Archives for category: Privacy and Privacy Rights
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BATs Call on Justice Department to Investigate Pearson

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2015 //
33

The BadAss Teachers Association wants the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Pearson.

“This week’s scandal about Pearson spying on children and their social media activity to determine if testing security was breached shows us that Pearson has no qualms in stealing the sanctity of childhood. Gone are the days in which a child’s life can be that of a private citizen. The idea that Pearson feels it must corral and control what our children put on social media is a corruption, greed, and injustice sandwich. Sorry Pearson we are not eating it.

“Here is a strong and direct warning from the teachers and parents of the Badass Teachers Association – You messed up and you messed up BIG. Due to your attempt to continue to buy up and control American education you have committed perhaps the most disgusting act any one could commit – you have used our children to further your agenda in a light that is so transparent. America values its children’s privacy and respects their ability to be private citizens.”

Write Michael Barber, who directs Pearson:

michael.barber@pearson.com

@MichaelBarber9

Categories Pearson, Privacy and Privacy Rights

Has Pearson Gone Too Far? Write Michael Barber!

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2015 //
25

We learned in the past few days that Pearson is monitoring the Twitter accounts and Facebook accounts and other social media used by America’s children. Some call it spying. Pearson expects America’s teachers and principals to help them police the children to make sure that they don’t write about or even discuss the PARCC test. (The corporation administering the Smarter Balanced Assessments is trying to exercise the same control to protect its tests.)

 

Mercedes Schneider here describes Pearson’s intrusive policy for non-native speakers of English who take the “Pearson Test of English Academic.”

 

Part of the agreement signed by the test-taker states:

 

I confirm that I have carefully reviewed the PTE Academic Test Taker Handbook, including, but not limited to, those provisions relating to testing, score cancellations, privacy policies, and the collection, processing, use and transmission to the United States of the PTE Academic test taker’s personally identifiable data (including the digital photograph, fingerprint, signature, palm-vein scan, and audio/video recording collected at the test centre) and disclosure of such data to Pearson Language Tests, its service providers, any score recipients the PTE Academic test taker selects, and others as necessary to prevent unlawful activity or as required by law.

 

Excuse me, but what is a “palm-vein scan?” Does everyone know this except me?

 

Now, there is no point just baying at the moon. If you don’t like Pearson’s policies, why not write to the man in charge, Michael Barber? In Great Britain, he is called “Sir Michael,” but in the United States we don’t recognize titles, so you may address him in the democratic style as Michael Barber, or Mr. Barber, or Mike. He is best known for his ardent faith in targets, goals, or what he calls “deliverology.”

 

Write him here:

michael.barber@pearson.com

@MichaelBarber9

 

Be candid. Tell him what you think.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Pearson, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Testing

Student Privacy Bill: No Parental Consent Needed for Data Mining

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2015 //
7

The ubiquity of online communications in the schools opens up new possibilities for entrepreneurs to collect and mine confidential, personally identifiable data about children. Under the terms of a bill to protect student privacy, corporations will not need parental consent to access this data.

As reported by politico.com:

“DATA PRIVACY BILL ON THE WAY: The long-awaited student data privacy bill is expected to drop on Monday. Reps. Luke Messer and Jared Polis have been working together to draft it, following principles that President Barack Obama laid out in January [http://politico.pro/1O71PUT]. An aide to Polis said the bill’s language would draw heavily on a voluntary, industry-backed Student Privacy Pledge [http://bit.ly/1zhrSlR ] that has been signed by 124 ed tech companies of all sizes, from startups to giants such as Apple and Google. A bill echoing the pledge would please the ed tech world. But it would likely raise red flags for privacy advocates, who have expressed concerns that the pledge contains too many loopholes to be useful. Among their objections: The pledge doesn’t require companies to get parental consent – or even to give parents advance notice – before collecting intimate information on their children’s academic progress and learning styles. It also explicitly allows companies to build personal profiles of children to help them develop or improve ed-tech products. They can’t sell those profiles, but some parents are uncomfortable with any use of student data for commercial gain. A refresher on the pledge: http://politico.pro/192EYsW”

Categories Data and Data Mining, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Students

Leonie Haimson: How Pearson Is Spurring the Opt Out Movement

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2015 //
17

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.

Categories Opt Out, Parents, Pearson, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Testing

Two Comments I Deleted But Wanted to Share with You

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2015 //
36

I normally delete stuff like this–it is an ad–without thinking twice. But in this case, I thought twice, and I thought the ad was fascinating and worth sharing. This is how low we (the world) have sunk. People advertise their services to enable you to change your grades, to pry into other people’s private correspondence, to listen to private conversations, and to steal from others. There may be other things to say about this service, but right now just color me “appalled.” I deleted the email for reply to the ad.

 

 

Hackers Scientist, is a professional hacking team based in India. We are prefessioners,we get your work done in less than 48hrs . We are the best in the following:

* HACK AND CHANGE UNIVERSITY GRADES
* HACK INTO ANY BANK WEBSITE
* HACK INTO ANY COMPANY WEBSITE
* HACK INTO ANY GOVERNMENT AGENCY WEBSITE
* HACK INTO ANY DATA BASE SYSTEM AND GRANT YOU ADMIN PREVELEDGE
* HACK PAYPAL ACCOUNT
* Hack WORDPRESS Blogs
* SERVER CRASHED hack
* Untraceable Ip etc
* We can restore LOST FILES AND DOCUMENTS , no matter how long they have been missing

NOTE
If you refer client to us as a result of the previous job done for you, you will stand a chance of getting any job of your choice hacked for you, free of charge.
We can also teach you how to do the following with our ebook and online tutorials
* Hack and use Credit Card to shop online
* Monitor any phone and email address
* Hack Android & iPhones
* Tap into anybody’s call and monitor their conversation
* Email and Text message interception

 

And here is another offering the same services, with the return email and phone number deleted:

 

 

*University grades changing
*Bank accounts hack
*Twitters hack
*email accounts hack
*Grade Changes hack * load bank account any amounts
*Website crashed hack
*server crashed hack
*Retrieval of lost,gadgets phones , computers and file/documents
*Erase criminal records hack
*Databases hack
*Sales of Dumps cards of all kinds email

 

What kind of strange new world are we entering? No privacy. Everything on records that can be hacked. Our identity open to hackers. Our possessions in bank accounts that can be hacked. What is real and what is fake?

Categories Privacy and Privacy Rights, Technology, Computers

Anthony Cody: High-Stakes Testing Requires High Levels of Surveillance

By dianeravitch
March 16, 2015 //
25

Anthony Cody posted yesterday that the high-stakes of the new testing system inevitably leads to high surveillance. Add to the high stakes the fact that the two tests are national, and you have a scenario in which the testing corporations are expecting teachers and administrators to help them spy on students’ social media. Apparently Pearson (and not Pearson alone) has a means of monitoring millions of students’ postings on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere, using key words as alerts.

 

Cody writes:

 

By creating a state-sponsored “accountability” system that attaches heavy consequences to student performance on tests, the state and its corporate test-making partners have created a compelling need for extensive surveillance of everyone that accountability system touches. Teacher and administrator evaluations and thus jobs depend on these scores. Schools may be closed. Funding to schools is increased or reduced. And the tests are supposed to determine which students are ready for college.

 

All these consequences create reasons for people to game the system – and this has been the hallmark of NCLB from its inception. The “Texas Miracle” that inspired NCLB was based on the creative practice of holding back the 9th graders whose scores would make the schools look bad. Result? A miraculous rise in scores, a Texas governor who bragged he was an “education governor” on his way to the White House, and brought us a whole system of accountability based on test scores. And NCLB has made test-based accountability a part of the basic contract between the Federal government and the schools that receive federal funding.

 

Any system that imparts heavy consequences for success or failure must have intense security. How do you impose test security on a system that must test as many as fifty million school children every year, when many millions of these students have smart phones and Facebook accounts? You MUST have a surveillance apparatus. You must also have local District personnel act as your deputies in monitoring these activities, and in meting out consequences for those who violate your rules. It is all an inescapable outgrowth of creating a system that rewards and punishes people based on student test scores.

 

So, we should not be surprised that the testing corporations are protecting their “intellectual property” by not allowing students to write about the test questions or even discuss them (how do they monitor discussions?).

 

Frankly, we should be even more concerned that the vaunted “test security” extends even to teachers. When the tests are over, they are not allowed to see any information about how their students performed on the test questions. They get a score, but nothing of diagnostic value. It is like going to a doctor feeling ill, taking tests, then learning that you won’t get the test results for four months or more, that the doctor won’t tell you what is wrong or give you any treatment, but he will give you a score comparing you to patients with similar symptoms across the state and nation. That’s crazy. But that is what is happening. Billions of dollars for tests with no diagnostic value.

 

 

Categories Privacy and Privacy Rights, Standardized Testing

Reader to #Pearson, #PARCC, and #SBAC: Please Monitor Me Too!

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2015 //
64

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??

Categories Education Reform, Pearson, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Standardized Testing, Students

Frank Breslin: Police States Spy on Children

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2015 //
71

Reacting to the news that testing corporations are “monitoring” the social media accounts of children during and after testing, and forbidding even verbal discussions of the tests, retired educator Frank Breslin is outraged. He wrote to me:

“Pearson is encouraging educators to spy on their students’ privacy, thereby trying to undermine the integrity of the relationship that students have with their teachers. This is vitiating the entire tradition of student/teacher trust that has been a sacred tradition between them for thousands of years. They’re making educators complicit in this illegal and immoral spying on children, so that teachers are becoming adjuncts of a Police State.

“This is what the Nazis did to teachers during the Reich — having teachers spying on parents by having children report back to them what parents were saying against the Reich. This is diabolical! ”

I know that some readers object to any analogy that references Nazis, but Breslin might just as well have referred to the Stasi in East Germany or any other police state in which teachers are expected to inform the Authorities about the private communications of their students, and family members are expected to inform on each other.

Categories Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Standardized Testing

Bob Braun: The Brave Néw World of Testing and Spying

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2015 //
26

Bob Braun says that Pearson closely monitors students during and after testing, to protect test security. They expect educators to collaborate with the state contract with Pearson.

“Another New Jersey school district–Hanover Park Regional in East Hanover–was notified by state officials that “monitoring”–spying?– by the British test publisher Pearson revealed at least one student had used a social media account to post a forbidden message regarding the PARCC tests. No surprise, really–it’s happening everywhere, including Maryland where a state official said he gets daily reports from Pearson on what students are saying about testing on their social media accounts.

“PARCC has a very sophisticated system that closely monitors social media for pretty much everything (comments like the one you shared, test item questions that students use cell phones cameras and take),” said Henry Johnson, the state assistant education commissioner in Maryland. The state, like New Jersey, has a contract with Pearson.

“We get those reports daily.”

Let’s run that one by you again:

“PARCC has a very sophisticated system that closely monitors social media for pretty much everything….”

The phrase “pretty much everything” aptly describes the broad reach of how this brave new world of testing and cooperation with government works. Pearson will say–as it told the Washington Post–that it is doing it for “security” reasons.

But security is itself a broad term. Here is what the State of New Jersey and Pearson agreed encompassed the idea of security and its possible breach–it’s codified in the testing manual developed by the state and sent out to all the districts:

“Revealing or discussing passages or test items with anyone, including students and school staff, through verbal exchange, email, social media, or any other form of communication.”

Another opportunity for repetition for emphasis here–discussing? Any other form of communication?

So, if children come home from school and their parents ask–”How was your day, sweetheart?” and the children talk about a really dumb question on the PARCC, they will be violating the rules and be subject to whatever punishment is meted out for cheating–as a blogger did who learned from a child who hadn’t taken the test that there was a passage on it about The Wizard of Oz.”

New Jersey is paying Pearson $108 million to run its PARCC testing program

Meanwhile Breitbart reports that a Superintendent in New Jersey confirmed Bob Braun’s initial story about spying on students.

Categories Common Core, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Students, Teachers, Testing

Smarter Balanced Test Is Spying on Children

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2015 //
43

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.

Categories Common Core, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Students
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