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Software to Predict "Troubled Youths"
Posted by
Hemos
on Sun Oct 24, 1999 12:47 PM
from the not-a-good-idea dept.
from the not-a-good-idea dept.
A reader writes "The Times is running this story which talks about a pilot program, called Mosiac 2000, for a software program which is supposed to vet how violent a person is. It's being rolled out to high schools around the United States (20 to start) as a test-bed, in anticipation of more schools getting on board. The program will be used to grade a person's potential for violence against others, and hopes to stop any future Columbines. " Stuff like this just gives me the willies - must everyone conform to one set standard? Just because I'm different doesn't mean I'm violent.
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Software to Predict "Troubled Youths"
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The software will make the decisions (Score:3)
> a decision maker
True. However, imagine having to defend yourself in court if you went against the "tools" advice.
``So you were noticed that he was a potential risk, but did nothing?'' Ordinary CYA procedure -- which is part of any administration -- will mean you have to take action when the tool claims there is a risk.
Yawn... (Score:3)
I'm tired of it. Yes, this is a tool that has the potential to cause great harm. But really, all it does is make observations based on trends. This is not inherently a bad thing!
Come on, people, get a grip. Yes, we are all individuals. Yes, there are exceptions to every rule. But statistical analysis is a valuable tool. In capable hands, a tool like this can be of immense help in dealing with a problematic child. It all depends on how it is used.
I don't think anyone is suggesting we just turn all decision making responsibility over to the program, and sit back and let it raise our children. Yes, there is cause for concern over abuse. But don't fly to the other extreme and jump up and cry foul at every corner!
--
Ian Peters
Mosaic-2000 (very long) (Score:3)
Apparently, it is being developed with the help and encouragement of the Beaurau of Alchohol, Tobacco and Firearms as well as the LA DA Gil Garcetti. It is being tested in a couple dozen schools.
Mosaic-2000 [gdbinc.com] is documented here, by it's creator and developer, 'parenting expert', Gavin De Becker.
According to Mosaic-2000's website:
MOSAIC-2000 cannot label anyone as anything. People unfamiliar with the method may jump to the worry that principals will use it to unfairly label kids, but the objective process resists bias. MOSAIC-2000 is vastly more likely give a low rating in a situation to which people are over-reacting - than to give a high rating in a situation people are not concerned about.
School administrators already label kids. This will simply provide a tool with which they can harass them and bring them to the attention of the district and other professionals. Are they going to use this 'tool' on the beer-drinking all-star quarterback who date-raped his last girlfriend and enjoys slamming the heads of freshmen into the wall? Will they use this on the home-coming-queen who is hiding bullemia and drinking to avoid her abusive parents and contemplating slitting her wrists? Probably not. But they may jump at the chance to use it on the kids who keep to themselves and spend most of their time reading and expressing themselves through their abrasive or depressing writing and 'odd' attire.
MOSAIC-2000 seeks to identify those students most in need of the interventions and resources that are available, and in the school setting, all appropriate intervention is good. In other words, if you happen to fit their specific profile of what a 'troubled student' is and this hunk of code shows that you meet the outline of a possible psycho-killer, you will probably be forced to undergo counseling, therapy, possibly even be weeded out to attend a 'special' school.
How many of us have been the victims of busy-body teachers? I certainly have. When I was in grade-school, I constantly had bruises on me because I also happened to be very active in wrestling and Judo. And because I spent most of my after-school time in sports, I had to bury myself in reading and writing at school -- just to keep up. This appeared to a certain teacher as a loner-child who keeps to himself and is abused at home. This teacher asked me about this and although I gave her my honest explanation, I was speaking with the school counselor by the end of the day, and by evening, there were case-workers from Child Protective Services checking on my parents.
Needless to say, my parents were shocked. So was I. It didn't matter that I was a completely normal child who's bruises were from sports and who was deeply involved in his school-work. What mattered was the self-asserted perception of a busy-body who should have spent more time teaching than trying to play a fairy-god-mother. Is it really much of a stretch to say that a computer would look at the same situation and make the same possibly conclusion?
We must also remember that regardless of what the computer says, the input is from humans and is interpreted and acted upon by humans. Is a teacher going to suddenly change their opinion of a student because a computer did not believe the evidence provided warrented a truly 'potentially violent child'?
A range of answers is far more likely to stimulate accuracy fairness, and completeness. For example, if asking about firearms, a Yes/No question could not stimulate as fair or complete an exploration as a range:
__No known possession of a firearm
__Friends known to have ready access to a firearm
__There are firearms in the home
__There are firearms in a home frequented by the student
__The student owns his own firearm
__The student recently acquired a firearm
First of all, how in the hell are they going to know these things? I don't even know if my friends or neighbors have firearms. And if I have recently acquired a firearm, am I going to be walking up to any authority and tell them about it?
It seems that any questions that could possibly render any (even incorrect) answer as to whether a subject is a risk or not would require a certain amount of investigation to aptly answer. How will these answers be obtained? Will it require students to fill out a long questionaire? If so, how can anyone be sure the student was truthful? If not, then will schools begin employing detectives to start checking-up on children by interviewing their friends, family, teachers, co-workers, fellow-students, churchr-members or neighbors? By what right would the school be investigating anyone for anything? Even the police must prove a necessary need to do these things. A policeman can not simply go around interrogating everyone who "looks like a troublemaker" and "may, someday, in the next ten or twelve years, become violent".
For the first time, schools at the elementary, middle, and high school levels will have access to technology and methods that have long been used for many of our nation's highest stakes assessments.
The same technology used to weed-out international terrorists at airports based on one's ethnicity and accent will now help weed-out seven-year-old little Johnny so that he won't blow everyone's head off by the time he is in highschool.
Please note: hazing, intimidating, harassing, kicking, punching, spitting-on, humiliating, torturing and otherwise generally abusing and making other weaker students lives hell is acceptable.
How many times do you hear a killer's neighbors, friends, co-workers and even family say "I never knew..."? This is precisely because only certain types of violent people have certain traits and histories. In fact, more people who have those same traits and histories are not violent than those who are. You can not look at a person and claim that they will destroy an entire city block by the way they dress, music they listen to, and their proximity to places and people with guns.
If this thing is widely accepted, I'll be surprised if it isn't soon used in the workplace. Of course, we know it already is to a degree, but soon we may be able to officially harass that really quiet guy who reads all those high-tech magazines down in accounting!
School administrators would use MOSAIC-2000 only in situations that reach a certain threshold (e.g., a student makes a threat, brings a weapon to school, teachers or students are concerned a student might act out violently).
Better teach little Jilly to watch her mouth. Next time she says stamps her feet on the ground in a fit and says "I hope you die!" because little Timmy took her favorite Pokeman card, she may be filed away in the school computer and considered a potential threat.
Does MOSAIC-2000 invade the privacy of students?: The information gathered for each evaluation is held at the school only, and is never communicated over the Internet. MOSAIC is a stand-alone system, secure at each school, with no central combining of cases. The system isn't a "Big Brother" approach. MOSAIC-2000 merely brings organization and expert opinion to a process every principal already has. So if something is not distributed over the Internet, it is not invading your privacy? Is this why we walk around giving our social security numbers, home phone number and bank account number to every person who asks?
I find it extremely offensive that someone would want to tag myself or my child as a risk because of computer profiling -- and build a database with their information, telling me it's for the better. What gaurantee is there that this information will never be incorporated into a database or ever released to anyone outside of the school district? Further, what right does my child's teacher or principal have to know anything about the child that isn't directly involved in the child's education?
I understand that safety is involved, but this is a wreckless answer to a problem that has been grossly exaggerated. Profiling, at best, will give a false sense of security and at worst, rob us of any dignity, privacy and freedom while we're still reading Curious George and learning addition.
MOSAIC systems have been in daily use for a decade. Society faces many types of high-stakes evaluations (threats to public officials, hazards to domestic violence victims, workplace violence cases, etc). MOSAIC systems are used by the United States Supreme Court, the Federal Reserve Board, the Central Intelligence Agency, Governors of eleven states, and many others.
Is there really anything that needs to be said right here? Supreme Court, Federal reserve Board, Governors, Central Intelligence Agency, K-12 . . .
In cases where students have been expelled as a result of safety concerns, when they are considered for re-enrollment, some schools may use MOSAIC-2000 to help evaluate if the risk has lessened.
Oh, can't you just smell the lawsuits the next time some kid mows-down his entire graduating class after being reinstated by his school administrators because of Mosaic-2000?
The cost for the final version of MOSAIC-2000 (due in February, 2000) will be determined by the M-2000 Advisory Board. It is likely to be a small monthly fee for each school.
Oh, great. Now the little rats will be coming to my door more often, trying to peddle candy and magazines.
The system operates on entirely standard and traditional hardware, including an IBM-PC compatible 486 computer. It uses very little disk space.
They're apparently not running it on Windows.
Concern that a student might act out violently can be triggered in any of several ways:
a student makes a threat;
alarming writings are observed;
a student brings a firearm to school;
a student gets into trouble with police; teacher, counselor, psychologist, parent, or fellow student becomes concerned and makes a report
I'm not sure about the school you went to, but students made idle threats all the time at mine. It's a part of being an immature kid. As for bringing a firearm to school -- what moron requires a computer to tell them that the child is a risk? First, it is illegal to bring a firearm to school. If you need to rely on the computer program to tell you that posession of a firearm is a danger-sign, you need your face bashed in with a brick.
Alarming writing? What does one consider alarming? The greatest and most lauded writing in the world tends to be alarming, shocking and disturbing! Writing should be a method of release and creativity. And a lot of the most truly disturbing and brilliant pieces I have ever read were written by rather youthful authors.
Mosaic-2000 is not an all-seeing oracle. It is a peice of crap that should be left out of the school system. The answer to the problems of children is not to throw more technology at them and invade their inner-most thoughts and secrets.
The answer is to afford them a little more time, attention and considertion. If it requires mass-murder for us to come to their aid and hear them, we are a ruined society. When the only attention we provide kids with is the scrutinizing eye of accusation, we can only expect jaded, disinterested, paranoid children.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
Violent? (Score:3)
This program came about because politicians are looking for a "cheap fix" to the educational system. Well.. there is none. Even in maximum security prisons people get killed. There is an equilibrium we must strike between personal freedoms and security - they are mutually exclusive.
I have taken 13 psychological evaluations. I've talked with a half-dozen psychologists. I can talk the talk and walk the walk. Every single test, and I mean every test was different - by reading those 13 reports you would never know it was the same person if you didn't look at the title and see my name.
Psychology is a soft-science. It is not presently capable of making precision diagnoses. It can give you a basic understanding of how people think. It even has a very limited ability to predict what people will do in a NORMAL situation. But when you start throwing people into high-pressure and high-stress situations you don't need to be a psychologist to say they are unstable. Nobody can guess what they're going to do. In this respect, people are just like machines - they have operational limits. Exceed those, and something is likely to break. And since even the best psychologist can't say where that point is, I'll be damned if a computer program can!
In short - this tool will not meet it's goal of determining who is violent and who is not because human nature is such that normally non-violent people can become violent if put under pressure.
--
Airports (Score:3)
My last point is that most murders are second degree murders. The typical scenario is the person loses it due to a tramatic event (ie: finding your wife sleeping with another guy) and goes on a shooting spree. Sooo, maybe we should prevent people from having sex so that doesn't happen?
This is another example of mainstream prejudices being wrapped around some politically-correct methodology and being re-presented for acceptance. And the prejudice, my good readers - is that mainstream society doesn't like people who are different. Racism, sexism, white supremacy, the haves and the have nots - what's in common with all of them? One group is different from another. Welcome to the tyranny of the majority.
--
Re:Death and Destruction (Score:3)
That guy just has a sick sense of humour, and makes a way over the top joke. You don't have that sense of humour, and you react like you did. (Sick! Disturbed! Garbage!) What if you were someone at some school, and you had to look out for worrying signs among the kids. What if you overheard him telling that joke. How big is the chance that you would dive into your little program and label him a dangerous nutcase?
Sure, there will be some people who have a sick sense of humour because they're really dangerous, but there's also plenty of people who have the most crazy and tasteless sense of humour, but in real life wouldn't hurt a fly.
Exactly how would you test the hypothesis? (Score:3)
This unsupported proposition is preposterous on its face. First of all, there is a long line of substantial evidence that psychiatry is incapable of effectively predicting dangerousness. See American Psychiatric Asssociation, Clinical Assesments of Violent IndividualsTask Force Report 8, 24 (1974).
Secondly, exactly how would you prove the aformentioned proposition doesn't trigger false positives? Diagnose a sample size, let them lose and count the carnage? There is no credible and ethical methodology that can measure the proposition whether a person adjudged for mass murder was properly diagnosed.
Accordingly, the assumption that the test works is bad enough, but the unsupported assumption that the test has been shown to work is, well, incredible.
It is certainly true that one can provide a test that will capture all dangerous humans. (Count the chromosomes, for example). The problem is that a test that minimizes false negatives will pick up way to many false positives, resulting in substantial loss of civil liberty and social standing. This is unjust and, IMHO, evil.
It's also naive. Computer dating doesn't work so well. Are we truly to believe we can match students with traits of dangerousness?
Re:Conformance is not the danger! (Score:3)
Back at the height of the AIDS scare, clinics that did a lot of AIDS testing often had one or more full-time counselors whose primary job was to convince patients that they do not have AIDS. Many of these patients had gotten positive test results in the past, but later came up negative on more reliable tests.* What these people had trouble understanding is that when you test for something that is very rare in the general population, such as AIDS, there will be far more false positives than true positives.
So let's say that this test is supposed to flag the 1% of students with the greatest potential for violence, and let's say (very generously) that it's 90% accurate. On this test, 0.9% of those tested will be correctly marked violent. 0.1% will be marked "safe", even though they have the potential to be violent. 89.1% will be correctly marked "safe". And 9.9% will be incorrectly flagged as violent.
In other words, given this exmple, for every violent student that the test catches, more than ten "safe" students will be incorrectly "caught".
They may widen their criteria for violent students, which would make the test slightly more valid. However, it is likely that the test will be far less that 90% accurate, increasing the ratio of false positives/true positives even further.
*I'm not sure if I can back up this AIDS story, so feel free to consider it a fictional example if you wish.
The beatings will continue until morale improves. (Score:3)
It's always been said that your scores on standardizes tests have a little bit to do with your knowledge of the subject and a lot to do with your test-taking skills. I know a guy who scored 1600 on the Math section of the SAT. He was good but nowhere near perfect, a few lucky guesses (by his own admission) landed him on a talkshow with some drooling chess masters.
Any human shrink has some judgement that they can temper their results with. This software has no such judgement, and I'm sure its results will be misused.
What if you have some kid with a less-than-complete grasp of the language, who misunderstands the word "anxiety" or something and accidentally gets him/herself into the Manson category?
The only solution is to protest this thing like hell, and attempt to defeat it wherever it appears. I'm waiting for the 2600 [2600.com] article on how to bluff your way through the shooting-spree-test.
Violence is a tool (Score:3)
Many people with violent tendencies can be quite useful as cops, firemen, emergency medical technicians, rocket scientists, demolition experts, military personnel, spies, surgeons, butchers, football players, and other professions where violence and/or gore are facts of life. Sane people find acceptable and sometimes productive outlets for violence. We don't have to ensure all our kids are non-violent gore-hating pacifists.
Violent tendencies are better accepted and properly directed than suppressed thru a misguided notion that violence isn't a useful tool, or the ability to employ it a disease. If civilization *does* go down the tubes, violence will be a survival trait again.
The data from the Mosaic test could be useful, it also is only a tool. It's the way the information will be used I fear. If the results of the test were viewed as simple information, and not prejudicial, I would not object. Rather too much to hope from the people who suspended students for wearing black trenchcoats, I think. They are the problem, not the test.
I hear too much "Stamp Out Violence!" rhetoric, like it was possible or desirable. If you're familiar with Well's "The Time Machine", you know that neither Eloi nor Morlock is a good way to evolve, real humans have components of both. Violence in society has been decreasing steadily and significantly over the last 30 years. Why are we not congratulating ourselves instead of reacting in fear to tragic, but overplayed, media events?
Troubled Yoots (Score:3)
Another thing I see is if a student is determined to have a violent potential, the school might insist on "re-education" to eliminate those tendancies. Visions of re-education camps to "normalize" your behavior spring to mind. "We will help you, comrade citizen, since you cannot help yourself. We know what is best for you."
Re:Conformance is not the danger! (Score:3)
We don't really know, and to be honest at this point the computer is being asked to differentiate on a smaller segment of data (most people are not killers, and thus there is less data to find deviances from). So, what do the humans do? They over react and lock the poor sister hitting kid up. Or on the other side the parents down play the situation and the kid goes on a killing spree at the next pep rally. Neither situation is the fault of the computer, but instead the error prone humans.
I worry that the school administrators and teachers will not know what kind of tool they have here. They will misunderstand it and make wild assumptions about its abilities. Then the minute there is an error they will blame it on the computer when in reality it was the reactions by the humans. If you want to see evidence of this simple read the
Instead most made knee-jerk reactions- and then denounced others for doing just that!
Story about Tim Leary (Score:3)
Oh, and I believe he had possession of LSD...
The important part comes when they had him take a psycholoical profile for his sentancing.
He came out of the profiling as "Meek" and "Easily Lead". So they put him in minimim security prision, where in few weeks, he climbed a tree, jumped over a fence and left.
The profile he'd taken was the standard at the time, the "Leary Personality Profile".
Any psychological test can be worked around with by someone who is clever. And even if the test is built to try to reduce false negatives, you can still overcome it by making the results unusable.
Just thought I'd post this cute story as it seemed relevant.
- Serge Wroclawski
...if not this, then what? (Score:3)
Posting armed guards and putting metal detectors up may deter some people from a violent crime spree, but if someone _REALLY_ wants to get in and blast away, they're going to find a way - schools are not fortresses, no matter how much security is added as an afterthough to the original design.
Instead, the armed guards and metal detectors create an unstable educational environment for our students that's rooted in fear and not based upon the educators' care for the students' well-being. It creates a _perceived_ adversarial relationship in which (from the students' point of view) the administration doesn't trust any of them. While they are there to protect both the administration and the student, this is not what is in the forefront of the student's mind. This environment alone will most likely serve as a detriment to most students who are in school to learn (there still are a couple...in Montana, I think...).
Yes, "false positives" are to be expected, and any good surveying/analysis firm will expect that. "Nerds" don't have anything to fear from this system...unless they (we?
I think this is a step in the right direction. It beats sitting on your ass and doing nothing.
Mosaic is a double edged sword. (Score:3)
The software really serves no purpose other than for the administrators to cover their own ass and create more anger at the system the stundents are in.
Dackin, the principal here, said Mosaic's immediate virtue would be in producing detailed documentation of its evaluation of a troubled student so that doubting parents could no longer challenge an administrator's judgment as too subjective.
This software serves two purposes in my opinion.
1) to label students
2) to save the administrators from being embarrassed.
Labeling a person is the worst thing you could do to someone. It just creates more anger at the system the person is in, so now we have an endless loop. To install this program so that the administrators can say "It's not my fault, this kid was labeled." is just plain wrong. It goes back to making the student(s) even more angrier and more tension is built up. So any way this program is implemented it just plain sucks.
Anyone who goes to one of these schools with this program i say demand not to take it. Fight this thing and maybe one day the pendulum will swing back to the middle from all this knee jerk reaction.
It will be successful, no doubt about it! (Score:4)
It doesn't really matter if the program is any good or not, by using it the schools will _create_ violent kids.
Source (Score:4)
#include "manic_depressive.h"
#include "psycho_killer_chicken.h"
#include "geek.h"
#ifndef _POLITICS_
#include "conservative.h"
#endif
if(!conservative){
do_psych_eval();
killer++;
}
if(!normal){
do_psych_eval();
killer += 50;
}
while(different){
killer++;
if(killer > 150){
do_psych_eval();
expel_student();
matter, expel anyway. */
do_politically_correct_dance(& parents);
}
}
while(geek){
nuts */
wierd++;
if(wierd > 50){
suspect_computer_crime(*student);
}
}
printf("He's normal.. nothing to worry about!\n");
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
/* program notes:
this program should be compiled with -DPARANOID for maximum effect.
Also, profiling support is currently broken -
contact the FBI if you have a suspicion, or
even if you don't - they need the money you
know.
*/
--
Please, people aren't that complicated (Score:4)
Everybody likes to think that they're so complicated that profiling wouldn't work on them. It's always a little ego jolt to think that one isn't the free-thinker he thought he was. "Who, me? Predictable? Bah!" Well, I hate to break it to you, but people generally do break down into nice, neat little categories. That's why FBI profiling is so successful.
Secondly, it's not about trying to understand all the intracacies of the brain -- it's about recognizing common patterns of behavior in people, something computers are great at. Real profilers know what they're doing -- don't confuse them with your high school principal making a list of kids wearing "Ozzy Rules" shirts.
Cheers
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Weigh Them Against a Duck Instead! (Score:4)
An admittedly old study demonstrated that psychiatrists have not reasonably demonstrated an ability to predict future violence, even when focusing on populations of those who have exhibited prior violent tendencies. American Psychiatric Association, Clinical Aspects of Violent Individual, Task Force Report 8, 28 (1974).
In short, the risk of false positives from such profiling programs seems large compared to the enormous social and civil liberties consequences for those students falsely targeted. The vast overreactions to routine adolescent experimentation with minor "antisocial" activity is an abomination for a free society, particularly when it is implemented as a de-facto social casting system.
The methodology of any such system appears highly suspect, absent enormous research and study, and modifications to short-term dangerousness models based on extraordinarily rare incidents such as the Colombine disaster makes a mockery of modern statistical methods.
In short, this is evil -- and it has consequences that are far-reaching: Imagine that a principal ignores the unreasonable results of such a program (or refuses to use it), and the rare explosion occurs. Is the principal or school system individually liable for negligence resulting from a failure to expel the child, or at least a failure to warn the entire student body? Think of the tradeoffs that must face a lawyer representing the school system -- how could she help but advise the system to "play it safe," by socially destroying the "marked" students?
No, unless and until this "program" is proved by serious, high-quality, methodologically sound studies showing an ability to predict dangerousness without substantial false positives (which to this day i have understood to be beyond the reach of modern Psychiatry), use of this sort of thing is simply a modern equivalent of divining witchhood with a duck.
Conformance is not the danger! (Score:5)
These tests are not targetting "geeks", they are targeting "violent people". Obviously, they know there's a difference, because most violent people are not geeks.
The tests (from actually READING the article) will work on the well-established psychological principle of analysing known violent people's answers to a series of questions, discovering where they differ most from normal people's answers, and using those to distinguish between violent and non-violent people. You can use this technique for nearly any trait, and it works reasonably well. (It's a blind shooting technique; you don't necessarily understand why some questions are answered differently, but they are and it works.) Many tests use this in psychology, and you can even more-or-less detect people trying to answer the way they "know" they should answer to pass the test.
The results of this test will, honestly, correlate to those who have violent tendencies. It does appear not do it on the basis of who is wearing trenchcoats, who is "different", or who is left out. It is not about geeks, nerds, or social rejects at all.
This test is not dangerous because it will somehow enforce "conformance". The danger is that the test is reliable, but not reliable enough. There are four permutations of "person is violent" (assume for a moment that this is a simple boolean, for the sake of argument), and "test says person is violent." The true danger here is that a large number of people will become "diagnosed" as violent who are not, known as a "false positive". The society will then act on this false information, possibly in drastic and damaging ways. (false negatives aren't half as disturbing; few violent people shoot up schools)
The truly dangerous thing is that, contrary to most people's uninformed opinions here, this will work to some extent. (It is certainly not impossible.) That actually makes it worse; if it never worked correctly, then nobody will worry about the results, positive or negative. But because it will work, those who get false positives will seriously be treated as being violent people. This is horrible (and could well become a self-fulfilling prophecy).
This actually isn't much different then what can already occur (as the article says, it is only meant to be used on kids that are suspected to have problems). But as many people in schools worship both psychologists and computers (as the understand neither), having a computer program diagnose a kid as "violent", after the kid has somehow attracted attention to himself in some other fashion, could well become a Kiss of Death from which the kid will not recover until out of the school system.
THAT is the problem; geekness and enforced conformance have little to do with it. Read the article before posting. (And a lessening in the geek paranoia level would be nice; society is not out to get you, they barely know you exist.)
It is particularly disturbing that the Times did not point this out in the article. Must journalists swallow everything uncritically like this?
PS: If you ever have to take a test like this, answer honestly. They can tell if you are fudging the answers, unless you know what you're doing, which you don't if you're still in high school (unless you've taken several college-level psych courses, and, even then, probably had to help write the test to know the "answers").
from the mosaic2k site (Score:5)
MOSAIC-2000 is being developed for a national field test in 25 schools. Though
the field test is not complete, here's an informal summary of where we are:
What is MOSAIC-2000?
MOSAIC is a computer-assisted method for conducting high-stakes evaluations of
persons who might act violently (such as when students make threats to harm
others). MOSAIC systems have been in use for a decade by many federal and
state law enforcement agencies and major universities. The same assessment
strategies are now being made available to schools through MOSAIC-2000,
co-developed by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, the Los Angeles County Office of Education, and
Gavin de Becker, Incorporated.
Gavin de Becker Incorporated designed the MOSAIC-2 system used for screening
threats to Justices of the US Supreme Court (and also used by eleven states as part
of protecting governors). Another system, MOSAIC-20, is used by police
departments all over the country for identifying which domestic violence
perpetrators are most likely to escalate their violence. It has been credited with
major improvements in the safety of domestic violence victims. (See Los Angeles
Times article, October 21st, 1996.)
Two other MOSAIC systems were co-developed with the U.S. Marshals Service,
including MOSAIC-3, used for screening threats to Federal judges and
prosecutors.
The MOSAIC method has been widely applied for a decade, already having
screened tens of thousands of cases. The method is now being made available for
the first time to help schools evaluate situations that might escalate to violence.
Premise:
Every principal in America already has a method for evaluating students who make
threats - it's just that most of those methods are unorganized, idiosyncratic, and
cannot be expressed or documented. MOSAIC-2000 is intended to bring
uniformity, structure, expert opinion, and validity to high stakes evaluations.
Public pressure on schools has led many communities to respond to the fear of
Columbine-style incidents by improving real estate instead of improving children
and education. The buildings have been enhanced, to be sure (new locks, security
alarms, cameras, etc), and because of that, some parents may chose to conclude
that school-safety is no longer a problem. But Columbine had cameras - cameras
that recorded the tragedy, but contributed nothing to preventing it.
Gavin de Becker's book, Protecting the Gift is currently the best selling parenting
book in America. In both this and his previous bestseller (The Gift of Fear), he
notes that many parents are inadequately involved with their children's schools.
Parents are fast to blame schools for anything wrong, but slow to participate in
making things right - fast to develop outlandish expectations about what principals
can do, but slow to invest schools with the resources needed to do their jobs well.
As a society, we don't pay school professionals enough, we don't praise them
enough, we don't prepare them enough - and then we expect magical abilities in all
fields. Today, principals are expected to be threat-assessment experts able to
instantly make fair and accurate predictions -able to identify which students might
act out violently- yet we haven't given them the tools to help them do it.
MOSAIC-2000 is one of those tools.
How Does it Work?
MOSAIC is not a computer program, but rather an evaluation method that is
computer-assisted. It is a way of breaking down a case to its elements, then
organizing and identifying the most important factors. MOSAIC suggests to the
user which questions are most likely to produce a quality evaluation. Once a case
is broken down to its elements, it can be instantly compared to others where the
outcome is known. The case can also be weighed against the opinions of experts in
many relevant fields.
Imagine a student has made a threat which alarms others, and it falls to you to
evaluate the situation and the student. In a perfect world, you'd be able to instantly
confer with all the leading experts in threat-assessment, law enforcement,
psychology, and behavioral science, and ask:
What is most important for me to learn about this situation?
What information will most inform my evaluation?
How can I organize the information I gather to weigh it all most effectively?
What factors and warning signs are most relevant to future behavior?
How can I express and document my conclusions?
MOSAIC-2000 provides the guidance of leading experts, presented in a step by
step form that lets the evaluation process begin immediately.
Specifically, MOSAIC-2000 presents a series of questions, along with a range of
possible answers. Users are offered extensive, in depth explanations of what
factors must be present in order to stimulate selection of a given answer. Different
answers have different weights, so they can be weighed against each other, against
past cases where the outcome is known, and against expert opinion. Each
evaluation is rated on a scale of one to ten, with ten representing cases most similar
to those that have escalated, and thus, most in need of intervention
The system produces an automatic report that documents and presents exactly
what questions were asked, how they were answered, and what comments the
user chose to add along the way. Both the rating and the process help inform the
school administrator's evaluation of the situation.
Each evaluator brings his or her own intuition and experience, and MOSAIC
assures that different evaluators approach their cases from a shared foundation.
Can MOSAIC Label Kids?
MOSAIC-2000 cannot label anyone as anything. People unfamiliar with the
method may jump to the worry that principals will use it to unfairly label kids, but
the objective process resists bias. MOSAIC-2000 is vastly more likely give a low
rating in a situation to which people are over-reacting - than to give a high rating in
a situation people are not concerned about.
MOSAIC-2000 seeks to identify those students most in need of the interventions
and resources that are available, and in the school setting, all appropriate
intervention is good.
Is MOSAIC-2000 A Computerized Checklist Of Warning Signs?
The use of checklists in high-stakes evaluations is the antithesis of the MOSAIC
method. Checklists reduce to Yes/No answers elements of behavior and
circumstance that do not lend themselves to being limited to just two answers.
With Yes/No limitations, evaluators check off answers to global questions and
decide which answer they'll give - consciously or unconsciously influenced by
what they feel is the "right" overall result for the evaluation. Yes/No checklists do
not work for assessments of human behavior.
Imagine being asked to describe a movie you saw last night, but being required to
answer by saying either:
BEST MOVIE I EVER SAW, or
WORST MOVIE I EVER SAW
Those answers wouldn't produce a very fair appraisal of your opinion about the
movie - and situations involving human beings are far more complex than movies.
A range of answers is far more likely to stimulate accuracy fairness, and
completeness. For example, if asking about firearms, a Yes/No question could not
stimulate as fair or complete an exploration as a range:
__No known possession of a firearm
__Friends known to have ready access to a firearm
__There are firearms in the home
__There are firearms in a home frequented by the student
__The student owns his own firearm
__The student recently acquired a firearm
A range not only encourages accurate and complete evaluations; it also recognizes
that different answers have different value. To use a checklist that gives the same
weight to all answers would be like evaluating a passenger jet and giving the same
weight to the in-flight magazine as to the landing gear.
Here are some fast answers to frequently asked questions:
What is new about MOSAIC-2000?
For the first time, schools at the elementary, middle, and high school levels will
have access to technology and methods that have long been used for many of our
nation's highest stakes assessments.
Is MOSAIC-2000 for use on all students?
School administrators would use MOSAIC-2000 only in situations that reach a
certain threshold (e.g., a student makes a threat, brings a weapon to school,
teachers or students are concerned a student might act out violently).
Does MOSAIC-2000 invade the privacy of students?
The information gathered for each evaluation is held at the school only, and is
never communicated over the Internet. MOSAIC is a stand-alone system, secure
at each school, with no central combining of cases. The system isn't a "Big
Brother" approach. MOSAIC-2000 merely brings organization and expert opinion
to a process every principal already has.
Has the MOSAIC method been tested?
MOSAIC systems have been in daily use for a decade. Society faces many types
of high-stakes evaluations (threats to public officials, hazards to domestic violence
victims, workplace violence cases, etc). MOSAIC systems are used by the United
States Supreme Court, the Federal Reserve Board, the Central Intelligence
Agency, Governors of eleven states, and many others.
Has MOSAIC been used in the school setting?
MOSAIC systems have been in use by schools for many years, including Yale
University, Boston University, Penn State, and throughout the University of
California system.
What will MOSAIC do for school administrators?
MOSAIC-2000 will help schools identify students most in need of intervention,
and in the school setting, all appropriate interventions are favorable (i.e., no
adverse results come to a student when a principal concludes that there may be a
risk of violence). A student in need of intervention benefits, and of course the
student population benefits in terms of enhanced safety.
How does it work?
MOSAIC-2000 guides school administrators through the questions that most
inform an evaluation, then provides a range of possible answers. Answers that
have been developed and weighted by experts are then calculated by the system to
produce an overall rating, expressed on a scale of one to ten.
Does the computer make decisions?
MOSAIC-2000 does not make decisions; it is a tool that helps school
administrators by identifying the areas of inquiry that experts feel will produce the
best evaluation of the situation.
Does the computer tell schools what to do?
MOSAIC-2000 does not suggest any specific case-management actions. It offers
diagnosis of a situation, more triage than treatment plan.
Can schools use MOSAIC-2000 in cases where a student is already
considered dangerous?
In cases where students have been expelled as a result of safety concerns, when
they are considered for re-enrollment, some schools may use MOSAIC-2000 to
help evaluate if the risk has lessened.
Can the system brand a student as dangerous?
Most often, MOSAIC-2000 will help establish that a student does not pose an
elevated risk of violence.
Is the system biased?
MOSAIC-2000 brings a shared language to assessments, so that all users
objectively apply similar methods when exploring these situations. This ensures
that critical situations are evaluated in a fair, objective, consistent, and
well-documented way.
What will MOSAIC-2000 cost?
The 25 schools participating in the field test will pay nothing for the system. The
cost for the final version of MOSAIC-2000 (due in February, 2000) will be
determined by the M-2000 Advisory Board. It is likely to be a small monthly fee
for each school.
How does MOSAIC express evaluation results?
At a keystroke, the system automatically produces reports in regular English. They
include the questions that were asked, the answers that were selected, what
comments were added by the evaluator, the value of the information that was
evaluated, and the overall rating.
What are the technical requirements?
The system operates on entirely standard and traditional hardware, including an
IBM-PC compatible 486 computer. It uses very little disk space.
How was the expert opinion within MOSAIC-2000 identified and captured?
In order to identify what questions experts feel are most important to ask in one of
these situations, three groups were established:
1.A pool of experts and practitioners - 125 experts;
2.The M-2000 Advisory Board - 57 experts;
3.The M-2000 Development Team - 17 experts;
Concern that a student might act out violently can be triggered in any of several
ways:
a student makes a threat;
alarming writings are observed;
a student brings a firearm to school;
a student gets into trouble with police;
a teacher, counselor, psychologist, parent, or fellow student becomes
concerned and makes a report
Each of these categories was represented at the Expert and Practitioner Pool
(EPP) meeting at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The 125 members of
the EPP included experts in threat-assessment, law enforcement, education,
psychology, behavioral science, the judiciary, and even some high school students.
The EPP heard presentations by Gavin de Becker and other experts:
Dr. James McGee, an advisor to the Baltimore State Police who recently headed
up a comprehensive study of 16 students who have committed multiple shootings
at school;
Paul Mones, author of When A Child Kills, a seminal work in the field of violence
by children;
Gregory Gibson, author of GONE BOY, whose son was killed during a mass
shooting by another student at his school;
Barbara Nelson, Dean of UCLA's School of Public Policy and Social Research;
Deputy District Attorney Scott Gordon, a founding member of the Stalking and
Threat Assessment Team of the Los Angeles. County District Attorney's Office;
Robert Martin, former Commanding Officer of LAPD's Detective Headquarters
Division, and founder of the Department's Threat Management Unit;
Gil Garcetti, District Attorney for the County of Los Angeles;
After these presentations, the 125 participants broke into groups of twenty, tasked
to identify the questions they'd ask if faced with a threat-assessment challenge in a
school setting. Following extensive discussions, each group was asked to rank
proposed questions in order of importance.
The entire EPP then reconvened for a case-management workshop, where the
very questions they'd just identified were applied.
Months later, after the questions of all groups were combined, analyzed, and
ranked, they were presented to the MOSAIC-2000 Advisory Board (57 experts
representing the fields of threat-assessment, education, law enforcement, the
judiciary, school administration, and behavioral sciences). The Advisory Board
analyzed the questions for clarity, applicability, relevance-to-outcome,
answerability, and fairness. They then refined the list and developed a range of
possible answers for each question.
The Advisory Board's results were combined and further analyzed against what is
known about past cases that escalated to violence. The questions and answers
were converted into Artificial Intuition format and entered into a MOSAIC
program.
Next, the MOSAIC-2000 Development Team (16 people) gathered at the UCLA
Conference Center for an intensive two-day session. The group included senior
representatives from the Los Angeles County Office of Education (coordinating
programs for 1700 schools), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, the Los
Angeles County District Attorney's Office, the Cook County District Attorney's
Office, as well as Dr. James McGee, Gavin de Becker, Robert Martin, Jennifer
Mitchell, (co-developer of the Child Lures safety programs currently used in more
than 1000 schools), and several threat-assessment experts.
During two long days and nights, the Development Team worked with the
preliminary MOSAIC program, drafting language and further refining questions
and answers. In a daylong round-table session, Development Team members
reviewed all questions, omitted those that did not meet the group's criteria, and
added some that emerged during the discussions.
The draft version of MOSAIC-2000 is being tested against known cases that
escalated to violence, as well as being used in the field by schools around the
nation. The Advisory Board and Development Team will take the results from
these tests, as well as comments from schools using the system, and implement
changes.