Standardized Testing

From an article in the New York Times, it appears that the Princeton Review "published the personal data and standardized test scores of tens of thousands of Florida students on its Web site, where they were available for seven weeks."

According to the article, the breach -- likely caused by human error -- exposed some very sensitive data:

"One file on the site contained information on about 34,000 students in the public schools in Sarasota, Fla., where the Princeton Review was hired to build an online tool to help the county measure students’ academic progress. The file included the students’ birthdays and ethnicities, whether they had learning disabilities, whether English was their second language, and their level of performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which is given to students in grades 3 to 11."

In another folder on the same server, several files containing the names and birthdays of 74,000 students from Fairfax County, VA, were exposed.

On a related note, a prominent test preparation company will soon be looking for an experienced web security expert. The qualified applicant should be able to meet or exceed the skillset laid out in this document.

From an Op-Ed in the June 1 online edition of the NY Times by Brian Greene: Put a Little Science in Your Life

A few weeks back, I left a comment on the Students20h blog in response to an a post written describing a student's thoughts on the college admissions process. The gist of my comment was that college is but a part of actual learning, and that where you go to college offers as many opportunities about where and how you want to live as it provides opportunities on where, how, and what you want to learn. In my comment, I dropped an aside about how I'd love to see an entire class of students -- nationwide -- boycott the SATs and the APs. Without the SATs and the APs, my reasoning (if you can call it that :) ) went, colleges would need to find a different method to evaluate applicants, because the overwhelming majority of colleges would be dead in the water without new tuition revenue.