Pearson Is Watching: What Test Security Means For Student Privacy
Pssst…I know the answer to the first question on the third-grade PARCC math test. My inside source couldn’t wait to spill those beans as soon as he jumped into his mother’s mini-van in the pick-up line outside his New Jersey elementary school earlier this month.
Juicy inside information like that is churning the social-media waters and leading to a hearing before a New Jersey legislative committee as Pearson PLC, the designer and administrator of the new standardized tests, is fighting off charges that it’s “spying” on students who may be sharing test information online. The London-based company acknowledges that it monitors Twitter and Facebook feeds in an attempt to discover security breaches by students taking the exams created for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers consortium. In fact, Pearson says it is contractually required by the 12 member states and the District of Columbia to monitor social media to prevent anyone from compromising test questions.
The monitors may have noticed this tweet from Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers union. “OMG–Breaking: Pearson, spying on social media of NJ students taking PARCC tests.” And using the hashtag #pearsoniswatching, talk show host Montel Williams tweeted that it was the “creepiest story I’ve read in a month.”
Steve Addicott, vice president of Caveon Test Security, which has the contract to monitor the assessments, scoffs at the suggestion that the company is spying on teenagers. “By definition they want it public…it’s Twitter!” he tells FORBES.
Even a third-grader’s brag to Mom about getting a question right is a breach in test security, according to Pearson, which created the math and English tests for third through eleventh graders across the country to measure the results of the new Common Core curriculum standards.
“A breach includes any time someone shares information about a test outside of the classroom–from casual conversations to posts on social media,” Pearson says in a statement.
The New Jersey Department of Education backs up that sentiment. “These are public postings,” Michael Yaple, the director of public information, says in a statement. “When students circulate test questions online, it is akin to a handing out test questions on the steps of the school–except in this case it can be seen globally.”
When hasn’t there been a time when students have been warned to keep quiet about test questions for fear of forewarning the next class? But the evolution of online, high-stakes testing throughout school districts has moved the issue onto a higher level. New Jersey alone will pay Pearson $108 million over four years for testing services.
Says Yaple: “Students may not realize that each test item involves a substantial commitment of taxpayer expense and a great deal of time and effort of dozens of educators in New Jersey and across the consortium who review and design each test question–which is proprietary, copyrighted material.”Pearson Is Watching: What Test Security Means For Student Privacy - Forbes:
