Is Pearson Another Word For Stalker?
©2015 By Rafael Pepper-Clarke
5th grader
Have you ever worried that your email and social media accounts and even your test scores are being watched? Well now you have a reason. It’s worse than a virus. It’s a company! Pearson is a UK company that monitors their standardized tests and watches almost everything that you do on the internet. If they catch you doing something they don’t like, they’ll try to send you to court or they’ll fine you. Look up Pearson on Google; it says “Always Learning.” Well yeah, that’s true, always learning about us! Pearson is monitoring students, supposedly because they’re cheating on their tests.
According to Bob Braun’s Ledger, Watchung Hills Regional High School district superintendent, Elizabeth Jewett said “the district’s testing coordinator received a call from the state education department saying that Pearson had initiated a Priority 1 Alert for an item breach within our school.” Braun continues, “The unnamed state education department employee contended a student took a picture of a test item and tweeted it. That was not true. It turned out the student had posted–at 3:18 pm, well after testing was over–a tweet about one of the items with no picture. Jewett does not say the student revealed a question. There is no evidence of any attempt at cheating.”
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, demands an end to this type of “spying.” Some parents want to boycott Pearson’s tests. In Oxford Mississippi, Brandon Smith, parent of a 5th grader said, “I never get to see the results of the test; even the schools didn’t see the scores. We have to take Pearson’s word on what the score really was. They won’t let me see the test questions, either. That’s ridiculous.”3
While they watch us, they make millions because they run the common core tests! They don’t care about children, all they want is money, money, MONEY.
“For a five-year contract, Pearson was paid $32 million to produce standardized tests for New York. Its contract in Texas was worth $500 million,” says Alyssa Figueroa in her article on Alternet.4
She reports that 4th grader Joey Furlong was lying in a hospital bed, undergoing a pre-brain surgery screening, when a teacher walked into the room with a number 2 pencil and standardized test for him to take. Shocked, Joey’s father, who was in the room, told the teacher to leave. Why did that happen? Pearson. They don’t care about health, they just want kids like me to take their tests, even if we’re very sick; points out Alyssa Figueroa.
Edward Snowden fought for our right to privacy, which is in the Constitution’s fourth amendment! He said: “Privacy is a function of liberty”. Snowden was a former agent from the NSA. In 2013, he made it to the headlines for leaking TOP SECRET info. When the government found out he leaked it, he ran away to different countries because the NSA was trying to send him to jail just like they did Chelsea Manning, Martin Luther King Jr. , and the Chinese Government sent the artist Ai WeiWei. Right now Edward is stuck in Russia.
When Snowden said “Privacy is a function of liberty,” he was speaking to the NSA, beause just like Pearson, the NSA also stalks people. The NSA watches your online activity, listens to your phone-calls, looks at your texts, snapchat, e-mail, etc. One of my family members made a song:
“You better watch out, you better not pout; the NSA is comingggg to town. They see you when your sleeping; they know when you awake! They know your social secuiiirityy numberrr. So you better be good for goodness sake. The NSA is coming to your town!’’
While the NSA is far worse than Pearson, both still invade our privacy. “Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it’s only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%,”said Edward Snowden.
Meaning: It’s not okay to spy on innocent people just to catch a few criminals. Everyone deserves privacy!
Or do you like people watching your private life?
It’s time we protest for our rights and have a strike, or a boycott. Without our right to privacy, we are like animals in a cage being watched.
“I don’t want to live in a world where everything that I say, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded.” –Edward Snowden.
Notes
1 All of this paragraph according to http://www.bobbraunsledger.com/breaking-pearson-nj-spying-on-social-media-of-students-taking-parcc-tests/
2 In an email to all AFT teachers dated March 17, 2015.
3Parents protest PARCC; tell kids to skip test http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2015/03/16/parents-protest-parcc-kids-skip-test/24857925/
4 http://www.alternet.org/education/corporations-profit-standardized-tests
5 This essay was inspired by the @LARGE Ai WeiWei on Alcatraz exhibit.
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1 Comment
Without going into detail, this is just the beginning. Much more investigation needs to be made about the company. It is becoming, or is already, a dominant force in education.