Emily Hays file photo
Computer work in class, now monitored ...
GogGuardian image
... thanks to NHPS's adoption of GoGuardian.
Watching YouTube or surfing the Web during class? Better watch out: New Haven public school teachers can now look at what students are up to on their computers when they should be doing school work, thanks to a recently adopted classroom online surveillance program primed for a three-year run.
That computer program, called GoGuardian, was at the center of the latest regular monthly meeting of the Board of Alders Finance Committee. The virtual meeting took place online via Zoom.
The Board of Education seeks to enter into a three-year contract with the California-based ed-tech company for the period covering July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2024.
The contract would come at an annual cost of $70,620 for a total of 22,000 licenses, for a total three-year cost of $211,860. The cost of those software licenses, in turn, would be covered by the school system’s federal pandemic-relief ESSER II grant money.
Because the Board of Alders has final say over all multi-year contracts, the proposed three-year accord came to the Finance Committee at the Monday night meeting.
It will next be taken up by the full city legislature during the Board of Alders meeting scheduled for Feb. 22. (The committee alders took no vote on the proposed contract Monday night, a procedural move that allows the full board to expedite a final debate and vote on the matter at its next regularly scheduled meeting.)
New Haven Public Schools IT Director Gildemar Herrera told the committee alders Monday night that, even though this proposed three-year deal with GoGuardian is still pending before the local legislature, the public school system has already started using the program.
That means NHPS teachers today can use the “classroom management tool” to watch what students are doing on their computers while those students are logged into their NHPS Google Classroom accounts.
“We have provided more than 35,000 devices to students” over the course of the pandemic, Herrera noted.
Even with students back in-person in school, they still use laptops and Chromebooks and other Internet-accessible devices every day in the classroom.
“Teachers need the ability to monitor and keep kids on task.”
That’s where GoGuardian comes in.
She said the application allows the school system and teachers to monitor what students are doing on their computers while they are logged in to their NHPS Google Classroom accounts.
So the teacher can see if a student is on YouTube or Instagram, for example, and then let that student know that they need to close out those tabs and get back to work.
East Rock Alder Anna Festa pressed on potential privacy concerns from widespread use of this classroom-surveillance software.
Indeed, as GoGuardian has been adopted by more and more school systems across the country during the pandemic, the software has sparked controversy over just how tightly monitored and controlled student computer activity should be while in class.
Click here for a recent deep dive on the program by Bloomberg CityLab. And click here to read a September 2021 letter written by U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal, Elizabeth Warren, and Ed Markey to the CEO of GuGuardian, voicing concerns about algorithm-driven surveillance of student online activity. According to the Bloomberg article, GoGuardian responded to the senators’ critique by saying that the company cares “deeply about keeping students safe and protecting their privacy.”
Is this program in place only on school-issued devices? East Rock Alder Anna Festa asked.
Not exactly, Herrera said.
“It’s an enclosed application” that lets teachers monitor student activity on their computers regardless of whether or not the actual device belongs to the school system or to the student.
The limiting factor, she said, is whether or not a student is logged into their NHPS Google Classroom account. If so, then a teacher can monitor their activities through GoGuardian. If not, then they can’t.
Herrera said NHPS’s GoGuardian program also automatically turns off after 4 p.m., so students don’t have to worry about being monitored after school.
“It’s not the device itself,” she said. “This is monitoring that Google Classroom. If a student is doing things outside of Google Classroom,” that’s not being monitored by GoGuardian.
“We’re not monitoring your personal Yahoo,” Herrera said. “We don’t do that.”
And this software is currently being used by NHPS? Prospect Hill/Newhallville Alder Steve Winter asked.
“Yes,” Herrera replied. “That’s how we monitor the students as we speak.”
The school system has already started using it as part of the first year of its three-year contract with GoGuardian, even though that contract has not yet received final approval by the Board of Alders.
What are the procedures around this kind of sole-source contract? Winter asked.
“There was a need,” Herrera said. “During Covid, we had a need to monitor the students, because a lot of inappropriate comments were going on … It was how we wanted to implement the curriculum and keep the kids on task.”
She said teachers “were asking” for a program like this.
Now, thanks to GoGuardan, “if a student is watching YouTube, the teacher can see it and shut it down.”
Teacher Union Prez: Center Trust
Asked for her take on the school system’s adoption of this classroom-surveillance tech, teachers union President Leslie Blatteau said she could see how GoGuardian could be a useful tool for some teachers in their efforts to keep a class full of 26 students on task.
But she envisioned it more of a “last resort tool,” not something the school system should lean on as a primary driver of public education.
“Our end goal should be investment money so that class sizes are lower,” she said. “Our end goal should be providing more professional development to teachers so we can invest in more high-quality in-person learning opportunities,” and not just default to screen time all the time.
Blatteau said that she personally has never used GoGuardian in her Metropolitan Business Academy classroom. She has never spoken with fellow teachers about this program. Nor does she recall teachers being asked at the distrctwide level: Is this something we should spend money on?
“We want students to be able to develop intrinsic motivation and self-control on their own eventually,” she said. That in part means centering trust between students and teachers.
She said she worries that computer-monitoring programs like GoGuardian “could impact trust” through amped-up surveillance.
“What can we do where trust is centered?” she asked. “Where class sizes are lowered? Where there are more adults who know students and have conversations with students?”
There has been lots of research about this and this kind of thing does not promote autonomy, self control, or real learning. Waste of tax dollars. Also, panopticon much?