Pearson is clearly a major force in American education.
It is the dominant provider of testing and textbooks. It owns the GED. It owns Connections Academy, which runs for-profit virtual schools. It owns a teacher evaluation program being marketed to states and districts. It partners with the agates Foundation to develop online curriculum for the Common Core standards.
This article tries to assemble all the pieces. It builds on an earlier article by Alan Singer in Huffington Post.
Please, someone, time for in-depth journalism or a dissertation that documents how Pearson bought American education and what it means for our children. Standardized minds, indeed!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes, from the politicans, to the standards, to the books, to the tests.
LINK ADDED! SORRY!
Part of how they bought it is that we sold it to them. Educators who wanted a ‘seat at the table’ swallowed and then kept regurgitating the memes about standards and accountability, the whole business model not only of learning, but of thinking about the deep purposes of education. So it became about outcomes and measurements and quanitfiable data and wrokforce development. And then we need a company to think for us, because humans are just too messy, uncertain, and imprecise. When we reclaim the real human complexity and purposes of education (democracy, empathy, building communities, exploring meanings) we will abandon as well these dehumanizing discourses. But, to do that, we need to stop looking to sit at their table. I think it is time to call out not only the corporate profiteers, but their willing accomplices.
The money quote from your excellent comment: “Educators who wanted a ‘seat at the table’ swallowed and then kept regurgitating the memes about standards and accountability, the whole business model not only of learning, but of thinking about the deep purposes of education.”
Pearson–and a raft of willing, compliant, fund-seeking nonprofits and education agencies, wanting to be players in this new accountability-toward-global domination game, jumped on
board. Teachers are merely the foot soldiers here. What we need is an imaginative vision of what education could and should be. And it’s not about to come from the likes of Pearson.
Yes, well put. We do need to call out the willing accomplices (consultants, trainers, evaluators, data analysts, curriculum writers, all sorts of specialists who never see students) who find it easier to sit at the table with the profiteers than to carry out the complex work of education in the classroom. It won’t be easy to dislodge them. They seem very comfortable, and more and more teachers want to join them as conditions grow worse in the classroom.
Just want to add that, as a teacher educator, I count teacher educators among the collaborators. Many too many ( and so called ‘leaders’), have climbed on board the accountability and audit train rushing to create the ‘best’ accountability and standards system rather than taking a stand against the entire discourse. There are other ways to talk about and engage teaching and learning, and teacher educators have actively participated in silencing those ideas. Ask those who fear speaking up about the TPA and the Common Core. I understand the power of Pearson and how it uses its power. I do not understand the many who continue to tell themselves Pearson and their ilk are not dangerous to the promise of public education and collaborate with these corporate profiteers. Diane, I wish you would take this up. Pearson has no power if we resist. But if our resistance is stifled and the fears people experience denied by those who we would call colleagues, they need to be called out. http://cantbeneutral.org
Diane, what can we do? Education entrepreneurship = Conflicts of interest & greed. So sad this is how student data (children) are used.
The Pearson contract used at Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS), MD, is online at http://www.parentscoalitionmc.blogspot.com. Type ‘Pearson’ in the text box. The Pearson curriculum is being sold here as ‘Curriculum 2.0,’ and parents don’t like it. Report cards have been changed to align with the curriculum, getting rid of letter grades and replacing them with touchy-feely ‘grades.’. Local newspapers are not interested.
Hi Diane,
Maybe I’m not seeing it, but where’s the link you’re to which this post refers?
Also, I much appreciate your blog and work. I use it to convince my South African colleagues that many challenges to education are universal, and there are thousands of activists and teachers fighting the good fight for quality public schools in the US.
Greetings from Khayelitsha, Cape Town,
Michael
Thanks, I added the link in an update. Sometimes I post too hastily and forget the link. This was one of those times.
Love what Barbara says about deeper purposes of education but that is why the far right won’t sit at “our table.” That work was acceptable in the “old days” when the teacher at the front of the room, the principal who headed the school, and the schoolchildren who sat alongside theirs were mostly homegeneous and would represent the anglosaxon Christian values they all held in common (with just a few exceptions along the way…and when they were few, they were tolerable…exotic even). Today, with the world so diverse, it is not ok to teach empathy, foster acceptance, explore meaning in a complex world, or build community with the “enemy.” That is why they have not just accepted but pushed for the Common Core. Stick to the basics and follow a script. Then they won’t have to deal with messy humanity, nor expose their children to unacceptable ways of thinking and being. This is why I think public education is falling apart. We can no longer agree on its purpose.
Kay,
You are wrong about the “right wing” being behind it. There is plenty of the Common Core curriculum that the “right wing” has problems with.
As a staunch right wing conservative, I can say that everyone I know that’s of my mindset want nothing to do with this curriculum, standardization, incessant testing and storing of data on our children. They are seeking to produce a homogenous work force without regard to individuality, and it’ll leave many children lying by the wayside as the steamroll the rest into their image. No conservatives I know are for that. That’s not what made this country great.
Madeloni: When we reclaim the real human complexity and purposes of education … democracy … building communities
Kay: I think public education is falling apart. We can no longer agree on its purpose.
Teachers pay about $2B in dues every year to unions. Where is the competitive research that money might have bought? Instead, we see American public education end run by Sir Michael Barber and a British multinational.
Here’s some reading that union organs neglected to recommend:
Reclaiming Public Education By Reclaiming Our Democracy, David Mathews
Framing Issues for Public Deliberation: A Curriculum Guide for Workshops (circa 2002, difficult to find–U Georgia library has a copy)
WV Issue Framing Guide at http://www.wvciviclife.org (on the web, possible substitute for Framing Issues for Public Deliberation)
Naming and Framing Difficult Issues to Make Sound Decisions
Moving From Forums for the People to Forums by the People
Click to access ed_data_commitments_1-19-12.pdf
Pearson commits to support the “MyData Button” initiative being announced today. Pearson already offers parents access to download their child’s record of learning through the PowerSchool student information system’s parent portal, and, by the end of the year, will provide this capability through the GradeSpeed grade book parent portal. The “MyData Button” initiative aligns with Pearson’s long-standing pledge to provide secure access to the data that can help educators and families create and manage a path of personalized learning for every child.
Pearson has committed to supporting open and interoperable systems that put high-quality, personalized learning resources into the hands of teachers and students. In support of this goal, Pearson will share data into the Learning Registry about many of their existing learning resources, including those that support the Common Core State Standards so that they can be used in each student’s personal learning path. In addition to making their resources more accessible across many different learning systems through Learning Registry, they are committed to using the Learning Registry as an important component of finding and using high quality materials produced by others within their learning systems.
joe…
http://checkresult.in/admission-in-aisect-university-www-aisectuniversity-ac-in/