals who were on parole or probation or minding their own business and rebuilding their lives were then placed in what became known as a Chronic Offender Program, unbeknownst to many people.

 

Then, based on this risk assessment, where Palantir is processing all the data, the LAPD created a list. They started releasing bulletins, which were like a Most Wanted poster with these individuals’ photos, addresses, and history as well, and put them in patrol cars. [They] started deploying license plate readers, the stingray, the IMSI-Catcher, CCTV, and various other tech to track their movements, and then creating conditions on the ground to stop and to harass and intimidate them. We built a lot of grassroots power, and in April 2019 Operation Laser was formally dismantled. It was discontinued.

 

And right now we are going after PredPol and demanding that PredPol be dismantled as well. [LAPD announced an end to PredPol on April 21, 2020.] Our goal for the abolition and dismantlement of this program is not just rooted in garbage in, garbage out; racist data in and racist data out. Our work is really rooted in that it ultimately serves the whole ideological framework of patriarchy and capitalism and white supremacy and settler colonialism.

 

We released a report, “Before the Bullet Hits the Body,” in May 2018 on predictive policing in Los Angeles, which led to the city of Los Angeles holding public hearings on data-driven policing, which were the first of their kind in the country. We demanded a forensic audit of PredPol by the inspector general. In March 2019, the inspector general released the audit and it said that we cannot even audit PredPol because it’s just not possible. It’s so, so complicated.

 

Algorithms have no place in policing. I think it’s crucial that we understand that there are lives at stake. This language of location-based policing is by itself a proxy for racism. They’re not there to police potholes and trees. They are there to police people in the location. So location gets criminalized, people get criminalized, and it’s only a few seconds away before the gun comes out and somebody gets shot and killed.

How do you ensure that the public understands these kinds of policing tactics? 

Public records are a really good tool to get information. What is the origin of this program? We want to know: What was the vision? How was it being articulated? What is the purpose for the funding? What is the vocabulary that they’re using? What are the outcomes that they’re presenting to the funder? 

 

They [the LAPD] would deem an area, an apartment building, as hot spots and zones. And people were being stopped at a much faster pace [there]. Every time you stop somebody, that information goes into a database. It became a major data collection program. 

 

We demanded that they release the secret list that they had of these individuals. LAPD fought back, and we did win that public records lawsuit. So now we have a secret list of 679 individuals, which we’re now looking to reach out to. And these are all young individuals, predominantly about 90% to 95% black and brown. 

 

Redlining the area creates conditions on the ground for more development, more gentrification, more eviction, more displacement of people. So the police became protectors of private property and protectors of privilege.

What do you say to people who believe technology can help mitigate some of these issues in policing, such as biases, because technology can be objective? 

First of all, technology is not operating by itself.  From the design to the production to the deployment to the outcome, there is constantly bias built in. It’s not just the biases of the people themselves; it’s the inherent bias within the system

 

There’s so many points of influence that, quite frankly, our fight is not for cleaning up the data. Our fight is not for an unbiased algorithm, because we don’t believe that even mathematically, there could be an unbiased algorithm for policing at all.

What are the human rights considerations when it comes to police technology and surveillance?

The first human right would be to stop being experimented on. I’m a human, and I am not here that you just unpack me and just start experimenting on me and then package me. There’s so much datafication of our lives that has happened. From plantation capitalism to racialized capitalism to now surveillance capitalism as well, we are subject to being bought and sold. Our minds and our thoughts have been commodified. It has a dumbing-down effect as well on our creativity as human beings, as a part of a natural universe. Consent is being manufactured out of us.

With something like coronavirus, we certainly are seeing that some people are willing to give up some of their data and some of their privacy. What do you think about the choice or trade-off between utility and privacy? 

We have to really look at it through a much broader lens.  Going back to one of our guiding values: not a moment in time but a continuation of history. So we have to look at crises in the past, both real and concocted. 

 

Let's look at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. That led to the most massive expansion of police powers and militarization of the Los Angeles Police Department and the sheriff’s department under the guise of public safety. The thing was “Well, we want to keep everything safe.” But not only [did] it become a permanent feature and the new normal, but tactics were developed as well. Because streets had to be cleaned up, suspect bodies, unhoused folks, were forcibly removed. Gang sweeps supposedly started happening. So young black and brown youth were being arrested en masse. This is like 1983, leading to 1984.

 

By 1986-1987 in Los Angeles, gang injunctions became a permanent feature. This resulted in massive gang databases, and children as young as nine months old going into these gang databases. That became Operation Hammer, where they had gotten tanks and armored vehicles, used by SWAT, for delivering low-level drug offenses, and going down and breaking down people’s homes.

 

Now we are again at a moment. It’s not just the structural expansion of police powers; we have to look at police now increasingly taking on roles as social workers.  It’s been building over the last 10 years. There’s a lot of health and human services dollars attached to that too. For example, in Los Angeles, the city controller came out with an audit about five years ago, and they looked at $100 million for homeless services that the city provides. Well, guess what? Out of that, $87 million was going to LAPD.  

Can you provide a specific example of how police use of technology is impacting community members?

Intelligence-led policing is a concept that comes out of England, out of the Kent Constabulary, and started about 30 years ago in the US. The central theme of intelligence-led policing is behavioral surveillance.  People’s behavior needs to be monitored, and then be processed, and that information needs to be shared. People need to be traced and tracked.  

 

One program called Suspicious Activity Reporting came out of 9/11, in which several activities which are completely constitutionally protected are listed as potentially suspicious. For example, taking photographs in public, using video cameras in public, walking into infrastructure and asking about hours of operations. It’s observed behavior reasonably indicative of preoperational planning of criminal and/or terrorist activity. So you’re observing somebody’s behavior, which reasonably indicates there is no probable cause. It creates not a fact, but a concern. That speculative and hunch-based policing is real.  

 

We were able to get numbers from LAPD’s See Something, Say Something program. And what we found was that there was a 3:1 disparate impact on the black community. About 70% of these See Something, Say Something reports came from predominantly white communities in Los Angeles. So now a program is being weaponized and becomes a license to racially profile.

 

The goal is always to be building power toward abolition of these programs, because you can’t reform them. There is no such thing as kinder, gentler racism, and these programs have to be dismantled.

So, you really think that reform won’t allow for use of these technologies in policing?

I can only speak about my own history of 35 years of organizing in LA. It’s not a matter of getting better, it’s a matter of getting worse. And I think technology is furthering that. When you look at the history of reform, we keep on hitting our head against the wall, and it just keeps on coming back to the same old thing. We can’t really operate under the assumption that hearts and minds can change, particularly when somebody has a license to kill.

 

I’m not a technologist. Our caution is for the technologists: you know, stay in your lane. Follow the community and follow their guidance."

 

For original post, please visit:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/05/1002709/the-activist-dismantling-racist-police-algorithms/

 

Photo credit: Damon Casarez

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Resources for Responding to a Crisis 

The following list of resources has been curated from colleagues whose work is focused in school safety, school climate, student mental health, and educational leadership. Thanks to California Council on Teacher Education and UCLA Center for Mental Health in Schools and Student/Learning Supports for contributions below in response to the Robb Elementary School Shooting in Uvalde, Texas. 

 

Enough is Enough Syllabus

https://bit.ly/enoughisenoughsyllabus 

Resources provided by students and faculty of University of Minnesota in response to Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018

 
Teaching and Learning on Days After: Tragedy and Trauma Resources: https://bit.ly/onthedaysafter // Curated by Dr. Kaitlin Popielarz

 

Responding to a Mass Casualty Event at a School: General Guidance for the First Stage of Recovery

https://www.nasponline.org/resources-and-publications/resources-and-podcasts/school-safety-and-crisis/school-violence-resources/responding-to-a-mass-casualty-event-at-a-school-general-guidance-for-the-first-stage-of-recovery

 

Responding to School Violence: Tips for Administrators

https://www.nasponline.org/resources-and-publications/resources-and-podcasts/school-safety-and-crisis/school-violence-resources/school-violence-prevention/responding-to-school-violence-tips-for-administrators

 

Helping Youth after Community Trauma: Tips for Educators

https://www.nctsn.org/resources/helping-youth-after-community-trauma-tips-educators

 

Talking to Children About Violence: Tips for Parents and Teachers

https://www.nasponline.org/resources-and-publications/resources-and-podcasts/school-safety-and-crisis/school-violence-resources/talking-to-children-about-violence-tips-for-parents-and-teachers

 

From San Diego County Office of Education: Resources for Educators, Families to Discuss School Shootings

https://www.sdcoe.net/about-sdcoe/news/post/~board/news/post/resources-to-discuss-school-shootings

 

For more, see also:
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/crisisresp.htm

 

 

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School Surveillance Will Never Protect Kids From Shootings // Chris Gilliard // Wired

School Surveillance Will Never Protect Kids From Shootings // Chris Gilliard // Wired | Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research | Scoop.it

By Chris Gilliard

"If we are to believe the purveyors of school surveillance systems, K-12 schools will soon operate in a manner akin to some agglomeration of Minority ReportPerson of Interest, and Robocop. “Military grade” systems would slurp up student data, picking up on the mere hint of harmful ideations, and dispatch officers before the would-be perpetrators could carry out their vile acts. In the unlikely event that someone were able to evade the predictive systems, they would inevitably be stopped by next-generation weapon-detection systems and biometric sensors that interpret the gait or tone of a person, warning authorities of impending danger. The final layer might be the most technologically advanced—some form of drone or maybe even a robot dog, which would be able to disarm, distract, or disable the dangerous individual before any real damage is done. If we invest in these systems, the line of thought goes, our children will finally be safe.

 


Not only is this not our present, it will never be our future—no matter how expansive and intricate surveillance systems become.

In the past several years, a host of companies have sprouted up, all promising a variety of technological interventions that will curtail or even eliminate the risk of school shootings. The proposed “solutions” range from tools that use machine learning and human monitoring to predict violent behavior, to artificial intelligence paired with cameras that determine the intent of individuals via their body language, to microphones that identify potential for violence based on a tone of voice. Many of them use the specter of dead children to hawk their technology. Surveillance company AnyVision, for instance, uses images of the Parkland and Sandy Hook shootings in presentations pitching its facial- and firearm-recognition technology. Immediately after the Uvalde shooting last month, the company Axon announced plans for a taser-equipped drone as a means of dealing with school shooters. (The company later put the plan on pause, after members of its ethics board resigned.) The list goes on, and each company would have us believe that it alone holds the solution to this problem.

 

The failure here is not only in the systems themselves (Uvalde, for one, seemed to have at least one of these “security measures” in place), but in the way people conceive of them. Much like policing itself, every failure of a surveillance or security system most typically results in people calling for more extensive surveillance. If a danger is not predicted and prevented, companies often cite the need for more data to address the gaps in their systems—and governments and schools often buy into it. In New York, despite the many failures of surveillance mechanisms to prevent (or even capture) the recent subway shooter, the mayor of the city has decided to double down on the need for even more surveillance technology. Meanwhile, the city’s schools are reportedly ignoring the moratorium on facial recognition technology. The New York Times reports that US schools spent $3.1 billion on security products and services in 2021 alone. And Congress’ recent gun legislation includes another $300 million for increasing school security.

 What many of these predictive systems promise is a measure of certainty in situations about which there can be none.

But at their root, what many of these predictive systems promise is a measure of certainty in situations about which there can be none. Tech companies consistently pitch the notion of complete data, and therefore perfect systems, as something that is just over the next ridge—an environment where we are so completely surveilled that any and all antisocial behavior can be predicted and thus violence can be prevented. But a comprehensive data set of ongoing human behavior is like the horizon: It can be conceptualized but never actually reached.

 

Currently, companies engage in a variety of bizarre techniques to train these systems: Some stage mock attacks; others use action movies like John Wick, hardly good indicators of real life. At some point, macabre as it sounds, it’s conceivable that these companies would train their systems on data from real-world shootings. Yet, even if footage from real incidents did become available (and in the large quantities these systems require), the models would still fail to accurately predict the next tragedy based on previous ones. Uvalde was different from Parkland, which was different from Sandy Hook, which was different from Columbine.

 

Technologies that offer predictions about intent or motivations are making a statistical bet on the probability of a given future based on what will always be incomplete and contextless data, no matter its source. The basic assumption when using a machine-learning model is that there is a pattern to be identified; in this case, that there’s some “normal” behavior that shooters exhibit at the scene of the crime. But finding such a pattern is unlikely. This is especially true given the near-continual shifts in the lexicon and practices of teens. Arguably more than many other segments of the population, young people are shifting the way they speak, dress, write, and present themselves—often explicitly to avoid and evade the watchful eye of adults. Developing a consistently accurate model of that behavior is near impossible.

Not only are these technologies incapable of preventing our worst nightmares, their presence is actively moving us toward a dystopian one. If society were to deploy every surveillance and analytical tool available, schools would be hardened to a point where even the most anodyne signs of resistance or nonconformity on the part of young people would be flagged as potentially dangerous—surely an ongoing disaster for the physical, social, and emotional well-being of children, for whom testing boundaries is an essential element of figuring out both themselves and the world they live in. This applies as well to the proposal for more hardware. It’s possible to envision schools as a site where drones and robots are ready to launch into action, such that they come to resemble some combination of a penitentiary and an Amazon warehouse. Worse yet, this hyper-surveilled future is likely to significantly increase the violence visited upon Black students, trans students, and now, given the overturning of Roe, students seeking information on sexual health. All without bringing us any closer to the intended goal of eliminating shootings.

 

There’s a long-standing maxim among scholars and activists who study the history of technology: Innovations by themselves will never solve social problems. The school shooting epidemic is a confluence of many issues, none of which as a society we will “tech” our way out of. The common refrain is that these attempts are “better than nothing.”  Rick Smith, the CEO of Axon who briefly proposed the taser drones, told Motherboard that his plan was in fact motivated by the gridlock in Washington DC.

In one sense, it is true that doing absolutely nothing may be worse than what we have now. But this artificial dichotomy obscures other options—such as making it harder to obtain weapons capable of inflicting incalculable damage in a matter of seconds—that many countries have already done. “Better than nothing” is a set of practices that arise at the expense of children. It’s a half measure because as a society we are unwilling to do what actually works.

 
Chris Gilliard is a visiting research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center."

 

For original article, please visit: 
https://www.wired.com/story/school-surveillance-never-protect-kids-shootings/ 

 
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What Gun Violence Does to Our Mental Health // The New York Times

What Gun Violence Does to Our Mental Health // The New York Times | Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research | Scoop.it

"Mass shootings and other types of trauma can have ripple effects not only for survivors but also for those who follow the news of the events."

 

By Christina Caron 

"Heather Martin was a senior at Columbine High School in 1999 when two gunmen, also teenagers, killed 13 people and wounded 21 more before taking their own lives. She ended up barricaded in a room for three hours. And although she wasn’t physically injured, she witnessed the aftermath of the shooting, which she described as “horrifying.”

Despite having survived such a traumatic event, she did not consider how deeply her mental health might have been affected. “I minimized my own experience and always thought, Someone has it worse. I should just be fine or be better,” she said.

But she wasn’t fine. Ms. Martin had recurring nightmares for years and eventually dropped out of college after developing an eating disorder and taking recreational drugs.

It wasn’t until the 10th anniversary of the shooting that she finally found the support she needed and reconnected with some of her classmates “who got it, who were also struggling, who didn’t judge me,” she said.

 

Mass shootings have become more common during the pandemic, and so, too, have other types of gun violence. So far this year there have been more than 200 mass shootings in the United States, including the one that caused the deaths of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday. But beyond the statistics is a number that is harder to quantify: The large swath of people grappling with the psychological effects that stem from the violence.

The mental health toll doesn’t just affect those closest to gun violence. It also ripples through a community and the nation, said Erika Felix, an associate professor of clinical psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has studied survivors of shootings.

“It’s felt everywhere,” she said. “We really have to look at this as a public mental health crisis.”

For survivors, victims’ families and those who live near the location of a shooting, the psychological effects can be intense and prolonged. They may include post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, self-harm and major depressive disorders.

But even among those who do not frequently experience gun violence or who have never been directly affected by a mass shooting, feelings of fear, anger or helplessness can arise. And studies have found that continually consuming news media after a tragedy can lead to acute stress.

“It affects our perceptions of vulnerability and risk,” Dr. Felix said. 

Could have happened to any of us

In a 2018 survey conducted by the Harris Poll for the American Psychological Association, 75 percent of young people between 15 and 21 said that mass shootings were significant sources of stress for them. Most adults ranging in age from 22 to 72 said the same.

The fact that the shooting in Uvalde could have happened to any of us “is deeply unsettling,” said Dr. Sara Johnson, a professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who has studied how chronic stress affects child development and behavior.

Some people may develop a sense that the world is not a safe place, that others cannot be trusted “or that they are powerless to change the circumstances in which they’re living,” Dr. Johnson said. “These kinds of mass shootings really tear at the fabric of society.”

But despite the potential for far-reaching psychological effects, there is limited data on what firearm injury does to our collective mental health.

 

This is in part because agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not fund gun violence research for more than two decades after a provision called the Dickey Amendment prohibited the use of federal money to “advocate or promote gun control.”

What experts have found is that directly after mass violence, most survivors and responders will have stress reactions that gradually decrease over time, according to the National Center for PTSD. But some people — and especially those with specific risk factors — may experience lasting consequences, including PTSD.

PTSD symptoms can be similar in adults and children, said Nicole R. Nugent, an associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and an expert in PTSD identification and treatment.

 

Those with PTSD often have trouble sleeping and may become emotionally numb, continuously on edge or easily startled, she said. The world will often feel unsafe to them, and upsetting memories may intrude on their daily thoughts. Some people may try to avoid things that remind them of their trauma. Teens and adults might turn to substance abuse.

Younger children may experience stomachaches or headaches, and lower-grade anxiety that causes them to misbehave or have trouble concentrating. They may also engage in “traumatic play,” acting out the trauma they experienced, Dr. Nugent added. If the behavior persists, she said, “then we start to worry that it could be signaling something significant like PTSD.”

Proximity to violence

Much like those who experience gun violence, those who live near it may also suffer.

Dr. Aditi Vasan, a general pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, decided to investigate how children in her community were psychologically affected by nearby shootings after speaking with patients who had anxiety, depression or difficulty sleeping.

“When I asked them when these symptoms started, they told me it was after a classmate or a friend or a neighbor was shot,” she said.

The resulting study, published in JAMA Pediatrics in 2021, examined emergency department admissions between 2014 and 2018 and found that children and teenagers in west and southwest Philadelphia who lived within about four to six blocks of where a shooting had occurred were more likely than other children to use an emergency room for mental health reasons during the two months after the shooting.

The odds rose among children who were exposed to multiple shootings and among those who lived closest to a shooting’s location, within two or three blocks. Their symptoms included anxiety, panic attacks, suicidal ideation and self-harm behavior, Dr. Vasan said.

Another study, in California, looked at the effects of police killings on several communities in Los Angeles. It showed decreases in high school students’ academic performance, learning deficiencies related to PTSD and higher levels of depression and school dropouts that correlated to how close students lived to where the shootings occurred. These problems were most pronounced among Black and Latino students who lived near the locations of police shootings of Black and Latino people.

“The fear overcomes the need to connect with other people, and that’s the real tragedy of what violence does to communities,” said Dr. Joel Fein, an emergency medicine physician at Children’s Hospital Philadelphia, where he co-directs the Center for Violence Prevention.

 

Addressing the psychological effects of gun violence

For younger children affected by violence, Dr. Nugent recommended keeping as much structure in place as possible, like regular bedtimes and mealtimes.

“They are looking to us for those subtle signals that things are OK and things are safe,” she said.

It’s also important to allow ourselves to feel grief, rather than to bottle it up, and to allow our children to acknowledge it, too, said Dr. Megan L. Ranney, an emergency physician and the academic dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University.

Finding the things that give us a sense of control can help us cope as well. Plan on disconnecting from the news media from time to time, Dr. Ranney added, so as not to “re-traumatize yourself over and over.” And consider making a positive contribution to your neighborhood, like getting involved in organizations such the Boys & Girls Clubs of America or planting a community garden.

Shortly after the shooting in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., in 2012, Ms. Martin and one of her high school friends co-founded the Rebels Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan peer support group for those directly affected by mass violence. With about 1,700 members, it is one of the largest organizations of its kind, she said.

People will “push down their trauma and their experiences, and it can lead to some really dangerous places,” said Ms. Martin, now 41 and a high school English teacher in Aurora. “It’s really about acknowledging that you are impacted.”

 

Christina Caron is a reporter for the Well section, covering mental health and the intersection of culture and health care. Previously, she was a parenting reporter, general assignment reporter and copy editor at The Times. @cdcaron

 

For original post, please visit:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/28/well/mind/gun-violence-mental-health.html 

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Restorative Justice as a Doubled-Edged Sword: Conflating Restoration of Black Youth with Transformation of Schools // Daneshzadeh & Sirrakos (2018)

Abstract
The anchoring weight of slavery continues to ground schools by design and implementation, 151 years after the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. Empirical literature is rife with evidence that Black and Brown youth are penalized more frequently and with greater harshness than their white, suburban counterparts for the same offenses (Gregory, Skiba, & Noguera, 2010; Welch & Payne, 2010), to the point where Triplett, Allen, and Lewis (2014) describe this phenomenon as a civil rights issue. The authors examine how a constellation of school-sanctioned discipline policies have connected the legacy of slavery with punishment. In order to curb burgeoning suspension rates that disproportionately target Black youth, schools and grassroots organizations have adopted various tiers of Restorative Justice (RJ). This article draws upon existing theoretical frameworks of Restorative Justice to discuss new approaches and directions, as well as the limitations of its hyper-individualized applications in K-12 schools. Finally, the authors assess two case studies that aim to transform schools and community engagement by refocusing restorative philosophy on the ecological conditions of student contexts, rather than the presumed intrapsychic symptoms habitually ascribed to youth behavior and Black culture."

 

To download, click on title, arrow above, or this link below:

https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1172&context=taboo 

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Child Psychiatrists Warn That The Pandemic May Be Driving Up Kids' Suicide Risk // NPR

Child Psychiatrists Warn That The Pandemic May Be Driving Up Kids' Suicide Risk // NPR | Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research | Scoop.it

By Rhitu Chatterjee

"For ways to help kids at risk, read Part 2 of this story.

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (en español: 1-888-628-9454; deaf and hard of hearing: dial 711, then 1-800-273-8255) or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741."

"Anthony Orr was almost done with his high school coursework when the governor of Nevada ordered a statewide shutdown of nonessential businesses on March 17, 2020.

"He was looking forward to all of the senior activities, prom and graduation," says his mother, Pamela Orr. But all he got was a "mini [graduation] ceremony," with only a handful of students walking, wearing masks and at a distance from each other.

"That was the most we could do because of COVID," she says.

Anthony graduated with honors as he had planned to, wearing a white robe and cap and an advanced honors sash, says Pamela. But he decided against going to college.

"Right now ... it's all online, and you just lose the whole college experience," she says.

 

Instead, he got a job working in construction. His parents thought he was doing fine. "He seemed happy to us," says Pamela. "He seemed happy."

But in August of last year, Anthony died by suicide.

While Pamela and her husband, Marc, struggle to come to terms with their loss, his school district in Las Vegas is trying to come to grips with the troubling statistic his death is part of.

He was one of 19 students who has died by suicide in the district since the shutdown last March. Thirteen of those deaths occurred since July.

 

"There's a sense of urgency," says Jesus Jara, the superintendent of the Clark County School District. "You know, we have a problem."

Suicide is complex, involving layers of risk factors, including biological and environmental ones. And it's hard to know the exact factors involved in the deaths of these 19 students.

But the sudden rise in deaths has school district officials worried that the coronavirus pandemic may have played a role. And educators and mental health care providers in other parts of the United States have the same concern.

In recent months, many suicidal children have been showing up in hospital emergency departments, and more kids are needing in-patient care after serious suicide attempts.

 

"Across the country, we're hearing that there are increased numbers of serious suicidal attempts and suicidal deaths," says Dr. Susan Duffy, a professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at Brown University.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between April and October 2020, hospital emergency departments saw a rise in the share of total visits that were from kids for mental health needs.

Now, there are no nationwide numbers on suicide deaths in 2020 yet, and researchers have yet to clearly link recent suicides to the pandemic. Yet on the ground, there's growing concern.

NPR spoke with providers at hospitals in seven states across the country, and all of them reported a similar trend: More suicidal children are coming to their hospitals — in worse mental states.

"The kids that we are seeing now in the emergency department are really at the stage of maybe even having tried or attempted or have a detailed plan," says Dr. Vera Feuer, director of pediatric emergency psychiatry at Cohen Children's Medical Center of Northwell Health in New York. "And we're admitting to the hospital more kids than usual because of how unwell they are."

She has seen a slight increase in 10-to-11-year-olds attempting, but the majority of kids she sees are teenagers. Other places are seeing a rise in 2020 numbers compared with 2019 as well.

 

The number of kids with suicide attempts coming to the emergency room at Children's Hospital Oakland, in California, in the fall of 2020 was double the number in the fall of 2019, says Marisol Cruz Romero, a psychologist and the coordinator for the hospital's behavioral emergency response team.

At Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, the number of children and teens hospitalized after suicide attempts went up from 67 in 2019 to 108 in 2020. And October 2020 saw a 250% increase in these numbers over the previous October, says Hillary Blake, a pediatric psychologist at the hospital.

Psychiatrists and other doctors who work with children say the pandemic has created a perfect storm of stressors for kids, increasing the risk of suicide for many. It has exacerbated an ongoing children's mental health crisis — suicide rates had already been going up for almost a decade among children and youth.

The problems brought on by the pandemic, they say, only highlight the weaknesses in the mental health safety net for children — and point to an urgent need for new solutions.

"The stories that we hear day by day in the emergency department really speak to us about the level of difficulties, the layers of traumas and the real problems that families are facing," says Feuer.

Loss of critical in-person support services

Many young people, like Anthony Orr, have no diagnosis or known history of mental illness when they start struggling with thoughts of suicide.

But the children who are most vulnerable right now, says Duffy, are the ones with underlying physical or mental illness, because the pandemic has disrupted in-person services they relied on in communities and at school."...

 

For full post, please visit:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/02/962060105/child-psychiatrists-warn-that-the-pandemic-may-be-driving-up-kids-suicide-risk 

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https://rjcenterberkeley.org/

https://rjcenterberkeley.org/ | Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research | Scoop.it

"Restorative justice brings people together to build community and address harm through community-based circle processes. At the heart of RJ is the belief that strong communities are essential to preventing harm from occurring. When harm or conflict arises, a trauma-informed, circle practitioner engages participants in transformational processes that address the needs of all who are affected. These processes emphasize accountability, humanity and community. Restorative practices promote the creation of spaces of trust and respect with housemates, co-workers, and partners for difficult conversations and deep listening."

https://rjcenterberkeley.org/ 

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NEPC Statement on Violence and Intimidation in Schools and Communities // National Education Policy Center 

NEPC Statement on Violence and Intimidation in Schools and Communities // National Education Policy Center  | Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research | Scoop.it
 "BOULDER, CO (November 11, 2016) - In the lead-up to this year’s election and in its aftermath there are widespread reports of violence and intimidation against people because of their race, religion, language, nationality, perceived immigration status, disability, gender, sexual orientation or political affiliation. We at the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder, deplore these acts.

 

As researchers working to improve our public education system, we are alarmed by the impact of this violence and intimidation on our nation’s young people, on the schools they attend, and in the communities where they live. Bigotry, bullying, xenophobia, and violence have no place in our society—especially in our schools. Children have a basic human right to live in communities and attend schools where adults will protect them. We commit ourselves to confronting hatred when we see it and to working with the targeted communities to ensure the safety of all people.  

 

We ask all those who share our concerns to stand together to express strong support of a democratic society in which we all feel accepted, safe and protected. We urge students, parents, educators and members of our communities to reject the devaluing of civility, to embrace our diversity, and to listen to and learn from one another. Together we must strive to create a compassionate world for our children and ourselves.

 

For those who experience or witness acts of violence, please report to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Report Hate Website. #reporthate

 

Here are some additional resources for educators and parents:

Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance Project

 

Anti-Defamation League’s Curriculum Resource on Helping Students Make Sense of News Stories About Bias and Injustice

 

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, produces and disseminates high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. Visit us at: http://nepc.colorado.edu"

 

For link to original statement: http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2016/11/nepc-statement  

 

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