Official: School Superintendents Blindsided By PARCC Social Media Monitoring
TRENTON, N.J. (CBSNewYork/AP) -- School superintendents felt blindsided to learn a PARCC standardized test company is monitoring students' social media for cheating, the head of a school administrators group said.
As CBS2's Meg Baker reported, Patricia Morgan, with the Department of Education, explained that PARCC test vendor Pearson hired a third party Caveon Test Security to monitor all public social media posts by students. Pearson alerts the state to any breaches of security, meaning posts about PARCC questions online.
"Pearson and Caveon are only monitoring public comments and only notifying the department when those comments reveal actual test content, not contacting schools where a student is merely expressing an opinion about the test," Morgan said.
Test officials say it's a common practice to make sure test contents are not getting out. But it made waves last week when a New Jersey school superintendent said her district was contacted after a student tweeted something about the new standardized test being given to students in a dozen states this month.
"I think it would have been helpful to put the information out there beforehand because it would have not surprised as many people after actually some breaches had occurred using social media," Richard Bozza, executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators, told WCBS 880's Levon Putney.
Official: School Superintendents Blindsided By PARCC Social Media Monitoring
Bozza added that district officials understand the need for the monitoring. He pointed out that kids can post a question online, and students taking the exam in other states could see it.
"We're in a new age," Bozza said. "Social media's exploded."
He said parents should remind their kids not to get involved in online cheating.
"Nobody wants to find their child in trouble when they could have avoided it," he said.
Assemblyman Ralph Caputo questioned the authority of Pearson to monitor online activity.
"This should be the job of local districts. They should be in charge of those children. You have no right," Caputo said.
Assembly Education Committee Chairman Patrick Diegnan, D-South Plainfield, said he plans to introduce legislation that would regulate the monitoring of students' social media postings.
"To have a 5th grader called into the principal's office over a tweet is just, it's chilling. Freedom of speech, privacy the basis of our freedom. This is not about PARCC. This is something much bigger," Diegnan said.
A few parents, who were upset that curriculum has focused on math and English because of PARCC, took their kids to Trenton on Thursday as a social studies lesson.
"Yesterday one of my classmates asked if we were ever going to learn science or social studies again. My teacher said, 'don't question my work. PARCC has been keeping us busy and is more important,'" Tiger Lilly O'Donnell-Fischer said.
Three bills have been introduced to delay the use of PARCC results, allow a parent to exclude a student from taking PARCC, and establish a task force to examine the effectiveness of the test.
"We have to take a time out to put this on hold, put in place proper regulation, and try and right this ship in terms of regulation," Diegnan said.
Meanwhile, the New Jersey Education Department says it will do a review to make sure that students' privacy is not compromised by Pearson, the standardized testing firm behind the social media monitoring.
