Students Required to Carry GPS

This would make Ferris Bueller’s principal Ed Rooney happy. In an Anaheim, California, pilot program, seventh- and eighth-graders with four unexcused absences are assigned to carry a handheld GPS device and check in five times a day. The device, about the size of a phone, also reminds them to come to school each morning. And three times a week, an adult coach calls them to see how they’re doing and talk about how they're going to get to school on time. "The idea is for this not to feel like a punishment, but an intervention to help them develop better habits and get to school," said Miller Sylvan, regional director for AIM Truancy Solutions. It’s not the first time GPS devices have been used on students: In San Antonio and Baltimore, average attendance among the chronically truant went from 77 percent to 95 percent.