An article by journalist Yoav Gonen in the New York Post reveals that the Pearson Common Core tests given last week in New York include at least half a dozen plugs for brand name products.
In the film industry, corporations pay to have their brand mentioned or shown.
In the world of standardized testing, it is usually forbidden to use brand names.
This is a huge embarrassment for Pearson.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You can’t be embarrassed if you do not give a damn.
FIRE DUNCAN! Hire Ravitch!
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Doubt it was a mistake so doubt it is in their view an embarrassment.
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Truly, they are not embarrassed about this. They consider themselves clever.
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My daughter’s freshman STAAR EOC had an article all supporting Trader Joe’s.
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Embarrassment, like shame and decency, is for little people, whom the big guys roll over with their trucks.
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Don’t you mean tanks and not trucks as many of us little people have trucks but no tanks!
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Love the spin about how the content of the tests will not be made available because of “teaching to the test.” No, we’ll just leave that to those who buy their “test prep” material.
Perhaps the real reason is because Pearson is afraid of the criticism. I did see the ELA NYS middle school tests and can unilaterally say that they are an embarrassment. I consider myself an educated adult with a Master’s degree and I could not determine the “correct” answer for many of the questions. What a sham!
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From the SAT 9 a while back (I’m sure they’ve corrected it by now-ha ha):
Write as many math sentences as you can using the whole integers 0-9.
(If you don’t see the problems with this one, well, I don’t know what to say)
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RL–You are absolutely correct. As a special ed. teacher, I found exactly what you did. Also–especially on the middle school math tests–there was often more than one right answer or no right answer. Finally, in giving the prep. samples, the ELA teachers could NOT see the rhyme or reason in the assignment of scores to the Extended Response essays. A sham and a shame! (And–make sure to read Todd Farley’s book, Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Test Industry to find out about the SCORING of said tests. A hilarious read, albeit heartbreaking.) Parents & older students: OPT OUT!
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retiredbutmissthekids: I enthusiastically second your recommendation!
🙂
Todd Farley, MAKING THE GRADES: MY MISADVENTURES IN THE STANDARDIZED TESTING INDUSTRY (2009). Slim, inexpensive, enlightening and heartbreaking, easily accessible because it is written with wit and verve.
I just realized there is a ‘first’ part to Farley’s work. Banesh Hoffman, THE TYRANNY OF TESTING (1962). Slim, inexpensive, enlightening and heartbreaking, written with wit and verve.
What is truly heartbreaking and enlightening is that the more recent tome—published 47 years after the older one—shows that the edupreneurs who make, promote and sell high-stakes standardized tests haven’t ‘worked out the kinks’ or ‘finally gotten it right’ over the last half century. What they have accomplished: become more $ucce$$ful at cramming their pernicious eduproducts down the throats of OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN.
For the edubullies and the leading lights of the charterite/privatizer movement, THEIR OWN CHILDREN will have to suffer through the ‘oh so last century’ foolishness practiced in Sidwell Friends and Cranbrook and the Waldorf Schools and Harpeth Hall and U of Chicago Lab Schools and the rest of those backward-looking institutions. You know, creative writing and arts and music and sports and foreign languages and education abroad programs and all the rest of that useless stuff that isn’t on the Tablets of the Divine Metric of Bubble-In.
Hey, I almost feel sorry for them.
Almost.
🙂
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They are all corporations and what do you see constantly if you buy my product you get a discount on the other guys product like $.20 cents a gallon off at Chevron if you buy so much at my supermarket. What is different. It is cross branding and cross supporting for increased revenue flow and profits. Go look at who is on the boards of what corporations and then you will see.
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Georgia doesn’t use Pearson, but testing is still a huge mess here, too. http://bit.ly/13JbT1D
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I just researched Tennessee’s standardized test creator… Yep, it is Pearson. I wonder if we’ll have any little “commercials” embedded in test questions, too? Next week is the testing in our schools.
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My thoughts on this topic:” So frequent are advertisements in students’ lives that any product placement, paid or unpaid, on these standardized tests may contribute to the definition of what is “authentic”. Students are exposed to ads so frequently and in so many genres that a text is not real without some brand name mentioned.”
full post:
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Of all the countless pages of “authentic non-fiction text,” Pearson can’t find a sufficient number that are free of references to commercial products and their trademarked brand names? I call baloney, particularly in light of the NY State Dept. of Education’s explanation that “the inclusion of brand names is inevitable.” That’s nonsense.
What makes more sense is that Pearson lobbied for the inclusion of brand names so that they would have additional leverage when negotiating the rights to use the passages in standardized tests. See, Pearson pays any fees associated with obtaining rights to the passages. What better way to reduce those fees to zero than to say to Company X, “Your trademarked brand name will be put before the eyes of hundreds of thousands of kids numerous times throughout the school year”?
If it is so “inevitable” that passages of authentic, non-fiction text will contain trademarked brand names, I would be interested to know how many of the authentic passages in the tests portray the product in an unfavorable light, as in references to the BP oil spill or the tendency of Firestone tires on Ford Explorers to blow up. I would bet real money that the number is less than one.
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