Peter Greene reports on another test-scoring company looking for test scorers.
Measurement Incorporated boasts ten scoring centers, which is a good thing because “to guarantee test security, all work has to be done at one of our Scoring Centers in Tennessee, Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, Kansas and Washington or from a secure work station in your home.”
The ad, which went up ten days ago, is part of a recruiting drive for the test-correction high season of March and April. “These projects may include scoring test items in reading, math, science, social studies, or written essays. The tests come from many different states representing students at all grade levels.”
The job starts at $11.20. After logging 450 hours, workers are eligible to bump up to $11.95. Day and night shifts are available, and workers are expected to put in five days a week.
Peter Greene’s summary:
I expect we’ll continue to see many of these smaller companies scarfing up sub-contracts for the Big Guys and handling the business of hiring part-timers to help make decisions about the fate of America’s children, teachers, and schools. Only one of two things can be true here– either the system is so simplified and so user-proof that it doesn’t really matter who’s doing the scoring work (in which case it’s a dopey system that gives back very little information and is easy to game) or it does matter who’s doing the scoring (in which case, the use of part-time temps who are available only because they couldn’t find a real job is not exactly comforting). Either way, this is one more big fat reminder that the Big Standardized Test is a dumb way to assess any part of America’s education system.
Yet another reason to opt out of this system.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Pearson’s stock dropped Friday; they were offering $13.50 a hour a couple of days ago!
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Todd Farley, MAKING THE GRADES: MY MISADVENTURES IN THE STANDARDIZED TESTING INDUSTRY (2009, last pp. 241-242, last four paragraphs):
[start]
What does it really mean to entrust decisions about this country’s students, teachers, and schools to the massive standardized testing industry? In my opinion, it means trusting an industry that is unashamedly in the business of making money instead of listening to the many people who went into education for the more altruistic desire to do good. It means giving credence to the thoughts of mobs of temporary employees who only dabble in assessment while ignoring the opinions of the men and women who dedicate themselves daily to the world of teaching and learning. It means saying you’re not interested in what the Mrs. White or Mr. Reyes who stands in front of a classroom of children every day might think about their students’ progress, but you’re absolutely enthralled to hear the thoughts on that same subject of a dopey Hank, a non-English-speaking Michi, a senile Alice, or a uninterested Todd. It means ignoring the conclusions about student abilities of this country’s teachers—the people who instruct and nurture this country’s children every single day—to instead heed the snap judgments of bored temps giving fleeting glances to student work.
I understand people may disagree with me, but none of that sounds like too good an idea to me. It seems to me entrusting the education of this country’s children to “professional scorers” in far distant states instead of the men and women who stand in front of their classrooms each day is about as smart an idea as entrusting your health not to the doctor holding a stethoscope to your heart but to some accountant crunching numbers in Omaha. Personally, I’d trust the guy who’s looking me in the eye.
If I had to take any standardized test today that was important to my future and would be assessed by the scoring processes I have long been a part of, I promise you I would protest; I would fight; I would sue; I would gone on a hunger strike or march on Washington. I might even punch someone in the nose, but I would never allow that massive and ridiculous business to have any say in my future without battling it to the bitter, bitter end.
Do what you want, America, but at least you have been warned.
[end]
😎
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Peter Greene needs to connect the dots here! As teacher retirement funds are cut by the likes of Governor Walker and Christie more and more retirees will be seeking part-time employment… and grading tests is a better way to supplement pensions than working as a greeter at Walmart!
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Ummm…wgersen…they don’t necessarily like hiring retired teachers (too knowledgeable about how essays should be scored).
Read Todd Farley’s book.
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Or teachers working without union representation, as I have had to do. I was a Dep’t Chair within the for-profit online arm of a prestigious private university…and was paid $22,000, which I understand to be less than a F/T worker at Walmart can earn. Plus, Walmart offers benefits, something to which I as the supervisor of eight other teachers was not entitled. Let’s not turn up our noses at the people driven to supplement their income however they can. We feel bad enough already.
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We might be witnessing the death of one profession (real teachers who teach) and the birth of another (people paid poverty wages to score the tests that rule over what takes place in classrooms).
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We are witnessing the death of a nation. Read what Obama’s Trojan horse, the TPP will do to further enhance that destruction. The sole goal is to make more money for the very very wealthy, with complete disregard for the workers. The cheaper the better.
And our kick a_ _ president is steering the boat. No pensions, no benefits, no nothing. Fire ’em all.
Welcome to the new USA, maybe now Serfs of America. We just need to Unite.
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You are spot on correct!
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Agree Mdm…so how does your knitting go? It must cover a football field by now.
This plan to divide America into the royalty and the serfs, however, has been in gear since before the Reagan administration. The phony Gipper’s “kitchen cabinet” was comprised of some of the most egregious robber barons of our era like Justin Dart and Al Bloomingdale and others, who were in league to put in place the ‘trickle down’ philosophy that has come to pass. Their women proudly announced they could never be “too thin or too rich.”
Now David Stockman regrets his economic input into this devious and greed ridden ingroup…too little, too late. And John Dean is riddled with guilt over his part with Nixon and Reagan
Obama is only the most recent trickster in this long line of Dem and Repub presidents (including Bushes 1 and 2 and Clinton) who were/are the Nixon/Reagan/Milton Friedman/Ayn Rand fellow travelers. Beware of Hillary, the latest corporatist multi millionaire!
We now see war fronts building with Russia and with Iran, and ongoing wars in the Middle East, so that the military-industrial combine and Wall Street profiteers can invest with confidence. Education is only one more massive investment opportunity for these insular oligarchs who seek all the riches of the world only for themselves.
Remember a time 20 years ago when profit sharing actually seemed a viable alternative? Long gone…forgotten…framed as Socialism, Marxism, by the Eli Broads and Rupert Murdochs of the world.
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Have they started advertising for the outside evaluators the state wants to hire? I say every school district in New York opts for the outside evaluation. Where will the state get all the people it will need, and how will it be paid? How many teachers are there in New York State?
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Or we infiltrate the ranks of every effort. Score them all HIGH. Corporates get infected with massive paranoia. Infiltrators get fired eventually, of course, but together form the basis of a great made-for-TV special, sitcom, drama or sic-fi series or just a good read.
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LOVE your idea,kathy–my thoughts exactly, & hope that’s what people will do. Let’s get someone to write an updated expose on the “standardized” testing industry–and donate all the money you make scoring (because, after all, it’s blood money), if you can, to help fund those public school programs that have been cut due to all the money your state has given to the testing-industrial complex!
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I love this idea, too!
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Hmmm. 16 billion dollar industry and they are hiring temp. workers. Something is just not adding up here. Is anyone else at all concerned that these tests are more high stakes than the SAT’s we took years ago? How did we ever let things reach this point. Where were and are the unions?
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Always Learning,
One of the first things that big educational corporations and their congressional bedfellows did was to vilify the Unions. The lie worked. People ignorantly parrot the message that unions protect bad teachers and that is why public education is failing. Companies like Pearson pretended to be saviors with their products and testing. The truth is that unions were an obstacle between them and huge profits.
Now it’s up to parents and taxpayers to see through the lies and rescue their kids from the testing juggernaut.
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Obviously the temps aren’t College and Career Ready since they aren’t even making a middle class wage.
One can make 15 an hour here with a high school diploma if you’re willing to work general labor production and you’ll be an actual employee instead of a cut-rate temp. With no workplace regulatory protections.
Maybe the scorers need a union.
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Looks like they have had their share of problems. Of course they could always claim “We’re Better than Pearson”
http://www.myajc.com/news/news/scoring-errors-jeopardize-tests-poor-oversight-rai/nZ27M/
http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/1-6-11.cfm
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I’m thinking disruption, a little creative anarchy. Get interested disruptors to sign up and copy anything and everything they can. Then do a wiki-leaks on the material.
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I worked some years ago for Pearson to score the CST writing and SAT writing. Mind you, I have 30 years experience teaching writing and literature (in US and Europe) also credentialed as a reading specialist. I took the job the learn what was being prioritized so that my at-risk students might benefit from the help. Unfortunately, the goal of Pearson is to ensure that each scorer works faster and faster, devoting a few minutes at most to the scoring of an essay. Imagine, you don’t score at least 30 essays per hour…services no longer required. When I refused to score certain essays as the scoring leader advised, and pointed to the contradictions in the rubric that was being used, I was informed that they had no interest in recalibrating.
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Reblogged this on stopcommoncorenys.
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