The school’s internet filters are inconsistent. Though students can sometimes get the information they need after weaving through the filters, they waste precious research time.

MCPS bans students from visiting certain social networking sites and viewing internet content that relates to weapons, drugs, alcohol, violence, criminal skills, sexually explicit material, hacking, and hate speech. While shielding kids from inappropriate information is understandable, some high school students need to research sensitive topics for school assignments. MCPS should allow school administrators to grant exceptions to students who need to access prohibited material for educational purposes.

The Children’s Internet Protection Act mandates that school systems enact measures such as internet filters to protect students from inappropriate sites, or else have federal funding cut from schools and libraries. MCPS should keep filters in place but create a special computer password that allows students to see banned information for school projects. Teachers could then type the password in for students when they need it for an academic assignment.

Internet filters are controlled by a computer program that has the capability of creating multiple levels of filtering, although the county currently has only one level, tech specialist Greg Thomas said. The program filters through internet content by searching for keywords in the text that the county considers inappropriate.

Principal Alan Goodwin argues that if students need to research material blocked by the filters, they can do the research at home. However, this puts some students at a disadvantage when much class time is devoted to research. It’s frustrating for students when teachers give them class time to work on a project but the internet blocks prevent them from researching effectively.

Students with access to prohibited information would not be unsupervised because teachers could easily monitor student activity on the computer by walking around the lab, checking computer history or using SynchronEyes, a software that allows teachers to see each student’s screen. If students are misusing their computers, teachers would have the authority to issue warnings and deny computer privileges.

Students can easily find loopholes in the filters. For example, if a student searches “naked mole rat” on Google, he hits a block. But if he searches “mole rat,” the first link takes him to Wikipedia—naked mole rat. Instead of having to navigate around the filters, students should simply be able to view information they need for school projects. County officials mean well and intend to protect students from unsuitable material, but when students need information solely for educational purposes, the filters are more of a burden than a safety precaution.