March 20, 2015
After a New Jersey superintendent expressed privacy concerns over how the company that administers PARCC investigated possible cheating, a state Assembly committee grilled state officials with their own concerns.
When two state Department of Education officials testified before the Assembly Education Committee, they were hit with questions about whether they had the authority to look at the social media accounts of students, according to NJ Spotlight.
Privacy concerns erupted after a superintendent at the Watchung Hills Regional High School District raised concerns about the way Pearson, the company that authors and administers PARCC, had looked at students’ social media accounts to see if they were cheating.
The superintendent, Elizabeth Jewett, said in the email that she found the company’s actions “a bit disturbing.”
State Assemblyman Ralph Caputo, D-Essex, asked one of the officials what his authority was to look through students’ social media accounts, according to NJ Spotlight.
The state officials said that any investigations were being done to ensure that no student gained an unfair advantage by cheating and that it did not including searching through private information.
The sometimes heated discussion was in contrast with the two Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers or PARCC bills which were tentatively approved for a broader vote without dissent by the committee. If passed, one would set opt-out rules for the test and the other would create a task force to study the test.
