Recommendations for School Districts – Public Interest Privacy Center

Part IV: Recommendations

How to Reduce Risks, Ensure Equity, and Protect Student Privacy when Implementing Self-Harm Monitoring Programs

As schools and districts attempt to protect students amid the strains of the pandemic on student well-being, education stakeholders should remember that privacy protections can enhance mental health support programs by encouraging students to feel they can safely ask adults for help because they know that the information shared will remain confidential.

Before adopting monitoring technology, schools and districts should understand key facts about how the technology works, how its implementation may impact students with mental health needs or disabilities, and how to prioritize student privacy within their programs.

To foster a healthy school environment that strives to ensure students’ mental well-being, schools must ensure that students and their communities support using monitoring systems for this purpose and are aware of how the program affects them and their associated rights. To create self-harm monitoring programs with those protections, schools and districts can take the following steps:

Develop a firm understanding of community values surrounding mental health, self-harm, and monitoring by creating a dialogue with the school community prior to adopting any monitoring program. If a monitoring system has already been adopted without seeking input from students and families, school leaders should begin to convene regular opportunities for student and family feedback on the district’s monitoring policies, solicit community input on a regular basis as they periodically review the monitoring policy, and incorporate this input in periodic updates to the policy. If students and families are not aware of how and why they are being monitored, self-harm monitoring will feel like an administrative overstep and breach of trust. Students and families will be most affected by any self-harm monitoring program and should accordingly be centered and involved in developing their school district’s monitoring plans and processes. Efforts to include the school community will help build trust, support, and transparency. This will ultimately increase student well-being and safety.
Create trust among students and families by providing transparency about monitoring programs and practices. When considering online monitoring programs, schools should clearly define and communicate which information and activities the programs will track and why, who will have access to the information collected, how that information will be used, and how long it will be stored.
School and district leaders should ensure that all school personnel understand student data privacy as a fundamental right, including in the context of self-harm monitoring programs. Districts should ensure that all educators know the requirements of FERPA, particularly its rules on sharing student information in health or safety emergencies.
To fully protect student privacy, schools should do more than simply comply with the law; they should also establish careful privacy protocols and practices to build trust with their stakeholders and communities. In particular, districts and schools should consider incorporating the Principles for School Safety, Privacy, and Equity into their safety policies. Written by 40 education, privacy, disability rights, and civil rights organizations, these ten principles are designed to protect students’ privacy, dignity, and right to an equal education. Several of the principles directly address issues relevant to mental health needs, such as the need to focus on prevention; to use monitoring programs that encourage evidence-based rather than knee-jerk responses; to use programs that include appropriate privacy protections; to provide mental health and behavioral services; and to avoid discriminatory practices and unnecessary involvement of law enforcement.

Before implementing self-harm monitoring programs, school district leaders need to consider many privacy, equity, and practical concerns. The extent to which such technology can filter and monitor students’ online lives raises critical questions about students’ rights to privacy and how much schools should access students’ personal information. Scanning and monitoring all website activity, documents, searches, social media, emails, and online chats can make students feel excessively surveilled by their school, while inappropriately sharing and responding to student information collected from self-harm monitoring can put students’ well-being at risk. Individual districts and states can and should set their own policies of whether and how to monitor students. However, privacy guardrails must be drawn so students and families can be reassured that their rights will be protected. It is imperative that school districts approach any self-harm monitoring system holistically, taking into account the totality of harms that could arise from hastily adopting technology without well-developed implementation policies and the necessary accompanying school-based mental health resources.

Key Questions School Districts Should Ask Monitoring Vendors Before Adopting a Monitoring Program

If school and district leaders are considering adopting self-harm monitoring software, we recommend they ask the software vendors the following key questions:

Can the vendor demonstrate the efficacy of its product?

Vendors of self-harm monitoring systems claim that their programs can prevent children from harming themselves.¹⁴⁵ What is the rate of false positives? What independent evaluations have they employed? What is the science and research behind their product? A best practice is for vendors to have their products evaluated by a third party to verify their claims about what the products can do. Otherwise, it will be difficult to know whether the product is an appropriate choice to help detect student self-harm and a worthy investment for schools.

How does the monitoring system generate and send alerts? Who is alerted?

What criteria is used to determine when students should be flagged? What control does the school have over this criteria? Does the monitoring company use an automated system to send alerts to school officials whenever a student has been flagged? Are there personnel in the monitoring company that review flagged material prior to initiating alerts about the student in question? If the software determines that someone is an imminent threat, there should be an established process for alerting the school. Who is designated to receive alert notifications? Is it more than one person? What are the qualifications for those notified? How are escalations handled? Are parents notified? Under what, if any, circumstances will law enforcement be notified?

What content does the monitoring system review?

Different monitoring systems can access and review a variety of materials, ranging from web searches to emails but also chats, collaborative documents, and social media. What content does the technology access? Is this content necessary, appropriate, and useful for the school to scan? Is content scanned 24-7, or is it only scanned during school hours? Is content only scanned on school devices, or also on personal devices if students are logged into their school accounts at home?

How long does the vendor and the school retain the data?

Schools should know whether vendors delete students’ data immediately after an incident is acknowledged, annually, after students graduate, or at a specified point thereafter. Sometimes, self-harm monitoring companies want to use the data to improve their algorithms. However, schools should ask and know how long the information remains identifiable and traceable to students. Similarly, school districts should develop retention and deletion schedules for the student information they receive through self-harm monitoring and plan to delete information on a regular basis.

If a system uses keywords and categories to provide alerts, are they appropriate and useful for the purpose of self-harm monitoring?

It is important to consider whether the software’s goals align with those of the school and community. If vendors extend their keywords to include terms related to sexual orientation or gender identity, for example, what is their reason for doing so? How is this flag relevant for detecting risks of self harm? Flagging such keywords can accidentally expose a student who is not ready or safe to disclose such information, without serving the goal of monitoring for mental health crises. Furthermore, will the software send an alert if a student simply posts a word such as “sad” or uses profanity? Schools should remember that their goal is to keep students safe from self-harm and should refrain from tracking and flagging sensitive topics that have nothing to do with children’s safety and mental health.

How does the monitoring system recognize context?

Monitoring systems cannot understand all the context and slang of different age groups from various communities across the nation. How will a system know whether a word is part of a song lyric or whether students are simply joking? Does the system process and rule out irrelevant flags, or are all flags forwarded to the school for evaluation? Does the school have the ability to adjust the alerts, for example alerting on self harm, but not profanity? Since these alerts could trigger serious consequences, it is important that vendors broadly examine the context of a post rather than simply flagging keywords. Likewise, schools should take into account and examine these processes when deciding whether to adopt a monitoring system and selecting a vendor.

How does the vendor process student content in non-English languages?

In many communities across the nation, some students and families are not fluent English speakers, may speak English as a second language, or speak multiple languages. It is impossible for vendors to have accurate translation software for all languages. In these cases, vendors must refrain from flagging content in non-English languages if the vendors and schools do not have personnel who are professionally fluent in those languages and can accurately assess whether the content represents a risk. This practice ensures that monitoring systems do not falsely target student content in non-English languages as a result of mistranslations and do not needlessly subject such students to the potential risks and harms associated with being flagged. Schools and vendors must ensure the trust and safety of the entire community by ensuring the monitoring system does not unfairly target students simply for speaking other languages.

How does the monitoring system interpret pictures?

It is possible that students could share posts in the form of a picture or video. In these cases, will the system also review student content that is not text-based? How will the system determine whether the content is threatening self-harm? Will students’ pictures or videos be shared with personnel at the monitoring company if they are flagged? Will they be shared with school personnel?

Does the monitoring system match students with their schools on social media, and if so, how?

There are several ways that vendors can match students to particular school districts. For example, they can identify the users who follow a school’s social media account and then identify the friends of those users. Another method is geofencing, defined as a virtual boundary around a real-life geographical area. Applied to self-harm monitoring, geofencing allows vendors to know which students attend certain schools by identifying active accounts on school grounds. For both these methods, schools should understand whether and how the vendor gathers information from private accounts and clearly communicate these practices to students and families. Before engaging with vendors that track student social media or use geofencing, schools should determine whether their community is comfortable with these forms of self-harm monitoring.

When, if ever, does the vendor turn over data to law enforcement?

Special provisions under FERPA limit which sort of information schools can forward to law enforcement and under what circumstances. For example, under FERPA, an education vendor may share FERPA-protected data with law enforcement in order to comply with a subpoena or court order, but the school must first make reasonable efforts to notify the parent prior to sharing the data. School districts should read vendors’ terms of service closely to ensure that vendors do not have the authority to independently mark a situation as an emergency and turn monitoring information over to law enforcement without school involvement.

Checklist for School Districts Developing Monitoring Plans and Policies

Before adopting any monitoring technology, school officials and policymakers should ensure they have thoughtful policies surrounding the use of this technology that prevents unintended privacy violations, centers equity for all students, and clearly regulates the follow-up practices when students are flagged by the software.

School officials should ensure their monitoring plan and associated mental health policies:

are based on tools and methods that have been independently validated and endorsed by mental health researchers and professionals, based on robust peer-reviewed and published medical evidence.
are based on a needs assessment that defines specific, clear goals for adopting a monitoring system and establishes the need that the monitoring system will fulfill.
are developed within the framework of existing school-based mental health resources and professionals (school psychologists, counselors, and social workers) that are able to provide support to any students who may be identified.
have been transparently developed in consultation with experts and community stakeholders, particularly families, students, and teachers.
have clear policies on which data are collected, who has access to them, how they will be used, and when they will be destroyed.
have clear policies on how to act upon data collected via student monitoring.
have clear policies on how school staff will review student information flagged by monitoring and who determines whether a flag is indicative of a true risk of self harm.
have clear follow-up policies on how school staff will respond to monitoring flags that they do deem indicative of a true risk of self harm and how they will respond to flagged information that they determine is innocuous.
have clear policies on sharing data, particularly limitations on sharing with school resource officers, law enforcement, and administration beyond the school level.
make all of the policies easily available and accessible to students and parents in the Student Handbook/Code of Conduct and on the school website, and available in multiple languages.
are transparent and understandable to school staff, families, and students.
include a robust training program for school officials responsible for handling sensitive student data.
have policies, including clear consequences, for individuals who violate data protection and sharing protocols.
do not stigmatize or reinforce biases against any groups of students based on race, religion, gender, disability status, sexual orientation, or other legally protected characteristics.
provide opportunities for recourse for students identified as a threat or at risk of self-harm, including access to the information used to identify them and an opportunity to dispute findings..
are compliant with all federal and state laws and protections, including FERPA, the ADA, Section 504, Title VI, and Title IX.
are reviewed regularly to verify that it protects student safety and to ensure that unnecessary surveillance is discontinued.
are reviewed prior to adoption and periodically after adoption to audit for civil rights and privacy rights compliance.

Conclusion

In addition to understanding the privacy and equity risks, school and district leaders should also be aware of the many practical challenges involved in implementing self-harm monitoring. As discussed above, the efficacy of monitoring technologies for reducing self-harm has not been fully evaluated and the technologies have not been substantiated by mental health professionals or clinicians as an effective tool for addressing mental health crises. Beyond questions about the initial accuracy of identifying students in need of support, there are practical challenges to this identification actually leading to the students receiving support, including the widespread lack of qualified mental health personnel in schools. Flagging at-risk students can only be useful if effective follow-up plans and mental health resources are in place for the identified students.

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All Resources

Additional Resources for Schools Developing Policies on Monitoring

FPF Resources:

School Safety & Privacy: An Animated Introduction
- This short video explores some technologies that schools use or are considering, privacy harms that can result from surveillance, and basic steps to help districts safeguard students’ privacy.
Principles for School Safety, Privacy, and Equity
- Written by 40 education, privacy, disability rights, and civil rights organizations, these principals are designed to protect students’ privacy, dignity, and right to an equal education
Ensuring School Safety While Also Protecting Privacy
- This blog post highlights key recommendations from FPF’s testimony before the Federal Commission on Student Safety.
Reopening Schools Issue Brief: Online Monitoring & COVID-19
- This brief covers the issues surrounding online monitoring during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Student Privacy and Special Education: An Educator’s Guide During and After COVID-19
- Co-written by FPF and the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD), this report serves as a guide for educators in navigating the legal and ethical best practices for students both during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
The Privacy Expert’s Guide to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
- This report is an introductory guide to understanding the basics of artificial intelligence and machine learning as they relate to privacy.
Surveillance Won’t Save Our Kids, Humane Public Policy Can
- This blog outlines arguments against surveillance in schools, followed by alternative policy approaches.
Surveillance Won’t Save Our Kids, Humane Public Policy Can
- This blog outlines arguments against surveillance in schools, followed by alternative policy approaches.
A Closer Look: Network Monitoring. This brief covers the issue of network monitoring in schools, supplemented by both FPF and external resources.
School Safety Measures Must Have Evidence, Be Specific, & Have Privacy and Equity Guardrails. This brief discusses the balance between managing school safety and student privacy in schools in a way that minimizes student harm.
The Student Privacy Communications Toolkit.
This provides resources for school districts developing their student privacy approach.

Additional Resources:

School Surveillance: The Consequences for Equity and Privacy. This publication by the National Association of State Boards of Education recommends key privacy principles in the context of surveillance technologies, including minimization, proportionality, transparency, openness, empowerment, equity, and training.
BluePrints for Healthy Youth Development. Provides a comprehensive registry of scientifically proven and scalable evidence-based interventions to promote youth development and health, including mental health. School and education leaders can refer to the BluePrints program search to find evidence-based and independently validated strategies for preventing student self-harm and improving student mental health.
Children and the Internet: Laws Relating to Filtering, Blocking and Usage Policies in Schools and Libraries. This resource by the National Conference of State Legislatures gives a description of all the state laws that govern children’s use of the Internet.
Fencing Out Knowledge. This report by the American Library Association details findings that schools and libraries nationwide are filtering out more of the Internet than what is necessary by law.
Student Surveillance, Racial Inequalities, and Implicit Racial Bias. This journal article by Jason P. Nance discusses the implications of student surveillance on perpetuating racial inequalities in schools.
Mixed Messages? The Limits of Automated Social Media Content Analysis. This report by the Center for Democracy and Technology discusses the limitations of social media analysis, with recommendations for policymakers on how to govern the use of these tools.
Under Digital Surveillance: How American Schools Spy on Millions of Kids. This piece by The Guardian unpacks the prevalence of surveillance in schools and how this could negatively impact students’ success.
Schools Are Deploying Massive Digital Surveillance Systems. The Results Are Alarming. This piece in Education Week discusses the use and potential avenues for abuse of surveillance systems in schools
Student Privacy in Massachusetts K-12 Schools. This report by the ACLU of Massachusetts outlines best practices and recommendations for Massachusetts public schools to balance technology use with student privacy.
Smart Investments for Safer Schools. This piece by the Center for American Progress outlines previous responses to bolster school safety and how certain initiatives, while well intentioned, are not always in the best interest of students.
SAMHSA’s Evidence-Based Practices Resource Center. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration provides resources that schools may use to seek evidence-based strategies to address student mental health issues.
Mixed Messages? The Limits of Automated Social Media Content Analysis. To understand the practical limitations of social media monitoring technology, schools and districts can consult the Center for Democracy & Technology report, which comprehensively examines the limitations of social media content analysis, lists questions to help organizations evaluate tools, and offers recommendations
Healthy People 2020 Data. Having an adult that a youth or child can talk to is part of Healthy People 2020, which outlines the U.S. government’s national health goals.
Best Practices for Serving LGBTQ Students. This report and toolkit by Learning for Justice provides best practices for educators to ensure that school policies support the mental health and well-being of LGBTQ students, and provides recommendations school leaders can follow to ensure use of a monitoring system does not inadvertently expose LGBTQ students to harm. Ensuring an inclusive and safe school climate for LGBTQ students helps reduce and prevent mental health challenges for this vulnerable group of students without relying on invasive monitoring.
Developing Policy to Prevent Youth Suicide. This policy brief by the National Association of State Boards of Education provides guidance for education leaders developing model student suicide prevention policies.
Student Activity Monitoring Software: Research Insights and Recommendations.
The Center of Democracy & Technology (CDT) performed a survey of teachers, parents, and students about their experiences with, and attitudes toward, monitoring software.
Online and Observed: Student Privacy Implications of School-Issued Devices and Student Activity Monitoring Software.
CDT interviewed nine individuals from five local education agencies about how schools could address privacy concerns arising from the use of monitoring software.