Pearson Is Everywhere: The “Boss” App

Posted on March 21, 2015 by A.P. Dillon
Pearson: Always Earning

Pearson: Always Earning

Welcome to another installment of Pearson Is Everywhere!

Last time, we looked at Pearson and Raptor Technologies teaming up to incorporate visitor tracking into Powerschool.

Today, we’re looking at Pearson’s app “BOSS”.

What is “BOSS”?

From the Apple Itunes site, the description is as follows:

BOSS stands for Behavioral Observation of Students in Schools. The app was designed to “enable psychologists to observe” patients but is now being marketed to schools interesting in tracking students’ behavioral patterns.

Created by the British-based textbook giant Pearson, the BOSS app can be loaded onto a smartphone and used to secretly monitor every move of targeted students in the classroom.

Does little Johnny fidget in his seat a bit too much? Does he socialize with the students around him in an appropriate manner? Does he tend to stare aimlessly out the window when he should be paying attention to the teacher?

All of this information can be pulled in and stored in an individual dossier for later analyzing and assigned an intervention and remediation that will deal with Johnny’s shortcomings, whether they be laziness, lack of assertiveness, over-aggressiveness or whatever psychological problem the app may discover.

BOSS app can be downloaded from iTunes for $29.99 and comes in age-appropriate versions from pre-K through 12th grade. The product description boasts that BOSS is able to “record students’ behaviors in real time. The BOSS software uses interactive buttons labeled to a particular behavior for the observer to press while observing a student during a given duration. The software keeps track of the amount of times a behavioral button is depressed during an observation.”

The app tracks “a student’s active or passive engagement in activities” and will collect data and email it to the teacher “for future use to help support a disability diagnosis,” the Pearson promotional material states.

Tracking your child’s active and passive engagement.  Great! It only costs $29.99!

Related: Orwellian Nightmare Unleashed On School Kids.

 

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What Common Core Has Going For It

Posted on March 20, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

A reader inspired this latest meme I’ve created to add to my collection.
Common Core Kiss

Common Core is a theoretical construct based on a perfect, but impossible ideal that defies public school reality & the KISS principle.

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Common Core | Tagged | 1 Comment

Lt. Governor Forest Talks Common Core With Pete Kaliner

Posted on March 20, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

In case you missed it yesterday, North Carolina’s Lt. Governor Dan Forest was on the Pete Kaliner show (WWNC 570) discussing Common Core.

You can access the audio file on Kaliner’s Sound Cloud.

Topics included the NC Common Core Commission, the funding for the commission being held up by being tied up by the legislature, recommendations given to the Commission and more.

I’d like to thank Pete for mentioning this blog during their discussions about the NC Common Core Commission and the recommendations given by Former Common Core Validation Committee members, Dr. Sandra Stotsky and Dr. James Milgram.

Related Tweets:

 

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Pearson Is Everywhere: Raptor Technologies

Posted on March 20, 2015 by A.P. Dillon
Pearson: Always Earning

Pearson: Always Earning

Welcome back to another installment of Pearson Is Everywhere!

Last time we looked at Pearson defending their spying on student via social media and use of a subcontractor to do so.

Today we look at the Pearson relationship with ‘Raptor Technologies‘.

 

Pearson and Raptor have made sure your school has the best “Best-in-Class Solutions for School Visitor Management Systems Through Integrated Software Solutions”.

Here is what Raptor does, according to their own press release from 2013:

Raptor Technologies is the nation’s leading visitor management system for K-12 schools and protects over 9,500 campuses nationwide. The Raptor system allows schools to screen all visitors to campus against the registered sex offender databases of all 50 states and issue instant sex offender as well as custody alerts. Raptor’s web-based software allows schools to electronically log all individuals entering the campus front office and print high-quality temporary badges for visitors, volunteers, and student tardies.

According to that same press release, the Raptor product was going to be merged with Pearson’s Powerschool:

“Integration with leading student information systems such as PowerSchool is important for both efficiency and safety. Our partnership with Pearson demonstrates Raptor’s continued commitment to use technology to help keep our children’s campuses safe and secure. Now, Pearson customers will be able to take advantage of the integration between our two software systems. We are excited to work with Pearson to grow and develop our partnership going forward.”

Punchline: Pearson is now actively trying to sell off Powerschool.

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#NCGA Bill Would Make Charter Boards, Employees ‘Personally Liable’

Posted on March 20, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

School choice advocates, House Bill 96 should set your hair on fire.

House Bill 96, presented by Rep. Larry Hall, represents a clear attack on choice and charter schools in North Carolina.

HB 96 would make a charter board member or employee who has any control over maintaining or releasing funds to be held personally and/or individually liable for all the debts of the charter school.

Text from HB 96:

“(c) A charter school shall operate under the written charter signed by the State Board and the applicant. The written charter shall include terms requiring that individuals with the authority to maintain or expend funds for the charter school be held personally and individually  liable for debts incurred by the charter school in accordance with G.S. 115C-218.20(a2).

Rep. Craig Horn was quoted by Carolina Journal on the bill, but read the whole thing as Rep. Hall seems to be hanging his reasoning for HB 96 on Kinston Charter’s problems — which were caught using processes already in place:

“I do think it’s natural that we spend a lot of time looking at charter school applicants on their pedagogy, curriculum, and academic plan. From what I’ve been aware of I’m not so sure we look at their finances as closely as we should,” said state Rep. Craig Horn, R-Union, a chairman of the House Education K-12 Committee.

 

Rep. Horn, how about we look at how DPI spends their money or each school district first? You know, a detailed accounting of ever penny?

While we’re at it, how about some transparency in who pulls who’s strings in North Carolina education?  [Related: NC DPI Gave Media Outlet Private Charter School Information[

More from Carolina Journal — “overreach”:

If passed, the legislation would require the Office of Charter Schools at the Department of Public Instruction to maintain a database of those individuals, and prohibit their future employment in charter schools until the debt is paid off.

“The bill looks like a solution in search of a problem,” said Eddie Goodall, executive director of the North Carolina Charter Schools Association.

He said the prospective database would be added to a requirement for charter schools to do criminal background checks of employees, a regulation traditional schools do not have. “It’s just overreach,” Goodall said.

This move is clearly meant to hamstring the growing charter school movement.  What’s next? Forcing private or parochial schools to list their finances?

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Pearson Is Everywhere: Defending Spying On Students Edition

Posted on March 19, 2015 by A.P. Dillon
Pearson: Always Earning

Pearson: Always Earning

Welcome back to another installment of Pearson Is Everywhere!

Last time we looked at Pearson spying on students via social media to ‘protect’ the Common Core PARCC tests.

Today, we have an update on that story. According to the Denver Post, Pearson is defending it’s monitoring of students, but promising to ‘let the states do it’ from now on.

 

Denver Post reports that Pearson has agree to stop the practice of monitoring students using test rosters and leave it up to the states, however there is a tidbit in their article that needs highlighting.

Here’s the relevant excerpt of the article, with emphasis added:

Pearson agreed this week at the states’ request to stop matching social media posts to a list of students on test rosters — instead leaving the matching to states, Skelly said.

“All students deserve fair tests,” said Dana Smith, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Education. “If they get advance warning about what is on the test, they have an unfair advantage.”

Skelly said a Pearson subcontractor monitors public social media posts, and in most cases, students list their locations in their social media profiles.

In Colorado, cellphones are not allowed in testing sessions. Smith said the social media monitoring involves searching keywords or images from PARCC, which tests students in grades 3-11 in math and English.

Pearson uses a subcontractor to monitor our kids. How nice.

WHO?
(Update 3/21/15: Apparently the ‘who’ is a company called Caveon according to Politico.)

What is this subcontrator’s privacy policy? How do they handle the data?  Could this subcontractor be using Tracx?

 

I want to give a shout out to fellow warrior, Cheri Kiesecker, who was included in the Denver Post article!

Cheri Kiesecker, a Fort Collins parent and student data privacy advocate, said parent concerns are heightened because public information is lacking over what exactly Pearson is monitoring.

“Without transparency, you won’t have trust, and without trust, you won’t have parent buy-in and you won’t have technology move forward in the classroom,” she said.

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