This article was distributed by the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy.
“Dr. Barbara Brothers, Dean Emeritus, Youngstown State University, and current chair of the Education Committee of the Greater Youngstown League of Women Voters, is looking into the Pearson operation in Ohio and wrote what she has found thus far.
Ohio, a Pearson State
The Pearson Corporation is a multi-billion dollar United Kingdom enterprise which has grown from a construction company to include newspapers, entertainment enterprises such as amusement parks, and book publishers among its holdings. In 2000 Pearson spent $2.5 billion to acquire an American testing company in an effort to increase its profits through securing contracts to produce standardized tests and test preparation materials
(http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/pearson-education-115026.html). It has been given enormous control over K-12 public schools in Ohio by the Ohio legislature and governor.
Pearson effectively controls what is taught, who graduates, and even who gets a second chance at a high school diploma through the General Education Diploma (GED) examination. Recently Comcast was prevented from acquiring Time Warner because the federal government determined that Comcast’s control of 60% of the market was too great. But that market share pales compared to the 100% Pearson has been granted by the State of Ohio.
Since 2013, Pearson tests even license teachers in Ohio. Because the tests are designed and graded by Pearson, the company and its employees determine what teachers need to know in all particular teaching fields-English, science, history. Colleges must address what Pearson puts on the tests so that their students will be licensed to teach in Ohio initially and, later, when a teacher seeks professional advancement.
By 2018, Pearson end of course exams in designated subjects in grades 9 -12–PARCC Tests–will determine if a student receives an Ohio high school diploma. PARCC tests-Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and careers-are to be based on Common Core State Standards (CCSS), developed with primary input from Pearson.
In January of 2014 Pearson produced a revised GED exam—a new version of the GED that is to be taken entirely on-line. The pass rate fell 90 percent because the test now measures college readiness rather than what was actually learned in high school.
Pearson controls the curriculum by defining the knowledge and skills a student must master. Pearson assures us the CCSS will be rigorous; i.e. that at least thirty percent or more of students taking the tests will fail. An educator such as Dr. Louisa Moats, who was a contributing writer of CCSS, is just one of many of those critical of the jump to test and fail (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/child-development-central/201401/when-will-we-ever-learn). These standards for which Pearson oversaw the development, helped by tax free money such as an $88 million dollar grant from the Gates Foundation, in turn require the development and selling of both on-line materials and textbooks to prepare the teacher to teach to the test. Pearson produces the materials from which the teachers teach and the tests that tell us if they have performed satisfactorily. In Ohio they have no competitors. If your school “fails” then send your child to a Connections Academy, a Pearson for-profit Charter advertised on their GED webpage.
Teachers, parents, and concerned citizens have criticized the tests on a number of grounds-the number of tests, the time the tests take, the appropriateness of the questions, the secrecy about the test questions, the spying on students’ social media, the use of the tests for punishment, teaching to the test, the ignoring of the arts, the expense and failure of the technology for administering the tests, and the tremendous cost to taxpayers. The mania for testing and collecting volumes of data are destroying our education system and creating a world of big profits for the Pearson corporation and Big Brother-ism–all approved by our Ohio Legislature and Governor and supported by Federal legislation-No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.
William Phillis
Ohio E & A
Ohio E & A | 100 S. 3rd Street | Columbus | OH | 43215
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Wake up. EVERY state is a Pearson state. TN actually signed a contract with Sir Michael Barber and Kathi Hycock’s US EDI to implement Common Core in TN and set up Education Delivery Units. Sir Michael Barber also works for Pearson. Sir Michael Barber also developed and utilizes a system called DELIVEROLOGY (EDI stands for Education DELIVERY Institute). His philosophy about reform is to implement it in such a way that it is irreversible. This is why we are seeing the GED, AP, ACT, SAT, CLEP, PSAT, books etc all aligned to the standards for the first time in US history. It is all in the effort to make CC irreversible. And remember Barber and Coleman are buddies. Barber from the UK, Coleman was a Rhodes Scholar and attended Oxford and Cambridge, and they both were consultants for McKinsey & Co. Pearson is now in the process of rewriting the international PISA test to align with CC and it is scheduled to roll out in 2018. What more do people need to know. If parents keep their kids in the public school system they someday will pay a very dear dear price. If we pulled out kids out now in 1 year the system would implode and we would be back in control of our children’s education. The US Dept. of Education must be shut down. If Diane Ravitch REALLY wanted to fix this problem she would gather all of us warriors and activists and rally us for a national campaign to shut down the US Dept. of Education.
Pearson has more in Ohio than licensures of teachers, state standardized tests, GED testing, psychology testing, its’s bigger.. They also provide tests for licenses through the state not just for education. I found out after the fact when I took my state test for Surety License (Bail Bondsman License) it was provided by Pearson through a third-party. They had questions that has nothing to do with bail bondsman, therefore, causing my score to be lowered because of unfair questions that I would have no knowledge of and of course, they included survey at the end. Just like PARCC, GED being flawed, so is this test in which I am not surprised now (and makes sense why my frustration of unfair questions) whom provided the test in which Pearson has many troubles uncovered. We need to uncover everything that Pearson has a hand in.
This is what ODE has signed up with Pearson from 2014 till 2018
And what ODE entered a contract for quality assurance over PARCC testing..
This is amazing. They sold 12 elementary schools on Friday with no public notice or input.
And before anyone tells me it’s the charter management company not the charter entity, you’re going to have show me how those two things are different as a practical matter since the charter management company makes each and every decision for “the school”.
“Akron-based White Hat Management reportedly sold off management of 12 elementary charter schools Friday to an out-of-state, for-profit company that could acquire a third charter school company, an attorney for the charter schools’ public boards said.
The two deals would make Pansophic Learning the largest for-profit operator of Ohio charter schools, which has become a taxpayer-funded $1 billion private industry.
Pansophic is a Virginia company founded by Ron Packard.
Packard previously worked on mergers and acquisitions for Goldman Sachs and other large banks before getting into the for-profit education business by founding K12 Inc.”
Oh, look! It’s blended learning! Their online learning product was tanking so they decided to re-brand:
” K12 runs Ohio Virtual Academy, one of the state’s largest online charter schools. State test scores show students learn less at Ohio Virtual Academy in a year’s time than at any of Ohio’s 3,444 traditional public and charter school options.
Pansophic has told the school boards that the curriculum used in Ohio Virtual Academy will be blended with classroom interaction at the elementary charter schools formerly run by White Hat.”
http://www.ohio.com/news/break-news/white-hat-management-reportedly-selling-ohio-charter-school-operations-to-out-of-state-company-1.599723#.VX2ffHhSwtk.twitter
Chiara and Deb, Thanks for the superb tracking of developments in Ohio, really a showcase for the corruption in the charter industry, which is has a huge arm now in real estate and deals for delevopment, especially in urban centers .This is hard and important work. Ohio’s governor is joining the herd of elephants running for president and in a brief clip on TV was presenting himself as a very “kind” person as if to distinquish himself from Gov Christie other bullies in the herd.
Ah, but John Kasich is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He is NOT what he represents at all. He is corporate. He was partially responsible for the Lehman Brothers mess that caused the collapse in 2008. I mean, WHY would anyone want him to be PRESIDENT? He is not good for the 99% of the people in the U.S.
Best government money can buy.
Again and again.
Plutocracy usurps democracy.
“The British are Coming”
The British are Coming
They’re PARCCing in schools
The Pearsons are drumming
We’re acting like fools
We beat them in battle
But now we surrender
They treat us like cattle
As corporate provender
“Pearson Boardroom Banter”
We beat them with a test!
With not a bullet fired!
Completed is the quest
That King George once desired
“The Pros and Cons of Testing”
Pearson are the pros
At conning bureaucrat
And what do you $uppo$e
They u$e to pull off that?
This was posted on Plunderbund, today, June 14, 2015.
Ohio Senate Agrees With House: Defund PARCC Testing
by Greg on June 10, 2015 · 1 Comment
In the Ohio Senate’s version of the state budget bill, House Bill 64, a controversial provision added in by the Ohio House was left unchanged:
Sec. 3301.078. (B) No funds appropriated from the general revenue fund shall be used to purchase an assessment developed by the partnership for assessment of readiness for college and careers for use as the assessments prescribed under sections 3301.0710 and 3301.0712 of the Revised Code.
The “partnership for assessment of readiness for college and careers” is better known as PARCC, the consortium that administered the new state tests in Ohio and many other states this year and was beset by problems, from how it was administered (technology issues, a dramatic increase in testing time for students) and from a public relations standpoint where an unprecedented number of parents began refusing to allow their children to participate in the tests.
Also like the House’s version, the bill is devoid of specific details as to what Ohio would use to replace the new exams, which means that we are likely to see components of House Bill 74 and/or Senate Bill 3 hurriedly integrated into the bill. The probable scenario is that such changes to the actual assessments used and any testing time limits will be added in during the conference committee after the Senate passes their version of HB64.
With only three weeks left to get this bill to the Governor, any final changes will unfortunately be made without the benefit of any real public vetting and/or input on the final decisions, once again leaving teachers, parents, and schools out of the process.
And, apparently, Ohio’s online schools just don’t have to make the grade.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/06/ohio_ignores_online_school_fs_as_it_evaluates_charter_school_overseers.html
is it not time for the government (hahahaha) to break up this monopoly?????????
Another Plunderbund commentary.
http://www.plunderbund.com/2015/06/17/senate-proposes-two-year-hiatus-from-using-value-added-in-evaluations/munderbund