[ocdtrekkie]

So, if your child goes to a school which has "gone Google", personal information about your student is sent to Google without your consent, and their sole path to success depends on interacting with and sending more data to Google. Students are often required to purchase[1], carry, and use Google-controlled hardware daily as part of their routine.

The student has no choice (and no chance at privacy), because the decision was made for them by a school administrator who was excited about getting $100 laptops in bulk.

It's hard to imagine a more exciting situation to be in if you're Google or Microsoft: You have guaranteed customers who literally are required to buy their products. They're forced to buy in, year after year. And the further the buy-in, the further a school system has invested into Google or Microsoft's education platform, the less ability they have to pivot, since the devices they bought are locked to those platforms, the software they're using is running on those platforms' cloud servers, their curriculum is tied to those platforms, etc.

I think the pox here we need to deal with is vertical integration. We need to put an end to the concept of a single company selling you hardware, providing the software, and locking you in on services.

A fun similar racket is body cams: Taser will give a police department free body cams for every officer, so, you know, nobody has an excuse not to have body cams, as far as the public sees. But those body cams only work with their cloud service (which isn't free), and thanks to the handy fact that evidence has to be retained for many years, Taser can effectively make it impossible to stop subscribing once a department signs up.

[1]The school may or may not purchase it for your student, but you paid for it in your taxes anyways.

[plussed_reader]

There are absolutely accommodations that can be made for parents who don't want certain aspects of the students data to enter the G Suite system. But you have to participate and engage with your district, and not just let the wheels of bureaucracy turn for new student enrollment.

[ocdtrekkie]

I'd be very curious what you mean here. I can definitely understand the possibility of being entered in under another name or the like, to try and avoid traditional PII, but students are supposed to complete and submit work through Google Classroom as well. Particularly in light of Google's AI work, things like an essay a student submitted is, at the very least, personal data, but very possibly, personally identifiable information. There is no realistic anonymity from just hiding someone's name.

I have significant doubts the school district is going to be particularly tolerant of "grade all students on Google Classrom, but this student needs to be graded by hand and recorded on paper" requests.

[joejerryronnie]

>[1]The school may or may not purchase it for your student, but you paid for it in your taxes anyways.

Unless your community has explicitly passed bonds earmarked for school district tech purchases, you’re not paying extra taxes for this. The district is making the decision to use existing funds for tech purchases rather than spending that money on something else. If you don’t agree with this allocation of funds, you are more than welcome to attend a school board meeting to voice your opinion.