As parents and teachers discover more reasons to question the indiscriminate carpet bombing of classrooms with digital devices and ed tech of dubious pedagogical value, a case from Arizona reveals another, more Orwellian, danger.
The Marana Unified School District and Marana High School deploy a suite of ed-tech devices and programs, purportedly in service of improving learning. Unfortunately, this technology also allows the school to conduct what amounts to nearly 24/7 monitoring of students. Those gifted in math will recognize that includes students’ time outside of the school walls.
Marana strongly encourages all its students to use a school-provided Chromebook laptop at school and at home. Whether they accept the device or not, students are obligated to open a school-managed Google account, including Gmail, through which they can access Google Workspace for Education. The school district then taps three other products—Gaggle, GoGuardian, and Securly—to monitor the students’ online activities, whether they are on campus or not. The district does warn students that it reads their email: “Marana Unified School District scans all student email for objectionable content. Objectionable messages found may be forwarded to school administration and subject to disciplinary action.”
If the district stopped there, it might not provoke objection. It’s reasonable for schools to tell students that sending inappropriate emails on school accounts is forbidden and could be punished. However, in this case, Merrill v. Marana Unified School District, the district went well beyond this simple warning—in a way that raises alarming privacy concerns.
A student at the high school, N. M., asked his mother how to handle a bad grade he had received in English class. She advised discussing it with his teacher, so he used his school-issued Chromebook to draft an email. While doing so he wrote and deleted several jokes. Readers will be shocked to learn that since they emerged from the mind of a teenage male—a demographic category normally known for its refinement and sophistication—that these jokes were not in the best taste. The last one, “GANG GANG GIMME A BETTER GRADE OR I SHOOT UP DA SKOOL HOMIE,” he read aloud to his mother. Although the student never sent the jokes nor even saved them, the school’s Eye of Sauron . . . ahem, surveillance apparatus, captured them. In less than an hour, his mother received a call from the school principal, who informed her that their technology had captured her son making a threat. Despite her explanations that it was a joke and not a serious threat—and despite N. M.’s spotless disciplinary record—he was suspended. When the family’s appeals failed, they sued. The case is currently before a state trial court in Arizona.
