Jason Stanford watches Texas politics closely and has become fascinated with the state’s devotion to high-stakes testing. As he shows in this post, there is plenty of accountability for kids, but none at all for Pearson.
In 2010, Pearson won a $468 million contract to test Texas students. When the legislature decided to reduce mandated high school testing by 67% this year, Pearson cut its budget by less than 2%.
A state audit showed that no one is monitoring what Pearson does or how it spends the state’s money. There is no accountability for Pearson.
As Stanford says, the new state motto might be “Don’t mess with ethics.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Pearson has no accountability because there are financial interests between it and Texas state government.
Despite the Lone Star’s opprobrium for federal interference, the state is also tied to the national House and Senate. They pose these relationships as steps in addressing the public interest. The parent body in Texas is about as interested in excessive and price gouging testing as they are in doorknobs and banana hammocks.
Texas, the Feds, and this huge corporation are all partnering together in the seemingly unorchestrated but very intentional interest of campaign financing, directing each other’s members to sit on boards of various organizations, and awarding contracts.
It’s a no brainer, so be warned:
AhaI That’s it. Here’s the link
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-stanford/student-success-act_b_3634089.html
I found several other great posts by Jason while I was tracking this down. Pearson’s arrogance is actually useful now, to organize against them. After what they did in my district last spring, under their own brand name, everybody suddenly understands what I mean by corporate reform.
Pearson is drunk on the standard cocktail – one part ignorance/one part arrogance. Test scores are known to decline under the direction of these corrosive, corporate consultants. This is particularly true in communities where kids are fighting against a nationally corrupt system just to achieve literacy, numeracy and a sense of self worth. The deliverable ordered up by the paymasters is their deliberate disenfranchisement which helps to insure the continuation of the power arrangements and the payola.
By “nationally corrupt system” you are referring to what? The public schools? What is the “system” and why is it corrupt?
Readers will find facts about Pearson’s Texas contracts at the TAMSA link:
Click to access 2013-01-13-tamsa_overview.pdf
From 2000-2015, $1,178,723,689.00 in contracts have been funneled to Pearson by the Texas Education Agency. That’s $2 spent every second of every day for 15 years. That’s $50,400.00 every seven hours. That would be three teachers per day or 1,277 teachers per year every year. Pearson’s Texas contracts have been approved and signed by state officials until 2015.
Pearson is where a lot of ex-Principals, ex-School administrators, ex-teachers and generally folks with these phony Ed School degrees go to make money. Look in the mirror.
You are correct, Michael. A once lead teacher for Reading Recovery in my county’s public school system is now working for Pearson. I wish I had been as knowledgeable about all that is going on in education today regarding Common Core and the related assessments as I am now. I would not have given the new Reading Street series (put out by Scott Foresman/Pearson) high marks when teachers in my school system (I teach in the Archdiocese/Parochial Schools)
were selecting our new reading series for this up-coming school year. Although the McGraw Hill option would not have been any better. Perhaps Journeys which I think was put out by Houghton Mifflin should have been the way to vote.