Pearson just lost most of its Texas testing business.
For the first time in three decades, a new company is poised to develop and administer the state-required exams Texas students begin taking in the third grade.
The state is in negotiations with Educational Testing Service, or ETS, to take over the bulk of the four-year, $340 million student assessment contract, the Texas Education Agency announced Monday. Company Vice President John Oswald said ETS is “privileged and honored” to land the work. Final contracts are still being negotiated.
The London-based Pearson Education has held the state’s largest education-related contract — most recently, a five-year, $468 million deal to provide state exams through 2015 — since Texas began requiring state student assessments in the 1980s. Under the new agreement, the company would still develop the state’s assessments designed for special needs and foreign students. That portion of the contract is worth about $60 million.
Here is the puzzling question: Why did it cost $468 million for a five-year contract with Pearson when New York State pays Pearson “only” $32 million for a five-year contract? Does New York have smarter negotiators? Does Pearson have better lobbyists in Texas than in New York? Does New York get Texas’s used questions? True, Texas has more children than New York, but not 15 times more. Can anyone explain?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Were I a betting person, I’d bet a big chunk of the $468 million is funneled back to the Texas lawmakers (you know, graft) as a “thank you” for providing Pearson with the contract.
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Good point. And maybe the thank you to New York’s Governor is off the books?
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I’m anxious to see the lawsuits spin out of this. Didn’t Coleman, now head of ETS, work with Pearson to develop CCSS tests? I could be wrong.
Sent from my iPad, which likes to change my words and spelling.
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Coleman heads College Board, not ETS.
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There is more oil in Texas.
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But isn’t oil slippery?
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Yup, that ole slippery slope…
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Follow the money! There is so much more to all of this than we have any idea.
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Could it be that “conservatives” are not conservative when it comes to giving public money to their corporate friends? This is the common pattern for Republican controlled state and federal governments. The Republicans ran an “off the books” war in Iraq and Afghanistan in which they relied heavily on private contracts. Republicans in Florida gave $100 MILLION in capital improvement money to charter schools in 2014 with ZERO accountability, and the private charters keep the equity in their property paid for by the citizens of Floriduh. These are 2 easy examples, but there are hundreds of “privatization” schemes that transfer public resources into the hands of corporations with NO savings for the public. The Texans are turning on Pearson because it is a foreign company whose track record has grown too familiar.
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Excellent post. Thank you, FL Teacher.
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Excellent statement, FL Teacher.
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Privatization schemes are mine fields of hidden money with potential for abuse. This is one reason why Wall St. loves them so much. They get to play with taxpayers’ money behind the scenes where no sunshine shines.
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Reblogged this on Who's Minding the Children?.
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Purely speculation but Texas produces a lot of the country’s text book material… I wonder if there’s some connection between that and the size of the contract they command. Perhaps is a valuable market for reasons entirely independent of their population.
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“Does New York get Texas’s used questions?” I bet they do. I bet Pearson recycles questions. That is why they need to have teachers sign a gag order, so they can keep their dirty secret. I wonder this every year. Why can’t I, an English II teacher, see the questions that my students answered? I want to see these questions. I want to know if they are clear, unambiguous questions. I am evaluated based upon the Pearson test. My students are evaluated upon the Pearson test- 25% of their second semester grade. It is past time for us to see if these tests are any good. Right now, they are worthless, because we don’t get to see the test questions or the results.
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“Why can’t I, an English II teacher, see the questions that my students answered? I want to see these questions. I want to know if they are clear, unambiguous questions.”
In my reckoning it is UNETHICAL for a teacher to give a test which they have never seen. Hey, if you want to be a paid test giving proctor, that’s fine but your not a teacher. You may feel you are being forced into UNETHICAL behavior but you have a choice.
Do the right thing-refuse to proctor those tests if you are not allowed to read them. I did that this year with the Missouri mandated ACT test given to the juniors this year. Make the bastards pay for their proctors, quit being their stoolies. Quit being a GAGAer.
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You’re not not your not
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Pearson is horrible, but will things be any better with ETS or just more of the same overtesting?
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ALL this horrendous TESTING is really about $$$$$ … ka-ching … and at the same time POWER OVER others. This country is really going fascist.
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Exactly, Yvonne. I grew up thinking “it can’t happen here.” Well, the moment public-school teachers and parents stopped controlling how the children they were jointly raising would be educated, it did happen. We’ve lost one of our most basic democratic rights, and not surprisingly another — freedom of speech — went with it when students, teachers and parents were forbidden from talking about an experience (the state tests) the state forced them to undergo. Fascism is a perfectly good label for all this coercion.
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Yes……you and I both can….BR
Billy R. Reagan
(713) 795-9696
(832) 215-8877 cell
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And what fat-cat moguls own ETS?
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Somehow I am not jumping for joy in hearing this news (although I am glad Pearson will lose a sum of money on this). This news is tantamount to “Company X” will no longer be under contract to build gallows for children… “Company Y” will now be given the contract. Also wondering… Wasn’t David Coleman tied into ETS career-wise?
And yes, the huge discrepancy in state costs between NY and TX just to run Pearson testing is mind-boggling! Certainly deserves investigation and exposure!
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Yes, I agree. I guess we just have to hope that this is a battle won that will ultimately help to win the war. But it’s going to be a long war.
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Imagine the possibilities if the sum total reported above – $808 million – was actually being spent in the classroom, instead of being handed out to corporations.
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It is always better to have urban and suburban classes of 40 or 50 so that the fat-cat corporations can be paid.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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ETS is worse than Pearson, they are non-profit. But their tests have come under scrutiny for bad tests too.
I think the total contract is NY was for roughly $450 million. But the way they got around that is the State of NY that paid for $32 million for the contract the rest is made up of what the districts have spent/pay to buy the materials, testing and other Pearson “perks”.
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” A ban on standardized tests in kindergarten through the second grade has come one step closer to becoming law.
The Senate Education Committee on Monday passed a bill prohibiting such tests. The Assembly passed a similar bill unanimously in March.
It’s the latest in a yearlong legislative push to address parent, educator and student concerns over the start of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers test, which began this year.”
I think this is a good development, particularly since PARCC is a testing “system” with many, many more possible components which will be marketed to schools.
Maybe they’re getting smarter and heading the (inevitable) excess off at the pass 🙂
Put the controls in first or this one test will devour public schools. Maybe they’re learning.
http://www.courierpostonline.com/story/news/local/south-jersey/2015/05/18/state-standardized-tests/27527779/?utm_content=buffer7387a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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We the People are crashing through the institutional walls. The numbers of parents opting out have been extraordinary. We are indeed standing up. The bullies are watching and wondering. In another year Testing conceivably could be dismantled. But we cannot stop at Testing, and we cannot end up caught short asking, What Now? We need to begin framing the principles and crafting the workings of Transformation. To stop Testing and not leverage this power into a Transformative push, as I have said before, will surgically remove the tumor but not the cancer. Deep and Sweeping transformation must be the objective. The adoption of an organizing principle is key to framing a new future that is not pyramidal, autocratic, and controlling. We must rise above the mess. We must apply different thinking and language to free ourselves from the thinking and behavior that created the old-school machinery to begin with. In a word, we need Vision. There are far too many personalities and gurus who will want to play a role or seize power as the walls begin to fall. We are all too ready to embrace false gods as we negate the great power in ourselves (one of the supreme lessons of old-school culture), and if we don’t recognize this weakness, we will continue to re-create the same old problems. By adopting Principle, rather than Personality, we can keep clear-headed, and learn to follow its spirit. To empower the young, and build a learning culture that nourishes their gifts, we must create new pathways, guidelines, mechanisms and Rights that help us keep our learning culture vital, and strong enough to resist the advance of 3rd Party interference and dictate. Principle is where we must start to begin framing a new future for our children. goo.gl/rsF0yv
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Apparently everything is bigger in Texas. (except dollars, hence the Larger size of the contract.)
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Funny, that was also my first thought when I read Diane’s “puzzling question”.
I’m surprised she doesn’t know this, being from Texas. 🙂
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“Everything’s Bigger in Texas”
“Everything’s bigger in Texas”
Is what the Texans say
“Even the cost to test us
The Common Corey way”
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This is great news. No company that does not pay taxes in the United States should have any revenue from public schools.
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“ETS’s purpose is about doing its mission, making enough money…to continue doing it in better and BIGGER (my caps) ways.”
Summary posted at their site, “What Does It Mean to Be a Non-Profit Educational Measurement Organization in the 21st Century”.
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“Bigger ways”
That means the CEO gets paid more.
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Poet,
Adding a voice to the choir.
When a non-profit makes more money, it’s expensed.
What top manager wouldn’t suggest, to the Board, an increase in salary as a reward for “organizational” growth?
Non-profit, For-Profit. Potato, Potato.
If ETS supplied a cheaper product because it didn’t have to pay profits to shareholders, why was Pearson able to carve out such a large share of the market?
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Last week, PRWatch posted a “Special Report: Feds Spent 3.3 Billion Fueling Charter Schools but No One Knows What It’s Bought”.
PRWatch is part of the Center for Media and Democracy. The organization has had success in exposing ALEC’s financial supporters and the group’s impact on state legislatures. CMD created the ALEC Exposed and Sourcewatch sites. One of their new projects is UnKochmyCampus.org.
At Credo, the populist company providing credit card and cellular phones, we can vote to award $100,000 to the Center for Media and Democracy, in May, so that they can redouble their commitment to fighting plutocrats. “Active Credo members” can vote.
A signature on a Credo petition makes a person an active member. You don’t have to buy anything.
Credo’s e-mailed petitions reflect important issues that main stream media often ignores.
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Think about state leadership at the time the contract was negotiated. In addition, remember that Texans tend to feel powerful when oil prices are high. Now they are low.
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In most articles the 32 million is the only figure that is thrown around. The way a read it is that the 32 million is given to Pearson so that they can align the “common core” test to the NYS regents exams. (which could also be used in other States)
NYS is still charged $24. per student taking the exam, which amounts to many more millions!
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You cannot just take the dollar value of the tests and compare them…you have to look at the actual tests. Texas has open-ended writing tests in 4th and 7th grade, as well as English I, II, and III in high school. Each of the written responses must be read by two scorers, as well as back-read by a supervisor if the scores are not adjacent. A multiple choice test would cost a lot less because a machine is doing the scoring. You also need to look at the number of tests administered in each state: what subjects are being tested, and in what grades? Moreover, Texans do not use the Common Core Standards, so the content of the exams for Texas will be completely different from those for the 43 states (including New York) who adopted the standards. (by the way, I am a Texas public school teacher)
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Click to access tr_us_history_release.pdf
Vice President of the State Board of Education in Texas questions validity of 2015 U.S. History EOC.
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From what I understand about the contract, Texas paid for all testing materials as well as instructional materials and digital access to all instructional materials. Texas receives test prep as well as district-wide tests related to the standards. This included grading of all quarter district-wide testing.
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Texas has their own standards and most time textbooks are created for Texas and California and then repackaged and reused in other states. They are the biggest and spend the most money on educational materials. California is common core now, so probably shares more material than before. I am sure It’s the same with testing.
Texas has to have specialized test items created to meet and align with the special educational standards. It is not a common core state. The contract also covers ancillary materials, including test administration and instructional materials, which the NY contract might or might not contain. Special item creation + all the test materials and admin stuff for a much larger student population adds up.
I suspect NY uses the common core, which means a lot of questions and materials can be reused and shared with other states, and their exams can just be realigned.
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Here’s hoping “most of Texas” includes SAISD!!!
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Someone has been getting rich at the expense of Texas students. Teachers have been saying this for years. What response did they get? Why they were called WASP ( Whinney ass school people).
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A little basic research would show you that New York prints and ships its own materials, Texas allows for retests, New York has separate contracts for the state and NYC, etc.. But, then again, you are obviously not interested in facts.
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Yes, I can see how that would add another $400 million to the bill in Texas.
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Both TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills ) and Common Core have their draw backs, however as Step pointed out Texas does march to the beat of it’s own Drum. The contract covered not just testing for the state based on their specific standards of the state, but also custom created curriculum designing to teach said TEKS. I personal am happy about the change and am looking forward to better written curriculum and understandable test questions. http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/talking-pineapple-question-state-exam-stumps-article-1.1064657
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I share your distrust of Pearson, but I must object to your use of the term “foreign students.” Don’t you mean English Language Learners? The majority of ELLs are U.S.-born. Pearson is responsible for the language proficiency assessment system for ELLs in Texas (the TELPAS), which may account, in part, for the larger contract.
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Diane….this could have major potential for the giving practices of the Corporations and Foundations in this area….Confidential…Please call…Billy
Billy R. Reagan (713) 795-9696 (832) 215-8877 cell
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Thanks for the good news…I am now ready to visit with you….Billy
Billy R. Reagan
(713) 795-9696
(832) 215-8877 cell
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