<p>[Warning</a> lands Batavia teacher in hot water - DailyHerald.com](<a href=“http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20130525/news/705259921/]Warning”>Warning lands Batavia teacher in hot water)</p>
<p>Have at it.</p>
<p>Interesting. I get surveys at work about work conditions that are ‘mandatory to fill out’ and request ‘anonymous information like age gender etc.’ and I work for the federal government. I have always had problems with them. I just got one asking when I plan on retiring. I put ‘unknown’. I could see where students might think they were mandatory. In a sense a lazy way to ask student to seek help.</p>
<p>I support his position.</p>
<p>I instructed my kids not to compete such surveys, and claimed parental perogative under California law so that they would not have to. It drove their teachers crazy since they were under pressure for a high response rate. Too bad; none of the government’s beeswax, and many of those questions had absolutely nothing to do with education.</p>
<p>The teacher was 100% right. This is a case of government overreach. </p>
<p>And I am quite sure that if this isn’t resolved in an informal way in the teacher’s favor very soon, the ACLU might have something to say about it. Of course, for the ACLU it may be far more interesting to sue the entire district on behalf of all enrolled students, rather than limiting their focus to a single teacher. Maybe a nice class action lawsuit aimed at protecting these and all future students from similarly intrusive surveys? </p>
<p>I don’t think this is a fight that the district level administrators want to start.</p>
<p>It seems rather naive of them to expect honest answers to a non-anonymous survey on topics of this nature.</p>
<p>But the flip side is that kids might assume that because it is a “survey”, it will be treated as anonymous. Aside from the clear privacy issues, I think it creates a huge potential civil liability for the school both for taking certain actions and refraining from taking actions on information disclosed in the form. They are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. I can’t even fathom why a school administrator would think it to be a good idea.</p>
<p>What is there to “have at”? Such surveys should be anonymous if they even have a prayer of getting honest answers. Those surveys are notoriously inaccurate anyway. Whole thing is ridiculous.</p>
<p>Midway through the article the teacher states that the students’ names were preprinted on the surveys, so they were not anonymous, but were intended to be used to track responses from individual students. He was absolutely correct in advising students of their rights. </p>
<p>In our lawyer heavy, highly educated district, the central offices would have started recieving phone calls from irate parents within minutes of the surveys being passed out. (Under the desk texting from student to parent asking for advice on what to do would have been a given.)</p>
<p>Wow. Imagine that. The Constitution. What a beautiful thing.
I always told my kids never to fill out personal surveys, even when anonymous, in the schools. I also would never let them get on a scale and be weighed.</p>
<p>OK, I’ll bite. Are you talking about at school- you would not let them get weighed, or somewhere else? What about the speech, hearing and vision screening that is sometimes done at schools?</p>
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I am talking about at school. It is absolutely not relevant to their education to be weighed in school, particularly in public and to have that information be known to others.</p>
<p>Not everyone gets vision or hearing screening. If a student has a completed medical form with that information included, then they are not screened or asked to be screened. And for the record, height and weight is also included in the confidential medical form provided to the school nurse and maintained in confidence by the only professional in the school system who might have the need to know that information.</p>
<p>Under what circumstances would a kid get weighed at school? If they were participating in some group/team Presidents physical fitness program contest through the school which involved some before/after measurements (endurance, strength training #s, weight, etc) would you allow it under those circumstances?</p>
<p>There is a fitness program here in which each child has to complete certain tasks and then get weighed in the middle of the gym. In front of everyone else. The results of all those things are turned into a fitness record that each student receives with his or her academic standardized test reports at the end of the school year. (And to add insult to that injury, in my daughter’s school, the report cards were held to be picked up by the parents as a way of forcing them to sign for the fitness reports, which always led to an hours-long line to pick up the report card, leaving no time to meet with teachers.) There are absolutely no circumstances under which I would allow my kids to be publicly weighed. None, zero, zip. Now if he or she were on a team and the coach wanted a private weigh-in, that would be fine.</p>
<p>Here is a sample of the fitness report
<a href=“http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/706F9A72-3C38-42B9-94EA-E103EDA1A794/0/412NYCFGReportSample.pdf[/url]”>http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/706F9A72-3C38-42B9-94EA-E103EDA1A794/0/412NYCFGReportSample.pdf</a>
Which actually can be completed without the student’s weight.</p>
<p>If the fitness program is required and the parent has to sign off on it to get the report card, how do you work around that? Do they allow the student to decline the weigh in since,as you indicate, the weight isn’t a necessary part?</p>
<p>Yes and aren’t schools tracking students BMI now?!</p>
<p>I remember when my oldest D took the MCAS (Massachusetts standardized tests) she came home and told me that at teh end of the test there was a section that asked questions such as “how many books do you have in your home. Do your parents read to you?” etc. I was outraged that the state would use the context of standardized tests to “spy” on our home environment.</p>
<p>The teacher in this article is absolutely doing the right thing for students and the school system is making an a$$ out of itself by reprimanding him for it.</p>
<p>Where is Batavia, by the way?</p>
<p>Batavia is a Chicago suburb. </p>
<p>The outrageous part of the school’s survey is to the student to put their name on it. These “surveys” are unreliable when anonymous. Totally invalid, IMO, if requiring a name. Who would answer honestly??</p>
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The school system doesn’t allow or not allow my kids to get on the scale. They simply do not do it. And when I show up at the school to pick up the report cards, they have no choice but to hand it over. There has never been a problem, though. It is not clear to me that the teachers support public weighing. If a student is absent on their day to be weighed, then obviously that information will not be involved. I also think that students who are exempt from PE for a semester/year don’t get these reports for those semseters.</p>
<p>It is not only ridiculous in terms of privacy, it is ridiculous in terms of the added responsibilities that schools are being asked to take on or are offering to take on. Not only are we supposed to get every child to the same level of proficiency in every subject, we are also being asked to ensure that nobody is obese, misses breakfast, is abusing drugs or alcohol, gets pregnant or an STD, practices good hygiene, doesn’t get into an abusive relationship, etc…</p>
<p>Very true EPTR. And from the department of unintended consequences, I think it is always a terrible idea to weigh teen girls in front of others. I am sure that would not help any girl with self esteem issues or someone struggling with an eating disorder.</p>
<p>I don’t object to any of the question on a “survey”. But this isn’t a survey, it is a screening instrument, used to track an individual, identifiable student, allowing school officials and others to intervene in the individual’s life. I doubt very much that parents gave informed consent to this. What are the limits of access to the information? What mechanisms are in place to protect confidentiality? </p>
<p>I worked on our state’s youth behavioral survey for 15 years. What is being done here would be clearly illegal - it is not even a gray area. Not only are the questions anonymous, we have schools and entire school districts that opt out of being able to be identified. We have “optional questions” that the school district can choose to use or not. The survey is done every two years, and we spend an entire year convincing schools and school boards that it is to their benefit to participate, and to approve the questions.</p>
<p>“These “surveys” are unreliable when anonymous.”</p>
<p>Actually, we have 30 years of experience testing this question. They are in fact extremely accurate, with a large enough sample size. (Among other things, we have questions on the test itself that screen for reliability - and they work.)</p>