This is a press release from More Than a Score in Chicago:
Illinois parents oppose new threat to student privacy:
Little oversight of classroom videos for Pearson product raises red flag
Contact:
Cassie Creswell 716.536.9313
Rachel Lessem 617-230-4048
Springfield, IL. Tuesday, a representative of the Chicago coalition More than a Score shared disturbing information with an Illinois House education committee concerning new dangers to student privacy. As of September 2015, student teachers in Illinois must now submit videos filmed in public school classrooms to education conglomerate Pearson as part of a standardized assessment. The assessment, known as the edTPA, is required by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) for new teacher licensure.
Parents must grant their consent for children to appear in the videos. The rights to the videos then reside with Pearson—possibly to be used for purposes other than certifying the student teacher. Although the videos are intended to be confidential, numerous examples of the videos are found online, in violation of both the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the guidelines provided by ISBE and Pearson.
The House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee on School Curriculum & Policies held the subject-matter hearing on the edTPA because of the numerous issues this latest high-stakes standardized test presents for the teacher education process in Illinois.
The required video submission pits the interest of student teachers against those of their students. Chicago parent Roberta Salas refused to allow her child to participate in an edTPA video during a pilot program this past spring. “I felt bad for our student teacher, but I encouraged other parents to read these permission slips very closely and to be thoughtful about signing,” said Salas.
“The process to certify teachers in Illinois should not depend on pressuring parents to hand over their child’s personally identifiable information to Pearson,” testified Cassie Creswell, organizer with More Than A Score. “My organization will continue to inform parents that we have no confidence in either Pearson or the edTPA and that they should seriously consider refusing consent.“
Pearson, the world’s largest education corporation, also has multi-million dollar contracts with the state of Illinois for the controversial PARCC test, the recently revised GED, and one other required test for teacher certification, the TAP. In 2011 Illinois sued Pearson for $1.7 million for the unexplained loss of student scores on a previous contract. In 2013, Pearson had a multi-million settlement with the New York State Attorney General for having inappropriately paid for travel junkets for state education officers, including Illinois’ previous state superintendent Chris Koch.
More Than A Score helped expose the privacy threat posed by InBloom, a joint venture of Rupert Murdoch’s education company Amplify and the Gates Foundation. Illinois withdrew from the InBloom project in 2013. InBloom closed altogether in 2014 after strong parental opposition to potential breaches of student privacy from around the country.
Full testimony available at http://bit.ly/MTASedTPA.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Very important initiative. Parents can not only protect the privacy of their children but indirectly restore the academic freedom of higher education faculty and their collective judgment of the readiness of prospective teachers to meet the challenges of teaching.
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How is this type of teacher evaluation even valid? Who knows what kind of class you are going to get? Are they having an off day or a good day? When I student taught I was observed by one of my professors several times during my student teaching, why isn’t this good enough any more? Who are these so called Pearson evaluates…were they hired via Craigslist? Honestly, Pearson is just getting ridiculous, do they just sit around and dream this stuff up over drinks? It sure seems like it.
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Exactly. My kid did clinical 1 and 2 over the course of the Jan-June school year, then the Sept-Dec school year. She was observed, she participated, she created lessons, she took over classes, etc. She was evaluated and observed not only by the principal, but the teachers she worked under, the district evaluator, and the pedagogy lead at her college. That, and everything else that was required isn’t enough?
TFA doesn’t do any of that. They go to summer school with 8-10 kids, often in the lower grades and easy to handle, for 5 weeks of sleep deprived conditioning, and they are instantly given highly qualified status and preferential treatment. Try getting a job in a district that has partnered with TFA…no dice. Even though you have jumped through every hoop to licensure in NJ, you can’t compete with TFA’s ironclad contract, which includes firing veterans to create the jobs, and turning away qualified, certified, licensed, properly trained, novice teachers, in order to make room for the scabs.
Now Pearson wants videos? Hilarious.
Pearson has a hand’s off, distance approach that is very expensive, all meant to discourage, disincline and get rid of real, certified, trained, teachers–now they don’t even want to license them. Does TFA have to do EDTPA?
EDTPA: Early Denial To Pedagogy Admission
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Privacy in education should closely mirror the safeguards of privacy in health care.
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Why anyone would turn over the right to decide who is an adequate teacher to a multinational corporation is beyond me? This has always been the responsibility of the state, and it should remain so. Why would the state turn over such an important responsibility to a foreign for profit corporation? States are giving up the opportunity to set acceptable standard for their own state. Instead, they are signing up to allow the invasion of privacy of thousands of students and a one size fits all evaluation system. Clearly, This is another example of Pearson inserting itself into education for the purpose of profit.
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Diane â
As a recently (semi-) retired (2014) Prof of English, I have been a witness to the effects of Pearsonâs complete domination of teacher training in Illinois. I have trained teachers in Illinois for over 45 years, but I was (and my well-educated and published colleagues were) TOLD and never consulted by the State Board of Education that Pearson would be in charge of the teacher certification process in the fall of 2012. We asked several times about who (or what) made the decision and why, but never received any satisfactory answers. We (at NIU English) have been âpracticingâ all of the Pearson model for three years, a model that will cost each certification student an additional $300. over and above tuition and fees, etc. at the very end of the program. But the proponents of the model insist, indeed demand, that we are not to share the evaluation process with our own students because it would, supposedly, âcontaminateâ the results. Pearsonâs proprietary needs (and its profits) turned what were once healthy formative and finally summative judgments between trainer and trainees into some version of the magical mystery tour of classroom teaching, whose evaluation processes were fully known only to those in charge of making a profit from it.
The model has a few useful qualities but many shortcomings, and, as is true with most top-down programs, the devil is in the details. Who will monitor and then judge the two 10 or 20 minutes film sessions of student teaching in situ, and what are their qualifications? How can the judges comprehend the context of what they are seeing on film from two mini-sessions of teaching, and from a set of pen-and-paper (what?) tests/summaries/narratives? What types of appeal do students have, other than a retake @ $300. a session? Why do the regular faculty, who have interacted with, observed, and evaluated our students both personally and professionally for 4 to 6 semesters or more in a variety of classes, have no input into the very end of this process? The cynical part of me wondered, back then, what and who Pearson paid to effect this complete take-over, one that included & could be called the Black Box of Judgment, because no one but Pearson can make or even know why this student was given a pass, and that one rejected. Letâs hope the privacy issue helps put a stake in the heart of this foolish foolish politically-driven enterprise.
John
John V. Knapp, Editor,
Style
Professor of English, Emeritus.
Northern Illinois University,
330 Reavis Hall
DeKalb, Ill. 60115 USA
jknapp@niu.edu
(608) 345-0509
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Reblogged this on 21st Century Theater.
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What is really telling is that the parents are the ones fighting this madness. The IEA and IFT just keep going along to get along ….
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The IEA testified in support of the edTPA the other day at the IL House subject matter hearing. The IFT did not testify, but they were instrumental in getting the subject-matter hearing arranged and are very supportive of the teacher-educators who are fighting edTPA.
This is the same pattern we saw with parents pushing the opt out bill here in Illinois. The IFT was supportive; meanwhile the IEA was neutral and instead was giving parent groups patronizing advice on how they should *really* be fighting standardized testing.
Not sure how NJEA and OEA have leadership that is out front on the fight against high-stakes standardized testing, but we do not here in Illinois.
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Hillary Clinton stated a mild criticism about charters and defended public schools, and DC is absolutely freaking out:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ms-clinton-backpedals-on-charters-and-children/2015/11/13/6600b814-8a42-11e5-be39-0034bb576eee_story.html?postshare=5651447506753806&tid=ss_fb#pq=6qcPz7
I can’t figure out what they’re madder about- that she said something (mildly) critical of charter schools or that she said something positive about public schools.
Is it any wonder all politicians sound exactly the same on ed reform? Step out of line and there are consequences! God forbid someone in government should say they support public schools. That’s now forbidden.
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Good job Hillary.
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The fat cats never give up unless they are knocked down for the count.
The video “The Story of Stuff” that Susan shared with me emphasizes this fact.
http://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff/
Lord Acton in the 18th century said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”
The fat cats represented in this video have been corrupted by the power their HUGE wealth buys.
The real fat cats—for instance, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton family and the Koch brothers—are real fat cats who have been totally corrupted by their wealth and power and it is easy to find the evidence of their corruption through Google.
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Like the post on Rick Ayers’ much needs to be clarification/ideas here:
1. Many have discussed the issue of videos showing up on You Tube or other places. First, SCALE and Pearson both state clearly that candidates should not share the videos on social media. Some think that SCALE/Pearson should do more. Why shouldn’t the responsibility be with the student teachers OR the institutions. At my own institution, we clearly state that if we find their videos on social media there will be consequences. Why not have each institution do this? The second thing that I would add is are those that are finding edTPA videos online also looking for ANY teaching videos online?
2. To Donna, who mentioned the numerous observations, I am guessing that her child also completed Praxis I and Praxis II (Pedagogy and Content) – multiple choice assessments that really do not look at teaching at all. Her child had numerous observations from different people, and I don’t know of one TPP that has dropped such observations because of edTPA. edTPA is more than just videos – it looks at the cycle of teaching (planning, instruction and assessment). To the professor who asked about faculty having no say in the process. My program offers a grade for student teaching. If mentors, supervisors or others have issues with a candidate, then the student may not pass the student teaching course – no matter how well he/she does on edTPA. edTPA offers an objective view of a candidate’s teaching (some may claim how do we know the evaluators are not biased – but the same can be said about supervisors, or even mentors)
there is a reason why we have a law bar and we have medical boards have objective measures to determine our teachers and lawyers – a reason why they are considered professions while many don’t view teaching as a profession (the idea that those who can’t teach). Nearly anyone on this blog knows that statement is not true, yet for years we have tried to convince others. One way to do that is having a common professional assessment like edTPA. Otherwise, education and teachers will constantly be open to the attack that “anyone can teach”
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Correct me if I am wrong but as far as I know, the bar exam and medical boards do not interfere with the normal course of instruction students receive in their training. The medical profession and the legal profession as a whole have imposed these gatekeeper exams after coursework is completed. The teaching profession has not mandated deTPA. Stanford and Pearson have; they are attempting to impose a defacto teaching internship/test. edTPA is obviously seriously disrupting already established internship programs. Rather than working through and with the faculties of education departments, Stanford and Pearson are attempting to impose their program by doing an end run around stakeholders and going directly to state agencies who can impose it. It is all part of the testing mania. Establish a false narrative: students are failing; teachers are bad. Test them! That will teach them to get better! Rather than deal with issues we know make teaching difficult like lack of support, little planning time, and isolation, impose top down solutions with no stakeholder input that ignore known causes for struggle.
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