New York state’s attorney general Eric T. Schneiderman won an agreement from the Pearson Foundation to pay $7.7 million in fines for using its charitable activities to advance its corporation’s profit-making arm.
According to the story by Javier Hernandez in the New York Times,
“An inquiry by Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York State attorney general, found that the foundation had helped develop products for its corporate parent, including course materials and software. The investigation also showed that the foundation had helped woo clients to Pearson’s business side by paying their way to education conferences that were attended by its employees.
“Under the terms of the agreement to be announced on Friday, the money, aside from $200,000 in legal expenses, will be directed to 100Kin10, a national effort led by a foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, to train more teachers in high-demand areas, including science, technology, engineering and math.
“The fact is that Pearson is a for-profit corporation, and they are prohibited by law from using charitable funds to promote and develop for-profit products,” Mr. Schneiderman said in a statement. “I’m pleased that this settlement will direct millions of dollars back to where they belong.”
“Officials at Pearson and the foundation defended their work.
“We have always acted with the best intentions and complied with the law,” they said, in a joint statement. “However, we recognize there were times when the governance of the foundation and its relationship with Pearson could have been clearer and more transparent.”
“The case shed a light on the competitive world of educational testing and technology, which Pearson has come to dominate. As federal and state leaders work to overhaul struggling schools by raising academic standards, educational companies are rushing to secure lucrative contracts in testing, textbooks and software.
“The inquiry by the attorney general focused on Pearson’s attempts to develop a suite of products around the Common Core, a new and more rigorous set of academic standards that has been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia.
“Around 2010, Pearson began financing an effort through its foundation to develop courses based on the Common Core. The attorney general’s report said Pearson had hoped to use its charity to win endorsements and donations from a “prominent foundation.” That group appears to be the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“Pearson Inc. executives believed that branding their courses by association with the prominent foundation would enhance Pearson’s reputation with policy makers and the education community,” a release accompanying the attorney general’s report said.
“Indeed, in April 2011, the Pearson Foundation and the Gates Foundation announced they would work together to create 24 new online reading and math courses aligned with the Common Core.
“Pearson executives believed the courses could later be sold commercially, the report said, and predicted potential profits of tens of millions of dollars. After Mr. Schneiderman’s office began its investigation, the Pearson Foundation sold the courses to Pearson for $15.1 million.
“The attorney general’s office also examined a series of education conferences sponsored by the Pearson Foundation, which paid for school officials to meet their foreign counterparts in places like Helsinki and Singapore…..”
They’ll take it out of petty cash …
Too bad they weren’t all jailed. 17 million is pennies to them.
The fine is only $7.7M, not $17M –and it’s going to another foundation –Carnegie, to train more STEM teachers?
WTF? That’s just a slap on the hands and then back to having the foxes in charge of the henhouse…
According to the article, Pearson joined with Gates foundation to do this, sold it for 15.1 million and where fined only 7.7 million so they still have a profit off 7.4 million and Pearson in turn sells it to States (not just NY)for millions more! The 7.7 million is then transferred to 100kin10 another Gates funded foundation.
This does not mention all the millions (if not billions) of ARRA funds that are going to Pearson and used in the same way.
They catch the snake biting us, give it a little pet, then return it to the den!
It’s called ‘efficacy’.
Only the poor go to jail. Executives seem to be immune from going to jail when their company commits a crime. They want to have corporations considered as a person on one hand and a business when it’s convenient. You can’t have it both ways.
But they have Affluenza!
It’s just a cost of doing business, along with lying and cheating.
Lying and stealing and abusing kids is the curriculum at Harvard now.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/30/shackles_and_ivy_the_secret_history
Always has been
I wonder how many of their Directors/Executives/Employees were in one of the 3 groups involved with Common Core “creation”
I am afraid that until people actually do some jail time, this is just the cost of doing business.
How will this effect Microsoft? Are they not in collusion?
See how much your kids are worth?
A FINE!!! Right, Money talks and everyone else gets the shaft!! http://gothamist.com/2013/12/09/video_teacher_says_bogus_marijuana.php
Laws and taxes are for little people.
Wait. A fake philanthropic foundation robs the people’s education funding, then they pay their fine to the private Carnegie Foundation?
Thank you for staying up to post this stuff, Diane, because I’m going back into battle with these profiteering hucksters in four hours. Pearson “Foundation” is all over my building, imposing their business and marketing plans directly on teachers, and training their TFA stoogelings to supervise the faculty’s compliance with their profit-making initiatives.
We sit in mandatory meetings where we are assigned to refute “myths” about their initiatives, instead of raising our own concerns. We’re given indefensible balderdash, like “Common Core” gobbledygook rubrics, on which we may comment, but we are barred from any initiative of our own. We’re required to comply with their orders on our stupid iPads, but the minders in our meetings have real laptops.
I’ve been ordered to produce chemistry teaching videos and submit them to the “flipped learning” instructor Pearson Foundation provided, who coincidentally is developing video materials for Pearson Corporation’s online “Mastery Learning” product.
I am deeply grateful to New York state’s attorney general Eric T. Schneiderman, and to JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ at the NY Times Regional edition, for pointing out that this crap is not all right . Teachers have been amazed and disgusted by the complicity of journalists and public officials in transparently illegal “philanthropic” schemes like Pearson’s.
“I’ve been ordered to produce chemistry teaching videos and submit them to the “flipped learning” instructor Pearson Foundation provided, who coincidentally is developing video materials for Pearson Corporation’s online “Mastery Learning” product.”
But aren’t those chemistry lectures YOUR intellectual property?
This is a very interesting question that I had addressed to Administrators in the past.
The question I asked myself was, why do they want such detailed lesson plans? Today’s Math lesson plan is in such detail, including examples and diagrams, that a substitute could simply read it and present the lesson.
In my opinion, since Teachers are required to write these lesson plans as part of their duties, then they become Public property. Since they are Public property, Virtuals or others could simply use these for their computers or others could have an “non-certified” person simply read these to present a lesson!
Yes, these “lesson plans” are more than just extra work for the Teachers, there is an ulterior motive!
I was on a public school faculty in New York State who was directed to turn in ELA lesson plans which were then copied and used to fill up a course the ELA Coordinator was teaching evenings at Nazareth College – all without my permission. Yeah. We were REQUIRED to turn in specific plans in specific form due specific dates so she could use these in the course SHE was getting paid to teach.
I think of my intellectual work output as belonging to the public sphere, Emmy, or maybe shared, but it certainly doesn’t belong to Pearson.
It’s one thing for a substitute teacher to use math lessons Tim created to teach his students when he’s out sick, but a very different matter when a corporation can take control of his district, fire half or all of the teachers, and then vend the lessons back to his students from behind their paywall.
http://www.pearsonschool.com/index.cfm?locator=PSZ4Z4&pageitemid=1&PMDbProgramId=52963&PMDbSiteId=2781&PMDbSolutionId=6724&PMDbSubSolutionId=6732&PMDbCategoryId=808&level=4&CFID=1896013&CFTOKEN=46143808
Is the book at this link a creation of teacher-made lessons that were in the public sphere?
Same in the one of the states bordering VA
They want teachers to put materials on that Power thing they bought from Pierson for millions and millions…and they want the sweet little teachers in this state to share…..Wait and see……I did not ….I would not…Will not……….Teachers I talk to said if you think they are going to spend hours and hours doing their plans and then sharing with some lazy tester across the way and giving it to these P People…..They are Not……..
That bunch on the hill running the TESTING SYSTEM will not get one single solitary thing from any teacher that I know unless they pay and I mean pay big..(thousands of dollars…not fifty cents)..which they will not do ………………………..as they appear so in love with the Giant Testing P People!.
And yet, the officials on the other end of the largesse – like former NYSED Commissioner David Steiner – were not investigated.
If you have illegal activity that a company gets fined for that amounts to a quid pro quo, why doi the people on the other end of the illegal actions get off free and clear?
Let’s see the names of all and any NYers that were part of this bribery scheme. We have the right to see what public officials were on the take.
To me this is no win at all. It’s a way for politicians to say “see we listened” without actually costing their Pearson buddies any real money. Plus the fines never make it into any actual schools. Just another foundation for “training”. Can you say shell game boys and girls?
Linda, a fine of $7.7 million to a multi-billion dollar global corporation is chump change.
And, of course, the Carnegie Foundation is a major promoter of the Common Core, and so its activities benefit Pearson. Pearson might as well have been required to pay this fine to itself.
Now if this were to happen in all the states…50 x 7.7 million is a lot more….too much to hope for?
Schneiderman is the real deal, though, as far as a prosecutor. He’s also gone after for-profit colleges (the Trump college got all the media attention, but it was probably the least important).
For-profit colleges are very politically powerful, as are, of course, K-12 ed reformers in the for-profit area.
The US Department of Education completely capitulated on regulating for-profit colleges when the lobbyists descended.
Like with the banks, we may be wholly dependant on those state AG’s who are not captured for law enforcement and regulation of ed reform.
My own state AG in Ohio is completely useless, so those in NY should be happy you have this prosecutor.
So, 110kin10 looks likes it’s funded and run by exactly the same small group of ed reformers.
How did the NY attorney general determine who would get the 7 million?
He might want to look at why he’s simply funneling more money to the same group of people. Michael and Susan Dell and the Gates foundation?
Is there some reason this couldn’t have gone directly to public school students? They’re the ones who are being ripped off here. Their (supposed) elected advocates were purchased with the trips Pearson paid for. The ed tech programs Pearson and Gates are developing and pushing will be paid for out of money that was supposed to go to their schools.
http://www.100kin10.org/page/funding
If these folks cannot be counted on to develop their own ethics, education products need to be regulated in a similar way to pharma/physicians.
Public education is a public good.
How can we be surprised? This is what corporations do. I’m way more concerned about NYSED buying Pearson’s services & products!
We are on our way to becoming the biggest mafia state of all time. Naples and Sicily, move over.
Not only has Pearson been given the opportunity to cash in on the education of American’s children, university student teachers now have to complete extensive protocals and then pay Pearson $300 to grade them. Graduation depends upon their determination.
Noteworthy is the current 2nd grade Pearson reading curriculum that demands the students read Charlotte’s Wed followed by a simple primary reader.
Isn’t fining Pearson 7.7 million for cheating about like fining one of us a dollar for illegal parking?
Not likely to change the behavior at all.
Worse yet, it is fining us a dollar then giving the dollar to our spouse!
Exactly!
In that case get rid of the spouse, eh!!
The Carnegie Corporation of New York was given permission to develop computer softwear with the Soviet Academy of Science under the 1985 Soviet American Agreement signed by George Schultz under the Reagan Administration. Check the web for this agreement. What is actually being put in under the guise of improvement of education is the old Soviet/German system of training young children for work skills. That is the bottom line in all this treachery. The citizens have to be fooled so the corporations get richer with the hoax. Corporations who run public schools destroy local representative government. Taxation without representation. annherzer@gmail.com
I agree on the chump change. Some background beyond New York.
In April, 2011, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Pearson Foundation announced they would collaborate in developing free courses for the Common Core State Standards—digital print and online content with video, interactive software, games and social media. The Gates’ press release said: ”… through our partnership with the Pearson Foundation, four of these courses—two in math and two in English language arts—will be available for free online.“ See http://www.gatesfoundation.org/foundationnotes/Pages/vicki-phillips-110427-cutting-edge-tools.aspx.
Not disclosed: The ”non-profit collaborators” were developing 24 courses. Only four were free, leaving 20 available for sale by Pearson INC.
Project leaders: Judy Codding, former President and CEO of America’s Choice, Susan Sclafani, former counselor to U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige, and key writers from the CCSS (mathematics, Phil Daro; English/language arts, Sally Hampton). Coincidently, Microsoft INC. had plans to expand its relationship with Pearson INC in the international marketplace for online education. See Gewertz, C. (2011, May 11). Gates and Pearson partner on Common Core. Education Week, 1, 20.
According to the Global Philanthropy Forum (2011) this kind of market-based philanthropy is relatively new. Arrangements are legally structured so non-profits can generate commercially viable products or services, and government contracts, often aided by a seamless relationship with “thought leaders.” The line between non-profit and for-profit activities is blurred.
Example: In 2009, Susan Fuhrman, president of Teachers College at Columbia University and president of the National Academy of Education, a high profile thought leader, served as a director of Pearson International for a fee of about $98,000. Example: Pearson INC sponsors international “summit“ conferences, co-hosted by the “non-profit” Council of Chief State School Officers—The first was in 2008 in Singapore on science and mathematics education, then Finland (2009 on teacher quality), London, (2010 on digital technologies), etc. After each conference Pearson publishes a “Report and Policy Recommendations for Education Leaders” with press and national circulation aided by the CCSSO. Sources available on request.
The decision to give the $7 million to the Carnegie foundation signals a privatization of justice as well.
One would think that Pearson would be starting to have second thoughts about the extent to which it is poisoning its brand by this association with overreaching via summative assessments.
There are many Pearson companies, and there are many, many Pearson employees. A lot of those employees are creative, thoughtful, dedicated educators who have not forgotten that there are children on the other end of everything that they do. I have hope that the market will instruct Pearson’s management about summative assessment overreach and that the company will move toward creation of more sane assessment products–finely grained diagnostics for the purpose of assisting in individualization and formative assessment that disappears into instruction, for example.
When you run a company and large numbers of people begin to exhibit such behaviors as fuming and clenching their fists whenever your company name is mentioned, that’s a problem. I encounter this kind of thing with astonishing frequency these days–people who utter the name Pearson as though it were an expletive. So, from a Balanced Scorecard perspective, Pearson is paying attention to its financials but not to its customer loyalty and brand. From a purely business perspective, that seems to be a grave mistake.
As a teacher educator, I am deeply concerned about Pearson’s clumsy and poorly executed attempts to meet Missouri’s effort to “raise standards” for teacher licensure. The older state tests that led to certification cost our candidates roughly $250. The new tests raise the price tag to over $1000. A close examination of the “MEP” a supposed work styles inventory created by Pearson, revealed multiple grammatical errors and inappropriate vocabulary. We have not even seen samples of the new content tests that Pearson has designed and that will replace the PRAXIS this Fall. At the very least the Pearson corporation could take the time to proofread the tests it is spewing out. If one is to be a bully, at least one should be a well-spoken bully.