UPDATE: The Virginia Department of Education has directed FCPS to disable LCM starting April 15 as students head into the spring testing window. LCM will resume May 31 once the testing window is closed.

An outburst of teachers implementing Lightspeed Classroom Management (LCM) in classrooms has begun in the second semester, and skepticism on its ethics are following suit.
LCM allows teachers to see and manage students’ screens in real time in order to promote online academic integrity and focus. Lightspeed Systems has been around on FCPS servers for years and categorizes and blocks sites, but recently the LCM tool was issued into teachers’ computer capabilities.
“What we really wanted to do was to work out the kinks and get staff members to pilot it first to see how it was going to be used and could be implemented in the classroom on a smaller scale,” said School Based Technology Specialist Miriam Lynch. “Later on in second semester is when we decided to go forth with a whole school rollout and training for teachers.”
Being a new apparatus in the school, LCM’s potential for effectiveness has not yet been fully realized. Some teachers, though, have taken notice of its worthwhileness.
“I think that it provides me a level of security in my tests and that’s the main way that I’m using it right now,” said math teacher Mandy Cunniff. “I also say that I do like the fact that I can send students a link and the tab will open up so that way I can get everybody on the same page.”
LCM does not stop cheating altogether, as some students ignore the fact that it is there.
“I’m very upfront with, ‘Hey, I’m using this, and I can see what’s going on. Please don’t put me in this difficult spot,’ and there are some folks that still try and go around the system to do it,” said social studies teacher Bradley Swain.
The ability for teachers to view and monitor screens has caused a wave of opposition from students, particularly due to personal views on privacy.

“If a student is checking an email from their counselor that has personal information and a teacher sees it, that breaks the confidentiality,” said senior Abby McKay. “The school Wi-Fi has the ability to restrict websites, I see no reason why they feel the need to essentially spy on students.”
The widespread nature of LCM may give students paranoia over being watched, but LCM is not the only instance where educational honor has been expected online.
“Even for teachers, the things that we do on our computer are also being monitored,” said Lynch. “Anything that is property of FCPS that’s a resource computer technology is being monitored.”
Not only that, but the FCPS website states school computers are “only for assignments and tasks related to FCPS learning programs.”
The dispute over if or how LCM should be used is an ongoing debate. Students have pressing concerns over how ethical the surveillance is while teachers try to put it in perspective. In whole, the program is still unexplored territory with moral boundaries at the heat of debate unraveling.