Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters is a leading advocate for student privacy rights. She explains how Pearson is actually encouraging the growth of the Opt Out movement (unintentionally, of course) by monitoring students’ social media. Even though tweets and Facebook postings are public, it is kind of creepy to know that a big corporation is reading your child’s comments.
Add this to the flap over the silly story of “The Pineapple and the Hare,” known as #pineapplegate, and parents have ample reason to doubt the value of standardized tests to rank and rate their child.
Add to that the ubiquitous data mining that is embedded in the online testing, and parents should truly be alarmed.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We could always try the Indian method: https://preaprez.wordpress.com/2015/03/20/in-india-parents-find-an-alternative-to-opting-out/
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Seems like Pearson is trying to identify the divergent students—and do we know if they are also monitoring the accounts of teachers?
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Google “pineapple” and “hare” and “Daniel Pinkwater.”
Below I give you just one example of what you’ll find—from the Wall Street Journal no less! And the beginning of the piece—
Link: http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/04/20/daniel-pinkwater-on-pineapple-exam-nonsense-on-top-of-nonsense/
[start excerpt]
Eighth-graders who thought a passage about a pineapple and a hare on New York state tests this week made no sense, take heart: The author thinks it’s absurd too.
“It’s hilarious on the face of it that anybody creating a test would use a passage of mine, because I’m an advocate of nonsense,” Daniel Pinkwater, the renowned children’s author and accidental exam writer, said in an interview. “I believe that things mean things, but they don’t have assigned meanings.”
Pinkwater, who wrote the original story on which the test question was based, has been deluged with comments from puzzled students — and not for the first time. The passage seems to have been recycled from English tests in other states, bringing him new batches of befuddled students each time it’s used.
The original story, which Pinkwater calls a “fractured fable,” was about a race between a rabbit and an eggplant. By the time it got onto standardized tests, however, it had doubled in length and become a race between a hare and a talking pineapple, with various other animals involved. In the end, the animals eat the pineapple.
The tests can be used to determine whether a student is promoted to the next grade. Once new teacher evaluations are put in place, the tests will also affect teachers’ careers.
Pearson PLC, which created the test as part of a five-year, $32 million state contract, referred questions to the New York State Education Department. The department hasn’t returned requests for comment since Wednesday.
[end excerpt]
And I can’t resist giving the end of the interview the article’s author [paragraphs 1 and 3] had with Mr. Pinkwater [paragraphs 2 and 4]:
[start of the end]
Regardless, I’ll ask you the questions. Why did the animals eat the pineapple: A) they were annoyed B) they were amused C) they were hungry D) they wanted to.
They feared socialism. Or they had made an appointment to see their aunt in Minnesota. The next answer is: “Are you a fool? Animals can’t talk.”
The next question we know of was: Who was the wisest? A) the hare B) the moose C) the crow D) the owl.
There are only two answers for who were the wisest: the author or the publisher who made the test.
[end of the end]
Top your google searches off with Todd Farley’s MAKING THE GRADES: MY MISADVENTURES IN THE STANDARDIZED TESTING INDUSTRY (2009).
Seriously, folks, who in THEIR RIGHT MINDS can take high-stakes standardized testing seriously?
It only makes ₵ent¢ to those in mad dog pursuit of $tudent $uccess.
Rheeally! But for the rest of us…
Not really.
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
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Love your response, KrazyTA!
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What do Pearon’s contracts with other countries look like? Did other countries just blindly accept the contractor’s demands?
Since Pearson would go out of business without the testing obsessives in the US and this huge (mandated) market for their product, can we at least treat them like a contractor instead of treating them like they’re doing us a favor taking billions in public funds?
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Diane (and all), I hope you don’t mind that I’m cross-posting a comment I left on Leonie’s blog: I’d like to hear clarification about why people think “The Pineapple and the Hare” is a bad test set. I’m a reading educator and a doctoral student in educational psychology, and to my eyes, it’s a humorous story and the questions are quite straightforward.
If an eighth grader has trouble reading this story or coping with its irony (much gentler than that in South Park or Sponge Bob), then there may well be important reading comprehension concerns.
I understand why eighth graders might object and create a critical Facebook page because they think the story is silly or infantile. But that kind of adolescent objection doesn’t translate into assessment flaws. They might as easily object because a passage is “boring.”
Certainly Pearson shouldn’t be re-using the items again and again, but what’s wrong with including readings as entertaining as that which kids pick up on their own, like JK Rowling or Lemony Snicket…or Daniel Pinkwater himself.
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Good point, week-stated!
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You must be joking, Russell Miller! The questions were as nonesensiscal they could possibly be. Moreover, the story wasn’t even the one Pinkwater wrote! A Pearson hack rewrote a paragraph – paragraph! – from one of Pinkwater’s books that featured an eggplant and a rabbit.
I’m not sure why Pinkwater didn’t sue Pearson. He sold the excerpt rights to Pearson, but maybe there was hold-harmless clause buried in his contract allowing *artistic liberties* with the material.
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With all due respect, abstractions aside, please refer to my comment above.
Google “pineapple” and “hare” and “Daniel Pinkwater.”
In a similar vein, remember that CCSS—apart from what it is and what it isn’t and what it does do and what it doesn’t do—is the greatest thing since sliced bread! No, correct that—it’s even bettererer!
😱
“A day without laughter is a day wasted.” [Charlie Chaplin]
This day was not wasted.
😎
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Russell, did you read KrazyTA’s comments? The AUTHOR himself thought the test passage/questions were absurd!
And, yes, DO read Todd Farley’s book–you, Russell & EVERYONE! It’s an easy read–less than 200 pp., perhaps (can’t look at it, because I gave all my copies away!)–a paperback–& it is entertaining (you should enjoy it, Russell)–as well as heartbreaking, of course. Written in 2009, & all of this CCRAP is still going on–in fact, has gotten much, much worse.
Hey, Class Size–time for you to organize another march on Pear$on’$ in Manhattan–& I bet you’ll have much more than 400
marchers this time. In fact, everyone who has a Pear$on building or campus nearby–organize…don’t agonize. Tell the people of your towns, cities & states exactly how many of their taxpayer $$$ are being absolutely WA$TED on Pear$on te$t$ & product$, & watch them ALL become furious.
Point the finger where it belongs–at the education-fund-$ucking Pear$on: ALWAY$ earning, NEVER learning.
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Hey Leonie — that is how it works…eventually when they see no impediment to their mendacity and lawlessness they overstep them selves.
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Here is another area of student data mining that Pearson has inveigled into:
School Counseling:
http://www.pearsonclinical.com
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GROSS!
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Maybe I spend too much time reading Diane’s wonderful blog, but…
Having just read the Pineapple And The Hare for the first time, it’s apparent to me that this passage is actually an elaborate allegory about corporate school reform, that has been embedded into the state test.
The Hare represents corporate school reform, who having every advantage, has capriciously set up a competitive dynamic with an opponent who has none of the resources needed to compete .
The pineapple represents public schools and teacher unions, which, simply because they exist, have attracted the contempt and ridicule of the inhabitants in this weird world.
In the end, and in the survival of the fittest, dog eat dog, cannibalistic spirit of market driven, corporate school reform, they eat their utterly under resourced opponent, once they (predictably) defeat him.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/04/20/151044647/the-pineapple-and-the-hare-can-you-answer-two-bizarre-state-exam-questions)
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And in the end, these oligarchs devour each other and themselves. HUBRIS!
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BTW–Todd Farley will be speaking this Tuesday, March 24th, from 5:30-7 PM at the Auditorium–600 E 6th Street, NYC, sponsored by Tompkins Square Middle School PTA & Earth School PA–ALL are Invited! “Your Kids, Bad Data & Corporate Profits:
Why a Testing Insider is Refusing the Tests.” (He has kids at Earth School, I believe, & he won’t allow them to be tested, much as he’d professed to do in his 2009 book.)
I wish I lived in NYC so I could go, but for those of you who do, you must see him!
(Hope he comes to speak at the Network for Public Education Conference in Chicago!)
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Here’s the meat on exposing private student data in the Haimson article:
“According to the briefing given by the Colorado State Education department last week, Pearson/PARCC has been supplied with a wealth of personal data, including students’ race/ethnicity, economic status, 504 plan (health conditions that can impact student performance, like allergies or epilepsy), whether they have migrant or immigrant status, disabilities, homelessness, language proficiency, how long they have lived in the state or attended school in the district, and whether they have ever been expelled. All of this is quite disturbing and is SIMILAR TO WHAT WE DISCOVERED ABOUT INBLOOM. [emphasis mine]
“In addition, Pearson/PARCC has access to if a student is using testing modifications, along with their names, unique identifier numbers, etc. Beyond sensitive student information, Pearson also collects everything a student types into the keyboard during the test including words or sentences that were typed and then deleted. Pearson knows whether or not the student views a test item, how long it takes him/her to answer a specific question, and it tracks the student’s clicks as he/she navigates the test. This seemingly harmless data, when paired with sensitive information about an individual student, creates a very complex learning and behavioral profile of the child.”
Pair the above with the proposed Student Digital Privacy and Innovation Act to hit congressional floor Monday. No teeth – all based on an “honor-system” pledge to be monitored by the FTC– no fines, but I’m sure there will be a scolding by FTC in some future century when its underfunded personnel get around to the millions of infractions sue to materialize.
OPT-OUT has a seriously good tool to use for its platform against PARCC/SBAC. This should be trumpeted far & wide. Only difference between InBloom and PARCC/SBAC combined with weak FERPA and toothless new bill? InBloom made the mistake of clearly stating its intentions. AND IT WAS HANDILY PUT OUT OF BUSINESS.
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