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Education Company Monitors Social Media For Test References
theodp writes: As if people haven't found enough to hate about the new 11+ hour K-12 PARCC standardized testing, the Washington Post reports that Pearson, the world's largest education company, is monitoring social media during the administration of the PARCC Common Core test to detect any security breaches, saying it is "obligated" to alert authorities when any problems are discovered. The monitoring of social media was revealed in a message that a New Jersey School Superintendent sent to colleagues about a "Priority 1 Alert" initiated by Pearson in response to a student who referenced a PARCC test question in an after-school Tweet. The news was broken in a blog entry by former NJ Star-Ledger reporter Bob Braun, who also posted the Superintendent's message and called the monitoring of social media nothing less than "spying." Pearson has a contract of more than $100 million to administer the PARCC in New Jersey.
I am as anti-spying as the next guy,but monitoring public postings to prevent cheating is not spying. If you re going to lie, cheat or steal, pass your notes in a private location.
Silence is a state of mime.
Yep, someone learned a lesson - there's big bucks in education. Between this and textbook costs, there's something really wrong here.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Since when did it start to cost $100 million to administer a test??? The schools are out of freaking control and are gouging the life out of property taxes. It's time we end the fiasco and do 100% online virtual schools or fire the union, pension hoarding teachers and replace them with robots or TV's. In today's day and age, there is no reason why they can't record all the lectures into video format and play them back. As far as tests are concerned, every kid should get a different randomized test in front of a computer with a time limit. It's time we put our foot down and end the waste of tax dollars on old bureaucratic nonsense.
More like rethink the philosophy that the free market will be the best solution in every walk of life.
Telling on you is not spying if you're standing on a soap box and shouting for all to hear.
Parsons strike me a a useful teaching tool. Lessons learned include:
1) don't use Facebook, Twitter, etc.
2) encrypt private email
How many false positives users will be able to generate?
What did the student tweet that was so bad? Were they under contractual obligation not to tweet about the test??
Isn't this just a computer-era version of the Iowa basic assessments we took as kids? Those were just buried in our school records next to our high-jump score. Why are these new tests different?
Someone is making a fuck of a lot of money out of this. What a scam.
You might as well try to stop the tide from coming in. The case in question was a tweet after the test was taken; not during the test. If Pearson is so worried about the test integrity and question confidentiality then completely re-write all the questions so they are new, vet the instrument to be sure it measures what you claim it measures (which is a whole argument in and of itself), and administer a new test every time. Of course, that costs a lot of money so it's easier, and much cheaper, to raise a "Priority 1 Alert" (Danger Danger Will Robinson) and put the onus on the school and student.
It's just another symptom of a badly broken, but financially lucrative, testing system out of control. It's not no child left behind but no teacher left standing.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
It also appears that the question was posted after the test was taken. In this case there is no security issue because the exam has already been administered. If they are not giving the same exam at the same time everywhere - or at least with enough of an overlap that nobody leaves before the exam starts anywhere else - then the problem is their own broken security model. It's not academic cheating if someone who has completed the exam discusses the questions in public and since they are minors they can't even sign a contract to enforce legal penalties.
This really isn't new at all. The American Chemical Society has monitored the web in general to keep people from posting versions of its standardized chemistry exams online. A couple of years ago, they busted a professor at a school in Florida for copying questions from the exam and posting those online. The school was fined a fairly large sum of money.
You are not "anti-spying" when you support spying of "public" posts _that should have a reasonable expectation of privacy_.
For someone who supports spying, everything they want to spy is "public", because they think they shouldn't have a reasonable expectation of privacy -when they should-.
Facebook users should have a reasonable expectation that posts that are meant only for their social circle -to not be spied on-.
Bob Braun was never a reporter. He was an opinion guy who spent 50 years shilling for the teachers unions.
"A noun, a verb, and teacher unions". You wingers and your one track minds...you think teachers want billions in education funds diverted to corporations like Pearson? Because that's what standardized tests are all about. That, and de-proffessionalizing education by forcing educators to teach to the test or lose their jobs.
As has already been pointed out to you, Pearson would love nothing more than to do just that. They'd be quite, quite happy to sell you Pearson programming and "edutainment" contracts.
The tweet "referenced a test question" AFTER the exam had already been administered. If Pearson depends on asking the same questions year after year, then WTF are they charging a hundred million bucks for? And how about the fascism of the company demanding the district punish the student for discussing the test after the test?
Nothing Orwellian here, move along citizen.
Although nobody should send fake tweets, I wonder what plans Pearson has for a scenario with a huge amount of chaff to investigate. For example: suppose many accounts sent tweets in a 1 hour period after school on your local area's testing day, all of the tweets had relevant text keywords and a picture reminiscent of a PARCC sample test question, and all of the pictures had various problems (blurriness, poor contrast, aimed at the corner of a page, etc.) that would make analysis expensive.
It also appears that the question was posted after the test was taken. In this case there is no security issue because the exam has already been administered. If they are not giving the same exam at the same time everywhere - or at least with enough of an overlap that nobody leaves before the exam starts anywhere else - then the problem is their own broken security model. It's not academic cheating if someone who has completed the exam discusses the questions in public and since they are minors they can't even sign a contract to enforce legal penalties.
This is more or less completely not the way standardized testing works.
Standardized testing works by using current test questions and possible test questions for the future and mixing them together, scoring some and not scoring others, and relies on being able to re-use questions. That re-use is how you normalize the difficulty of exams. You agree not to discuss the questions.
The seriousness of discussing them goes up as the professionalism required goes up. Talking about Bar exam questions can be a *massive* deal. Talking about LSAT questions can be a big deal. Talking about SAT questions can be an issue that affects your college admissions prospects.
As a practical matter, a very small bit of discussion is normal, mostly just with people who took the test right after it. Good testing authorities only care if you cross the line--like describing a test question to an unfiltered audience or in an online forum or test prep book, for example. Posting a question to twitter is not okay. Posting comments that reveal something about the particular test is technically not okay, but you have to actually look at the circumstances and make a judgment call. (A lot depends on whether everyone has finished the particular test yet, for example.)
That being said, there is *also* a financial incentive for testing companies to go after people who are too egregious. Test companies license old tests and sell them as prep materials.
They saw an Asbury Park Press story about my ex and our farm. They liked it so much but didn't want to plagerize so they changed details to the point it was useless fluff.
The testing company can't rewrite the test everytime it's given, how would you compare test results?!
Posting the the question and answer is cheating, be it on Twitter, FB or the bathroom wall
Pearson...
So before long there will be accurate question / answer lists for this just there are for everything else Pearson tests.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
This has the potential to get real nasty.. Not all teenagers are idiots, some are actually pretty smart, innovative and enjoy subverting the system. How long before some kid sets up a Tor site where anyone can post answers to any test? I predict the consequences will be kids being banned from the Internet (or at least heavily monitored) around exam time. Maybe enforceable by law.