RFID Chips for school badges

From other articles Ive read on this, I believe originally the school said they would give her a badge without an RFID but they had to agree to not tell anyone of the arrangement and not go public with their disapproval of the system.

Once kids have to be tracked with RFID, it would be simple to track their movements pretty much anywhere.  For example, you could hide a reader near a bathroom and then be notified anytime a geek that needs a swirly walks in.

Easy?  Yes.  Inexpensive?  No.

We use RFID on many of our machines.

You have to have a RFID reader at each point of interest.  RFID only displays presence or absence (plus some other encoded info like name or serial # etc..). 

So if you have one large reader in a courtyard it'll tell you the person is in that courtyard but not WHERE in the courtyard.  You need more readers the more precise you want to become. (There is some facy ways to use triangulations to narrow down the locations but we're talking big bucks now.)

It's not an expense that our schools should be investing in.  Buy more books or computers (or teachers) for goodness sakes.

The girl’s father, Steven, wrote the school district explaining why removing the chip wasn’t good enough, that the daughter should be free from displaying the card altogether. “‘We must obey the word of God,” the father said, according to court documents. “By asking my daughter and our family to participate and fall in line like the rest of them is asking us to disobey our Lord and Savior.”

Just quoting for hilarity.

Why not just microchip them at birth?  My dogs don't seem to mind...

Seriously though, the tracking is a bit weird.  I wouldn't be all up in arms about it but I would rather see an actual human out there monitoring the kids.  What really is the issue with it?  To further what the OP was saying, we all have drivers licenses.  I would guess the majority of us have some form of work ID, mine even lets me in doors and gates and doesn't work in places I'm not supposed to go.  What's the difference really?

Yeeeeeeaaaaaa Booooooooyyyyyyyy!

I do not see anything wrong with this, in theory, as a way to monitor student attendance and location. If this is a system which can be accessed securely and remotely image how it could help in case of an emergency. a simple check of the system and firefighters could see that someone went into a restroom/classroom/the school etc but never came out. I also have no problem requiring students to display their id on them. This help identify them to staff who may not know them.

in practice though the system could be easily duped and mis-used if someone wanted to skip class or not show up they can just hand their card to a friend and be on their way.

Glory be to Chuck D.