A suggestion from a very creative and imaginative reader:
Someone suggested attaching hashtags #PARCC and #Pearson, or just using those words, in all tweets. Sharing your Aunt Celia’s mac and cheese recipe? #Pearson. Tweeting about the next big storm coming? #PARCC Congratulating your cousin on his promotion? “Great job, Cousin Joe! You worked hard for this. PARCC!”
Their monitoring system would be overloaded with hits.
Why not add #SBAC and other hashtags that will draw attention from the overseers??
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Are we absolutely sure that this incident happened? It seems strange that there is only one parent reporting this problem in one school district. I dislike jumping to conclusions too quickly. Thanks.
Mary Cannon
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Mary Cannon,
Surveilling the social media of students during and after tests is not a single incident. It is the policy of both Pearson (PARCC) and Smarter Balanced Assessment.
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It was not a parent that reported the issue. It was a superintendent. Here response letter is here:http://www.whrhs.org/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&DomainID=1&ModuleInstanceID=768&ViewID=047E6BE3-6D87-4130-8424-D8E4E9ED6C2A&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=8547&PageID=1
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Yes, it’s for real. Folks are tired of being scared into silence. Welcome to the tipping point.
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As to incident specifics, it was not a parent reporting an incident. Elizabeth Jewett, Supt of Watchung Hills Regional District was contacted by her test co-ordinator, who said she received a late-night call from an employee at the NJDOE reporting a supposed breach of test security, referencing a student tweet during testing with a photo of a test question.
Jewett apparently then contacted parent/ student. The tweet details revealed that it was not in fact a breach: there was no photo & the tweet was sent hours after testing was over. Supt Jewett then sent an email relaying these details to other school supt colleagues. Her email was then leaked anonymously to Bob Braun. He published it in his blog. His post is worth a read; it includes follow-ups with Pearson & the NJDOE.
Braun’s blog post was picked up within hours by the Washington Post [Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog], complete with a clarifying & confirming response by Supt Jewett, including the info that during testing week two additional such reports regarding the same district had been received and dealt with. Strauss’s blog also worth a read, includes some info re: CA, whose DOE has been monitoring social media during STAR testing for some years.
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Pearson must be scared that another “Pineapplegate” will happen. But they cannot prevent students from talking about the questions once they have left their testing documents behind and the school day is over. Free Speech is in our supposed democracy. I wish for a student with a photographic memory to detail each and every question on their test from the safety of after school hours and then spread the contents of their memory far and wide through social media. What is illegal about this????? Seems like Pearson knows it.
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http://www.bobbraunsledger.com
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MC, Google the Watchung Hills Regional High School (NJ) website. You’ll see March 14 Letter from the Superintendent, Elizabeth Jewett, an astute educator who has worked for respected districts.
Then go to Bob Braun’s Ledger Facebook page (blog may still be affected) for specifics; this wasn’t “one parent.”
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Love it!
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What a novel and terrific idea!
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Sharing your Aunt Celia’s mac and cheese recipe?
Yeah, but be careful. If you start mention how to double or halve the recipe, then they might think you’re referencing one of the Common Core math questions and take an extra interest.
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ROTFLMAO!
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#PARCC= Parents Against Releasing Children’s Conversations
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I don’t have a tweeter account, but what a great idea! I just finished reading V.A.M. It! blog regarding the “Testpionage” that’s going on with #PEARSON (I know I don’t have an account but I love the hashtag movement). James Bond would be baffled by #PARCC’s Goldfinger in protecting the profits.
http://valueaddedmeasureit.blogspot.com/2015/03/testpionage.html
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hey, that rhymes
Pearson, PARCC, and SBAC
Pretty please, won’t ya spy on Me?
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My CA kid has been taught to pronounce it as “Ess-Back”.
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It is true
http://tapinto.net/towns/warren/articles/superintendent-responds-update-on-pearson-monito
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What lesson does it teach kids when testing opponents are so desperate to make tests invalid that they resort to juvenile behavior as a means of protecting cheaters?
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WT
Have you taken any practice tests?
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WT,
1. Cheating was not involved, as determined by the Superintendent.
2. One “lesson” for kids may be that those guys who tossed tea into Boston Harbor still inspire people.
No comestibles will be wasted, no coastal water polluted.
(Say, SDPoet & Duane, we have provender & comestibles in one week!)
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good points, booklady.
It actually makes no logical sense to call someone who has already taken the test a “cheater” simply because they have commented about it.
But on a more important note: comestible is a very commendable word.
Maybe I can work it into a ditty somehow.
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SDPoet, Please capture the sense of conscientious activism:
-teachers who bravely refuse to administer test
-superintendents & principals taking a stand (the Midwest Supt who suggested test-interim home schooling, LI Supts, Carol Burris & more)
-Newark Students Union, bless them!
-regular folk enlisting five others to call, write
Who’d a thunk that 50 years ago people protested for voting rights; 45 years ago people protested re Viet Nam War; and in 2015 people have to protest re inept policies in our community schools?!!
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If kids go online post info about questions, anyone else who has access to the Internet could use it to cheat. That would undermine the validity of the tests. Of course, if that happened, test critics would then leap to criticize Pearson for *not* monitoring Twitter so as to prevent leaks about the test questions.
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The tests have no validity WT. They are totally ridiculous. I attempted a practice third grade ELA test and I was having trouble figuring out the answers. I don’t want to tell you how many graduate credits I have.
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This whole fiasco just shows what a piece of CCRAP the PARCC is. A real, valid test is cheat proof precisely because it requires individual critical thinking. A good test can be sent home over the weekend and allow kids to use their books, the internet, their friends, their parents, etc. because in the end each kid still has to submit their own individual work. Real critical thinking – the kind that occurs in real life, is collaborative and takes time to percolate. When else in life are you going to be asked to answer a bunch of multiple choice questions under time pressure without being allowed to consult with anyone else.
Your constant defense of testing tells a lot about the kind of subservient, obedient to authority type of person you are and suggests why you have such a need for conformity and such a negative reaction to democracy. You’d do well in China.
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Isn’t the old “20 page paper” assignment an example of the kind of take-home, percolating, critical-thinking assessment that is susceptible to one of the oldest forms of cheating, plagiarism?
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Here’s Jersey Jazzman explaining what I just said, only he said it better: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/03/when-pearson-monitors-students-they.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JerseyJazzman+%28Jersey+Jazzman%29
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And here’s Peter Greene saying more or less the same thing: http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/03/pearson-prove-parcc-stinks.html
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“If kids go online post info about questions, anyone else who has access to the Internet could use it to cheat.”
True, which would only demonstrate what a bad idea it is to test every kid in every grade via computer, hooked to the internet– all of which is done purely to mine & sell data so that the vendors of computer systems/ hardware & ed-testing designers can make bunches of money from the hard-earned school-tax dollars of American taxpayers.
All the while peddling the scheme to the public as a way to ensure ‘college-and-career readiness’. Without even mentioning the curriculum-learning time lost to teaching keyboarding/ drag-&-drop technicalities to 8-11-y.o.’s, & test-prepping all ages on the idiosyncrasies of one man’s (Coleman’s) & one testing company’s (Pearson’s) take on ‘college-and-career readiness’. Not to mention the insanity of using the resulting scores to grade/close schools & grade/fire teachers.
As to your second point, I can’t imagine any world where test-critics would criticize Pearson for not monitoring Twitter to prevent cheating.
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I thought one of the brilliant features of PARRC and SBAC was that they were adaptive. If that were the case, wouldn’t the students be getting different questions?
I’m no psychometrician, but somehow I can create tests for my students that aren’t significantly affected by students merely talking about them. In fact, my students know what will be on their tests and I encourage them to discuss the material. That’s how actual critical thinking on competent authentic assessments works.
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WT, Does T stand for Troll?
Are you one of the people provided with script & paid to comment?
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WT–“That would undermine the validity of the tests.” Can you explain this statement.Do you work for Pearson and helped determine that the test have sufficient content validity?
Validity refers to the accuracy of an assessment–whether or not it measures what is it suppose to measure. Administrators, teachers and parents do not have access to these test so they can not speak to the validity of the tests.
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booklady,
I’d have to say that if WT is being provided with script & paid to comment either 1) the script is very poor or 2) whoever is paying should ask for their money back.
PS I’ll try to work what you gave me into a poem. It’s a great idea. I just hope i can do it justice.
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PARCC tests are already undermined because they don’t make any sense at all. Bad science. Holy CCRAP.
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I don’t think the student here was “cheating”. He/she simply tweeted something or other about a test question after the test was over. How is that “cheating”?
When can students speak about the test questions? One day after testing? Six weeks after testing? Never?
Good luck enforcing that. Better hire more assessment security.
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Here’s a thing: The incident that set this off cannot be reasonably described as “cheating.” No picture of secure test materials was taken or disseminated. With only 140 characters available for ONE tweet, it is hard to imagine any critical information about the exam or the item was released.
Pearson monitored students’ social media, provided the NJDOE with information sufficient to identify a single student, and sent Trenton thundering into this child’s school district over NOTHING OF CONSEQUENCE.
Pearson is getting heat because its interpretation of test security demonstrates no sense of proportion or sense.
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What about a lot of people sending along fake “test secrets” with #PARCC, #Pearson, etc? Stuff that looked like it might be real enough to warrant an investigation but turned out to be a goof? Would that waste more of Pearson’s time?
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I have to get more proficient
at interacting in the twitter world?
It is not a top priority for me,
but, some of the suggestions for twitter bombing
sound like good fun.
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I use my twitter account for mostly school. Since this entry appeared, every tweet I’ve made has had one or more of those three hashtags included.
Most of my followers are students, past and present. Some are wondering why I’m doing it.
Do I tell them? Do I simply tweet the URL to Diane’s blog entry to provide an explanation? Do I just keep doing it without explanation? Was it a mistake to even start doing it?
I truly want to do the right thing. We aren’t taking the PARCC in NYS yet, but Pearson does provide many of the NYS tests we do use. I have no problem twisting its nose, but I also don’t want to be in the role of advocating or encouraging student behavior that could potentially get me in some hot water.
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New NYSUT guidelines state that they will provide legal protection for any member who has chosen to speak out against the harmful effects of high stakes testing and/or the misuse of test scores. If your district files charges against you, contact NYSUT legal immediately.
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I know I can count on the union to have my back, but I was interested in the ethics side of the question. Heck, I don’t even teach in the grades these tests are given. I teach 9th grade earth science, so I have little skin in the game directly. Many of my kids follow me, and retweet the things I post. I also don’t want them to get into a jam either.
Thanks for your reply.
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You are one of thousands of NY public school teachers who express their views about over-testing through social media. To the best of my knowledge, not one teacher has been brought up on charges related to criticism of the Regents Reform Agenda (RTTT/NCLB waiver/Duncan’s Folly) or Cuomo’s education proposals. It is highly doubtful that you will be the first. Cuomo’s ridiculous plan for toughening APPR evaluations has actually worked to coalesce all stake holders into unified opposition of ideas, if implemented, will dismantle NY’s public school system. Keep the faith Rockhound – stay fierce and fearless.
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Alarm bells going off for me that you are worried about trouble for you or your students. First amendment rights trump Pearson policy.
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Teachers do not have full, first amendment rights.
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The grim, joyless ed reform machine rolls on.
Oh, well. It’s good training for when the third graders get to The Goal-obsessing over the SAT/ACT. The security will be really tight there!
At what point do students say “enough!” with being poked and prodded and monitored and measured?
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FairTest lists colleges that don’t require college admission tests; about 800 I think. That list may increase given the current climate re standardized tests. So those 3rd graders may escape some goal obsessing.
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Arne Duncan actually said this last week:
“Decade ago, was the job of the Ss to adjust to the school. Now, job of school to adjust to needs & talents of Ss”
I mean, my God, does he even believe this stuff he says? It literally has NOTHING to do with what he does. There’s the things he says and the things he promotes, and there is absolutely no connection between those two.
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Lack of self awareness seems to a prerequisite for working in education reform today.
Think about what we’ve got today. Only in America would education “reform” be billionaires (Gates, Broad, Walton, Tilson) hiring millionaires (Rhee, Brown, Klein) to ruin the lives of unionized, middle class workers.
Life doesn’t get weirder than this.
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Since no one in government seems particularly interested in regulation or oversight, maybe public schools could demand better terms from contractors.
Testing contractors need public schools much more than public schools need testing contractors. Why should a state dept of ed monitor/enforce “security” for a testing contractor? What if schools said “we won’t accept those terms”?
What does Pearson do? Find another giant country that is obsessed with standardized tests to replace the US public school market?
They don’t have to accept security enforcement/reporting mandates from a contractor. They’re the client, and the testing contractors really don’t have anywhere else to go if public schools reject their terms.
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It’s bigger even than states having to enforce test security — some modicum of security is reasonable for a standardized test.
But why is Pearson allowed to retain most a deployed test and only release portions of it? We use these tests for all sorts of purposes — many of them high stakes and federally mandated. The fact that Pearson is contracted to create a product and then KEEP most of it undermines any ability to have a real public conversation about the tool. They ought to have intellectual property rights to the tools they use to create and validate their assessments, but when they write a test like this for our public schools they should have to turn over the whole thing.
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No test anywhere ever has needed the level of protections against cheating that Pearson’s (and SBAC’s) so-called “rules” demand in order to be a valid test. Peter Greene is exactly right. All this tells us is that the PARCC and SBAC tests and their evil progeny in other states are beyond bad, and the testing companies just don’t want us to find out.
Does Pearson not understand that the very FIRST Amendment to the US Constitution, dearly-won and dearly-protected for nearly 240 years, guarantees freedom of expression?
Like a poster said above, welcome to the tipping point!
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The Brits didn’t get what the big brouhaha was about 240 years ago and they still don’t seem to get it.
Is this the cash-cow-tipping point, by any chance?
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This might put me off Downton Abbey for good. : (
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Pearson’s unethical efforts to spy on children online is easily defeated by a few simple social media practices which I’ve long recommended to minors and their parents:
1. NEVER use your full legal name, address, or other personal details when registering on social media accounts. You can use a variations of your name that do not violate terms of service, but keep your real location & birthday private from stalkers and data-miners.
2. Adjust your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc privacy settings to keep your postings off of search engines and/or visible only to your friends & followers — this minimizes the ability of entities like Tracx to monitor you with their automated software.
3. Make your accounts or specific posts private — Users can make their entire Twitter feed or specific FB posts/threads visible only to approved followers. It is invisible to Pearson & Tracx.
If I served on a School Comittee, I would want to know how much money from our Pearson contract is being paid to Tracx for online surveillance of students.
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Good suggestions. Also make sure geo-tagging is not enabled.
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Nope, not sharing my Mac and cheese recipe with Pearson! Wouldn’t mind sharing a piece of my mind with them though. I wonder how many people they have running Tweetdeck to catch keywords in tweets. I bet they are not evaluated on how many times they catch a juicy comment about their big boss. –Aunt Celia
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I didn’t think DC could push ed tech and online learning anymore than they already are, but I expect we’ll see an even more blatant industry+ government marketing effort now:
“Former U.S. Representative George Miller Joins Cengage Learning as Senior Education Advisor
SAN FRANCISCO, CA and WASHINGTON D.C., March 11, 2015—Cengage Learning CEO Michael Hansen today announced the appointment of former U.S. Representative George Miller (D-CA) as senior education advisor. In this role, Miller will provide strategic counsel to company executives on a wide range of issues, including public policy and business strategy. Miller will have offices in Cengage Learning’s West Coast hub in San Francisco and in Washington.
“George Miller has been a powerful advocate for students and educational equity his entire career, and we were fortunate to meet and discover we share this passion,” said Michael Hansen. “George is highly respected across all sectors of education and he brings solid leadership and a unique perspective to our company. His expertise in education, partnered with Cengage Learning’s product development capabilities and our reach, will advance learning.”
http://news.cengage.com/corporate/former-u-s-representative-george-miller-joins-cengage-learning-as-senior-education-advisor/
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“danielkatz2014
March 16, 2015 at 6:30 am
It’s bigger even than states having to enforce test security — some modicum of security is reasonable for a standardized test.
But why is Pearson allowed to retain most a deployed test and only release portions of it? We use these tests for all sorts of purposes — many of them high stakes and federally mandated. The fact that Pearson is contracted to create a product and then KEEP most of it undermines any ability to have a real public conversation about the tool.”
That, too, could have been negotiated, and public schools are in a very good bargaining position. They’re a huge market. They should be calling the shots, not the contractor. The contractor is wholly dependent on their business.
How does Pearson operate in other countries? Do public schools in other places get a better deal?
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Just posted a nice fruitcake recipe on the PARCC facebook page. The comments there are hilarious.
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Brilliant push-back!
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Seriously? How many of you posting that this is spying know of stories about fellow teachers or students who have gotten in trouble for tweets or other social media posts that have nothing to do with testing? I’ll start:
January 29, Arlington VA, as reported in Washington Post:
Arlington schools officials urge students to #keepitclean on Twitter
January 6, Fairfax County, VA, as reported in Syracuse Post-Standard:
#CloseFCPS: Washington, D.C.-area students complain about 2 inches of snow (photos)
January 22, 2013, Ohio, HuffPost Education
Melissa Cairns, Ohio Teacher, Faces Firing For Facebook Photo Of Duct Tape Over Students’ Mouths
December 12, 2014, Cleveland, OH, Fox 8:
Vegan Teacher Fired over Facebook Post
And one that wasn’t even a teacher at all, but the nurse from the ABC News reality show NY Med. The nurse commented on a picture that a doctor took, and SHE was fired. The doctor wasn’t fired, the nurse was.
Nurse Firing Highlights Hazards of Social Media in Hospitals
Is what Pearson did right? Absolutely not. Is it spying? No. Nothing on social media is private. I can go back and find lots of information on Diane Ravitch from when she posted comments and wrote books that are a 180 degree flip from this blog. People could go back and find things about me too.
However, to “annoy” Pearson by tagging your Cousin Amy’s apple crisp recipe with #PARCC is just childish, and only proves what people says about teachers.
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Nonnymouz, the issue is not whether anyone ever wrote a Tweet that was embarrassing but whether it is appropriate for Pearson to read students’ social media posts, tweets, comments.
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N, I consulted two dictionaries and noted that among the multiple meanings for “spy” are “investigate” and “search extensively.” Either of those describe the PARCC “social media monitoring” even if their liaison to NJ DoE isn’t wearing a trench coat.
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Hi Diane,
I posted this in reply to a friend linking your article, but apparently you have a fair readership so I feel I should mention it to you too. Copied (almost) verbatim, so apologies if some context is lost:
I guess if you wanted to get kinda ridiculous you could arrange an action where large masses of non students tweet answers, real or fake, to Pearson tests to overwhelm the monitoring team and force them to rewrite the tests as if they had been compromised. Nothing explicitly illegal about it and costing them money seems useful. They might have a good civil case against participants though.
The test info in the tweets is what keeps the pre-filtration phase from discarding them, though. For instance, I tend to doubt that anyone sharing test answers is tagging pearson, so were I on the Pearson data science team, I would *exclude* posts tagging pearson. The goal of my solution is not to annoy the social media team at pearson (which, in an org of that size, is almost certainly unrelated to the data science team) but to actually disrupt collection. The potential legal problem is civil, and comes from covering their costs; if pearson can prove that you intentionally disrupted their business (which is *easier* under the model with tags, above) they could hypothetically sue for lost costs; technically no law prevents the tweeting of test answers, real or fake. it’s the concerted effort from a group that might be a civil liability.
That said, answers wouldn’t be the only tool at your disposal, and certainly this approach has the feel good social value of a good sign waving protest. However, I doubt it’s capacity to damage their monitoring process.
You’d want to isolate traits of test-answer sharing and replicate those explicitly. Probably you want to create the impression of being a student at a pearson tested institution, or a parent thereof. you also would prefer to lead your reader to believe you have information available for sharing, if not actually sharing it in post
But I’m not much of an experienced activist so maybe I’m way off. Do what thou wilt and stuff.
I hope that pasting this to you helps in your action planning; while I don’t find pearson’s data gathering unethical personally, if parents are feeling hurt I like the idea of helping discern how to fight back.
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