Chinese school's facial recognition scans students every 30 seconds - Business Insider

Chinese school's facial recognition scans students every 30 seconds - Business Insider

A school in China is monitoring students with facial-recognition technology that scans the classroom every 30 seconds

Visitors viewing a display of electronic facial-recognition technology that claims to be able to detect when students are talking or looking at their cellphones at the 21st China Beijing International High-tech Expo in Beijing. AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

• A Chinese high school in Hangzhou is using facial-recognition technology that scans students every 30 seconds.
• The system is analyzing students' emotions and actions in the classroom as well as replacing ID cards and wallets at the library and canteen.
• Facial-recognition technology is widespread in China, where it is being used to predict crime.
• But using the systems in schools has raised privacy concerns, and last year hundreds of channels livestreaming classroom surveillance footage online was shut down.

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A Chinese high school is using facial-recognition technology to monitor and analyze students' behavior.

The technology scans classrooms at Hangzhou No. 11 High School every 30 seconds and records students' facial expressions, categorizing them into happy, angry, fearful, confused, or upset. The system also records student actions such as writing, reading, raising a hand, and sleeping at a desk.

The "intelligent classroom behavior management system," according to Global Times, also records students' attendance, and students' faces are used to pay for canteen lunches and to borrow items from the library.

The school's vice principal said students' privacy was protected because the technology didn't save images from the classroom and stored data on a local server rather than on the cloud.

Last year the Chinese company Qihoo 360 shut down hundreds of its surveillance livestreaming channels after an uptick in privacy concerns. The channels streamed camera footage from several public locations including swimming pools, restaurants, and classrooms — the latter protected only by a password.

But security systems are rising in popularity after an increase in violence and questionable practices at Chinese kindergartens. In Beijing, all kindergartens are now required to have surveillance systems, some of which are even connected to local policemonitoring systems. Continue reading: Chinese school's facial recognition scans students every 30 seconds - Business Insider

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Education Underfunding Tops $19 Billion over Decade of Neglect | #AFT2018 #RedForEd #IamAFT @aft @AFSCME @NEAToday @SEIU

Education Underfunding Tops $19 Billion over Decade of Neglect | American Federation of Teachers

Education Underfunding Tops $19 Billion over Decade of Neglect

PITTSBURGH—Governments in 25 states have shortchanged public K-12 education by $19 billion over the last decade, with low-tax Republican states guilty of the worst underfunding, a groundbreaking report by the American Federation of Teachers, released today, reveals.

“A Decade of Neglect: Public Education Funding in the Aftermath of the Great Recession” details for the first time the devastating impact on schools, classrooms and students when states choose to pursue an austerity agenda in the false belief that tax cuts will pay for themselves.

The comprehensive report offers a deep dive into the long-term austerity agendas and historic disinvestment that sparked the wave of nationwide walkouts this spring.

Among the findings: K-12 education is drastically underfunded in every single state in the United States. When you control for inflation, there are 25 states that spent less on K-12 education in 2016 than they did prior to the recession. But there are signs of the negative impact of austerity even in states with relatively stronger investment in schools.

Chronic underfunding explains why, in 38 states, the average teacher salary is lower in 2018 than it was in 2009, and why the pupil-teacher ratio was worse in 35 states in 2016 than in 2008.

While the recession may have forced budget cuts on our schools, the report exposes how Republican legislators and governors prolonged the damage by cutting taxes for the rich at the expense of public schools.

A majority of Americans instead support repealing tax cuts for the rich and using that money to invest in education, infrastructure and healthcare.

The report measures each state’s “tax effort”—that is, how much they tax, compared with how rich they are. Of the 25 states with the worst K-12 funding, 18 of them have taxed their residents less since the recession. Five of the 11 states with the lowest K-12 funding—Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas—are also among those with the lowest taxes on the rich.

The problem only gets worse in higher education, where 41 states spent less per student, creating a massive affordability and accessibility gap. This explains why tuition and fees for a two-year degree in 2017 rose at three times the rate of inflation when compared with 2008, and why the cost of a four-year degree rose even higher, putting college woefully out of reach for far too many Americans.

“These problems belong squarely at the feet of elected officials, many of them Republicans, who rather than investing in our future, insisted on ushering in counterproductive austerity,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “When legislators choose to prioritize millionaires over children, our country suffers. And when our education secretary says that money doesn’t matter in schools, we tell teachers, parents and children that they don’t matter either.”

The report was accompanied by a key resolution, passed by delegates today at the AFT’s biennial convention, to turn the data into action. “The Fight for Investment in Our Future and the Fight Against Austerity” states, in part, that the AFT “will … investigate legislative, policy and grass-roots solutions to increase investment in public services, including the identification of new revenue streams,” and “will work to channel the activism we are witnessing across the country in this moment into a movement for enduring change by electing pro-public education, pro-worker candidates in November.”

Read the full report here.

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The AFT represents 1.7 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; nurses and healthcare workers; and early childhood educators.

Education Underfunding Tops $19 Billion over Decade of Neglect | American Federation of Teachers

'We're militant again': US teachers at convention galvanized by wave of strikes | US news | The Guardian

'We're militant again': US teachers at convention galvanized by wave of strikes | US news | The Guardian

'We're militant again': US teachers at convention galvanized by wave of strikes
Thousands of teachers gathered in Pittsburgh to discuss plan of action for new school year after strikes over pay and conditions

View All AFT Convention 2018 Videos HERE

Thousands of teachers gathered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, this weekend for the American Federation of Teachers’ convention and to discuss a plan of action for the new school year after a series of extraordinary strikes across the US over pay and conditions.

The convention comes as the teachers’ union movement has been galvanized by a wave of strikes, mainly in traditionally Republican states. At the same time, public sector unions are facing a brand new assault on their finances after the supreme court ruled in June that public sector employees in unionized workplaces can opt out of paying union dues. 

Addressing the meeting on Friday, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said: “We have to gear up again, because the challenges we face now are truly unlike any we have seen for some time.”

However, teachers gathered in Pittsburgh say that instead of being deterred by the attacks on them that the attacks have forced their union’s member to re-engage more in order to keep members from leaving their unions.

“Whose schools? Our schools,” cried out Chicago Teachers Union vice-president Jesse Sharkey as thousands of teachers poured out of the David L Lawrence convention center and into the blistering heat of Pittsburgh’s streets.

“We are all militant again, we will all go to jail if we have to,” said Robert Russo, a teacher union leader from New Jersey who served 15 days in jail in 1970 for his role in an illegal teachers strike. “They are taking away rights, they are taking away everything we have worked for years and people are very invigorated.”

Despite school being out for the summer, teachers around the country aren’t taking a break. They are mobilizing support for more teachers strikes in states across the country including in Louisiana, where a survey of 3,800 teachers in May performed by the union showed that 61% of teachers supported a strike. Continue Reading: 'We're militant again': US teachers at convention galvanized by wave of strikes | US news | The Guardian

View All AFT Convention 2018 Videos HERE

AP Analysis: Billionaires fuel powerful state charter groups

AP Analysis: Billionaires fuel powerful state charter groups

AP Analysis: Billionaires fuel powerful state charter groups

SEATTLE (AP) — Dollar for dollar, the beleaguered movement to bring charter schools to Washington state has had no bigger champion than billionaire Bill Gates.

The Microsoft co-founder gave millions of dollars to see a charter school law approved despite multiple failed ballot referendums. And his private foundation not only helped create the Washington State Charter Schools Association, but has at times contributed what amounts to an entire year’s worth of revenues for the 5-year-old charter advocacy group.

All told, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given about $25 million to the charter group that is credited with keeping the charter schools open after the state struck down the law, and then lobbying legislators to revive the privately run, publicly funded schools.

It’s an extreme example of how billionaires are influencing state education policy by giving money to state-level charter support organizations to sustain, defend and expand the charter schools movement across the country.

Since 2006, philanthropists and their private foundations and charities have given almost half a billion dollars to those groups, according to an Associated Press analysis of tax filings and Foundation Center data. The review looked at 52 groups noted by a U.S. Department of Education website as official charter school resources in the 44 states plus Washington, D.C., that currently have a charter law, as well as the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Most of the money has gone to the top 15 groups, which received $425 million from philanthropy. The Walton Family Foundation, run by the heirs to the Walmart fortune, is the largest donor to the state charter advocates, giving $144 million to 27 groups.

“We ought to be paying more attention to who these organizations are, and what kind of vision they have, and what drives them. A lot of these organizations have extraordinary influence, and it’s often pretty quiet influence,” said Jon Valant, an education policy expert at Brookings.

Charters aren’t subject to the same rules or standards governing traditional public schools but are embraced by Gates and other philanthropists who see them as investments in developing better and different ways to educate those who struggle in traditional school systems, particularly children in poor, urban areas. Studies on academic success are mixed.

The charter support groups, as nonprofits, are typically forbidden from involvement in political campaigns, but the same  Continue reading: AP Analysis: Billionaires fuel powerful state charter groups