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.

Comments

Really?

[wbr1]

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.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is because people have become so stupid about media that they're no longer able to distinguish broadcast (or publishing) from 1:1 messages. They're using Twitter the way they use IM and then blame others for "listening in".

Re:Really?

[stephanruby]

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.

The intent is not to prevent cheating. The intent is to only prevent the appearance of cheating. The intent is to prevent students from talking about the test after they've taken it and after they've gotten out of school already. Apparently, Pearson is cutting corners by selling the same test to all the schools no matter what time zone they're located in, or on what day the test is administered, which is the real problem here.

And so instead of revising its business model, it's spying on students and urging schools to penalize students when they're found to be talking about the test publicly online. Never mind, that they have no way to monitor private messages, or private emails, or other private communications, so their real intent here is to prevent the appearance of cheating, not the cheating itself -- which will continue underground because of the inherent flaw in their system.

$100 Million???

[BarbaraHudson]

Yep, someone learned a lesson - there's big bucks in education. Between this and textbook costs, there's something really wrong here.

Re:$100 Million???

[ShanghaiBill]

Yeah well that is just 1 state. This is nationwide, so likely a billion dollar boondoggle...

New Jersey is a special case. Pearson is headquartered there, receives huge tax breaks, and is a donor to Chris Christie's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Letting Pearson run your education testing system makes about as much sense as letting Oracle design your health insurance website.

$100 million

[WaterDamage]

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.

Re:$100 million

[BarbaraHudson]

More like "Fire the school administrators who approve this crap." This one is not on the teachers.

Re:$100 million

[Attila Dimedici]

Since when have government run schools been "free market". In a free market, those who benefit from the purchase choose what to purchase and how much of their money to spend on it.
You can argue that those who are choosing to spend this money are the ones benefiting from it, but if you make that argument do not try to argue that the purpose is education.
The theory behind public education is that everyone benefits from a well educated population, therefore everyone should pay. The problem with that theory is that we then turn around and say that we should let experts decide how to spend the money. The "experts" can gain a lot more value for themselves from that money by allocating it in ways which do not improve educational results. So they do so.

Re:$100 million

[Entrope]

What part of one level of government coercing another level of government to adopt new educational standards, and then both of them together working to select a contractor to do these extra things (that even the government realizes it's too incompetent to run on its own), all while pushing private schools to the sideline, reminds you of a free market?

Re:$100 million

[Anonymous Coward]

Replacing them with robots and TVs is essentially what the common core, and before that, the myriad of state standards with standardized tests, aim to do. Gone are the days of planning particularly interesting lessons related to the actual kids in the room, having the flexibility to explore a particularly curious topic, etc. Most teachers are picking up their "Teachers Manuals," almost exclusively from giants like Pearson, and following numbered steps like its the magic recipe for teaching kids X topic.

Whats missing? Actually learning how to LEARN. Which then shackles the majority of the kids to the awful system ignorant people have created for them.

Its disgusting and citizens should be enraged by it but those most prone to get angry and speak out are far too busy on non-issues like the AP History curriculum not being patriotic enough.

Re:$100 million

[Entrope]

There are special needs kids who can't just click through a test on a computer screen -- blind children are an obvious example, and anyone with dyslexia needs special accommodations for the test to accurately measure skills beyond reading comprehension. Anything more complicated than a multiple-choice question -- for example, being able to get partial credit for showing work in a math or science problem, or any essay question -- tends to be very hard to grade by computer. Setting up computer-focused course materials takes extra work, and if that doesn't amortize over enough classes, it is wasted effort. How often does the course material need to be reworked, do to changes in the available hardware and software platforms? Does the computerized curriculum mean that schools in the inner city, rich suburbs, and rural areas all need to have their students follow the same curriculum, or is there any room to tailor to local needs and abilities?

There certainly is a lot of budget that is wasted or abused in public schools, and bureaucracy and teacher's unions contribute much to that, but good solutions are not always as simple as they seem from the outside. If they were, we'd see more success stories of how a plucky reformer (with backing from the right school board members or whomever else) was able to turn a failing school around and deliver improved results for notably less money.

Re:$100 million

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Here's a hint: those out-of-control teachers had no say in choosing the contractor for this test, nor in overpaying them; and they won't be seeing a cut of the administration costs(except in the weak sense that they'll be administered on school days, which are days teachers are paid to work).

Perhaps more importantly, who do you think would end up selling you those 'robots or TV's', and how much do you think you'd end up paying for them, if Pearson is currently able to score 100 million for handing out a bunch of bubble sheets(with the staff already present in schools doing most of the actual handling and proctoring)?

If you can't successfully order a prosaic little test without getting gouged by the contractor, that's typically a very compelling sign that you aren't ready to go shopping for more advanced gizmos.

Re:$100 million

[ranton]

Since when did it start to cost $100 million to administer a test???

If we are going to spend this much on tests, I wish we could actually get some tests worth this kind of money. Create a test with 100,000 questions, but with only a hundred or so given to each individual student. For a school with 100 3rd graders, you would only give 10% of the total questions to this school. This way there could be no "teaching to the test" because the material on the test is too vast. And you don't have to worry about students cheating. Teachers would simply have to teach the way they used to, but with tools helping them find areas of improvement.

With enough of these tests given out, you could produce statistically significant metrics. Tests could also continuously evolve if they find the results are not a good predictor of actual knowledge. Current standardized testing has been found to be a very poor predictor, but probably only because the statistics used to measure and create the tests are so poor. We should not only say a history class is scoring in the bottom 20% on the civil war, but also that there is a 60% chance they could really be in the top 50% because the sample size of questions / students were too small.

If you go another step further and have teachers record data on what general information was covered each week, the algorithms could make great use of this data. The results could take into account that it has been 5 months since you covered the civil war. Now you would be measuring long term retention instead. The algorithms could even give scientifically studied recommendations on what material to cover to provide a better breadth of knowledge for the students.

For this kind of money, we should be getting tools that actually help in teaching instead of just those used in a perverse blame game.

Re:$100 million

[tompaulco]

More like "Fire the school administrators who approve this crap." This one is not on the teachers.

Fire the school administrators anyway. People complain about the teacher's union, but teacher's salaries have barely kept up with inflation. The administration budget, meanwhile, has gone up by thousands or tens of thousands of percent all across the country. Why were we able to get by in the 70s and 80s with effectively a couple of secretaries and a principal, but now we need an entire separate building to house hundreds of administrators? Why is the student to administrator ratio less than the student to teacher ratio? It is needless red tape and needless expense that drives up property taxes and sales taxes and reduces the amount of money going toward education. Fire all of them and education will be improved.
In my school district, in the 1970s, the band program received $15,000 a year, which helped to repair, replace and purchase instruments, music, and equipment. It is now $1,500 in actual dollars or $243 in inflation adjusted dollars. Meanwhile the administrative staff in my school district has gone from a size of perhaps 20 in the 1970s to several hundred now. The number of students in the district has remained approximately the same. The number of teachers has gone down so we can afford to pay all the administrators. Other services have disappeared as well. Bus service is only available if you live more than 1.5 miles from the school. School lunches have been cut back such that about once a week my kids come home and tell me that the cafeteria ran out of the meal and gave them a cold sandwich, yet charged full price.
What administrative costs have done to our schools is a nationwide epidemic and needs to be reversed and quickly. The entire department lives only continue its own existence at the expense of our children's education.

Re:$100 million

[Jason Levine]

My wife was a teacher. When we were expecting our second son, we did some budgeting and realized that, after daycare, after school care for our oldest son, and other expenses for her to continue teaching, we'd be PAYING money for her to keep her job. Her salary as a teacher was just too low. Not to mention that she had to deal with so much stress (from kids, parents, administrators) and worked so many long hours (begin before kids arrive to set up, stay late to grade tests, work on vacations to come up with new lesson plans, etc). Anyone who thinks teachers are high paid, have a cushy job, and work short hours doesn't know the first thing about teaching.

Stopping students from sharing test questions?

[Registered Coward v2]

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.

...and it was after the test

[Roger W Moore]

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.

Really didn't RTFA?

[Uberbah]

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.

Disclosing Test Questions is a Problem

[Etherwalk]

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.

Re:Disclosing Test Questions is a Problem

[Balthisar]

It's been a long time since I've taken a standardized test, but I don't remember ever signing a licence indicating my willingness not to divulge the contents. Given the quasi-mandatory nature of PARCC I can't imagine such a EULA having any real weight, if it exists.

Barring any mutual agreement via a license or other contract, we still have some amount of freedom of expression in the USA, and discussion of a fact, such as the contents of an exam, would fall within that right. Even verbatim copying of some of the questions would fall within the realm of fair use. One might argue that copying the entire exam is fair use, but that's probably not defined in the courts as it is for telephone books and recipes, so I won't make that argument (I will mention it for consideration, however).

Re:Disclosing Test Questions is a Problem

[Balthisar]

Oh, I get that the testing companies want to prevent discussion, and that perhaps teachers are subject to an NDA, but the children are not. Perhaps they're subject to discipline on school grounds, but off grounds there's certainly no legal basis that prevents the children from discussing the contents of a test, whether it be face to face or electronically. I would suspect that the teachers' NDA is probably really a matter of disciplinary action from the administration rather than a signed license agreement, else we'd hear about a leak now and then. Did you actually sign an NDA? Was there an alternative, or was it akin to "sign this and so your job, or you don't have a job."?

Re:Disclosing Test Questions is a Problem

[Roger W Moore]

That re-use is how you normalize the difficulty of exams. You agree not to discuss the questions.

If you do it correctly you are re-using some questions out of a very large pool of questions. If some student wants to memorize every question ever asked then let them go for it - they will end up learning the material even if they think they are some how gaming the system. You can also alter some of the details e.g. numbers in a question without really changing the difficulty.

How do you get a minor to agree to this? Their signature carries no weight and it would be a violation of academic integrity and ethics to penalize an exam mark for an action which could not possible affect the mark. The need for restrictions like this are the result of sloppy and lazy exam writing: I've written and administered many exams myself and never needed to do this. Nor when I was a school kid myself was their any such restriction placed on me after taking an exam: even ones which were administered across the country: everyone took the exam at the same time everywhere.

Test companies license old tests and sell them as prep materials.

Then that's a copyright argument and you go after that in the courts with lawyers. You do not have the teachers monitor conversations during lunch or monitor discussion sites for any mention of the test. Instead you look for someone posting a copy of the test and then have your lawyer contact them.