A Month of Opting Out of Standardized Tests: Week 1 | Jason Endacott

A Month of Opting Out of Standardized Tests: Week 1 | Jason Endacott:

A Month of Opting Out of Standardized Tests: Week 1

Parents Can Opt Out - United Opt Out National

Click Here to go to United Opt Out National: 

Click Here to go to the Website- United Opt Out Team

Click Here to go to the Website FairTest

 I get a lot of questions about education from friends, family, friends of family, family of friends and random people on the interwebs.  One of the most difficult questions I get is "Why did you choose to opt your kids out of standardized tests?".  This question isn't difficult because I don't know the answer.  It's difficult because they are looking for the short version of a very complex decision.  Last year I wrote about our decision to opt out of the state test in Arkansas.  This year is a bit different.  Partly because our reasons have evolved and partly because standardized testing will take an entire MONTH in 2015.  So I decided that I would tackle one reason per day during the month-long testing window of March 9 - April 10.  Including spring break, that's 20 school days of testing.  I'll post each reason separately and use this post as the master list.  So here you have it, the Endacott Family Top 20 Reasons we are opting out of PARCC in 2015:

Reason 1:  We trust teachers
Standardized tests have become the most important measure of educational quality in recent years.  As some of my later posts will explain, this is ridiculous.  You might have heard of Value Added Measurement (VAM), which is how test scores are used to determine teacher quality.  VAM requires a complicated statistical model that can be horribly erroneous when calculated by those without the right expertise.  Not only is VAM ripe for error, but the American Statistical Association has highlighted research that shows teachers account for only 1 percent-14 percent of the variance in student test scores. Very recent research has also demonstrated that there is no association between VAM test score data and other composite measures of effective teaching.  In other words, VAM is a problematic way to measure teacher quality that is also inconsistent with what we already know about good teaching.  Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

According to the most recent Phi Delta Kappa survey on public education, 72 percent of Americans have trust and confidence in their kids' teachers.  You can count us among their numbers.  Nobody knows what our children are capable of more than the teachers that see them every day.  Fifty-eight percent of Americans also oppose the use of standardized tests to evaluate teachers.  We are definitely among them as well, and as long as test scores are being used in this fashion, I hope they join us in opting out.

Reason 2: False Premises

If you listen to politicians and pundits (bad idea) then you'd think that poor standardized test scores are a danger to our national security and that boosting test scores can be the cure for everything from pervasive poverty to sustainable economic growth.  You'll even hear claims that closing the achievement gap will add trillions of dollars to our GDP.  While the U.S. census has shown that each additional year of schooling will lead to greater overall career earnings, there is no evidence that higher test scores will have that same relationship.  Economists make predictions with lots of assumptions, but there is one serious flaw to the argument that higher test scores equal greater economic success.

That flaw is that test scores are a symptom of poverty and economic success, not a cause.  There is a clear and undeniable link between socioeconomic status and test scores, but it is socioeconomic status that affects test scores, not the other way around.  Simply put, raising test scores will not reduce poverty -- reducing poverty will raise test scores.  We opt our children out of the test because we refuse to help A Month of Opting Out of Standardized Tests: Week 1 | Jason Endacott:

EPISD superintendent meets with Obama about No Child Left Behind | News - Home

EPISD superintendent meets with Obama about No Child Left Behind | News - Home:

EPISD superintendent meets with Obama about No Child Left Behind

The goal is to rewrite "No Child Left Behind" by April.

EL PASO, Texas -

The goal is to rewrite "no Child Left behind," by April. That's the 2002 law that mandates annual testing to monitor students' progress. As the Republican-led congress prepares to do this, President Obama is preparing to fight it, but first he wants to seek input from El Paso Independent School District Superintendent Juan Cabrera.

"We're example of what happens when testing is the only measure," Cabrera told ABC-7. "Not only did it partially cause the scandal. But it also doesn't make learning fun for kids and it doesn't make it fun for teachers."

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• EPISD superintendent meets with Obama about No Child Left...

While Cabrera said the hour long meeting between the Obama administration, eight superintendents and three board members, was intended to gauge what they felt worked under No Child Left Behind, Cabrera made clear that getting rid of the overwhelming amount of testing has got to be the goal as Congress rewrites the law.

"We want accountability," Cabrera said. "I'm not saying we don't need accountability, I understand that, Republicans would never let us have that. And that's fine I believe in that. We just need to find measures that aren't so taxing on people and don't take up so much of the year for our kids and teachers."

New proposed measures are murky at this point, although leaders of the Senate education committee say there is significant progress in the negotiations.
But the big worry is funding could be cut from the multi-billion dollar program because congress will keep the budget at sequester level funding.

"We would actually be spending less on pre-K through-12th in America's schools then we were back in 2000, and that's adjusted for inflation," Obama said at the meeting. 

"No Child Left Behind did a lot of things right," Cabrera said. "But I think we got into over-testing. And I think he [Obama] just wanted reinforcement that we supported him if he was going to try to veto that bill that would come from Congress."

Cabrera said he most likely will be called out to share his concerns before Congress in the coming EPISD superintendent meets with Obama about No Child Left Behind | News - Home:

WASHINGTON: Obama, California school officials talk education goals | Education | McClatchy DC

WASHINGTON: Obama, California school officials talk education goals | Education | McClatchy DC:

Obama, California school officials talk education goals

 WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Monday found an ally in Fresno Unified School District Superintendent Michael Hanson.

During an hour-long meeting, Obama pitched his education priorities to Hanson and other superintendents. For the school leaders and administration officials now facing some high-stakes legislative struggles, the White House session came at a key time.

“We were reinforcing to him the importance of his continued support,” Hanson said, adding that Obama’s “articulated vision for what goes on in public schools gives us the room to do this very difficult work.”

Hanson is a member of the executive committee of the Council of Great City Schools, which represents 67 districts serving cities that include Sacramento, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The late morning meeting in the White House’s Roosevelt Room came as part of the Council’s annual legislative conference, a four-day program that features speeches, receptions and briefings. Politically, the timing was apt, as the Republican-controlled Congress and the Democratic White House are now maneuvering for position across several fronts.

“This is a pretty polarized city,” Hanson said, standing on the driveway outside the West Wing of the White House. “You can feel it when you come here.”

This week, the polarization will intensify when House and Senate budget committees unveil budget resolutions that spell out Republican priorities on everything from education to defense. The House committee members include Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., a staunch conservative whose district stretches from Fresno County in the south to Amador County in the north.

Separately, House GOP leaders have been struggling to pass a bill reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The bill, dubbed the No Child Left Behind Act during the George W. Bush administration, has roiled conservatives critical of the federal government’s role in education, but it has also worried educators who fear funds will be diverted away from the neediest.

After failing to rally a majority on Feb. 27, Republican leaders pulled the bill from the House floor and have not yet rescheduled a vote. The Obama administration has warned that the president would veto the bill, now renamed the Student Success Act.

“We are making too much progress now in terms of graduation rates, improved reading scores, improved math scores, increasing standards, increasing access to the resources the kids need for us to be going backwards now,” Obama said following the meeting with superintendents.

Nationwide, high school graduation rates for African American, Hispanic and Native American students have increased during the past two years, Education Department records released Monday show. The nation’s overall high school graduation rate reached a record 81.4 percent during the 2012-2013 school year.

The Fresno district’s graduation rate of about 76 percent during that school year was somewhat lower than the national average. The other superintendents who met with Obama on Monday, serving cities like Kansas City, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., struggle with similar challenges.

“The students they work with are largely poor, and they’re largely people of color,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said.

One specific sticking point between congressional Republicans and the White House involves the distribution of Title I funds, designed to help districts serve low-income students. The FresnoWASHINGTON: Obama, California school officials talk education goals | Education | McClatchy DC:

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/03/16/259904/obama-california-school-officials.html#storylink=cpy

California Education Board Chooses Common Core Over Academic Performance Index : Columns : ISchoolGuide

California Education Board Chooses Common Core Over Academic Performance Index : Columns : ISchoolGuide:

California Education Board Chooses Common Core Over Academic Performance Index

The California Board of Education has voted to suspend its school accountability system to pave way for the new Common Core standards. The board’s move is meant to give students and teachers ample time to adjust to the new standardized tests, which are aligned with the Common Core.

California's Education Board voted Wednesday at a meeting in Sacramento to suspend its Academic Performance Index for school year 2014-15. The decision, Christine Armario of The Huffington Post wrote, is meant to give students and teachers more time to adjust to the new standardized tests that are aligned with the Common Core.

The API used student test scores to rate schools and identify which of them require improvement. However, Board President Michael Kirst said it is important to ensure that student growth is also considered, and not just baseline performance, on the new tests.

The Common Core education standards are benchmarks developed by a group of states nationwide to help students become prepared for college and careers. The new standards have become controversial in recent years, criticized largely by conservatives who see them as the federal government's way to control local schools. To encourage states to adopt the federal academic standards, the U.S Education Department offered incentives like the Race to the Top.

In California, the new standards have been widely embraced by parents, unions, and district leaders. Kirst said that while the new test scores are not used on the state index, the results would still be reported at the state, district, and school level.

"They'll be held accountable to the public," said Kirst.

Many districts, such as the Los Angeles Unified, requested to exclude this year's results in the accountability process. They argued that students lack time to adjust to the new testing, and questioned the devices' reliability.

"We need that next year to look at this issue of growth," said LAUSD External Affairs Chief Edgar Zarzueta.

The Smarter Balanced tests are taken using a tablet or computer. The LAUSD has encountered several California Education Board Chooses Common Core Over Academic Performance Index : Columns : ISchoolGuide:

Hop: A Film About Reform And My Kid - Living in Dialogue

Hop: A Film About Reform And My Kid - Living in Dialogue:



Hop: A Film About Reform And My Kid

A few years ago I freaked out. Rigoberto Ruelas, an LAUSD teacher, jumped off a bridge on the Los Angeles Crest Highway after the LA Times published his unsatisfactory teacher rating. A teacher myself, his death cut to the quick, and I found myself protesting in front of the Times, running with Occupiers, learning to live stream and meeting a lot of other pissed off educators, the UOO folks first, then the NPE and Seattle BATS. I live streamed Diane Ravitch, Karen Lewis and countless other activists and bloggers, accumulating hours of footage I was foolish enough to try to cut together into a film. I even flew to Boston and interviewed Noam Chomsky, who had a big bag of baseballs in his MIT office he was in the process of autographing. When I finished the film, last summer, I freaked out again. How could I show anybody a movie about my son? Well, I’m finished freaking out. Here it is: https://vimeo.com/121553667  Hop: A Film About Reform And My Kid - Living in Dialogue:

How Sloppy Education Reporting Is Slowly Killing Our Schools | Alternet

How Sloppy Education Reporting Is Slowly Killing Our Schools | Alternet:

How Sloppy Education Reporting Is Slowly Killing Our Schools

Most of the news media have no idea how schools run, but they write about them like they do.

 Be afraid, be very afraid, any time you see a reporter in the business media turn his or her attention to education and public schools. What will likely follow is a string of truisms used to prop up a specious argument, steeped in biased notions that were themselves picked up from ill-informed conversations promoted by other clueless business news outlets.

All of this chatter would be something best to ignore were it not for the fact that reporters and pundits from these outlets are often raised to prominence, labeled as "experts," and lionized by political leaders and policy makers, while real authorities on education are overlooked or completely drowned out in the babble.

Exhibit A in the case against bad reporting on education is in the Feb. 14, 2015 issue of the Economist. An article titled "Pro Choice" highlights efforts to create new school voucher programs in many states and allow parents to take money meant for public education and use those tax payer dollars to enroll their children in schools of their choice, including private schools and charter schools.

This topic has been the subject of countless research studies and is a matter of ongoing examination by numerous authorities. Yet the writer barely skims the research and consults with a bare minimum of real experts on education policy.

Had the Economist made the effort to consult some real research and talk to bona fide experts, what they would have learned is there are some very big problems posed by school vouchers, and there are much better alternatives to improving schools.

It's important to call out this article and others like it, not only because it's an example of feckless journalism, but also because it exemplifies an all too common pattern when low-information reporters tackle stories about education.

When Education 'Experts' Aren't

At liberal-leaning watchdog group Media Matters for America,Hilary Toneclosely follows how journalists in major media outlets report on education. She unearths some startling revelations. One such discovery revealed that whenever cable news outlets such as CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC feature programming devoted to education, those segments hardly ever feature real educators.

Over all cable news channels, only 9 percent of guests in education segments were educators. This would be like CNBC reporting on the stock market and hardly ever consulting with experts on finance and investing or the CEOs of publically traded companies.

Print and online news outlets aren't much better. Tone recently came across a How Sloppy Education Reporting Is Slowly Killing Our Schools | Alternet:

Test-fraud detectives drawing scrutiny | www.ajc.com

Test-fraud detectives drawing scrutiny | www.ajc.com:

Test-fraud detectives drawing scrutiny

 When Caveon Test Security began its statistical detective work in Atlanta, it promised swift, enlightening results.

“I’m good. I’m fast,” Caveon’s then-President John Fremer told the business and civic leaders who hired the private, for-profit consulting firm in March 2010 to look into cheating in Atlanta schools.

Caveon delivered quickly, but it met spectacular failure. Gov. Sonny Perdue rejected the firm’s findings last year and publicly accused it of seeking to “confine and constrain the damage” from rampant cheating. This July, state investigators who conducted a deep, 10-month examination of Atlanta schools said Caveon vastly underrepresented the extent of test-tampering.

Now, Caveon is defending its work in Washington, D.C., too. Authorities are re-investigating the district’s 2009 test scores despite a Caveon examination of eight schools that proclaimed no proof of cheating.

For years, the small Utah firm has been the go-to contractor for test-fraud detection. But Caveon’s work in Atlanta and D.C. suggests the company is gaining a reputation more for clearing schools than catching cheaters, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation has found.

Caveon officials reject the suggestion they would minimize cheating to please clients.

“Our results are very, very solid,” Fremer said recently.

Caveon’s secrecy about its methods has elicited complaints, too.

The firm has staunchly resisted disclosing the inner workings of its test-data analyses, making it impossible for others in the field to validate or critique the results. Because Caveon’s approach is proprietary, public agencies that hire it can’t fully grasp how it reaches conclusions about who is or isn’t cheating.

The questions raised by Caveon’s work underscore the pitfalls that await school districts and state education departments that seek to combat fraud in their standardized test scores.

Most school systems and states perform few checks on the scores, despite a rash of cheating scandals nationwide and the rising importance of test scores as a measure of student and teacher performance.

Agencies that want to do validity reviews find that standard approaches are scarce, the work is highly technical and the federal government, which requires the tests, Test-fraud detectives drawing scrutiny | www.ajc.com:

Search for PARCC leaks raises new questions about test security measures | NJ.com

Search for PARCC leaks raises new questions about test security measures | NJ.com:

Search for PARCC leaks raises new questions about test security measures

When New Jersey switched to computerized standardized tests this school year it eliminated concerns about the security of test booklets and whether an erasure mark signified an honest mistake or an attempt to cheat.

But with new tests come new test security issues -- and new controversies.

Because New Jersey adopted the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) exams, its students are answering some of the same test questions as some students in 10 other states, and even students in the same state are taking the tests at a different time.

With a national testing window that began in mid-February ending in early April, PARCC questions could hit the internet weeks before a student's test, jeopardizing the integrity of the exam, said Gregory Cizek, a professor of educational measurement and evaluation at the University of North Carolina.

In response, New Jersey has continued many of the same security measures it implemented in the past, including an online monitoring program designed to spot any test questions or references to specific reading passages posted online, according to the state Department of Education.

Though not new or uncommon, according to testing experts, the online patrolling program has sparked more debate over the already polarizing PARCC tests.

The superintendent of Watchung Hills Regional High School called the online monitoring "disturbing" in a letter to other superintendents that was leaked online and went viral on social media. Some likened the program to spying and the national Parent Coalition for Student Privacy said it's a cover-up to protect a "a very, very shoddy product."

"We will never know how bad (PARCC) is unless students talk about it and teachers talk about it," said Leonie Haimson, the coalition's executive director.

Pearson, the international testing company that provides the online platform for PARCC, said in a statement it stands by the security program run by Caveon Test Security, a subcontractor based in Utah. PARCC and the New Jersey Department of Education defended the measure.

"When students circulate test questions online, it's akin to handing out test questions on the steps of the school -- except in this case it can be seen globally," Department of Education spokesman Michael Yaple said.

Protecting the test

Founded by testing industry veterans in 2003, Caveon has led cheating investigations in Atlanta and the District of Columbia and provided test security for graduate school admissions exams and licensure and certification assessments, Vice President Steve Addicott said.

The company offers clients five major services: consulting, data forensics, security investigations, test development and web patrol.

"We are a company that believes in quality testing and the importance of trustworthy test results," Addicott said.

Until recently, most of Caveon's web patrol clients were companies trying to protect Search for PARCC leaks raises new questions about test security measures | NJ.com:

Doubling Down On Risky Experiments | Oklahoma Observer

Doubling Down On Risky Experiments | Oklahoma Observer:

DOUBLING DOWN ON RISKY EXPERIMENTS

 BY JOHN THOMPSON

Oklahoma families and educators recently learned of Senate Bill 68 – the so-called “game changer” – which would empower the city of Oklahoma City to compete with the Oklahoma City Public Schools. This “under the radar” legislation would allow non-educators to authorize charter schools.

As OKCPS School Board member Phil Horning says, that would be like designating the school system to run fire stations.

SB 68 is an extreme version of choice that grew out of the claim by market-driven reformers that local school boards, teachers’ unions, and university education departments – i.e. the “status quo” – must be destroyed so that “disruptive innovation” can transform schools. In Oklahoma City, it could eventually become a mortal threat to the school system, as well as its teachers union.

If the majority of the City Council gains the power to compete with the OKCPS, SB 68 would allow them to set their own rules in doing so. Oklahoma City could then join the growing ranks of communities where traditional public schools are extinct or nearly all replaced by charters, including “virtual learning” online charters.

This extreme version of school choice is an example of how the contemporary school “reform” movement is in its death throes, and this desperation has led to a double-down on even more risky experiments. This accountability-driven reform movement may have produced the single biggest social policy debacle since Prohibition. Corporate reform failed by ignoring Harry Truman’s maxim, “Any jackass can kick down a barn. It takes a carpenter to build one.”

Perhaps the closest thing to a competition-driven “success” is New Orleans, a district that is now 90% charters. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan claimed that Hurricane Katrina was the best thing that had happened to New Orleans schools.

In fact, this hugely expensive gamble has produced modest, possibly fleeting gains, while doing the seemingly impossible for that city – increasing racial and economic segregation even more.

And even if the New Orleans record was not terribly exaggerated by true believers in choice, it has no relevance to Oklahoma City. If reformers get their wish, and a man-made Katrina were to blow up the OKCPS, could we expect an influx from across the nation of the mega-millions of dollars it would take to replace our schools?

That being said, I do not question the sincerity of local market-driven reformers; rarely do I see in Doubling Down On Risky Experiments | Oklahoma Observer:

Big Education Ape: Virtual Schools Remain Unproven | National Education Policy Center http://bit.ly/1BMvlss

Big Education Ape: Ohio’s First Public School Hundred-Millionaire: ECOT Founder William Lagerhttp://bit.ly/1ETIoe3

Big Education Ape: Charter spent $2.27M on advertising | The Columbus Dispatch http://bit.ly/1ETD7mt

Big Education Ape: Report Slams Virtual Charter Schools That Graduate Just 36% Of Students - BuzzFeed Newshttp://bit.ly/1AVX7nl

snopes.com: Pearson PARCC Social Media Spying

snopes.com: Pearson PARCC Social Media Spying:

PARCC Strife

Claim:   Educational materials publisher Pearson monitored students' social media accounts for content related to the PARCC test.

MIXTURE:

	FALSE: Pearson monitored individual, private student accounts to circumvent cheating on PARCC tests.
	TRUE: Pearson monitored social media networks for public posts that possibly disclosed test contents.

Example:   [Collected via e-mail, March 2015]

This was posted on FaceBook. It stated that Pearson was monitoring students' social media after a student tweeted about a PARCC test question.

Origins:   On 13 March 2015, the Facebook page "Bob Braun's ledger" (operated by a former newspaper reporter named Bob Braun) published two status updates about an e-mail message purportedly documenting that test and textbook manufacturer Pearson was surveilling the social media accounts of students taking the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) test:

PEARSON IS MONITORING SOCIAL MEDIA OF NEW JERSEY STUDENTS AND NOTIFYING THE STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT IF THEY MENTION PARCC. More on my blog later but three students from Somerset County high school were caught up in it.

BREAKING NEWS: HOW'S THIS FOR AN OUTRAGE: PEARSON, STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT, SPYING ON STUDENTS' SOCIAL MEDIA,ASKING DISTRICTS TO DISCPLINE STUDENTS

Braun's post (and a subsequent article) drew widespread attention and prompted debate about student privacy. On 14 March 2015, Superintendent Elizabeth Jewett of Watchung Hills Regional High School District in New Jersey published a letter confirming that the leaked e-mail circulated by Braun was authentic. Jewett said that she did not authorize the widespread release of the message and was unsure about why it was forwarded to Braun:

Dear Watchung Hills Regional High School Learning Community,

On Friday, March 13, 2015, Bobbraunsledger.com published a story referencing an email I had sent to other superintendents about issues regarding PARCC testing and Pearson's monitoring of social media. The email shown in his article is authentic. It was an email I sent on March 10, 2015 at approximately 10:00AM to a group of superintendents to share my concerns and to see if other schools had a similar experience. I did not authorize the release of this email nor am I aware of who did release it. I am also not aware of the motives they may have had behind the release. That said, I completely stand behind my comments as they represent not only my views and concerns; they also represent the views and concerns of our Board of Education.

The article references instances involving students during PARCC testing and any related disciplinary action. For student privacy issues, we cannot comment on any of the specific students or discipline referred to in the article. What I am able to share is that all issues have been dealt with in accordance with our Code of Conduct, Academic Integrity and Acceptable Use of Technology Policies.

Our main concern is, and will always remain, supporting the educational, social and emotional needs of our students. The privacy and security of student information remains the utmost priority for our district.

The district will have no further comment on this matter at this time.

A representative for Pearson also released a statement after Jewett's e-mail circulated, confirming that social media monitoring pertained only to information published publicly on the internet:

The security of a test is critical to ensure fairness for all students and teachers and to ensure that the results of any assessment are trustworthy and valid.

We welcome debate and a variety of opinions. But when test questions or elements are posted publicly to the Internet, we are obligated to alert PARCC states. Any contact with students or decisions about student discipline are handled at the local level.

We believe that a secure test maintains fairness for every student and the validity, integrity of the test results.

The claims about PARCC test content and social media alarmed a number of parents, many of whom were concerned that their children's social media accounts were subject to invasive, secret audits by a large educational testing company. However, much of the controversy boiled down to an initial lack of detail in the retelling regarding
the privacy level of content shared to social media.

Upon later examination, it became clear that Pearson monitored social networks (primarily Twitter) for public tweets that potentially included content from PARCC tests. Irrespective of whether folks find that specific protocol acceptable, Pearson was not implicated in the interception of any private social media postings or communications belonging to students who were administered PARCC tests.

Moreover, although the security measures cited were adapted to include social media networks, the overall practice of stringent test security for statewide materials is neither new nor novel. New York state's long-term efforts to secure its Regents exams [PDF] is a well-documented example of such measures, as revealed when controversy erupted in June 1989 after the secrecy of the statewide standardized Chemistry test was compromised and its answers were published in a newspaper:

State education officials said that The Post's front page, which displayed the answer sheet, appeared to have been sent by facsimile machines this morning to some students in upstate New York and that this led to the decision for a statewide ban. The chemistry test was to have been given this afternoon.

A spokesman for State Attorney General Robert Abrams said investigators were aware of "at least four tests and their answers having been bought and sold" among students. In addition to chemistry, the tests were in United States history, global studies and 10th-grade mathematics, said the spokesman, Timothy Gilles.

Education officials, who said they had no idea how the keys were obtained, pledged an overhaul of security procedures for administering the tests, which in their 111 years have been canceled statewide only once before.

Despite the initial controversy, Pearson was not accused of monitoring individual Twitter or Facebook accounts and merely accessed publicly-posted information visible to anyone with an Internet connection. Moreover, standardized testing-based security measures existed well before Twitter and Facebook, and students have long been subject to scrutiny and security measures to circumvent cheating on statewide tests. It didn't appear any students were specifically targeted in larger social media monitoring for PARCC test content, which included only publicly-available posts that were turned up through keyword searches.

Last updated:   16 March 2015

Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/education/parcc.asp#m1zYJ6ewqTXIkytm.99

NYC Public School Parents: Surveillance, free speech, student privacy and the Pineapple: Pearson gives parents more reasons to opt out

NYC Public School Parents: Surveillance, free speech, student privacy and the Pineapple: Pearson gives parents more reasons to opt out:

Surveillance, free speech, student privacy and the Pineapple: Pearson gives parents more reasons to opt out

On Saturday night the news exploded through the Twittersphere via Bob Braun’s blog that Pearson was monitoring student social media.  Pearson had sent a warning to the NJ State Education Department, who in turn had contacted the Superintendent of Warren, saying that a student enrolled in the district had posted a picture of one of the PARCC questions on Twitter during the exam.  

That turned out to be incorrect, according to the Superintendent.  Apparently, the student had just commented on the question after taking the test, and deleted his tweet after being contacted by the district.  The most disturbing aspect of the incident was not merely Pearson’s error in reporting this to the State Education Department,  (how did they get this wrong?) but also their suggestion that the student should be disciplined for this behavior – when it’s not at all clear  that he did anything wrong.  But parents and others were understandably alarmed that Pearson is monitoring student social media at all.

I don’t mean to minimize the creepiness of this, but I am not surprised.  Clearly, Pearson has good reason  to defend  against its test items being disclosed in advance of students elsewhere taking the PARCC exams, and will use whatever tools at its disposal to do so.  But it is somewhat implausible that anyone could imagine that they will be able to achieve this. Given the widespread use of social media and the speed and ease of communication, it is near crazy to imagine that questions given to over five million students in 11 states over the period of several weeks will remain secret for any length of time – or even just during the testing window. According to the PARCC website, since February 16, over two million students have now taken these exams  in Arkansas, the District of Columbia, Colorado, Illinois, Ohio, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey and New Mexico, with Louisiana, Massachusetts and Rhode Island to start testing soon.

The PARCC/Pearson consortium has also said they refuse to release all of the questions on these exams, a position that is difficult to justify for any assessments in which the stakes for students, teachers and schools are so high.   But then those in power always want to maintain maximum secrecy for themselves, and protect what they see is their own privacy rights, whether personal or commercial – while having little or no respect for the privacy of others.  Witness how technology CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg maximize their own privacy by asking all their NYC Public School Parents: Surveillance, free speech, student privacy and the Pineapple: Pearson gives parents more reasons to opt out:

Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » Avoiding a repeat of Pineapple-gate

Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » Avoiding a repeat of Pineapple-gate:



 Avoiding a repeat of Pineapple-gate

A letter from a New Jersey Superintendent started making the rounds on Friday. The letter included the following:

• An alert by the state department of education, late at night, that there had been a “test security” breach.
• An inaccurate allegation by the state official that a picture of a test question had been posted on Twitter by the student.
• A request that that the student be disciplined (suspended).
• This involved input from the test publisher, Pearson.

The tweet apparently did not include a picture, and was after the day’s testing ended. It started on Bob Braun’s Ledger website, which has been crashing since, either due to large amounts of traffic, or a DNS attack, depending on who you read. Either scenario says something about how explosive this issue is.

In my humble opinion, this is not spying by Pearson, because when this student put it up in social media it’s public. But there is something more disturbing about this because at the heart, it’s a free speech issue and the clash with intellectual property. These tests involve a lot of money. A lot of money to hire psychometricians to write the questions. A lot of money to test publishers from the states and localities to pay for the tests, etc. These questions are precious intellectual property for the publishers. They lose value the more “public” they become, so they loathe sharing on social media. They talk about “cheating” really, they worry about questions becoming dead because they’ve been all over the Internets and then can’t be used any more. Audrey Watters and Cynthia Liu have made this point too, I’m going to guess we all had this brilliant insight at once. but here are Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » Avoiding a repeat of Pineapple-gate:

Pearson’s Intellectual Property — Why Is This Even a Thing? | Daniel Katz, Ph.D.

Pearson’s Intellectual Property — Why Is This Even a Thing? | Daniel Katz, Ph.D.:

Pearson’s Intellectual Property — Why Is This Even a Thing?

Bob Braun, a five decade veteran of the Newark Star Ledger and currently an independent blogger, blew up a portion of the internet on Friday by reporting that Pearson, the international education giant responsible for the PARCC examinations currently underway, was “spying” on students’ social mediaactivity.  According to a letter from Watchung Hills Regional High School District Superintendent Elizabeth Jewett, the district test coordinator got a late night phone call from New Jersey DOE after Pearson initiated a “priority one alert” for a breech of test security within the district.  NJDOE informed the district that they believed Pearson’s alert was for a student who took a picture of a test item during testing and posted it to Twitter, and the state suggested that the district should discipline the offending student.  However, upon examination, the district ascertained that a student had tweeted a comment well after testing was over and included no picture at all.  The tweet has since been deleted by the student, but given the 140 character limit on Twitter, it is extremely unlikely that any significant breech of test security could have possibly occurred.  However, the incident revealed that Pearson is monitoring social media for any and all references to the testing going on and is prepared to initiate state level investigations of individual students (how else would NJDOE know the district and student involved?) over very flimsy circumstances.

The story took off very quickly as did Mr. Braun’s accusation that Pearson is Pearson’s Intellectual Property — Why Is This Even a Thing? | Daniel Katz, Ph.D.:

Pearson Is NOT Spying on Student Tweets; Instead Enlisting Public School Officials to Protect Its Tests

Pearson Is NOT Spying on Student Tweets; Instead Enlisting Public School Officials to Protect Its Tests:

Pearson Is NOT “Spying” On Student Tweets, It’s Enlisting Public School Officials To Defend Its Intellectual Property

Bob Braun, an education blogger and former journalist, got ahold of a note from a school superintendent advising parents in the district that a student in NJ had tweeted outside of school hours about a PARCC test he had completed earlier when school was still in session.* (The exact contents of the tweet are unknown now.)

Pearson, a multinational corporation which monitors its brand on Twitter for reputation defense and intellectual property rights violations, saw the tweet and contacted the New Jersey Department of Education which then reached out to the superintendent of the school district where the child attends. Pearson labeled this a “Priority 1 alert” breach of the confidential nature of the test’s contents and the NJDOE instructed the superintendent to have the student remove his tweet and he complied.

The framing of this by Braun as “spying” has caused the hair of many education activists to catch on fire. HOWEVER.

Pearson is not “spying” on student tweets, it’s enlisting public school officials — the New Jersey Department of Education — to defend its intellectual property. The latter is worse and a bigger problem. 

People need to realize that corporate brands monitor their Twitter mentions. This is a fact and not a new thing; this is how hashtags and searchable Twitter handles work, and this is how successful issue campaigns have been launched against corporate brands in the past. (In 2011, I wanted to force Procter & Gamble to divest monetary and other support for ALEC, which is the right-wing clearinghouse for state legislation like “stand your ground” aka “kill at will with your gun,” parent trigger, and other toxic legislation, etc. So some activists and I used their shareholder meeting hashtag and tweeted embarrassing news reports about P&G’s shameful corporate citizenship, costly lawsuits over metal hip joints, and so forth. Which of course they saw and any shareholders tuning in to the hashtag also saw. And not long after pressure from many much larger activist groups, including Pearson Is NOT Spying on Student Tweets; Instead Enlisting Public School Officials to Protect Its Tests:

Pearson Spying Part 2. Talking to Anthony Cody about TRACX 03/17 by Busted Pencils | Education Podcasts

Pearson Spying Part 2. Talking to Anthony Cody about TRACX 03/17 by Busted Pencils | Education Podcasts:

Pearson Spying Part 2. Talking to Anthony Cody about TRACX

After a stimulating conversation with Bob Braun last night about his breaking news story that proved that Pearson was spying on New Jersey students wilth the collaboration of the New Jersey Department of Education,, Jed and Tim continue the Pearson Spygate conversation with Living in Dialogue creator and blogger Anthony Cody. As detailed here http://www.livingindialogue.com/high-stakes-testing-makes-surveillance-necessary/ Anthony suggests that surveillance is a requirement of high stakes testing and explains how TRACX helps make it easy for Pearson to spy on the social media activities of our children.Pearson Spying Part 2. Talking to Anthony Cody about TRACX 03/17 by Busted Pencils | Education Podcasts: