A reader (nextlevel2000) left a comment with a link to the social media guidelines of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. What is amazing is that the guidelines tell school officials how to monitor their students on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to see if they are violating test security.
Privacy is truly dead.
Mercedes Schneider saw the same guidelines and appropriately skewers them.
How do you feel about a testing company encouraging educators to spy on students’ online exchanges?
GUIDANCE FOR SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING DURING THE FIELD TEST
Smarter Balanced Test Security
Maintaining test security during administration of the Field Test is critical to preserving the integrity of test items and validity of the test itself. The Consortium is closely monitoring social media networks for security breaches and escalating to states when appropriate. These guidelines provide recommendations for monitoring social media and we hope you find them helpful.
Test Administration Procedures
It is important to be vigilant before, during, and after testing for any situations that could lead to or be an impropriety, irregularity, or breach. Please remember that only individuals who have been appropriately trained and whose presence is required may be present during the administration of the Field Test.
To get ahead of the problem and reduce the number of security breaches on social media, we encourage you to refer to the Smarter Balanced Test Administration Manual (Appendix B) for detailed information on the impact and definition of incidences as well as the timeline for reporting these activities.
Sites to Monitor
Twitter (https://twitter.com/)
If your school has a Twitter account, you can take advantage of following your students by requesting their @username and/or encouraging them to the follow the school Twitter account.
Following @SmarterBalanced will also help you to monitor our news feed.
To search for conversations and posts about the Field Test, consider the following search queries:
o #sbac or #smarterbalanced
o #[insert name of school] or @[insert school Twitter handle] o “smarter balanced” or “sbac”
Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/)
If your school has a Facebook page, invite your students to join.
If your students have public profiles, you can also search their news feed and photo gallery for
security breaches.
Similar to Twitter, you can conduct searches by entering “smarter balanced” or “sbac” or “[insert
name of school]”
Statigram (statigram.com )
Statigram is a webviewer for Instagram and allows you to search and manage comments more
easily. You will need to create an account for yourself to search comments on Statigram. If you
have a private account, you can use this information to login and review information.
To search for posts about the Field Test, use the same search queries recommended for Twitter.
What to look for
Images of the computer screen that show ELA or math test items
Any photographs that appear to be taken in the test administration room. These can be images
students have taken of themselves or their classmates as well as pictures taken by test
administrators of the testing session.
Tweets that indicate test security policies are not being upheld.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Just sick!
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Truly. I find this kind of repression to be nothing short of FASCISM.
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internal domestic surveillance of the citizenry is absolutely one of the ways in which fascism starts
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yes – what’s up with Pearson siccing the local administrators on the kids – isn’t this matter between the school district and the students? we have the Pearson tail wagging the school district dog at this point… well, actually, we’ve had all of the ed reform tail wagging the public ed dog since the beginning of this rubbish…
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“. . . isn’t this matter between the school district and the students”
NO! It’s not. As a government entity the school district has no business monitoring what the students do on their own time and own technology.
The F&*%ing GAGA administrators that do that should be sued and lose their jobs.
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I know something happened in PA, where children took school laptops home and the district was able to access the built-in webcams on each laptop and peer in on what the students were doing in their rooms. Some of the imagery is unmentionable here.
My point is that the district was sued, and I believe the families prevailed. I wish I knew the name of the court case. Talk about chutzpah and stupidity rolled into one when it comes to an institution thinking it should have that much authority and power over other individuals.
I am not saying the kids were doing appropriate things with the laptops, but there needs to be a balance between school proprietary interests and the Constitutional rights to privacy within one’s own home.
If it were me, I would not permit the take-home policy in the first place unless the district had parents sign an agreement pledging that their children that will not be viewing inappropriate material or conducting any activities on the school laptops that would be educationally interruptive. Problem solved, at least legally and on paper.
Talk about a foolish district, one that knows little about liability and the law! It set itself up for liability and then attempted to use the parents and children as the culprit for the district’s own incompetence. That’s not to say that there should be no consequences for the parents and children, but spying on them in their own homes is the polar opposite solution and just plain immoral and illegal!
Honestly, I think some of those fracking chemicals s in PA territory are seeping into the ground, permeating the water supplies, and altering people’s brains down there.
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So now they want the schools monitoring kids social media accounts? This is beyond sick.
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Parents have not been properly informed of their rights. As a consequence of sending their children to public school, (which is the law), most parents believe that their participation in the federally mandated tests is, well, mandatory. It is time that parents are informed that the tests are not mandatory, that they can opt their children out. If they don’t opt them out, their children may be subject to a private company monitoring their social media for any discussion of the tests and their children’s data will be mined. There’s such a strange inconsistency in all of this. A student needs their parents’ permission to ride a bus, participate in sports, go on a field trip. A parent is told they can opt their child out of having their children’s pictures circulated or attending special events, but there are no mechanisms in place to inform parents that they can opt their kids out of standardized testing. How is this legal?
Further – How is it that a private, for profit company can enlist our public institutions to protect their intellectual property (their ability to generate profit) against the children’s rights to freedom of speech?
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“There’s such a strange inconsistency in all of this. A student needs their parents’ permission to ride a bus, participate in sports, go on a field trip. A parent is told they can opt their child out of having their children’s pictures circulated or attending special events, but there are no mechanisms in place to inform parents that they can opt their kids out of standardized testing.”
Excellent point Pamela!
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Administrators in Newark and Paterson are pressuring parents who have opted out their children to reinstate them.
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Yes, EXCELLENT POINT, Pamela.
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and parents’ rights to protect the rights of their children who are minors?
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These companies are scum.
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“escalating to states”
whatever that means?
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If the SBAC test is computer adaptive (although last spring’s field test was not), doesn’t that mean that the test takers will not have the same questions? So how can they be “cheating”? It would certainly seem, as some bloggers have asserted, that PARCC and SBAC don’t want parents and educators to know how awful the test questions are.
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Kathy, I would support this assertion completely. At no point is there any mention at all in any of the circulating correspondence that mentions the students’ “answers”. Only huge concerns over the “items” themselves. Why such concern over the items? I believe you are right, in that law suits are limited significantly when as few people as possible are exposed to the test items and subsequently reveal just how poorly written they actually are. Case in point, the awful “pineapple question” in NYS. It was only after the question was revealed that the company had to conceded it was inappropriate.
Incredibly disheartening to see the sickening reach of corporations into public institutions.
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Big brother is watching!!!
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Has this information been taken up by major media outlets? Shouldn’t all parents be made aware of the nefarious practices of Pearson? Are we living in some dystopia? We used to disparage the Soviet Union for this type of surveillance. Has it now become acceptable in the USA?
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You should vote and let those politicians know how you feel. This is such an outrage! Your vote can make a difference! You can vote for A. (the party that is already destroying public education) or B. (the party who promises to destroy public education in the future.) What a tough decision to make! I hope you can decide between those “2” tough candidates. It so great to live in a free country like this with such a great system of government. I’m so lucky my grandpa came over on that ship from Germany. If he had stayed, my kids would have free college, free healthcare, healthy food, and beautiful scenic towns and cities with excellent infrastructure. Who would want that life?
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And they would be told what major they were allowed to take in college based on testing of skills and abilities instead of what they wanted to study in college. It’s a double-edged sword in Germany.
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Not sure when your grandfather emigrated . . .Would he have survived WW II? Had to live in East Germany under Soviet rule?
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And, let me quote Mercedes Schneider right here:
“The sneakiest component of this “monitoring” is the potential use of a school social media site to track students without their knowing.
School social media sites should include disclaimers that those “following” or “joining” the site realize that their personal social media accounts are open for school site/district monitoring. Otherwise, the school arguably places itself in a legally awkward situation in which a school might be liable for encouraging students based on an undisclosed, ulterior motive.”
I’ve read this section over and over and it’s still sinking in. So, this is what it’s come to?
Some people are so concerned about “security breaches” in this country. But in their zeal to allegedly “protect” us, what are they really destroying? And, of course, many of these corporations are getting paid good money to take our freedoms away, too!
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Here’s an idea: Instead of using 21st century high tech “spying” to make sure that 19th century assessments are not being breached why not adopt the assessment methods used in progressive colleges and universities? If high schools adopted the “grading” structures of Bennington, Hampshire, and Evergreen instead of those used in traditional colleges we wouldn’t rely on high stakes tests: we’d rely on professional insights of teachers and each students emerging self-awareness.
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“we’d rely on professional insights of teachers and each students emerging self-awareness.”
YES!
What Noel Wilson has named the “Responsive Frame”:
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
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No test or any initiative, for that matter, is worth spying on students or colleagues.
The “reformers” have sunk to a new low and I did not think that was possible.
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One thing people – students especially – can do to combat this is to take to Twitter, Facebook, etc. in droves and post constantly about Pearson, SBAC, PARCC, testing, any other words that might get noticed. If they want to spy, let’s give them something to spy on. Heck, even if you’re tweeting/Facebooking/etc. about something else entirely, still include those words. And students should intentionally be as specific about the tests and the questions as they can.. Just let Pearson try and keep up.
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And once again, if ANYTHING happening in ed reform was worthwhile, it would not have to be forced upon us. IF the ccss were worthy, IF the tests provided anything useful in terms of informing instruction, educators everywhere might be more receptive. At what point does PARCC/SBAC take a step back and let their responses to the revolt (spying?) that is brewing in families, schools, and communities inform their actions? Reminds me of the Soviet Union closing its borders to keep citizens in, “for their own good.”
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Two years ago, a teen in NJ committed suicide after learning that he failed to get a passing grade on the standardized test that would allow him to graduate. He tweeted his despair over the test. I wonder if his Twitter account was monitored by the NJ DOE.
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Is the signature of a minor legally binding?
I recently took a teenage student to an eye appointment and she wasn’t able to sign anything, all had to be signed by an adult representative. They said medicaid would not reimburse with her signature and explained this is standard policy anywhere.
I am not yet a parent nor a lawyer, but I take real issue with this.
I would expect the school should be required to have explicit written consent of a guardian if they are having children sign NDA agreements and enforcing this policy with children. This should be written in the parent’s native language if they speak a language other than English.
I administeted Pearson NYS ELA and math (in the past years, not yet this year) and all students sign is to state that they have not receiced any sort of assistance on the test questions.
Can a minor really be held to an agreement to suppress their first ammendment rights? I have seen students at my school receive consequences for actions on social media that can be considered bullying- posting mean or embarassing photos, threatening posts, etc. this is defensible under DASA, however discussing state exams does not and should not apply.
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I would encourage all of my students to post pics of the questions or tweet the questions as they remember them. I did this several years ago when Indiana had just one graduation qualifying exam. I got reprimanded and transferred to a terrible inner city school, but the action did have some impact because the state had to admit that a great deal of the exam questions were wrong or too poorly worded to make sense. I realize that in today’s testing-mania culture I would probably have been fired, lost my license or maybe even jailed, but this stuff is so terrible we need to start some civil disobedience.
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It might be worthwhile to review what Stanley Kaplan did when the SATs first came out and ETS claimed it wasn’t possible to study for the tests. Kaplan knew that wasn’t true, but since ETS wouldn’t release any information, “Kaplan would have ‘Thank Goodness It’s Over’ pizza parties after each S.A.T. As his students talked about the questions they had faced, he and his staff would listen and take notes, trying to get a sense of how better to structure their coaching” (New Yorker, 12/7/01, at http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/12/17/examined-life).
Civil disobediance! Let’s all reconstruct the Pearson tests and, instead of paying Kapan, form “beat the test” community study cells.
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As much as I like this idea, and it probably works at the high school level and maybe somewhat for middle school students, I doubt one would get even a remotely accurate picture of the elementary tests this way. The information would have to come from teachers and test proctors and you would need widespread buy-in so that no one school or district could be targeted, at least until the outrage over testing spreads far and widely enough.
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VOTE 3rd Party.
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Inviting students to follow your Twitter account or join your Facebook page as a school fo r the purpose of monitoring them is distasteful and it is disappointing that this was proposed for last year’s field test. The big tell would be how many of this year’s state level security or test administrator manuals recommend the same.
My state’s manual does not recommend a system of monitoring social media, but it does include posting items on social media as a high level breach of test security. That is consistent with how we would view a student posting a question from a school exam. If we were made aware a student had posted a question from an advanced algebra or world history semester exam on social media, we would follow up on that as a breach of our academic honesty policy. That doesn’t mean we have someone constantly reviewing social media during exams, though. That’s monitoring without suspicion. Do we require students to put away their phones during exams, yes.
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Sing to the tune of “Don’t Say Nothin Bad About My Baby” by The Cookies:
Don’t say nothin’
Bad about the PARCC test
(Oh, no) don’t say nothin’
Bad about the PARCC test
(They spy on you)
Don’t say nothin’
Bad about the PARCC test
(You know it’s true)
Don’t say nothin’
Bad about the PARCC test
It’s bad (it’s bad)
It’s bad for me (bad for me)
It’s all the government cares about
(Oh, no) don’t you tweet that
The PARCC test’s just a dumb test
(It’s hard to take) don’t you tweet that
The PARCC test’s just a dumb test
(For goodness’ sake) they will listen
To ev’ry single word you say
(Opt out now) don’t you tweet that
The PARCC test’s just a dumb test
It’s bad (it’s bad)
It’s bad for me (bad for me)
So, kids, you better stash your phone
(Everyone thinks it’s a hassle)
‘Specially when it’s testin’ me
(Everyone says it’s crazy)
Stay off your Twitter
And don’t Facebook me, oh, yeah
Don’t say nothin’
Bad about the PARCC test
(Oh, no) don’t say nothin’
Bad about the PARCC test
(I hate it so)
Don’t say nothin’
Bad about the PARCC test
(Oh, don’t you know)
Don’t say nothin’
Bad about the PARCC test
They’ll stop (they’ll stop)
You when you tweet (when you tweet)
‘Cause that’s what Pearson cares about
[Instrumental Interlude]
(Oh, no) don’t say nothin’
Bad about the PARCC test
(Oh, no) don’t say nothin’
Bad about the PARCC test
(I hate it so)
Don’t say nothin’
Bad about the PARCC test
(Oh, don’t you know)
Don’t say nothin’
Bad about the PARCC test
It’s bad (it’s bad)
It’s bad for me (bad for me)
But, boy, you better stash your phone
(Oh, no) don’t say nothin’
Bad about the PARCC test
(Oh, no) don’t say nothin’
Bad about the PARCC test
Don’t say nothin’
Bad about the PARCC test
(Oh, no) don’t say nothin’
Bad about the PARCC test
(Oh, no) don’t say nothin’
Bad about the PARCC test
(Oh, no) don’t say nothin’
Bad about the PARCC test
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In my day, ditching campus for lunch or smoking behind the bleechers were among the major conerns. Now, we see public school districts hiring private companies to monitor student’s use of communications technology. Here’s an article on Southern California’s Glendale Unified School District’s efforts to educate parents of the long term dangers of teen misbehavior. “Scott Anderle, assistant director of student support services for Glendale Unified, keeps an eye on students’ posts on social media, particularly when students appear to be harming themselves or each other. He has assistance from Geo Listening, a company the district hired in 2013 to monitor students’ public social-media posts. The company alerts the district on a daily basis when students’ public posts reference bullying, suicide, drugs or violence.” In earlier days, this arrangement would be a clear sign of a police state! http://www.glendalenewspress.com/news/tn-gnp-school-forum-teaches-parents-about-social-media-safety-20150313,0,1294060.story
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Brave New World exemplified!!!!
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It’s my understanding that “test security,” meaning the need to maintain the secrecy of the content of exams, always been a high priority among administrators of standardized tests because of concerns about the tests’ validity and because of cost concerns. Technology has increased the magnitude of the risk associated with “security breaches” — in the old days, when the risk was just that one student might speak face-to-face with other students about test content, the risk was probably negligible. Then the Xerox machine came around, and there was then the risk that students or others might photocopy test content and distribute it to a bunch of people. Then there was the Internet, which allowed people to email or post content to larger groups of people, who in turn could easily forward messages to others. Now there’s social media, and things go “viral.”
These are challenges, made more challenging by new technology, that districts and their contractors have to deal with. They are inherent to standardized testing. I don’t think it’s surprising or odd that a school district would “monitor” social media, any more than it would be strange for school officials in the old days to “monitor” rumors that someone was handing out photocopies of a test. The new modes of communication have necessarily created new modes of surveillance. There’s a moral and legal line that shouldn’t be crossed (and they aren’t necessarily the same), but there were always moral and legal lines.
Is it creepy that Pearson would monitor social media for statements about the content of exams? Yes, at least I think so. Is it surprising that they would do this? Not at all. Is there anything illegal about this “spying”? Not remotely, assuming Pearson isn’t making misrepresentations about its identity or hacking to obtain access to statements that it couldn’t otherwise access freely on the Internet.
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Relatedly, every parent should repeatedly and mercilessly Mirandize their children about the risks of digital communication. Parents should impress upon their children that anything they post to social media can, by default, be seen by the entire world; that anything they text or email another person can be forwarded to anyone or posted for the entire world to see; that anything they write “can and will be used against them” in some way. If it freaks them out and upsets them and makes them paranoid, good, you’ve done your job as a parent. And this is a “do as I say, not as I do” area.
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Judging from what students used to share in class that should have remained private, there are going to be some issues. Is there anyone that can’t think back to something really stupid that you did? How much of it would be in danger of ending up on social media nowadays? (How much has?) Given that kids are spending a huge chunk of time in testing, it is really doubtful that they won’t be texting about it. Most of it will be innocuous, but I, too, find the thought of “big brother” lurking in cyberspace distasteful.
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Apparently the perps from the recent Brooklyn McDonald’s beatdown were identified from their own Facebook posts. That’s not a new phenomenon, but it goes to show that most teens will post almost anything on Facebook. Adults are cavalier and careless about social media. I’m quite careful, but then again I’m also often cavalier and careless about social media. Teens? They’re completely fearless and idiotic, just like they’ve always been.
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Honestly no minor child should have a Facebook account with privacy settings set to post publicly. That’s insane. Every parent should make sure their own and their children’s settings are to friends only.
When anyone does post publicly, then that information is public and visible to everyone with Facebook. I don’t understand posting something to the entire Facebook universe and then getting upset that people in that universe read the posts. Public is public. Set your privacy!!!
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Yes! Good point, Cindy. The same point could also be made regarding Twitter.
When we (or our children) post on social media in an account whose settings haven’t been changed, we (or they) are posting PUBLICLY — that means anyone can see it. This means anyone from the state department of education to a neighborhood pedophile can see what is posted.
We as adults need to do a far better job of helping our children become good digital citizens, aware of their digital footprint and the risks that accompany use of social media.
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