Last night, Bob Braun, an investigative reporter in New Jersey, received a copy of the following email:
He posted the following on his blog, Bob Braun's Ledger:
MARCH 13, 2015
BREAKING: Pearson, NJ, spying on social media of students taking PARCC tests
” Pearson, the multinational testing and publishing company, is spying on the social media posts of students–including those from New Jersey–while the children are taking their PARCC, statewide tests, this site has learned exclusively. The state education department is cooperating with this spying and has asked at least one school district to discipline students who may have said something inappropriate about the tests.
This website discovered the unauthorized and hidden spying thanks to educators who informed it of the practice–a practice happening throughout the state and apparently throughout the country. The spying–or “monitoring,” to use Pearson’s word–was confirmed at one school district–the Watchung Hills Regional High School district in Warren by its superintendent, Elizabeth Jewett.
Jewett sent out an e-mail–posted here– to her colleagues expressing concern about the unauthorized spying on students. She said parents are upset and added that she thought Pearson’s behavior would contribute to the growing “opt out” movement.
In her email, Jewett said the district’s testing coordinator received a late night call from the state education department saying that Pearson had “initiated a Priority 1 Alert for an item breach within our school.”
The unnamed state education department employee contended a student took a picture of a test item and tweeted it. But it turned out the student had posted–at 3:18 pm, after testing was over–a tweet about one of the items with no picture. Jewett does not say the student revealed a question. Jewett continues:
“The student deleted the tweet and we spoke with the parent–who was obviously highly concerned as to her child’s tweets being monitored by the DOE (state education department).
“The DOE informed us that Pearson is monitoring all social media during the PARCC testing.” (Diarist's emphasis)
When this posted, Braun's blog was shut down with a DDoS attack.
More below the Chee-to:
His Facebook page is still up, and I have just heard that his blog is back up, but running extremely slowly. In fact, I tried to link to the original story, but my computer was moving so slowly the page would not load.
Here are Braun's latest posts on Facebook:
Bob Braun's Ledger
9 hrs · Edited ·
Bob Braun's Ledger is back up but is still very slow. It's probably easier to get to it through something other than Facebook. Initially, I thought--vainly-- the site was acting up because of the number of people reading it. Then I got an email from my webhost saying the site was under a "denial of service" attack.
The webhost itself then suspended the site to stop the attacks and to give it time to repair the problem and install fixes to prevent future attacks. It seems to have come back up--for now--but clearly someone wanted it down. I'm flattered. And I am so grateful to all of those I know and do not know who sent messages of support and got around the siege by posting PDFs of the original blog. Ironically, I have not been a vocal anti-PARCC or anti-Common Core voice. But the idea that a global corporation and a state agency would cooperate to entrap children in their schemes chills me to my very old bones. What makes it worse is the indifference of the mainstream media and, of course, the thuggery represented by trying to destroy what was a very straight news story. I know distinctly what side I'm on now. Stop the corporate spies and their collaboration with government. Refuse the test. I do not believe in conspiracy theories but I do believe in conspiracies and this is one helluva big one.
Bob Braun's Ledger
13 mins · Edited ·
HERE'S A QUESTION: Why is mainstream media so silent on this story? No local press. No Star-Ledger. Ok, if they don't believe it, shoot me out of the water. Destroy my credibility. Let me look stupid from here to New Zealand (a site there picked up the story). But ignore it? I don't know how many people read my blog, but my FB post reach went from like 50k to 400k+ in the last 16 hours. As a reporter for 50 years, I would at least expect a tiny bit of interest. Some of you asked what you could do. Seems to me you would want the truth out and would want newspapers and radio and television stations to ferret out what happened. Contact your local media--whatever it is--and ask them why they have ignored the story about how the NJ state education department, following a tip from Pearson, the test contractor, asked the superintendent of the Watchung Hills Regional to discipline a student who tweeted about the test AFTER the test was given. When I was a kid working for a newspaper, I was taught one of the ingredients of a news story was the unusual nature of the event. Well, what public officials did was unusual, no? So just ask the Ledger--why aren't you covering the Watchung Hills testing story (and be sure to remind my old friends over there that they really should give my site credit for breaking it).
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He's right.
WHY IS NO ONE COVERING THIS STORY??? This is a Fourth Amendment violation of the highest degree.
And here's another tidbit for you all he posted:
Bob Braun's Ledger
1 hr ·
Hmmmm. Coming to a school near you. http://www.tracx.com/...
Pearson Streamlines Social Media Listening and Monitoring With Tracx
Tracx Case Study: Pearson Streamlines Social Media Listening and Monitoring With Tracx
tracx.com
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Except when I clicked on the link, I got a 404 message. Looks like some rapid fire damage control is starting to happen.
So what do we do?
Well, the Badass Teachers are already starting to Twitter Bomb Pearson with the hashtag #PeepingPearson
But we also need to contact Pearson directly, as well as your local newspaper/media organization. We also need to contact State and Federal Departments of Education as well. Because this is being done WITH THEIR KNOWLEDGE AND APPROVAL.
2:44 PM PT: And for those who think "Well, it's Twitter, it's public", remember this: So is walking down the street. But is it OK for the government to monitor us with street surveillance cameras and send us fines for not crossing with the crosswalk?