Test publisher monitoring social media to catch kids in test compromises!

The Washington Post’s education blogger reports that Pearson publishing is actively looking through social media, looking for what it considers to be compromises of its tests. Information in the Post’s blog indicates students are being disciplined for commenting in the web about the PARCC tests that Pearson creates.

There could be a Kentucky connection with this even though we don’t use PARCC. Click the “Read more” link to find out more.

Pearson, which is actually a United Kingdom company, creates the Common Core-aligned PARCC test for a number of states.

Though not mentioned in the Post’s blog, Pearson also creates the KPREP grade 3 to grade 8 tests used in Kentucky. So, Kentucky’s kids may not be off the hook, either.

So, you better warn your children to keep their thoughts after they take the KPREP to themselves – or at least off the web. Big Brother – who doesn’t even live in our country – could be watching!

By the way, I don’t know exactly how Pearson was able to link a child’s Tweet back to that student’s school, but it obviously happened.

Maybe the student lists his school affiliation in his Twitter data, which is probably a bad mistake.

But, it also could be that Pearson used its large database of student information to develop a match. You see, a lot of student data privacy was trashed a while back when the US Department of Education took it upon itself to gut the federal FERPA law. Now, education contractors like Pearson have access to a whole lot of data about students who take their tests. That data certainly includes student names and where they go to school.

And, those private companies can have access to a lot of information about your child even if you and the testing company don’t share the same national addresses.

One more point: PARCC has a policy on data. Pages 3 and 4 in the document say that contractors can only use student data in some limited ways – tracking them in social media is not included. Was that policy violated by Pearson?

I wonder if Kentucky has similar protections for KPREP and if Pearson is prowling for Kentucky kids, too.