Hey, Kids: If You Tweet About Your PARCC Testing Experience, Pearson Will Call You Out

The question of whether Louisiana students are taking a legitimate PARCC test might be answered by the outcome of Louisiana students discussing their PARCC testing experience on social media.

The Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) has no contract with official PARCC vendor, Pearson. Louisiana’s “PARCC” tests are supposedly the result of an undisclosed arrangement between another testing company, Data Recognition Corp (DRC) and Pearson.

The public is not allowed to know the details surrounding the shaky third-party-acquisition of Louisiana’s “PARCC” tests.

However, Pearson apparently trolls social media to protect its product. Pearson even declares as much in its social media monitoring policy— one that likely proves as effective as herding cats but nonetheless is an arguable attempt to feed a cheaper bottom line by requiring the writing of fewer test items.

In its social monitoring policy, Pearson maintains that it is merely protecting its “brand.” As such, Pearson has been monitoring social media in New Jersey to see if students in PARCC testing states have been chatting about their testing experiences.

Pearson officials have even had the gall to contact the New Jersey department of education three times and push for corrective action for the students’ actions on social media.

Read about the full story on Bob Braun’s Ledger.

NOTE: I read that Braun’s blog account had been (temporarily?) suspended. For a full copy of his post in Word doc form, click here:

Bob Braun’s Ledger 03-13-15

Now, the question for Louisiana students is whether Pearson will look even more foolish trying to “monitor its brand” for Louisiana “PARCC” when LDOE has no official, direct connection to said “brand.”

What could Pearson do? Call for a breach of a supposedly nonexistent, LDOE-Pearson contract?

Perhaps Pearson should put Louisiana students and teachers in their Briar-patch place by making public any heretofore secret arrangements that Pearson has with either DRC or LDOE for “their brand.”

I’ll go so far as to call my challenge “Schneider’s Counter-policy to Pearson Social Media Monitoring in Louisiana.”

However, I won’t be trolling Pearson on social media to see if they comply.

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Schneider is a southern Louisiana native, career teacher, trained researcher, and author of the ed reform whistle blower, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who In the Implosion of American Public Education.