How you can help unmask the Common Core by asking your Commissioner about computer scoring of the PARCC/SBAC exams

Please take a look at my piece on computer scoring of the PARCC and SBAC exams in a special report of the Network for Public Education; also posted at the Washington Post AnswerSheet.

To summarize: neither Pearson, in charge of administering and scoring  the PARCC exams, nor AIR in charge of the SBAC exams, have publicly told parents that their standard contracts call for half or more of their children's writing responses to be graded exclusively by robo-scorers, and never to be seen by a human being.  Yet these states also have the option to have the exams scored by humans at an extra charge.

Why is this important?  No computer program has so far been shown to have the ability to distinguish total nonsense from coherent prose.  Instead, robo-scorers grade prose according to its length and how much abstruse vocabulary is used.  As Les Perelman has warned, an expert on computer scoring, the inability of machines to identify gibberish from substance may lead teachers and test prep companies to train students to game the system by writing verbose and nonsensical prose -- the opposite of what the Common Core standards are supposed to encourage.

This reality unmasks the claims of its proponents that the Common Core and its allied assessments are really aimed at encouraging critical thinking and more advanced skills.  Instead as I conclude, "the primary objective of Bill Gates and many of those promoting the Common Core and allied exams is to standardize both instruction and assessment and to outsource them to reductionist algorithms and machines, in the effort to make them more efficient. Essentially, the point of this grandiose project imposed upon our nation’s schools is to eliminate the human element in education as much as possible."

One correction to the piece: Instead of my implication that ETS  uses computers exclusively to score  writing on the GRE exams, the company informed us that a trained human reader and a computer scores  every writing sample. If the human and the computer scores closely agree, the average of the two scores is used . If they disagree, a second human being is asked to assess the sample, and the final score is the average of the two human scores.

We wrote every Commissioner from the PARCC and SBAC states to ask them if they were using automated scoring, and only those from the following states responded: Oregon, Massachusetts, Nevada, and West Virginia. These officials informed us that their states were not using automated scoring at this time.

Wyoming Superintendent Jillian Balow also replied to our letter that she shared our concerns about automated scoring and that her state was no longer using the SBAC exam. Colorado Commissioner Richard Crandall responded to a parent activist in his state,that the state was using the standard PARCC method of having the writing samples scored by a computer two thirds of the time, with only ten percent of those re-checked by a human being, and argued this was necessary to maximize "efficiency."    (If you'd like to read them, their responses in full are linked to from my report.)

Though Rhode Island Commissioner Ken Wagner, formerly NY Deputy Commissioner, did not respond to our letter, the same day he  made the astonishing claim in a public forum that  his state was also using computers to score two thirds of the writing samples on the PARCC exam, because research has shown that "computers did a better job scoring than even expert trained teachers."  He also added that “SAT, GRE, GMA, those kinds of programs have been doing this stuff for a very long time.”

Yet as mentioned above,  every writing sample on the GRE is scored by both a computer and a human being, and the College Board uses trained human scorers exclusively on writing samples for the SAT and AP exams.

The following 18 states and districts have failed to respond to our letter as to whether they are using computers to score writing samples on their PARCC or SBAC exams: CA, CT, DE, DC, HI, ID, IL, LA, MD, MI, MT, NH, NJ, NM, ND, SD, VT, and WA.

If you are a parent, teacher or advocate in one of these states, please send your Commissioner of Education these questions:

• What percentage of the ELA exams in our state are being scored by machines this year, and how many of these exams will then be re-scored by a human being?
• What happens if the machine score varies significantly from the score given by the human being?
• Will parents have the opportunity to learn whether their children’s ELA exam was scored by a human being or a machine?

Their email addresses are posted here.  And please let us know if you get a response by emailing us at info@studentprivacymatters.org and/or posting their reply below.  Thanks!  

Is there a connection between the Common Core and data privacy violations?

inBloom was sold to states and districts and still is being justified by NY State as helping kids become “college and career ready,” and its interoperable instructional tools were supposed to be be aligned with the Common Core. 

It is clear, in any case, that having the same common standards and tests across states would simplify the task of comparing and collecting student data, and that the feds wanted to encourage this data collection and sharing through their revisions of FERPA and via their grants for state longitudinal data systems provided by the fiscal stimulus funds and Race to the Top.   

But I had thought the close connection the right wingers had made between the Common Core and violating student privacy was rather tangential until today; when I happened to watch a video of Joy Pullman at the Heartland Institute of all places - with whom I disagree on almost every issue.  She showed this slide:

PARCC and SBAC are the two Common Core testing consortia that were established with federal grants.  Here is a list of PARCC states , including New York (though I believe Indiana Florida and Pennsylvania have now pulled out.)  Here is a map of the SBAC states.

I looked up the quote above, and sure enough I found it in both the PARCC and SBAC agreements with the US Department of Education.  Here it is, from the SBAC site: 

So I wrote the people at the Data Quality Campaign, funded primarily by the Gates Foundation, which is now running the counter-campaign on privacy and holding webinars with other Gates grantees like the National PTA, in a desperate attempt to convince parents that they have nothing to fear from the Common Core or student data collection.

See this for example, from a DCQ webinar held yesterday:

So I asked the DCQ directly about the clear statements in the US Ed Department contracts with PARCC and SBAC which seem to contradict their claim that the federal government has no intention of collecting personal student data.

Here is the response I got from Paige Kowalski, the Director of State Policy and Advocacy:

From: Paige Kowalski [mailto:paige@dataqualitycampaign.org]
Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2013 4:10 PM
To: leonie@att.net
Subject: FW: question re federal involvement in data collection

Hi Leonie,

This is a great question and it’s one that we had asked the U.S. Department of Education a while back and, in response, they have clarified that language on an FAQ website. In addition to the 4 federal laws that prevent student level data from being collected and stored by USED (these laws would trump any poor wording in a federal contract), USED says the following:

MYTH: The two consortia of states developing new assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards are required to provide individual student data to the Federal government.

FACT: The Department does not, and will not, request or collect personally identifiable information (PII) from the consortia and it is not legally authorized to create a student-level database. As stewards of the taxpayers' funds, the Department collects basic project information—such as aggregate research results, but not PII—to evaluate the progress the grantees are making.

You can go to this website directly at http://www.ed.gov/k-12reforms/standards. USED will collect the same aggregate data, originally authorized under NCLB to determine AYP by school, for non-common core states like TX and VA as it will for states whom have adopted the standards (e.g., MD, ID, etc.). This same aggregate level data will be collected for states whom have adopted the standards but are choosing a separate (i.e., non-consortia) assessment including GA and OK.
I encourage you to join our next two webinars and the 3^rd one in particular which will include officials from the U.S. Department of Education to address these very concerns. My understanding is that both SBAC and PARCC governing states are working on data privacy language and I encourage you to check out their websites for the most recent statements they have made on this topic.

Best,

Paige

Paige Kowalski | Director, State Policy and Advocacy | Data Quality Campaign
1250 H St., NW| Suite 825 | Washington, DC  20005

Here is what I wrote back:
 
Now I’ve taken a look at the four laws cited that you say bar federal collection of personally ID student data.  In each of them, there is this quote: 

 “Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize the development of a nationwide database of personally identifiable information on individuals involved in studies or other collections of data under this paragraph.”

And yet these statements do NOT bar the federal collection of PII data, they just say that this particular law does not authorize this.

You guys have a BIG problem on your hands.  I had believed previously that the connection between the Common Core, inBloom and federal data collection was tenuous, but this language in the consortium contracts makes it clear that what the Gates foundation and US Ed Dept had in their heads the whole time is exactly what the critics have made it out to be.

Until and unless those contracts w/ PARCC and SBAC are changed to specifically bar their sharing PII data w/ the feds, no one is going to believe a word you say on this issue.

I also strongly urge you to come out with a position on parental consent quick, unless you are prevented from doing so because of your financial connections to Gates etc.