The connections between Pearson and the Néw Jersey State Department of Education are close, reports Bob Braun:
“Bari Anhalt Erlichson, an assistant New Jersey education commissioner and chief testing officer who supervises PARCC testing throughout the state, has a personal connection of sorts to PARCC’s developer, the British publishing giant Pearson. Anhalt Erlichson is married to Andrew Erlichson, a vice president of a company named MongoDB. MongoDB (the name comes from humongous database) is a subcontractor to Pearson, developing its national student database that provides the larger company with access to student records in New Jersey and the nation.
“Anhalt Erlichson wrote a memorandum to New Jersey educators March 17 defending the actions of her department and Pearson in monitoring the social media of New Jersey students while they took the PARCC tests. She blamed the uproar caused by the revelation of the cyber-spying on the failure of parents and educators to understand social media.
“She did not mention her personal ties to a company that profits from the business relationship to Pearson–and the state education department….
“State education department spokesmen declined to answer inquiries about Erlichson’s connections to MongoDB.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Surprising” – You are kidding aren’t you !!!! http://wsautter.com/read-save-walts-books-ipad
Surprised? No, and I’ll bet there are many more such cozy relationships teetering on the edge of conflict of interest territory.
Teetering on the edge? Sounds like over the top.
Contracts should be available for inspection and a follow the money investigation. Sunshine laws have probably taken a beating or vanished in many states.
Thank you Dr. Ravitch for picking this up. This needs to go to Washington because there is more to it as Bob states at the end:
“10gen (the MongoDB company) today announced a strategic investment and technology development agreement with In-Q-Tel (IQT), the independent strategic investment firm that identifies innovative technology solutions to support the missions of the U.S. Intelligence Community.”
IQT is a CIA company. So says The Washington Post. So says MongoDB
BLOGCIAThe CIA funds In-Q-Tel. In-Q-Tel funds MongoDB. MongoDB services Pearson.
And Pearson spies on our children.
This needs to get out to the press. I think a lot of parents would go ballistic.
And let us not forget NYS Chancellor Meryl Tisch’s business connections through her husband as he is one of the heirs to the Loew’s corporation. Yes, THAT Loew’s, the one that had partial ownership of CBS that was sold off to Westinghouse in the mid-90s for a cool $5.4 billion. Even though this is implying guilt by association, isn’t Meryl Tisch also involved in some type of business scheme disguised as some Ed Reform non-profit where other businesses have contributed to where their total funding for themselves is just over the double-digit millions? I can’t remember where I read that but the gist of that article was that Tisch is involved with other business elites to, essentially, keep the privatization engine alive.
What it the world does the value of that house have to do with anything? I’ve learned a new word today: Doxxing.
I was in Bari’s graduating class in college. I knew her only tangentially, but goodness people do show up in the most interesting places.
And don’t forget MA where the commissioner of the Department Of Elementary and Secondary Ed Mitchell Chester is the chair of PARCC’s governing board!
I hope the public schools are good in Princeton. That’s got to be one Mongo of a property tax bill.
I gave a presentation in Princeton last week — one of the parents said that only 20 kids in the high school were actually taking the PARCC.
I don’t know, this story seems like a bit of a stretch. MongpoDB is a Database provider. They happen to make a tool that Pearson uses to build a database with. Would it be any different if Pearson used Oracle for the database, and someones spouse worked for Oracle? I think a connection is trying to made made where one doesn’t exist.
There is a huge conflict of interest. She is a policy maker, dealing with assessment and Pearson, and her husband is vice president of a company gets money from Pearson? Anything Pearson arranges with her husband’s company is suspect, as a possible quid pro quo to bring about policy that benefits Pearson. This is appalling.
If her husband happened to be an Apache programmer, would the school district or state have to refrain from buying any product built on Apache?
Before you answer, realize that the majority of web sites probably run on Apache. They would be extremely limited in what web based apps they could run.
I just don’t see a conflict myself. And if there is one it is a very, very small connection.
I’m am as much against corruption as anyone, I just don’t see a case being made here.
Literally, predictable bedfellows . . . . .
As our friend the great Krazy TA would say of the very old, very Roman consul, Lucius Cassius Longinus Ravilla, cui bono? Does receiving funds through connections with the employer of one’s spouse get any bono-er than that?
Part of the Problem:
TAGO!
But you give me too much credit.
And besides, I am more of Lucius Annaeus Seneca man myself—
“For greed all nature is too little.”
An old dead Roman guy not your cup of tea? Howzabout an aphorism from the latest updated Marxist Playbook aka the Potemkin Village Plan for $tudent $ucce$$:
“Education reform is a parked taxi with the meter running.”
Again with the ¿😳?
The famous one, you know, whose precepts rheephormers have tattooed all over, er, parts of their bodies we aren’t supposed to peek at when we’re in polite company.
Groucho.
You were thinking of someone else?
😎
This is so pathetic. Do you have any idea how widely used MongoDB is? This is fear mongering at its finest.
What is it about nepotism you don’t understand?
Wait till Pearson breaks out the drones. They’ll have them things buzzing around every bus stop and playground. Cue the James Bond theme music…
Can they show parents something that relates to “cheating”? A legit “cheating” attempt this monitoring has stopped/curtailed?
Because I’m not clear this is about “cheating” and the question would be whether the state is enforcing the contractor’s product protection because while that is “security” it has nothing to do with any state interest in the validity of the tests or “fairness”.
If there were sanctions on students, what were they? How were the students punished?
She states that it isn’t about students discussing testing. Can she show that, or is she just relying on assurances by the contractor?
In the process described in the letter to parents, it looks like the contractor monitors/reviews student postings and then makes a referral to the state.
Should the contractor have that kind of discretion, where they make the call that one student has crossed the line but another has not?
If the contractor has that discretion, what are the factors that the contractor uses to determine a referral to the state should be made? Can the state show us the process the contractor uses to determine which student communications might be objectionable (“cheating”) and which don’t make the Pearson “cut” for referral to the state?
I see you deleted the reference to how much she paid for her house. Braun’s page actually has a link to her home address.
Actually, looks like Braun reconsidered the wisdom of that link and deleted it.
The question to be asked is whether there was a direct relationship between the actions of Pearson monitoring social media, then contacting the husband to use the database, who then spoke with his wife, who directly or indirectly contacted the superintendent demanding punishment for they tweeting student. Merely having an association with related entity does not make a person guilty, but using that relationship to expedite or circumvent policies and procedures could be a problem.
it looks like states asked the contractor to stop matching students from the test roster to social media posts, which is one way to limit the contractor’s role and return accountability to the state. Are there other changes that should be made?
“So far, the Facebook-era breaches have been relatively few. As of Wednesday, Pearson had identified 72 test item images or descriptions out of 4.9 million test sessions nationally, said Stacy Skelly, vice president of corporate affairs for Pearson’s school division.
The material was taken down quickly, sometimes in less than an hour, according to a spokesman with PARCC, a multistate testing consortium that includes Colorado. Testing started this month.
Pearson agreed this week at the states’ request to stop matching social media posts to a list of students on test rosters — instead leaving the matching to states, Skelly said.”
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_27739394/pearson-defends-monitoring-social-media-parcc-test-items
I’m also curious about the difference between Pearson and PARCC. They’re used nearly interchangeably in news reports, which might just be confusion or muddling by the writer.
Does PARCC have some oversight/regulatory role or are they simply promotion and execution of the directives provided by the contractor? Are they in any way independent, as a practical matter, or is the whole regulatory/oversight role up to state ed departments/individual schools?
PAARC Espionage – Let’s Do More! If the integrity of the test is so fragile as to require a permanent cone of silence around the children forced to take it, then limiting surveillance to social media sites simply won’t cut it. http://www.bluejersey.com/diary/26532/parcc-espionage-lets-do-more
Diane, I’ve been a big fan of yours for many years and I appreciate all you’ve done to help students and teachers with your work. You have been a hero to me and an inspiration too keep teaching when the going gets tough and it would be so much easier to just go back to the private sector.
But the strange bedfellows you’ve acquired through your ill-advised blanket opposition to the CCSS has pushed me and others that I know away. Your picking up this doxxing piece of questionable veracity by Braun and pushing it from your very large podium has been a kind of a watershed for me. I now no longer view you as an ally who I sometimes disagree with. I now see you as an opponent who I often agree with.
I am saddened by this, but that’s how it is.