If PARCC, Inc., Is the Owner of PARCC Items, Produce the Document Proving It
In a letter issued around May 12, 2016, to professor Celia Oyler regarding Oyler’s publishing three “live” PARCC items on her blog on May 07, 2016, PARCC, Inc., CEO Laura Slover wrote the following as part of a warning email to Oyler:
Parcc, Inc. is the owner of all intellectual property contained in the various PARCC assessments (other than third party literary excerpts, for which we have reprint permission), including the essay prompts you have posted.
According to Slover, her nonprofit, PARCC, Inc., owns the rights to the PARCC test items.
In the DMCA takedown notice sent to bloggers and others who shared Oyler’s post on Twitter, Slover is identified as the copyright owner of the items:
DMCA Takedown Notice== Copyright owner: Laura Slover
== Name: Kevin Michael Days
== Company: PARCC Inc.
== Job title: Associate Director, Operations
== Email address: kdays@parcconline.org== Address: 1747 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, 6th Floor
== City: Washington
== State/Province: District of Columbia
== Postal code: 20006
== Country: United States
== Phone (optional): 2027488077
== Fax (optional): n/a
Here is why I challenge the idea that Slover’s PARCC, Inc., is “the owner of all intellectual property contained in various PARCC assessments”:
PARCC, Inc., is not synonymous with the PARCC consortium. PARCC, Inc., is only the “project manager” for the consortium. Moreover, PARCC, Inc.’s position as project manager is not permanent; it is set to expire in 2017. So, how is it that the PARCC consortium would surrender ownership of its intellectual property to an entity with which it has a temporary relationship?
As project management partner for the PARCC consortium, PARCC, Inc., could surely handle PARCC test promotion and licensing, and it could even police social media on behalf of the PARCC consortium. (See more regarding PARCC, Inc., role in this Linkedin ad for a director of contracts management.) But there is a freedom that comes with ownership (“the” owner, at that)– an ability to exercise free rein over what is owned.
In a May 17, 2016, press release regarding Oyler’s post, Heather Reams, Director of Communications and Public Relations, at PARCC, Inc., alludes to copyrighted materials. However, Reams does not go so far as to tell the public that PARCC, Inc., owns the items:
Students are given an unfair test environment when anyone posts active test questions on the internet – whether the test is PARCC, the SAT, or any other exam. Because of this, states rely on Parcc Inc., a non-profit organization, to help ensure that every student who takes a test does so on an even playing field without any unfair advantages or disadvantages, and this requires that copyrighted materials be closely guarded.
Guarding copyrighted material is not the same as owning the material. Thus, Reams’ If PARCC, Inc., Is the Owner of PARCC Items, Produce the Document Proving It | deutsch29: