Tag: Pearson

TEA Responds to Letter re Social Media Monitoring

Written by admin on . Posted in STAAR | EOC Testing, Testing Irregularity. Leave a Comment

In response to TPERN’s inquiry, the Texas Education Agency has provided the following information.  It is reprinted below, but Pearson is not required to monitor social media by contract, and the TEA does not ask them to do so.  The TEA does monitor public social media.  The TEA did not disclose whether Pearson engages in social media monitoring of STAAR takers of its own volition.  The full reply is below:

March 27, 2015
Dear Mr. Placek,

Thank you for your recent correspondence to the Texas Education Agency (TEA) regarding the monitoring of social media accounts of students who take state assessments. The commissioner has forwarded your letter to the Student Assessment Division for response.

The current contract for the Texas state assessment program does not require any monitoring of social media by Pearson, the vendor for the state assessment program, and TEA makes no requests for the vendor to do so.

As required by 19 TAC §101.3031, the Student Assessment Division oversees the maintenance of test administration procedures and training activities to ensure the validity, reliability, and security of assessments. Requirements for ensuring test security and confidentiality are delineated in test administration materials annually and detailed in the Test Security Supplement (19 TAC §101.3031 (b)(2)).

Monitoring procedures as outlined in the Test Security Supplement require districts and campuses to implement necessary measures to prevent student cheating. This includes monitoring student use of cell phones and electronic devices during test administrations. TEA considers it a serious testing irregularity if a student photographs or duplicates secure test content or disseminates this information using an electronic device.

As obligated by TEC §39.0301, TEA has established procedures to ensure the security of assessment instruments. This includes the monitoring of public social media. In its review of information posted to public social media, it is possible that personally identifiable student information could be observed.

TEA understands its responsibility to protect student confidentiality. As a result, TEA has developed operating procedures that require all staff to adhere to the agency policy that personally identifiable student information collected and maintained by the agency will be protected from unauthorized disclosure to safeguard confidentiality. The agency is subject to the same requirements for controlled accessibility to confidential student information as are school districts, education service centers, and charter schools. Under no circumstances will personally identifiable student information be released except in accordance with FERPA. Therefore, if a posting on public social media is discovered that violates the requirement to maintain test security and confidentiality, TEA will respond in keeping with its obligations under federal and state confidentiality laws and under its own operating procedures.

[The response was not signed or sent from an individually identifiable e-mail adress].

TPERN Requests TEA Clarify Pearson Monitoring of Students’ Social Media

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Amidst numerous reports of Pearson Education monitoring the internet and social media postings of students taking assessments in the northeastern United States, TPERN has requested that Commissioner Williams disclose to Texas parents the extent to which Pearson is contracted to monitor the social media postings of Texas students.  A copy of our letter is below:

March 18, 2015

Dear Commissioner Williams:

Recent news items from New Jersey and Maryland have confirmed that Pearson Education engages in active monitoring of social media accounts of students who take Pearson created standardized assessments.(Link).  Pearson Education proudly asserts the importance of its review of the social media posts of minors in the name of test security and protection of intellectual property rights. (Link).  At the same time, however, it appears to have prevailed upon its software vendor to remove any reference to their work together from the vendor’s website. (Link).  This dissonance between its public stance and private actions is concerning.  It is unclear to what extent Pearson engages in social media monitoring of children in Texas.  However, from its public statements in regard to New Jersey and Maryland, there seems to be little doubt that Pearson does or intends to monitor Texas students online social media postings.

In that regard, the Texas Parents’ Educational Rights Network respectfully requests that the Commissioner or his designee answer the following questions for Texas parents:

(1) To what extent does Pearson Education monitor the social media postings of Texas students?  Is social media monitoring a part of the Pearson contract?  If so, how much do Texas taxpayers pay Pearson to review the internet postings of Texas students?

(2) What restrictions are placed on Pearson Education’s use of data derived from social media monitoring of Texas students, both as to data that may trigger further action in the name of test security, but also data that does not raise any alerts, but is nonetheless captured and reviewed by Pearson?  In what document may those restrictions, if any, be found?

(3) What notice, if any, is provided to Texas parents and students that their social media postings may be monitored by Pearson or the TEA?  In what documents may any such notices be found?

(4) What safeguards does Pearson Education have in place to assure that its staff that reviews social media postings of minors does not misuse this information for private and/or improper purposes?  There is no doubt that contact via social media is a primary grooming tool for child predators.  How does Pearson screen its employees to assure that those employees permitted to review the social media posting of children are not risks to child safety?  Does Pearson’s monitoring software separate content from identity, such that no one person can obtain information that might enable this information to be used privately for threatening or grooming purposes?  What written policies does Pearson have in place regarding private usage of this information by its employees and how are those policies enforced?

It is a sad truth of our modern age that technology has enabled child predators to approach and groom victims in relative anonymity.  It is a further truth that predators gravitate to work which enables them contact with potential victims.  Any business which engages in the monitoring of social media of minors must be aware of these risks and proactively address them.  Texas parents deserve to know what steps Pearson has taken to assure the safety of Texas students whose internet activity is being actively monitored.

With the first STAAR administrations of 2015 forthcoming, your timely response to this inquiry would be appreciated.

Sincerely,

R. Scott Placek
Chairman
Texas Parents’ Educational Rights Network

Of particular interest to TPERN is what safeguards are in place to assure that no Pearson employee misuses the data obtained to solicit or otherwise approach a minor student.  This risk is inherent in any position that provides regular access to children or their personal information.  Discussion of child protection has been sadly missing from the debate of Pearson’s monitoring of minors on social media.  We will update you with any response received.

TEA Commissioner Admits Teachers Unable to Align Instruction with STAAR

Written by admin on . Posted in English Language Learners | ELL, STAAR | EOC Testing. Leave a Comment

On August 21, 2014, TEA Commissioner Michael Williams announced that Texas would once again delay implementing increased performance standards for its STAAR examinations which are used to assess academic readiness, are required for automatic promotion to 6th or 9th grade, and which must be passed by high school students in five different areas in order for any public school in Texas to grant that student a diploma.

In 2011, the TEA awarded a foreign company, Pearson Education, a half billion dollar contract to develop the STAAR exam as a replacement for a well-established assessment system.  The TEA set a schedule of implementation that included regular increases in performance standards until an ultimate performance goal was attained.  However, despite not knowing how the test would align with the essential skills taught in Texas schools, the TEA determined that high school students would still be penalized with non-graduation if they failed to pass this new and unproven exam.  In fact, the TEA failed to require Pearson Education to obtain independent validation of the test instrument.  Instead, in a shocking example of conflict of interest, Pearson was allowed to self-certify the validity of its $500 million project.

But all has not been well.  The TEA’s own research demonstrated that Pearson’s accommodations for LEP students (a growing portion of Texas public school students) were completely ineffective.  Initial increases to performance standards were delayed due to stagnant test results.  Finally, the TEA commissioner announced yet another delay in increased standards – a clear indicator that the assessment system is not working.  But what is most shocking is the admitted reason for the delay.  In a memo to administrators, Commissioner Williams stated that the reason was to “provide additional time for educators to adjust instruction to align with the more rigorous TEKS measured by the STAAR program.”  In the public news release, the reason stated was to “give[] educators additional time to make the significant adjustments in instruction necessary to raise the level of performance of all Texas students.”

Thus, four years into STAAR, the TEA commissioner admits that teachers have not yet found a way to align the teaching of TEKS (essential skills) with the STAAR test that pretends to measure those skills.  In fact, he tells the public that this requires “significant adjustments.”  This should not surprise anyone, since the TEA threatens to pursue criminal charges against teachers who even ask a student what they found difficult on the STAAR exam.  How can teachers figure out how to teach TEKS in a way that the test measures when they can’t talk about the test itself with the students who have to take it?

So Commissioner Williams is delaying the implementation of the new standards.  But what about the Class of 2015?  For four years, these students have struggled to pass an assessment that our own TEA commissioner now admits the teachers are unable to prepare them for.  This is why almost 20% — over 50,000 real Texas kids — are being threatened with non-graduation.  What is Commissioner Williams’ solution for them?  Another year of ineffective preparation occasioned by a secret test?  Permanent labeling as a high school dropout?

There is only one solution:  Commissioner Williams must suspend the TEA STAAR graduation requirements until this system is fixed.  Anything less is simply cavalier disregard for the well-being of our kids, for the future of the Texas economy, and for the public education system itself.

A petition to delay implementation of the STAAR Graduation Requirements can be found here.

English Language Learners: STAAR’s Most Vulnerable Victims

Written by admin on . Posted in English Language Learners | ELL, STAAR | EOC Testing. 1 Comment

Last spring’s English I writing EOC examination laid bare the greatest threat to the future of this state that the STAAR test creates. Overall results were discouraging, but manageable. Of all test takers, 44% failed to achieve the minimum score. This is certainly a concern, but with many more administrations to come, the numbers are not too stunning. Still, having 44% of students off track for graduation at the very first EOC administration is concerning to be sure. But looking deeper into the data, we find a number that should raise concern among all parents and taxpayers. Among English Language Learners (ELL) currently rated as showing Limited English Proficiency (LEP), a full 87% of the students failed to achieve the minimum required score. That is almost 9 out of every 10 ELL students that took the test. The students comprised almost 10% of all test takers, and the numbers are growing.

Most LEP students in Texas are not immigrants or newly arrived students. They are children who grow up in a household where the primary language spoken is Spanish. As children they learn to speak in Spanish. They go to school and interact with their peers in English, but in most circumstances return to a home where no adult can provide meaningful assistance in either Language Arts or course content. The overall passage rate of the writing exam was FOUR TIMES higher than the passage rate for ELL-LEP students.

One would think this disparity, and the idea that almost 90% of our LEP students are off track for graduation, would inspire heated analysis and targeted problem solving at the TEA. If this is true, it is the best kept secret out there. A Public Information Act request was submitted to the TEA for all documents discussing the passing rate disparity or analyzing or proposing solutions to address the problem. The TEA responded that no such documents exist.

Imagine that! An assessment intended to be used to help identify the academic readiness of students shows that 90% of a  discrete and identifiable subgroup is failing a mandatory portion of the curriculum and the TEA claims that not so much as a single e-mail exists in all of the agency discussing this issue! That goes beyond benign neglect and suggests an almost wilfull disregard of the rights of the students. If we have created a system that dooms ELL students to failure, the case law is very clear that their rights have been violated.

However, this should not be surprising to anyone who has examined how the TEA has addressed the issue of ELL students and STAAR assessment. Under the old TAKS system, ELL students had a three year exemption from testing, during which time they were to be acquiring the language skills that would enable them to be validly assessed. STAAR eliminated those exemptions except in rare cases that permit a one time exemption of a very small group of students. The TEA’s own research indicates that attaining academic fluency takes between six and eight years. Yet STAAR proposes to demand satisfactory performance after as little as three months in a U.S. school.

To “assist” ELL students, there are certain testing accommodations available to them. Accommodations do not exist to make passing the test easier. They exist to make sure that we can be confident that a student’s scores reflect their true comprehension of the subject, not a lack of understanding of the language. Those accommodations were created by Pearson Education and field tested by them. Pearson’s research indicated that the accommodations have no statistically significant impact on ELL performance. In other words, they don’t work. When faced with research demonstrating the failure of the Pearson accomodations, did the TEA hire a new contractor? Did they send Pearson back to the workshop to come up with accommodations that actually work? No. What they did, in fact, was implement the very accommodations that Pearson told the TEA would not work. Can we be surprised to find wide disparities in STAAR achievement results for ELL students when we send them to test with ineffective accommodations?

What does this mean for Texas. We already have one of the highest dropout rates in conjunction with the lowest graduation rate in the nation. Our ELL population is growing and demographic trends suggest it will be many years before that component of our population peaks. In the meantime, these students will be moving up through high school being told from 9th grade on that they will not graduate. The consequences are easy to predict: more dropouts, more unemployment and higher public assistance and incarceration rates.

The Opt Out movement has put the spotlight on standardized testing as a whole. But who speaks for the ELL population? Their parents are often unable to effectively advocate for their children. Parents of native English speakers are not directly affected by the hurdles STAAR poses to the LEP population. But in the near future we will all be impacted by the effect. If the test of a man is how he treats the most vulnerable among him, let us all take this opportunity to remember that LEP students need our voice and our support as well.

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