Revelations of AIR Involvement in Miami Dade & Pasco Mental Screening & Attitudinal Profiling

The American Institutes for Research (AIR) is already extremely problematic both as the creator of the Smarter Balance (SBAC) computer adaptive testing platform and as statewide test provider for numerous other states that include Florida, Arizona, Montana, West Virginia, and now Ohio. We have chronicled these problems that include: Psychosocial testing and data collectionManipulative computer adaptive testingControversial social emotional intelligence and experimental education programsAdmits that Common Core is a national curriculum Its founder was involved in racial eugenics experiments Collects data on individual students and teachers through their national longitudinal database
As evidence of their student psychological and attitudinal profiling and data mining mounts, AIR continues to prove that they should not be the ones responsible for testing millions of American students via federally mandated, funded, and or supervised tests for either the SBAC federal consortium or for individual states. Here are the latest revelations:1) AIR is involved with the US Departments of Education and Justice to implement an Orwellian data gathering, monitoring, and psychological screening program in the Miami Dade Schools and across the country called The Campus Shield Initiative. This program involves an alarming amount of data collection combined with subjective and ineffective mental health screening of every child in a school, ostensibly to allow law enforcement and school officials to prevent violence. The program plans are revealed on the website: "One major recent development in preventative policing efforts is the use of social media by police to circumvent threats. The use of social media in school crime prevention is particularly relevant, considering the rise of Internet threats as precursors to school violence. With little effort, police are able to access information posted on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or other social media sites. In order to Read more

Posted in Psychological Manipulation. Tagged as AIR, American Institutes for Research, Campus Shield, Gallup Student Survey, mental screening, perceived sexual orientation.

Startling Validity Failures from Florida's AIR FSA Contract

It is getting very hard to keep up with the American Institute for Research's educational malfeasance in the testing realm. Parent Advocate Deb Herbage and Dr. Karen Effrem of FSCCC have reviewed the 2245 page contract between AIR and the Florida Department of Education. Here are just a few of those revelations as Alpine spends another $600,000 of Florida taxpayer funds to do a validity study that should have already been done and that Commissioner Stewart promised was done. The public has been told this test is going to cost the public $220 million over six years. It is very important to verify what has been paid for has been done.The following information was taken directly from the executed contract Contract #14-652 for the development of the state assessment (FSA) and Algebra I, Algebra II, and Geometry End of Course (EOC's) exams executed on 6/3/14. The contract was signed by Pam Stewart (FLDOE) and Vickie Brooks (AIR). [The full 2245 page contract is available at the Florida CFO website with all page numbers referencing this document].1) Potentially Missing Linking, Validity and or Field Studies Have Florida Taxpayers Paid for Work Not Completed? The FLDOE required in its ITN (Invitation to Negotiate) that:
7.6.0. Scaling, Equating, Scoring and Special Psychometric Studies (Pg. 77)
Excerpt from the ITN" Other than the annual regular psychometric operations, such as sampling, test construction, and SES for the assessment system, the contractor will conduct a set of special psychometric studies for these assessments, described in Section 7.6.3.6. (Pg. 77)The contractor must show evidence that the Department's preferences are psychometrically defensible and operationally feasible. The respondent may include in the reply a different proposal for scaling, equating, and scoring of these assessments to obtain assessment results that are valid, reliable, and accurate. (Pg. 165)
AIR said in numerous places in its proposal that became the Read more

Posted in Testing. Tagged as AIR, Alpine, American Institutes for Research, Deb Herbage, Dr. Karen Effrem, FSA, Pam Stewart, testing, Utah, validity.

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