Digitally Damning a Student’s Future with Old Data
You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.
—Johnny Cash
Some colleges and universities are now collecting sophisticated data about a student’s past performance and using it for what is called “predictive analysis” which has the potential to stigmatize students and sort them into categories of success or failure.
While this is only happening in a few colleges and universities, my guess is that it’s a matter of time before we see such a program used in the K-12 setting.
Predictive analysis includes past data collected on the student that they might not even know about! It combines all this information together into a report.
The claim is that such information assists in pinpointing problems and steering students in the right direction—to determine if they can do well in college. The catch is that this will only happen if adults with a good background and preparation in understanding this information are there to assist students.
Without the personal human element, such information will only unfairly sort and stigmatize individuals. Students will be labeled failures by a digital program devised by those outside of the child’s life who don’t know the student!
Most teachers like to give new students a clean slate when they enter the classroom. Even if a student has had behavioral or learning difficulties in the past, we still like to Digitally Damning a Student’s Future with Old Data:
