Facial recognition technology is being banned at some public and private elementary and secondary schools, including charter schools, across New York state.
The order issued by state Education Commissioner Betty Rosa in late September gives schools more freedom in using biometric identifying technology. A 2020 moratorium banned the use of all biometric technology in schools. Biometric technology refers to “any measurable physical, physiological or behavior characteristics” including fingerprinting, gait analysis, and facial characteristics.
The Education Department’s Chief Privacy Information Officer Louise DeCandia says the technology is far from perfect.
“Just has a lot of false positives, identifying people of color, in particular, and then even older women, children, could be transgender students. So, anybody who is a sort of middle-aged white person could fall into a false positive with the facial recognition technology and this has long been documented a problem,” she said. “And our report cites too many studies that have been done documenting this problem.”
A report released in August by the state’s Office of Information Technology Services found that the benefits of using facial recognition technology do not outweigh the risks. But DeCandia says that doesn’t mean the technology will be banned forever.
“One day if the technology can prove itself and be more acceptable and not have the false positive issues it has today it may be revisited and it may be allowed in schools,” DeCandia said. “Obviously right now people are talking about AI, so technology is always improving and we’re always trying to stay on top of how we can get guidance to schools and a system with these new technologies.”
The first-of-its-kind legislation came after four families from Lockport in Western New York sued NYSED in 2020. Stefanie Coyle is the Deputy Director of the Education Policy Center for the New York Civil Liberties Union, which helped the families bring the lawsuit.
“Why would we need to collect students’ sensitive information and potentially subject it to hacking?” Coyle said. “And also, continue to make students feel like they’re constantly being surveilled. They have to get their fingerprints taken, someone is watching how they’re walking, all those sorts of things. Like, those are things we should not be subjecting our children to.”
The NYCLU lost the lawsuit but ultimately gained what it was asking for— the banning of biometric data in schools.
Coyle says Lockport families are heartened by the state’s decision.
“They were concerned about the invasion of privacy and violations of their students’ civil rights and concern about hacking,” Coyle said. “And all of those concerns were validated by that report and now with the commissioner's determination.”
Coyle says in a world growing more dependent on advanced technology, it’s important to retain some barriers.
“We’re in an evolving world and it’s important for students to learn how to use computers and, you know, other sort of instructional technology,” Coyle said. “But I think the key distinction here is that we don’t need to collect students’ sensitive biometric information in order to have them to access their education.”
Jianwei Zhang is an expert in AI technology for education at the University at Albany. He says while there are many benefits to using biometric data in schools, educators should remain cautious.
“We should limit the use of it unless we see some really creative and powerful use of that for benefit, for real benefit to learners,” Zhang said. “The one thing that may be like a special, like I can make a case is school safety. I know some schools are facing this concerns on safety, gun shooting, and they may be like, for safety, security purpose, I think there may be some way to use especially for management, not necessarily student visitors.”
Despite the move to limit AI use in schools today, researchers expect benefits in education to grow with technology. Zhang points to the ability to pave the way for more inclusive learning methods.
“Creating new opportunities for them to work with knowledge more deeply,” Zhang said. “I think, for example, we have seen examples of AI’s for improving writing. I think that's probably a good example available already. And AI can also be a partner for helping students learn how to communicate, and work on a team.”
Zhang adds that the benefits of AI could increase productive class time.
“Teachers are very busy,” Zhang said. “They're doing a lot of work every day. Some of the work is just tedious work – paperwork and procedural work. And with AI tools, possibly those kinds of tedious work can be taken care of by some technologies apart so teachers can really do their favorite part of being a teacher.”
But Zhang says schools looking to implement the technology would need to hire a specialist to work with the technology in an effort to properly comb through the data.