Twitter Feed Analysis April 17-24
Twitter Feed Analysis Week April 17th through 24th
By: Tiernan Donohue
So in this our last twitter feed analysis, twitter has provided us with some hard hitting, dare I say deeply serious topics and highly controversial discussion, the likes of which we have not yet seen in the twitter-verse this semester. This week on twitter the discussions spanned from debates on: New Jersey to Canada to, wait for it, pineapples. In all seriousness, these seemingly confusing topics all dominated twitter this week serving as source material for far more practical discussions on parental involvement in education reform and the place and purpose of standardized testing in American education.
At the beginning of this week (April 17th through 19th), the discussion on twitter continued the debate on parent engagement and standardized testing carrying over from last week. At the start of the week, the discussion on twitter focused largely on the New Jersey story of students who were “opting out” of New Jersey standardized testing (http://willrichardson.com/post/21226188628/opting-out). This report sparked discussion early in the week regarding parents’ role in guiding education reform. The Center for Education Reform (CER) tweeted on April 18th “Need 2 stop talking 2 parents as though they r policy wonks…” in response to the discussion of parent’s decision to opt their children out of standardized testing in New Jersey. The theme of this discussion on parent engagement was well balanced with supporters and opponents both voicing their opinions on twitter. This debate paralleled a larger discussion in education reform in America over how parental involvement benefit student’s education versus harming policy wonks ability to execute reform policies.
Towards the middle week, a new topic on twitter was sparked by Edutopia, a subsidiary of the Pearson Foundation, tweet on “How Canada is Closing the Achievement Gap’ as part of their Education Everywhere Series (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDs4gr0pYrw&feature=youtu.be). This video was trending on twitter throughout the middle of the week after it was first released by Edutopia on Wednesday, April 18th. This discussion revealed another theme on twitter this week which was measuring student achievement. The video presents a case study of the Ontario school system as a larger example of how education policy can deal with diversity and promote student achievement.
Most tweets expressed interest in how Ontario’s “full-time student success teachers” program allowed greater communication among teachers and with families, and advocated looking at student’s lives holistically in addressing how teachers can help them. This type of community school model being used in Canada received positive reactions on twitter, and many retweeted this as something that should be applied in American education as a way to increase student achievement and close the performance gap.
Standardized testing in general was the main theme on twitter this week and dominated #edreform and #edpolicy discussions through the middle up until the end of the week. Discussions on standardized testing continued throughout the week, and spanned from commentary on New York’s ban on “references to dinosaurs, birthdays, Halloween, dancing in standardized tests” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/26/new-york-city-bans-refere_n_1380991.html) to discussion of student learning and teaching to the test. This discussion on standardized testing mirrored the start of the standardized testing season in schools this month, and through the middle of the week the discussion of the standardized testing question was evenly divided between proponents and opponents of testing. That is until ‘Pinapplegate’ broke.
How are pineapples and the anti-standardized testing movement connected you may ask? Well on twitter this week, the two became intimately involved as ‘Pinepplegate’ exploded in the twitter-verse. “Pineapples don’t have sleeves” became a popular tweet on twitter this week following a New York Times report from April 21st dealing with the controversy surrounding one of New York’s standardized English tests (http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/04/21/nyregion/standardized-testing-is-blamed-for-question-about-a-sleeveless-pineapple.xml). Gaining its own hashtag (#pineapplegate) and traction with Diane Ravitch, the use of the “Pineapple and the Hare” story in a New York standardized English test, substituting a pineapple for the traditional tortoise, left students confused and twitter in outrage.
To sum up this retelling of the classic fable, the pineapple challenges the hare to a race and the other animals agree, “No doubt, the crow insists, the pineapple has something up its sleeve.” The animals decided to cheer for the pineapple and foil its plan, but of course, the pineapple does not move, and the hare wins, then the animals eat the pineapple. This interesting (slightly disturbing) story was followed by these questions to students:
Why did the animals eat the pineapple? AND Who is the wisest?
A. They were annoyed A. The hare
B. They were amused B. The Moose
C. They were hungry C. The Crow
D. They wanted to D. The Owl
The story coming out of New York was picked up by both the Times and the Washington Post who stated “This may well go down in the annals of history as the least comprehensible reading comprehension question of all time” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/post/talking-pineapples-and-unanswerable-questions/2012/04/20/gIQAZ6M3VT_blog.html). Moreover, the twitter discussion grew even more heated after the Post reported that this question was not just administered to eighth graders in New York but was a question featured on tests around the country this testing cycle.
Based on this controversy, Diane Ravitch claimed “Standardized testing has become a vampire” and released an article on EducationWeek this morning entitled “The Problem is Bigger than the Pineapple” this morning, April 24th addressing the development of what she called a “genuine national revolt” against standardized testing in America (http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2012/04/the_problem_is_bigger_than_a_p.html).
Pineapplegate served as a mechanism for a more heated discussion on the state of standardized testing in general on twitter, however. After this story, the discussion of standardized testing on twitter shifted to mostly negative opinions on standardized testing. Many of the tweets reflected the anti-standardized testing sentiment and tied back into the “opt out” discussion from earlier in the week; with numerous tweets like this one “Stories like that are why I’m giving strong consideration to opting my kids out” appearing in #edreform and #pinapplegate. Also, tweeters exhibited backlash against the standardized testing industry, targeting Pearson who was responsible for this test question with tweets such as Pearson “has to keep on making dollars off our kids.” These tweets highlighted a more subtle theme of this week’s twitter feed which was the profitability of the standardized testing industry, and questions about the power these companies were gaining over general education policy in America.
This week’s twitter patterns matched the previous week in terms of the continued discussion on “opting out,” but also varied as the Bullying theme and pushback against the Obama administration disappeared in favor of discussion more directly related to news from this week, such as Pineapplegate. This week’s discussion was largely dominated by the standardized testing theme, which overshadowed other topics and with the controversy surrounding this issue on twitter, left little room for other meaningful discussions.
Some anomalies this week on twitter included a brief discussion of flipped classrooms after Edutopia tried to spark a discussion on whether “Can they work?” in American education on April 18th (http://www.edutopia.org/files/existing/edutopianews.html). This theme was initially picked up on twitter and gained some traction but was overtaken by midweek when Pineapplegate broke.
Additionally, another anomaly for this week involved a discussion of a state bill sent to the Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam which would place a cap on the number of foreign workers charter schools can hire in Tennessee (http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/charterschoice/2012/04/tenn_bill_to_limit_foreign_workers_at_charters_goes_to_governor.html). The bill specifically states “that a charter school could not rely on non-immigrant foreign workers on H1B or J1 visas for more than 3.5 percent of their workforce in any given year.” News of this bill was first tweeted on April 18th but failed to gain a following on twitter after Education Week tweeted on April 23rd that Michelle Rhee had asked the governor to veto the bill (http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/charterschoice/2012/04/rhee_urges_tenns_governor_to_veto_bill_on_charter_teachers.html). Michelle Rhee’s involvement seemed to attract a larger audience on twitter, and the discussion on this topic was growing towards the end of the week.
My overall assessment for this week was that the twitter discussion focused on standardized testing and student achievement, which echo pertinent questions about how we should be measuring student performance and learning. This discussion coincided with the onset of the standardized testing season, but brought up important themes including parent engagement, the power and ethics of the standardized testing industry, and the need for alternative methods of measuring student achievement. This emphasis suggests a growing national concern over the standardized testing industry and the need for either increased accountability or fundamental reform of the current system.
