Comment by themartorana | Hacker News Reader

Comment by themartorana | Hacker News Reader

“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_stude...

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/20...) seems to give Pearson the ability to arm-twist states into using their standardized tests ("otherwise we'll move somewhere else").

> 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

What does the Citizens United decision have to do with any of this? Standardized tests have been written by private companies for decades, it didn't just happen recently.

Privately run standardized testing generates a lot of money. Money influences politicians. Getting money out of politics would help prevent that influence. Citizens United went in the other direction.

It's actually worse than that. The teachers and administration are very concerned about the test scores. Now they are compelled to buy the lesson plans and other materials from the same private corporation that creates the test. Every piece of paper my kids bring home says Pearson on it. Privatization of public education is a serious problem.

We will also be opting out like @themartorana. In case you want similar content about opting out with regards to NY state, look here:

http://www.nysape.org/refusing-the-test-resources.html

>> Non-American here. Perhaps I'm being overly cynical, but why is a private company even been allowed to test kids?

That is the key question. And it is a rhetorical question. It would be better to point to the fact that "this is not supposed to be the job of a private company." Phrasing it as a question implies that there may be a legitimate answer, and offers the people pulling this crap an opportunity to try to justify it with an answer.

I've been to school board meetings where concerned parents ask rhetorical questions. IMHO the approach needs to shift to pointing out the boards responsibilities and the fact that they are not meeting them. Outsourcing is both failure to do your job, and also violating the childrens privacy as mandated by law. "Opting" in or out is just a diversion - it implies again that what they're doing ok because it's optional.

wife teaches at top 10 us university. they adopted Pearson books after Pearson allowed newer white book edition to be authored by one professor of the department (not the one that are reference in the file field, no. the one that barely has a degree in the dpt subject but is the TA and undergrad teaching supervisor)

now they moved several undergrad and extra classes that were taught by phd TAs to 60% online on Pearson black board system. which is a piece of crap site made in java.

their selling point to the university was that they could save money they pay to TAs. as if TAs are even paid... there is nothing in their pitch (which became public after a small strike) mention better learning.

Perhaps I'm being overly cynical, but why is a private company even been allowed to test kids?

In a nutshell: because a profound ideological shift has occurred in the last 40 years, which dictates that nearly all aspects of public life should ultimately be privatized -- real effectiveness, hidden costs (and nefarious side effects) be damned.

cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

It seems like Pearson is more concerned about students revealing test questions, than just talking about the test in general.

And I don't see that as a huge deal.

The level of control these companies assert over our young people (directly through testing procedures and less-directly through influence over their futures/distortion of curriculum goals) is a symptom of larger problems in our education system. These tests are also hugely expensive. The answer, however, is to increase the amount of testing we're doing - not eliminate it. The 'problem to be solved' is to create a way to integrate trusted assessment into everyday instruction more often and less intrusively.

This requires us to develop a way to accredit (through national scale use/vetting) assessment materials on a much smaller scale. PARCC, ACT, et al. will maintain their current level of influence (functionally, not politically) so long as we can't assure that teachers are assessing their students against agreed upon benchmarks.

If these benchmarked assessment materials could be integrated into everyday instruction (which, as a teacher, they surely can be) AND we can accredit them as accurately assessing student ability on "competency X' then we will no longer need centralized, high-stakes assessment.

This accreditation will come from a decentralized exchange of classroom instructional materials/artifacts which will allow for the 'cream' (i.e. materials that accurately assess 'competency x") to be used, assessed, modified, re-used and finally accredited. Currently, teachers are silo'ed and rarely exchange learning materials beyond person-to-person contact or by physically gifting photocopies. Google docs facilitates exchange with real gains in productivity, but only within your immediate department (which could 4 people, could be 20 - but will hardly be >1000). We need the ability to fluidly exchange learning and assessment materials from all over the country/world that can be easily personalized for our classrooms.

As we more thoughtfully mediate the average classroom (which is inevitable) I hope we see these sorts of changes - but right now I don't see very many edtech designers attempting to create tools that will enable my teaching in this way.

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