The student-privacy blogosphere has been atwitter (so to speak) over recent revelations that students’ social media posts have been monitored in connection with the Common Core-aligned PARCC test.
Originally, a local school superintendent in New Jersey was quoted as saying that mega-publisher Pearson, which has the contract to administer the PARCC test, reported to the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) a student’s after-school tweet concerning one of the test questions. It has subsequently come to light that the Web monitoring was accomplished by a security company called Caveon Test Security.
Although it isn’t clear exactly who has contracts with whom, it appears that Caveon discovered the tweet in its Web trolling and reported the find to Pearson. Pearson then alerted the NJDOE, which notified the local superintendent.
So let’s get this straight – a private company based in another country, on another continent, is being told what individual American students are saying about its tests on Twitter (and presumably Facebook and other media outlets). If it learns of something it doesn’t like, it reports the activity to the appropriate state department of education, which then contacts the local district and reports the “security breach” – identifying the student by name and obviously suggesting disciplinary action.
The implications of this are far-reaching.
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3 comments:
School boards have been warn about this for sometime but dismissed it.
Get Common Core out of our schools.
They've been listening and watching YOU for a while now (and you said nothing), but you are all up in arms over them watching and listening in on your kids??
Your complaints are too little, too late.
Way too late.
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