The BATs of Oregon and Washington State are joining together to protest Pearson and high-stakes standardized testing on Tuesday. The timing is right since the Oregon Legislature just passed a bill allowing parents to opt their children out of state testing, and Governor Kate Brown is deciding whether to sign it (and the corporate privatizers are rallying to persuade her to veto). Help the parents and children by contacting Governor Brown; from her bio, she seems to be genuinely concerned about children and families. If she is, she will sign the legislation.
Join the Oregon and Washington State BATs Protest Pearson in Portland
#Tested2Death Rally June 23rd
Meet at Shemanski Park (Portland, Oregon) 10:30 a.m. then march to Hilton Executive Tower
Rally will be from 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What do you do when you are aware of what bullies Pearson Learning are, yet in your job, everything is Pearson? We are a priority school. We begin summer school tomorrow. Every Tuesday for 5 weeks, we will have 4 hours of PD at $40 an hour, government grant, conducted by Pearson for Benchmark Literacy and envision Math, both which are Pearson curriculums. Yet, I am wondering if we will actually have curriculum books. As a sped teacher, I did not receive any last Fall.
They seem to expect a miracle…..to happen yesterday.
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Mary,
A miracle has happened for Pearson.
NCLB, RTTT, now CCSS.
Ka-Ching
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Are there any publishing companies left besides McGraw Hill (which I realize isn’t any better than Pearson) that have not been devoured by Pearson?
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Let’s start a list of everything Pearson owns or co-opts.
Owns
Scholastic
PARCC
Other CC Tests
Regents
(Part of Smarter Balanced?)
CC Scoring
Textbooks
Co-opted the Lexile company to change measures of reading difficulty, so that they can claim their material isn’t too hard.
Contracted to write next year’s NAEP, the test by which all others are measured.
Contracted to write the international PISA test, with which the US compares its own scores.
Please correct me if I’m wrong. Can you add to the list?
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I don’t think Pearson owns Scholastic
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My bad. May 29, 2015 – Scholastic Completes Sale Of Educational Technology And Services Business Segment to Houghton Mifflin
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Ka-Ching should come with strings, forcing this testing monopoly to be socially responsible even if it means turning down orders from our idiot laureates.
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Reblogged this on stopcommoncorenys.
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Common Core represents a huge, huge, huge lost opportunity to dramatically change curricula for the better, to hugely reduce content spread and check the loss through enrichment opportunities like electives and truly honor, integrate and allow for all manner of critical thinking and analysis in the standards themselves rather than tossing it out to teachers to figure out have to find multiple entries to the same place and make everything all real worldy and highly engaging despite all the contortions to ramp up rigor and hit unimportant and/or inappropriate standards. Very little care was given in creating these rushed standards that are not all that different from what existed before.
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People like Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Joel Klein, Eli Broad, John White and so many others, Pearson included, are at least partly responsible for this massive loss in American education that will at least be felt and resonate for decades regardless of the likely patchwork of fixes, revisions and reforms to come.
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Such a huge loss I couldn’t characterize as a miss.
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About fifty people gathered in Portland to protest Pearson’s “assessment conference” held ironically on the same day Oregon’s Governor Kate Brown signed into law a generous opt out bill. This “student bill of rights” allows families to demand to know the purpose and benefits of any standardized test. Many hope this will force the state either to prove Smarter Balanced directly benefits students, or to admit it doesn’t.
Members of BATS, SOS and CAPE assembled in shady Shemanski Park to protest Pearson’s take-over of public education. The warm-up rally featured a full spectrum of stakeholders – students, parents, grandparents, teachers, professors and even school board members. Latin folk musicians energized the group with a new version of “La Bamba” – “No el examen”.
Drawing amused attention from passersby, a school bus covered in opt out slogans pulled up with a man wearing a giant paper mache head of Bill Gates. Another marcher held the “abominable testing man”, a muppet covered in shaggy strips of testing forms.
Key points were driven home by a comic math teacher posing as “JP Pearson”, dressed in top-hot and suspenders as he dangled Monopoly money attached to strings. Even among this sympathetic crowd, many were unaware of the scope of Pearson’s dominance over tests, texts, software, tutorials, online courses, so-called “professional development”, and even our students’ attendance and behavior records. Clearly more work needs to be done delivering this message about the commercialization of public education
The protest was an opportunity for important exchanges among activists. One tourist approached who had organized a clearing house unifying Arizona opt out groups. Oregonians and Washingtonians compared notes on how to raise up an informed school board candidate.
Chanting “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Pearson tests have got to go!” protesters marched to the conference site, urging the public to opt out their children. Posters read: “Public Schools for Students, Not for Profit”, “End Corporate Rule of Our Schools”, “More than a Test Score”, “No profit left behind”, “Pearson Owns “Learning not testing” and “Pearson Owns the Tests, Texts, Tutorials, Workbooks, Scoring ….” A portable sound system projected statistics and rationale to onlookers.
Pearson became alarmed when several protesters used the hotel bathroom. Security guards quickly locked up, and police were called. Asking about the hotel “kerfuffle”, an officer politely advised protesters to not block roads or sidewalks, and then he left. Four men in business attire paced the block, took pictures and, strangely, wouldn’t engage in conversation.
What did we learn? 1. It’s wise to work with media in advance to garner supportive coverage. 2. Humor and props disarm and draw attention. 3. A portable sound system is needed while on the move. 4. Bring business cards – you never know who you’ll meet. 5. For better visibility march closer to the street (not the building) and all the way down to each intersection, rather than clustering in one spot. 6. Use the bathroom before you arrive.
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