That is a lot of power given without much scrutiny...to those who formulate and grade the tests that judge so many.  One of the biggest of these is Pearson, and they greatly affect many states.

Recently in the New York Times Michael Winerip told of some investigations being done about educators being treated to trips paid for by Pearson Foundation, one of the largest publishers of educational materials.  That includes testing packages sold to schools and the grading of the tests as well.

New Questions About Trips Sponsored by Education Publisher

In the summer of 2010, Lu Young, the superintendent of schools in Jessamine County, a Lexington, Ky., suburb, took a trip to Australia paid for by the Pearson Foundation, a nonprofit arm of Pearson, the nation’s largest educational publisher.

Ten school superintendents went on the trip.  

More:

Six months later, in Frankfort, Ky., Ms. Young sat on a committee interviewing executives from three companies bidding to run the state’s testing program. While CTB/McGraw-Hill submitted the lowest bid, by $2.5 million, Ms. Young and the other committee members recommended Pearson.

..."For several weeks, New York State’s attorney general has been investigating similar trips involving two dozen education officials from around the country who traveled to Singapore; London; Helsinki, Finland; China and Rio de Janeiro as guests of the Pearson Foundation. The trips, and the fact that most of these officials come from states that have multimillion contracts with Pearson, were the subject of two of my columns this fall.

Last month, the attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, issued subpoenas to the Manhattan offices of the Pearson Foundation and Pearson Education. Mr. Schneiderman is looking into whether the nonprofit, tax-exempt foundation, which is prohibited by state law from undisclosed lobbying, was used to benefit Pearson Education, a profit-making company that publishes standardized tests, curriculums and textbooks, according to people familiar with the inquiry.

Pearson has a lot of influence in states like Texas and Florida.  Here is more about Texas from the Texas Observor last September.  

How private companies are profiting from Texas public schools.

Pearson, one of the giants of the for-profit industry that looms over public education, produces just about every product a student, teacher or school administrator in Texas might need. From textbooks to data management, professional development programs to testing systems, Pearson has it all—and all of it has a price. For statewide testing in Texas alone, the company holds a five-year contract worth nearly $500 million to create and administer exams. If students should fail those tests, Pearson offers a series of remedial-learning products to help them pass. Meanwhile, kids are likely to use textbooks from Pearson-owned publishing houses like Prentice Hall and Pearson Longman. Students who want to take virtual classes may well find themselves in a course subcontracted to Pearson. And if the student drops out, Pearson partners with the American Council on Education to offer the GED exam for a profit.

“Pearson basically becomes a complete service provider to the education system,” says David Anderson, an Austin education lobbyist whose clients include some of Pearson’s competitors.

With the prevalence of companies like Pearson operating in Texas and many other states, the U.S. education system has become increasingly privatized. In some cases, the only part of education that remains public is the school itself. Nearly every other aspect of educating children—exams, textbooks, online classes, even teacher certification—is now provided by for-profit companies.

Here is the webpage for their North America education interests.  Just add the name Pearson in front of the publishing companies you used to know.   Almost every textbook we used in the classroom came from one of these companies, but now there is the word Pearson preceding it.

Pearson North American Education

Pearson has the FCAT testing contract for Florida.   That is the test that has decided most everything in Florida, though I hope some of that is changing.

From the Orlando Sentinel in December.  There is concern about the investigations going on elsewhere, concern that Florida might be linked to some of it.

NY investigating Pearson, testing giant with FCAT contract

New York’s attorney general is looking into whether an educational foundation affiliated with Pearson — the national testing giant that has the FCAT contract — tried to improperly influence state educators by paying for them to take overseas trips, the New York Times reported yesterday.

The paper wrote: ”The office of the attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, issued subpoenas this week to the foundation and to Pearson Education seeking documents and information related to their activities with state education officials, including at least four education conferences — in London, Helsinki, Singapore and Rio de Janeiro — since 2008, according to people familiar with the investigation.

At issue is whether the activities of the tax-exempt Pearson Foundation, which is prohibited by state law from engaging in undisclosed lobbying, were used to benefit Pearson Education, a for-profit company, according to these people.”

Former Florida Education Commissioner Eric Smith took a Pearson trip to Finland in 2009, though that was after the company won Florida’s contract. Pearson was one of three companies to initially apply to run Florida’s testing program but one of the applicants was deemed unqualified. A committee of state officials (Smith was not among them) and a few outside appointees (including a parent) selected Pearson over CTB/McGraw-Hill after rating the two proposals.

Pearson was fined about 15 million in 2010 for late scores on the FCAT.  

Florida hits FCAT contractor Pearson with another $12 million in penalties

Education Commissioner Eric J. Smith told Pearson he expects the damages to be paid by Aug. 6.

"Pearson's usage of unproven technology systems this year has caused great turmoil for our parents, teachers, administrators and other education stakeholders and I remain committed to holding the company fully accountable for these disruptions," Smith said in a written statement.

"It is our intent to make good on our previously stated commitment to reimburse the department and Florida districts for substantiated, unexpected costs due to the delay in reporting FCAT scores," Pearson spokesman Adam Gaber said in response.

Teachers in public schools are held accountable.  The companies that make the tests that are used to judge them should be held equally accountable.  

There are two more paragraphs from the Texas Observer, in which a lobbyist warns of the educational industrial complex.

Lobbyist David Anderson remains worried. “Ultimately in public education,” he says, “when you have something as significant as the education of the child or of a generation of children, you want to make sure that, to the greatest extent possible, decisions are being made based on reliable and valid information, and decisions are being made for the right reasons.”He says students and parents must now contend with a business-education complex in which industries perpetuate ideologies, and ideologies keep industries afloat.

Anderson compares it to the military-industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned of. Which makes sense, since Pearsonville does have a 1950s feel.

Here is the Pearsonville site.

Welcome to Pearsonville

Accountability should not just be for teachers.

Crossposted at Twitter

This week the New York Times published teacher rankings of 18,000 New York city teachers.

The ratings, known as teacher data reports, covered three school years ending in 2010, and are intended to show how much value individual teachers add by measuring how much their students’ test scores exceeded or fell short of expectations based on demographics and prior performance. Such “value-added assessments” are increasingly being used in teacher-evaluation systems, but they are an imprecise science. For example, the margin of error is so wide that the average confidence interval around each rating spanned 35 percentiles in math and 53 in English, the city said. Some teachers were judged on as few as 10 students.

My good friend, Rita Solnet, is is a Florida co-founder of Parent Across America, has given me permission to cross-post a piece she just did.  I strongly recommend you read her story.

Everything below this point is Rita's words.  Please read and pass on to others.   Thanks

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Statistically Speaking, Florida -- I Don't Believe Them

Florida's education statistics were front and center all week. As I prepare for my son's college graduation, I can't help but wonder how different his future would be had we lived by statistics.  

A '08 graduate of an outstanding public high school in Boca Raton, Jeff attended twelve years of Florida's public schools. He gained admission to some of the finest universities in our nation thanks to a village of supportive teachers, staff, guidance counselors and a host of interesting AP and college courses at his disposal.

Today Florida's education reform decisions are based on failed reforms touted by third parties with vested interests.  Worse still -- those decisions are then supported with illogically skewed or fatally flawed statistics  vs. real-world, in-the-trenches input.

Last week we learned that children could not write any better than martians arriving on planet earth yet later in the week the news trumpeted that Florida's reading scores improved across the state. Both tests crafted and scored from the same company. They can't write but they can read and comprehend very well.  Does that make sense to anyone? Flawed results based on flawed tests, forgotten instructions to schools, and flawed scoring methods were inflicted upon children. But one Conference call and presto, the passing grade drops under a recommendation by Jeb Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future which receives funds from Pearson.

Today at 11 AM - Thursday June 7 - hundreds of New York parents and kids are taking to the streets to protest:

* High-stakes testing which crowds out meaningful learning, e.g., critical thinking, complex writing, reading actual books, exploring ideas, research, experiments.

* The excessive power and influence billion dollar for-profit company Pearson has over our NYS Education Department - the tests are eating up resources and taking up children's time. Meanwhile, NY SED and Pearson have no accountability as they refuse to ever release the tests, which had nearly 30 questions invalidated this spring due to errors and poor quality.

Come join us today if you're in midtown Manhattan - we're protesting in front of Pearson HQ at 53rd and 6th avenue - more info at www.parentvoicesny.org or below

That is the title of this post at the Answer Sheet Blog of the Washington Post, run by Valerie Strauss.  The author is Carol Burris, an award-winning principal in Long Island who originally supported the idea of Common Core but has become increasingly concerned about the damage it will do as she has watched it take shape, particularly with respect to the assessments that will go with the Common Core.  As Burris puts it,

New York’s Common Core tests, designed to measure whether 8-14 year olds are on the path to college readiness, will soon begin. The stakes have never been higher, since teachers and principals are now being evaluated in part by student scores. Like the teacher evaluation system, Common Core testing is a plane being built in the air— a plane in which the passengers are children.

Offered without comment other than, please make it go viral.

New York officials signed a $32 million five-year contract with Pearson PLC's subsidiary, NCS Pearson Inc., in 2011 for its Common Core test merchandise. Pearson, a British consortium, is the world's most influential purveyor of educational supplies and holds numerous contracts with New York and other states. Texas, for example, is paying Pearson $462 million for its five-year contract.

Unknown at the time, the Pearson/New York agreement stipulated that the 2014 spring exams would be classified and not subject to public review or educators' criticism. In response to Elizabeth Phillips' April 10 NYT's Op-Ed "We need to Talk About the Test," Pearson says that the state is responsible for the gag order.

Public funds paid for the Pearson contract so it is unlikely that if challenged the suppression order will withstand judicial scrutiny but it is concerning that one or both of the parties believed they could stifle free speech.

The Washington Post revealed last year that Pearson has an unsatisfactory performance history. Alan Singer amplifies the company's failings on the Ravitch blog.

Mr. Singer shares the following sobering information regarding Pearson:

Pearson Education owns the publishers Adobe, Scott Foresman, Penguin, Longman, Wharton, Harcourt, Puffin, Prentice Hall, and Allyn & Bacon.  They are deeply involved in test assessment producing the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the Stanford Achievement Test, the Millar Analogy Test, the New York City special high school admissions test, and the G.E.D. Through interlocking boards of directors, partnerships, and donation’s from the company’s foundation, they have developed relationships with the largely online University of Phoenix, Teach for America, Stanford University, the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and the Gates, Lumina, Broad, and Walton Foundations.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation aligned with the Pearson Foundation in 2011 to pursue its Common Core mission. In December 2013 NY Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, collected $7.7 million from the Pearson Foundation following his allegations of improper use of charitable funds.

It appears from various news sources that Common Core gag orders exist outside the state of New York. An example is the testimony of Susan Kimball, a Missouri kindergarten teacher. Ms. Kimball told state senators in March:

I have been strongly discouraged from saying anything negative about Common Core by my administration and some school board members.

In a professional development meeting, um, inservice in November, and at a faculty meeting in January, we were told in my building, and I quote, ‘Be careful about what you post on Facebook, or talk about in the public regarding Common Core. Don’t say anything negative. It could affect your job.’

From the Tampa Bay Times.

Computer problems shut down FCAT testing in Pasco, Hernando and elsewhere

Problems with Florida's annual FCAT test on Tuesday rekindled simmering concerns that the state isn't ready for its next steps toward full computerized testing.

At least a dozen Florida school districts, including Pasco and Hernando, were forced to suspend online testing Tuesday as students had trouble signing in to take the annual exam.

State education officials blamed test provider Pearson Education for the situation, which appeared to be related to the company's servers. Other problems included slowness when students tried to download test questions or submit answers, and a warning screen that students should notify their teacher or proctor.

"This failure is inexcusable," education commissioner Pam Stewart wrote in a letter to Walter Sherwood, president of state services for Pearson.

Here is more about Pearson's long string of problems in Florida.

Company causing late FCAT grades in Florida has history of problems.

This is from 2010, so the powers that be in education have known.

The testing company responsible for the delayed release of this year's FCAT scores has a history of problems — in Florida and across the country. Now, Florida education leaders fear their planned rollout of a new computer-based testing system is in jeopardy because the company, Pearson, is not prepared.

Education Commissioner Eric Smith criticized Pearson in a recent letter for using an "untested" system for computer-based tests that the state plans to use in high schools next year.

The lack of a "proven" system created "unacceptable" problems for schools that tried out the new tests this spring, Smith said.

"The problems experienced by schools have created a lack of confidence in Pearson, our program, and computer-based testing in general. The product seems to be so new and untested that even Pearson staff cannot provide clear and reliable instructions for successful implementation," Smith wrote in his June 4 letter.

Anyone who has ever grown fruit trees knows that you HAVE to prune branches that have borne fruit several years in a row to make new growth available that will produce at higher levels than tired old branches...

The same is with the reform movement...

It looks promising, but with that we should also take note that when Common Core was rolled out, it too looked promising.... And still would, if it hadn't been hijacked by others with not-so-hot agendas.....

But IF handled right, and IF teachers are given the entire responsibility of driving the educational process, this new technological advancement could indeed revolutionize the results of educational success......

It is called "individualized learning"....

I just finished grading my students’ algebra unit tests, and I am thrilled with how well they did.  In fact, the sixth grade algebra unit is the best unit I teach, and the one in which my students are most successful, every single year.  Why?  It’s fun.  While most of us might remember learning algebra as a set of rules and steps, for my sixth graders, algebra means solving number tricks, “bowling” with numbers, and making up puzzles.  It’s a blast, every single day.

This is because our algebra unit, unlike every other unit in our district, was written by teachers.  It’s not just math; it’s accessible, interesting and fun- and the kids love it.  All the other units in my district’s curriculum were purchased from Pearson, the testing giant (currently located in Ireland where it doesn’t have to pay taxes, and standing to make over a billion dollars from our nation’s public schools with its standardized tests, the “PARCC”).  They are not the same.

Those problems haven't hit Pearson in the wallet yet, in part because contracts are often structured so that even if Pearson screws up or doesn't produce the results it pledged, Pearson gets paid, as Politico's Stephanie Simon details. For instance, in 2012, Pearson got a two-year, $8.5 million no-bid contract from the state of North Carolina:

Pearson’s new database, PowerSchool, turned out to be riddled with so many glitches that some schools couldn’t tally enrollment or produce accurate transcripts; one local superintendent called it a “train wreck.”

Most problems have now been fixed, Jeter said. But the state had to hire eight Pearson project managers — each of whom billed up to $1,024 per day — to relieve its overloaded IT staff and assist districts with their “unique issues arising from the implementation of PowerSchool,” according to a contract amendment.

Pearson sold the Los Angeles Unified School District an online curriculum that it described as revolutionary — but that had not yet been completed, much less tested across a large district, before the LAUSD agreed to spend an estimated $135 million on it. Teachers dislike the Pearson lessons and rarely use them, an independent evaluation found.

Pearson, by the way, is a funder of Jeb Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education.

Well, back in '04 there was the Big Four:

Three companies have traditionally dominated the market for developing tests: Harcourt Educational Measurement, CTB McGraw-Hill, and Riverside Publishing. All are part of larger conglomerates, and their financial data generally are not reported separately from the controlling corporation.

A fourth, little-known company, Pearson Educational Measurement out of Iowa City, Iowa, has significantly increased its market share in recent years. According to the Dec. 1, 2004 Education Week , Pearson has for now overtaken Riverside as the third main testing company.

A POLITICO investigation has found that Pearson stands to make tens of millions in taxpayer dollars and cuts in student tuition from deals arranged without competitive bids in states from Florida to Texas. The review also found Pearson’s contracts set forth specific performance targets — but don’t penalize the company when it fails to meet those standards. And in the higher ed realm, the contracts give Pearson extensive access to personal student data, with few constraints on how it is used.

So what is it that this "education industry" produces?  Well, textbooks, which might be useful in standardized classrooms in which controlled curricula is peddled to students, but the big profits in the era of NCLB/ RttT are to be made through testing -- prep materials, the tests themselves, the grading software, testing experts, and so on.  Here's your one-stop shopping location in that regard, where you can buy that extra layer of management to facilitate Pearson's profits.  In sum, what the "education industry" produces is regimentation, advertised through extravagant promises of "college,""careers," and "customized learning."

Back in the 1950s and 1960s there was this term, popular among critics of the capitalist system, to describe the then-current stage of the capitalist system.  The term was "monopoly capitalism." Paul Sweezy and Paul Baran, titans of the Monthly Review, even put out a book, Monopoly Capital, to dramatize "monopoly capitalism" further.  Reading about "monopoly capitalism" in this era, however, I've come to think that the claim of "monopoly capitalism" was and is an exaggeration.  Capitalism in this era is dominated by oligopolies, not monopolies -- and in any industry you can find a few dozen big firms.  Oil, for instance, is characterized by a couple of dozen firms (and maybe a few more) which do the bulk of the business.

In American education, though, the "industry" appears to be moving rapidly toward monopoly capitalism.  CTB McGraw-Hill is, of course, famous for its owning family's relationship with the Bush administration.  Pearson, though, must be the most formidable of the bunch.  From 2012:

If you haven’t heard of Pearson, perhaps you have heard of one of the publishers they own, like Adobe, Scott Foresman, Penguin, Longman, Wharton, Harcourt, Puffin, Prentice Hall, or Allyn & Bacon (among others).  If you haven’t heard of Pearson, perhaps you have heard of one of their tests, like the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the Stanford Achievement Test, the Millar Analogy Test, or the G.E.D. Or their data systems, like PowerSchool and SASI.

Currently, Pearson has partnered with 18 states in the U.S., as well as Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, to produce pricey testing materials. 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. Pearson also owns Connections Academy, a company that runs for-profit, virtual charter schools. It also owns the GED program, although competitors have been creating alternatives in order to combat Pearson’s expensive tests.

Texas has been at the forefront of the testing craze; in fact, testing was one of the things George W. Bush brought with him from Texas and pushed to a national level, through No Child Left Behind. In 2000, Pearson Education, the company that produces tests for Texas, "signed a $233 million contract to provide tests for Texas schools, and in 2005 they got another $279 million." In 2011, as Texas was slashing its education budget to the bone, Gov. Rick Perry's administration gave Pearson a $470 million contract "to come up with a new test that will hold Texas schoolchildren to a higher standard at the same time that budget cuts are forcing them into increasingly crowded classrooms."

The standardized testing (the PARCC and the “Smarter” Balanced) being foisted, by Pearson and others, upon children across the country is equally inaccessible, if not worse.  The tests are designed to fail most students (currently, approximately 30% of students will even “pass” them), and they’re pedagogically unsound, tedious and confusing.  I am horrified that we are heading at a rapid pace towards giving these tests this spring.  I am sickened to think that I will be a party to the unfair, poorly designed testing which my students will be forced to take.

I spoke to a very smart fellow-blogger (Mark Johnson) with a cybernetic/systems theory background about deliverology. His response is worth noting in full:

   

“Who’s problem does ‘deliverology’ solve? The answer, to me at least, is obvious. It is the politician’s problem. They want to get re-elected. Moreover, they don’t want to think too hard and have a clear ‘position’ on any of the immensely complex issues they have power over  So if they can bluff their way along without upsetting anyone, regularly taking the political temperature, that’ll do nicely.

    What’s this means for the rest of us is another issue. Critique and debate is neutralised by process. I suspect only when we become sick of the process itself and the state of our democracy will there be any kind (of) redress.

So here's a thought: let's get sick of the process really quickly.  Educational "reform" has replaced the promise of humanistic education with test-prep, and all for the benefit of Pearson and the rest of the "success" oligopolists.  The American public should arrange a divorce between the US government and big education corporations.  Have the government put out its own textbooks and test-prep materials, and get rid of the Federally-mandated testing regime altogether.  Maybe we'll end up like Finland or something.  Deprivatize!

Check out this CNN youtube=

"South Korea, where more than 70 percent of high school graduates enter university, education is a national obsession that the government worries is actually damaging society.  Education accounted for nearly 12 percent of consumer spending last year, and parents spent the equivalent of 1.5 percent of G.D.P. on cram schools for their children.  There are now more cram school instructors in South Korea than regular schoolteachers, and the exams are so difficult that even college professors admit they could not pass them."

"The paradox is these ridiculous tests don’t necessarily lead to demanding college classes. In Japan, where almost all college students graduate, it’s quite common for students to be asked only to parrot back lecture notes. Rigorous thinking, reading and writing too often is simply not expected."

"When I asked a class (South Korea) if they were happy in this environment, one girl hesitantly raised her hand to tell me that she would only be happy if her mother was gone because all her mother knew was how to nag about her academic performance. The world may look to South Korea as a model for education — its students rank among the best on international education tests — but the system’s dark side casts a long shadow.  Dominated by Tiger Moms, cram schools and highly authoritarian teachers, South Korean education produces ranks of overachieving students who pay a stiff price in health and happiness. The entire program amounts to child abuse. It should be reformed and restructured without delay."

He posted the following on his blog, Bob Braun's Ledger:

MARCH 13, 2015
BREAKING: Pearson, NJ, spying on social media of students taking PARCC tests
 ” Pearson, the multinational testing and publishing company, is spying on the social media posts of students–including those from New Jersey–while the children are taking their PARCC, statewide tests, this site has learned exclusively. The state education department is cooperating with this spying and has asked at least one school district to discipline students who may have said something inappropriate about the tests.

 This website discovered the unauthorized and hidden spying thanks to educators who informed it of the practice–a practice happening throughout the state and apparently throughout the country. The spying–or “monitoring,” to use Pearson’s word–was confirmed at one school district–the Watchung Hills Regional High School district in Warren by its superintendent, Elizabeth Jewett.
Jewett sent out an e-mail–posted here– to her colleagues expressing concern about the unauthorized spying on students. She said parents are upset and added that she thought Pearson’s behavior would contribute to the growing “opt out” movement.
In her email, Jewett said the district’s testing coordinator received a late night call from the state education department saying that Pearson had “initiated a Priority 1 Alert for an item breach within our school.”
The unnamed state education department employee contended a student took a picture of a test item and tweeted it. But it turned out the student had posted–at 3:18 pm, after testing was over–a tweet about one of the items with no picture. Jewett does not say the student revealed a question. Jewett continues:

“The student deleted the tweet and we spoke with the parent–who was obviously highly concerned as to her child’s tweets being monitored by the DOE (state education department).
“The DOE informed us that Pearson is monitoring all social media during the PARCC testing.” (Diarist's emphasis)

More below the Chee-to:

Originally Published on Up North Progressive

(( NOTICE: Bob Braun's blog had to be shut down after it was attacked. He also published an article about Pearson Education spying on school children's social media after school if they mentioned anything about PARCC.))

In the Hell on Earth that has come to be corporate education reform in the United States, the reality of Common Core came to a head in New Jersey yesterday when it was revealed by the Superintendent of The Wachtung Hills Regional High School District that Pearson Education had triggered an alert that there was a breach on social media when a student tweeted about a test question. Pearson monitors all student social media accounts during the testing period searching for any discussion about the tests students are forced to take.

Is a 5th grader smarter than Ohio's PARCC testing initiative?

Ayden Pol won 3rd place in the Lorain County Chronicle-Telegram editorial contest with his aptly titled piece "Park the PARCC".

I'm with Ayden. Why aren't we making learning fun? Why are we so test focused?

Why are we micromanaging teachers? What purpose do these tests serve when students don't get the results back until the following year?

Why are school IT departments setting up their own help desks to deal with all of the problems?  Why can't teachers help kids with the technology? And why do private schools in Ohio get an exemption from all of this unnecessary compliance overhead?

At what point do we remember the students? Shouldn't we be encouraging our best and brightest to go into the teaching profession instead of discouraging them?

I think Ayden hits the nail on the head and in his honor, I am going to do my best to use the phrase "bottom drawer word" every chance I get.

Please join me in congratulating Ayden on his excellent editorial and wish him luck as PARCC tests are this week!

Yes! 

According to data released by the New York state education department today Aug. 12,.... 20 percent of students in grades 3-8 eligible to take the statewide tests in reading and math for the 2014-15 school year did not do so. 

Hovering Over the Precipice, Desperate Pearson Reaches Out – Alan Singer’s Latest Huffington Post