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Pearson Under Fire for Monitoring Students’ Twitter Posts

73 points by digital55 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- ryanhuff 12y ago
  What does some local school administrator action against students have to do with a teacher union warning? Teachers != administrators. Unrelated.
simula67 12y ago
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 ?
- peri 12y ago
  In US law, at least, there is a large distinction between public school administrators searching a particular student and large-scale searching of students, even if the search only pertains to publicly available information. You can see the issues more clearly if you think about the history of freedom of speech cases vs. public schools, especially those pertaining to freedom to practice religion.
- UweSchmidt 12y ago
  There's "public, anyone can hear it and forget it a little later", and then there is "public, collected, stored, analyzed beyond anyone's wildest imagination". These are two different concepts; the latter is not understood at all; it would be nice if the former could exist in some form, so there you have this attempt to push back on "monitoring".
- DanBC 12y ago
  EU data protection laws are a useful model. An organisation should only collectthe information it needs to; it should not keep that information longer than it needs; it should be transparent about the information it gathers and the reason for doing so. In this case a company is searching public information (reasonable) but using education databases to get contact info for the student (not reasonable). This is unreasonable because they should be using things like warrants to get addresses -- something with judicial oversight. The student's personal contact information should be protected from this kind of trawling.
- Donzo 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    Doesn't that apply toTwitter as well? If the child is under 13 Twitter can't store their tweets?
    - ipedrazas 12y ago
      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.
- matt_morgan 12y ago
  Pearson used data it had on a student to identify the kid's district and began an investigation on its own. I.e., it abused its own privileged position. Supposedly they won't do that anymore and instead will forward info to the districts to investigate.
themartorana 12y ago
“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_students_dont_take_the_parcc.html http://www.nj.com/education/2015/01/what_happens_if_nj_stude...
- parennoob 12y ago
  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/20120207a.html http://www.state.nj.us/governor/news/news/552012/approved/20...) seems to give Pearson the ability to arm-twist states into using their standardized tests ("otherwise we'll move somewhere else").
  - coldpie 12y ago
    > 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
UhUhUhUh 12y ago
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...
mavhc 12y ago
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.
skywhopper 12y ago
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.
kazagistar 12y ago
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?
dreamweapon 12y ago
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).

73 points by digital55 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

ryanhuff 12y ago
What does some local school administrator action against students have to do with a teacher union warning? Teachers != administrators. Unrelated.

simula67 12y ago

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 ?

peri 12y ago
In US law, at least, there is a large distinction between public school administrators searching a particular student and large-scale searching of students, even if the search only pertains to publicly available information. You can see the issues more clearly if you think about the history of freedom of speech cases vs. public schools, especially those pertaining to freedom to practice religion.
UweSchmidt 12y ago
There's "public, anyone can hear it and forget it a little later", and then there is "public, collected, stored, analyzed beyond anyone's wildest imagination". These are two different concepts; the latter is not understood at all; it would be nice if the former could exist in some form, so there you have this attempt to push back on "monitoring".
DanBC 12y ago
EU data protection laws are a useful model. An organisation should only collectthe information it needs to; it should not keep that information longer than it needs; it should be transparent about the information it gathers and the reason for doing so. In this case a company is searching public information (reasonable) but using education databases to get contact info for the student (not reasonable). This is unreasonable because they should be using things like warrants to get addresses -- something with judicial oversight. The student's personal contact information should be protected from this kind of trawling.
Donzo 12y ago
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 12y ago
  Doesn't that apply toTwitter as well? If the child is under 13 Twitter can't store their tweets?
  - ipedrazas 12y ago
    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.
matt_morgan 12y ago
Pearson used data it had on a student to identify the kid's district and began an investigation on its own. I.e., it abused its own privileged position. Supposedly they won't do that anymore and instead will forward info to the districts to investigate.

themartorana 12y ago

“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_students_dont_take_the_parcc.html http://www.nj.com/education/2015/01/what_happens_if_nj_stude...

parennoob 12y ago
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/20120207a.html http://www.state.nj.us/governor/news/news/552012/approved/20...) seems to give Pearson the ability to arm-twist states into using their standardized tests ("otherwise we'll move somewhere else").
- coldpie 12y ago
  > 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

UhUhUhUh 12y ago

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...

mavhc 12y ago

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.

skywhopper 12y ago

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.

kazagistar 12y ago

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?

dreamweapon 12y ago

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).