An excellent article by Caroline Porter in the Wall Street Journal describes the heated competition for a slice of the Common Core market.
She writes:
As states race to implement the Common Core academic standards, companies are fighting for a slice of the accompanying testing market, expected to be worth billions of dollars in coming years.
That jockeying has brought allegations of bid-rigging in one large pricing agreement involving 11 states—the latest hiccup as the math and reading standards are rolled out—while in roughly three dozen others, education companies are battling for contracts state by state.
Mississippi’s education board in September approved an emergency $8 million contract to Pearson PLC for tests aligned with Common Core, sidestepping the state’s contract-review board, which had found the transaction illegal because it failed to meet state rules regarding a single-source bid.
When Maryland officials were considering a roughly $60 million proposal to develop computerized testing for Common Core that month, state Comptroller Peter Franchot also objected that Pearson was the only bidder. “How are we ever going to know if taxpayers are getting a good deal if there is no competition?” the elected Democrat asked, before being outvoted by a state board in approving the contract.
Mississippi and Maryland are two of the states that banded together in 2010, intending to look for a testing-service provider together. The coalition of 11 states plus the District of Columbia hoped joining forces would result in a better product at a lower price, but observers elsewhere shared some of Mr. Franchot’s concerns.
The bidding process, which both states borrowed from a similar New Mexico contract, is now the subject of a lawsuit in that state by a Pearson competitor.
An accompanying graph in the article shows that Common Core is unpopular: Based on the Phi Delta Kappa-Gallup Poll, 60% of the public opposes the Common Core, while only 33% support it. When asked whether standardized tests are helpful to teachers, 54% of the public said no, as did 68% of public school parents. Other surveys show that a majority of teachers now oppose the Common Core standards.
Despite growing opposition to the Common Core and to standardized testing, most states are forging ahead, under pressure from the U.S. Department of Education, which used Race to the Top funds ($4.35 billion) to lure states to adopt the standards, and then required adoption of “college-and-career-ready” standards (aka Common Core) as a condition for getting a waiver from impossible and ruinous No Child Left Behind mandates.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is amusing. The CCSS were supposed to leapfrog over “the problem” of marketing ideas, concepts, curriculum materials, tests and the rest on a state-by-state basis.
Why can’t “these people” just let one vender have the whole bankroll?
Bickering among venders was not part of THE PLAN for the CCSS…
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Of course, the CCSS was a business plan from the get-go–an utterly corrupt criminal conspiracy–but we do not have anything like actual journalism in the United States anymore, so the sordid story, which people like you and I and Mercedes Schneider and Diane Ravitch and others have been telling for several years now gets very little airing.
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Just as predicted. Even if CC was a good plan, the corruption it inspires would ruin all good intentions. Now we are just heaping insult onto injury.
The winners – big business. The losers – our children.
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Parents should question & expose the Industry springing up to profit with endless testing, limiting Instruction, narrow curriculum, and potential life impact of a poor FedControlled CorpProfit education – by exploiting our children & their confidential data is stored & sold forever.
Parents Rise Up!
How can we ignore this?
Why are we allowing this?
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Taxpayer dollars spent on edu-babble snake oil. This is institutionalized crime. The real Mobsters must be jealous.
Garbage, concrete, vending machines, casinos, and schools.
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yup
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Asinine Testing Regimen Inc. A, versus ATR Inc B, could life get any better?
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You all do know that Pearson had a major hand in CCSS. They even got sued in New York over it. The Pearson Foundation, a non-profit, did the work. Then the foundation handed it over to the for profit side of Pearson. The NY Attorney General didn’t like that. Pearson paid a fine, but it was small potatoes. Pearson swept it under the rug, it was just a governance oversight, it wont happen again. We promise they said.
I think the product that came out of this was the Pearson CCSS System of Courses. This is the phantom product that LAUSD bought. I think they call it vaporware in the software industry. Last I heard it’s still beta code, but Pearson is still hocking it as the next big thing. I think it they have a lot riding on it from my sources inside Pearson.
The other thing I hear, is that morale at Pearson is at an all time low. The new CEO just doesn’t get it. North America sales and revenue have stalled and the place is in free fall. They are on a major cost cutting campaign, laying off, restricting travel, even customer facing visits are forbidden. All while they claim they are reinventing themselves as you educational consulting firm of choice. They have all the answers.
John Fallon, CEO, must have drank the tasty Kool-Aid that Sir Michael barber is serving up.
Better cash in you stock if you have any.
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And why is the US allowing corps from other countries rich on our dime? Whatever happened to “Made in America”? Do we want our public education controlled by the Brits? I though we won the Revolution.
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I still don’t understand why the States went after the Race to the Top money. It meant $38,000 over four years, less than 10 grand a year in our rural district in Northern NY with an annual budget of around 15 million. I know we’ve spent in the 100’s of thousands in training, software and personnel to implement these ridiculous changes. How do you justify it?
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Twenty-Nine Years: getting a little while committing to spending a lot?
It’s called being sucker punched.
Terribly sorry that you folks are having to suffer the consequences brought on by the train wreck called “education reform.”
😒
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Ellen et al:
I think had NC not taken RttT money we would have had to do a major new approach to our public schooling. Maybe that should have happened. I think RttT funds did largely go for contracts for testing, VAM and technology, but I also think it saved a lot of jobs in our state. I’m not advocating for it (I think it was a poison apple), but I also think NC did need the money to persist in the structure of our schools a we knew/know them. Again, not sure the real cost to benefit ration there. I suppose that remains to be seen.
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Joanna, perhaps your state’s reforms should have been more grassroots than top down.
In NYS we had an adequate system in place. Our main issue was an unequal sharing of resources with some schools/school districts having better funding than others (especially in regards to schools in high poverty areas – both urban and rural).
And CCSS did not address these inequities. Actually, I think they made the situation much worse.
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ratio, rather
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Doesn’t it appear that the money went into each state’s “pot” and was not used towards education. It is the local districts which must “fund” this mandate, by either raising taxes or cutting services.
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Cuomo used the opportunity to fuel his presidential ambitions. It was a resume building stunt that is now damaging a generation of students. When current 8th graders enter HS next year the MAJORITY of them will have experienced three consecutive years of math and ELA failure under the Common Core, test-and-punish federal regime. At an age where student confidence and self perception walk a razor’s edge, this constant academic pummeling will push too many into simply giving up. Heck of a job Arne
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RTTT $M was used in a ‘dying’ school system in Metro ATL by its Super to fund private university PhD programs and administrative iPads, for her crony group of principals. Reasons given: to train her principals to work well in an urban setting. This school system is an urban system, the principals came from urban systems and were some of the worst principals. The system was on SACS Probation.
RTTT was never spent on instruction, children or teachers.
This Super was ousted, 2nd or 3rd in succession of shyster Supers, but left with a giant Golden Parachute $KK!
RTTT was never meant for children…only feeding the wealthy, corrupt & politically connected.
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Race to the Top will go down in the history books as the most vile and damaging “bait-and-switch” ever perpetrated. Using children as pawns while jeopardizing their future for private profit will not sit well with the Gods of Kharmic Retribution.
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