
Pearson Under Fire for Monitoring Students’ Twitter Posts - digital55
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/17/pearson-under-fire-for-monitoring-students-twitter-posts/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Privacy&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body
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themartorana
_“A breach includes any time someone shares information about a test outside
of the classroom — from casual conversations to posts on social media,” the
statement said. “Again, our goal is to ensure a fair test for all students.
Every student deserves his or her chance to take the test on a level playing
field.”_

Let's be clear - not only are our children being subjected to insane testing
schedules that breaks many down to tears and disenfranchises students -
_several times a year_ \- but now it's supposed to be top secret?? Now kids
can't even _discuss_ the tests out loud with parents or other students?

If you are a parent - and I am - I urge you to "opt out" your young child from
this insanity, all in the name of data-driven teaching and evaluating
teachers. This testing has no bearing _at all_ on your child's educational
future, except it may create lasting walls between children and learning.

Source: my father was a teacher, my mother is a teacher, my wife is a teacher,
my cousin is a teacher, and several of my friends are teachers - they all
despise PARCC and the testing load placed on young, impressionable children.
This isn't High School or SATs, this is elementary school.

[http://www.nj.com/education/2015/01/what_happens_if_nj_stude...](http://www.nj.com/education/2015/01/what_happens_if_nj_students_dont_take_the_parcc.html)

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parennoob
Non-American here. Perhaps I'm being overly cynical, but why is a private
company even been allowed to test kids? They have totally perverse incentives
to make tests more frequent and difficult, so they can sell more training
materials for the same.

Also, stuff like this
([http://www.state.nj.us/governor/news/news/552012/approved/20...](http://www.state.nj.us/governor/news/news/552012/approved/20120207a.html))
seems to give Pearson the ability to arm-twist states into using their
standardized tests ("otherwise we'll move somewhere else").

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coldpie
> why is a private company even been allowed to test kids?

Welcome to money in American politics, and one of many reasons behind the
outrage at the result of Citizens United v FEC

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC)

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saryant
What does the Citizens United decision have to do with _any_ of this?
Standardized tests have been written by private companies for decades, it
didn't just happen recently.

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coldpie
Privately run standardized testing generates a lot of money. Money influences
politicians. Getting money out of politics would help prevent that influence.
Citizens United went in the other direction.

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simula67
Aren't twitter posts, you know, public by default ? What is the big deal if
these students intended to share this information with everyone. Or did
Pearson somehow played tricks to subvert their trust ?

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Donzo
Collection of data on children younger than 13 is regulated by COPPA. Parents
need to sign off explicitly on all data that is knowingly being collected by
websites or applications on children younger than 13 years of age.

It doesn't matter if the children made the information public. The company
can't store it.

~~~
lotu
Doesn't that apply toTwitter as well? If the child is under 13 Twitter can't
store their tweets?

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ipedrazas
Yes, but in theory you cannot sign up unless you're older than X.

Thing is that neither twitter nor facebook do anything to prevent children
using their networks, you know, data is very important, specially that data.

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skywhopper
The PARCC test (which my daughter just wrapped up taking) is a computer-
administered test, and I assume if Pearson is the company responsible for the
questions, then Pearson is running the websites that grade the tests and
provide the results to individuals, schools, districts, states, etc.

So I'm a little confused by outrage over the potential of Pearson to "collect
personal information" about students via Twitter etc, when by definition
Pearson is collecting an extreme amount of personal information about every
public-school student in every one of these states administering this test.

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kazagistar
Twitter is publicly visible. Everyone sees everything posted there. There is
no expectation of privacy. Why is this so hard for all the "outraged citizens"
to grok?

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mavhc
Exams are obviously rubbish, the last time in your life you won't have the
internet, never collaborate because that's wrong, if you can remember things
for 24 hours you get a good grade.

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dreamweapon
Any test of students' abilities whose efficacy can be substantially weakened
by leaking is, from its very design, just not a good test.

Even my HS teachers (who designed their entire curriculum -- front to back)
were hip to this. They said "Yeah, we know some students have photocopies of
midterms from previous years. But we mix up our questions enough that we're
not too worried about it. Plus, a student who would waste his or her time with
rote memorization just isn't going to understand the material conceptually,
and will certainly bomb the essay questions."

(What? You're not letting your teachers design their own curricula? Or they're
not able to? Then you have a _much_ worse problem on your hands than students
trading answers to multiple-guess exams).

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UhUhUhUh
I went through 18 years of study in France, without having to answer a single
MCQ or item. Such developments are just a logical consequence of the reliance
on statistical methods to assess knowledge. As to the violation of privacy...

