Bryan Alleman, the technology coordinator for Acadia Parish schools in Louisiana, sent the following story. VAM, as you know, is “value-added measurement,” or “value-added modeling,” which is used in many states to evaluate teachers. If test scores go up as predicted by a computer, the teacher is effective; if they exceed the computer prediction, the teacher is “highly effective.” If they don’t, the teacher is “developing” or “ineffective.” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has pushed some version of this approach into almost every state as a condition of Race to the Top funding or waivers from the onerous sanctions of No Child Left Behind.
Bryan writes:
Greetings from south Louisiana! I wanted to share with you an interaction I recently had with a Pearson representative at a technology leadership conference I attended in Baton Rouge, LA a couple of weeks ago.
At the conference, I noticed Pearson was present as a vendor. Pearson owns Powerschool, a Student Information System (SIS), that has a small presence in Louisiana. Rumor is that Pearson is selling off Powerschool.
Typically, SIS systems can be very profitable for a company. Working in SIS management for the past 7 years, I wanted to confirm this rumor.
So, I approached the Pearson rep., a nice gentleman, who confirmed that indeed Pearson was selling off Powerschool. Curious, I asked him, why? Imagine my surprise when I heard the following (paraphrasing):
“…Pearson is strongly committed to improving student outcomes and has decided to score every single product it owns to determine the impact on student achievement. Powerschool didn’t score well so we are selling it off…”
So there I stood–mouth agape—at the realization that Pearson has fallen for it’s own scam. They have actually VAM’d themselves. And, as a result, is selling of a profitable product.
The parallels to students, teachers, principals, and whole schools who have also fallen victim to VAM flooded my brain.
Education has lost valuable human capital (I despise that reference typically….we are human resources, not capital) as a result of VAM.
Pearson is losing a valuable product as a result of their own VAM. I wonder how the Pearson shareholders feel about this.
Just amazing.
Bryan
__________________________
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain
a thought without accepting it.”
-Aristotle
Diane,
is that Pearson is selling off Powerschool. Typically, SIS systems can be very profitable for a company. Working in SIS management for the past 7 years, I wanted to confirm this rumor. So, I approached the Pearson rep., a nice gentleman, who confirmed that indeed Pearson was selling off Powerschool. Curious, I asked him, why? Imagine my surprise when I heard the following (paraphrasing): “…Pearson is strongly committed to improving student outcomes and has decided to score every single product it owns to determine the impact on student achievement. Powerschool didn’t score well so we are selling it off…”
So there I stood–mouth agape—at the realization that Pearson has fallen for it’s own scam. They have actually VAM’d themselves. And, as a result, is selling of a profitable product.
The parallels to students, teachers, principals, and whole schools who have also fallen victim to VAM flooded my brain.
Education has lost valuable human capital (I despise that reference typically….we are human resources, not capital) as a result of VAM.
Pearson is losing a valuable product as a result of their own VAM. I wonder how the Pearson shareholders feel about this.
Just amazing.
Bryan
__________________________
Bryan P. Alleman
Technology Coordinator
Acadia Parish School Board
P. O. Drawer 309
Crowley, LA 70527-0309
phone: (337) 783-3664 x279
fax: (337) 783-0194
balleman@acadia.k12.la.us
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain
a thought without accepting it.”
-Aristotle
,
Diane Ravitch's blog 
PowerSchool was originally Chancery from a Canadian company when my school district bought this not ready for the job school information system. After a few frustrating years, it appeared that the system was becoming stable and up to the job. Then Pearson bought it and almost immediately announced that it would only be supporting PowerSchool for three more years. I suspect that Pearson bought Chancery with the intention of shutting it down for reasons that we will never be privy to.
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We may not be privy to the reasons but one that logically comes to my mind is “eliminating competition” through buying them off, taking any “good” from the competition and then shutting them down.
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It’s a marketing ploy well worth the few dollars they will lose (a drop among billions in the bucket), intended to preempt inevitable criticism.
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I have cited this before but it bears repeating since the rheephormsters have proven, in the main, incapable of self-reflection and self-correction.
From a VANITY FAIR article of August 2012 entitled “Microsoft’s Lost Decade.” Think of how VAM is used to create what is called “forced ranking/stacked ranking/rank-and-yank/burn-and-churn” schemes.
Please excuse the the lengthy excerpt, but I include the first two paragraphs to give context. Ponder the third and fourth. Then reread the posting in which this comment appears.
[start]
At the center of the cultural problems was a management system called “stack ranking.” Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees. The system—also referred to as “the performance model,” “the bell curve,” or just “the employee review”—has, with certain variations over the years, worked like this: every unit was forced to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, then good performers, then average, then below average, then poor.
“If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, two people were going to get a great review, seven were going to get mediocre reviews, and one was going to get a terrible review,” said a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”
Supposing Microsoft had managed to hire technology’s top players into a single unit before they made their names elsewhere—Steve Jobs of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Larry Page of Google, Larry Ellison of Oracle, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon—regardless of performance, under one of the iterations of stack ranking, two of them would have to be rated as below average, with one deemed disastrous.
For that reason, executives said, a lot of Microsoft superstars did everything they could to avoid working alongside other top-notch developers, out of fear that they would be hurt in the rankings. And the reviews had real-world consequences: those at the top received bonuses and promotions; those at the bottom usually received no cash or were shown the door.
[end]
Link: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer
Even if (as suggested by comments above) Pearson is simply justifying a predetermined business decision, it is telling that they use VAManiacal thinking to justify their actions.
And that their sales rep bought into it. Hook, line and sinker.
Puts me in mind of something I saw once:
“Self-delusion is pulling in your stomach when you step on the scales.” [Paul Sweeney]
😎
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Great point, KTA! I wrote about this mis(use) of data and VAM with respect to teacher evaluation in a recent article: https://www.academia.edu/12968982/The_Inchworm_and_the_Nightingale_On_the_Mis_use_of_Data_in_Music_Teacher_Evaluation
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I fixed the spelling errors.
NO EXCUSES!
However, please understand that I write most of my posts on a tiny antiquated iPhone 4 (hoping to get a new model soon), and sometimes I can barely read the words as I type them.
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Eloquently stated truth! Thank you, Krazy TA.
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This is a textbook example of Mitt Romney’s strategy of “creative destruction,” in which profitable companies were purchased by Bain Capital, the valuable “resources” (employees, equipment, machinery) of the company were maximized for the profit they could generate and then sold off or terminated, and the company was then sold for parts–leaving thousands of employees without jobs, or pensions, or homes.
The result of these transactions was increased profits for shareholders, but “creative destruction” left a devastating trail of unemployment, shattered communities, and families that were ripped apart and scattered in its wake.
So Pearson is demonstrating here a stunning blindness and inability to analyze the difference between profitable and useful–which should come as no surprise to anyone that is watching their impact on testing and schooling.
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Mitchell Robinson: “the difference between profitable and useful“—
TAGO!
😃
Especially when, riffing off their free market fundamentalism, the rheephormsters have an infallible metric that tells them whether or not they are “effective.” As in, bottom line RED, “educationally” badbadbad; bottom line BLACK, “educationally” goodgoodgood!
😳
The sweet smell of $tudent $ucce$$! Ain’t it grand!
Rheeally! But only in the most Johnsonally sort of ways…
For the rest of us, not really.
Or when an very old and very dead and very Greek guy won’t do, a Roman will do quite nicely:
“For greed all nature is too little.” [Lucius Annaeus Seneca]
😎
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Has there been any movement, any compromise, from the ed reform “movement” or the Obama Administration on VAM?
I know they come up with various percentages- 50%, 35%, but has there been any re-examination on cost/benefit of this theory?
Don’t experiments ordinarily include a review process? This approach is just law ‘o the land forever?
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There will not be any real examination of VAM by policymakers because it can not stand the light of day.
USDOE is certainly aware of the ASA position paper on VAM, which made it quite clear that use of VAM for evaluating individual teachers is a bad idea.
There was a time in the not too distant past when science actually informed national policy but science has become little more than a political tool to use when it suits one’s purpose and disregard when it does not (and not just in education)
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“Take Heed — and chuck the rest”
Our leaders only heed
The data that they need
The rest they simply dis
Cuz ignorance is bli$$
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“Duncan Addresses Parent Priorities: Duncan: These Are The Things Parents Should Demand From Schools ”
I can already tell this “debate” is very parent-directed.
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What you do with your own products for business reasons is up to you, what you do to other people’s children, and their parents, and their teachers is not.
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Trying to dismantle public schools is worse than attacking a company. Children deserve stability and community schools, especially adequately funded schools with a comprehensive curricula. The way we are pulling the rug out from under so many urban children is unethical and immoral.
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We use Power School in Newark. I have often wondered who has access to the data.
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Pearson Education has a poor track record in several areas: developing new products, merging in acquired products, and investing in new technologies. The company is really just a conglomerate whose heft and long presence in education keeps it going, probably because schools/districts are slow to change.
Pearson appears to succeed in only two areas: large-scale testing (though it took a blow in Texas recently) and textbooks. Otherwise it mostly buys/sells other companies to make money. Besides PowerSchool, an acquisition that it bungled, SchoolNet (at one-quarter billion dollars!) is proving to be a bad investment. For a while it provided a stream of income through prior sales of district contracts. It should not surprise anyone if SchooNet is the next product that Pearson unloads because it was overpriced and Pearson execs were terrible at their due diligence.
If Pearson scored itself, its value-added measure would not be very good. It’s really just a trader and shell corporation. The model is fitting for reformists and charter schools: buy low, do as little as you can while money flows in, then dump the under-performers—make them someone else’s problem. This is destruction, and there is nothing creative about it. It’s the squeezing of life out of otherwise well-performing economic units, er children.
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Great analysis D L!
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Will we ever see the day when it is posted that Pearson has closed its doors?
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Interesting coincidence I suppose? I was visiting my former school to help colleagues clean their chem labs and learned that they were switching from Pearson’s Power School to become a Google School using a package available from Google. Anyone have any experience or comments that they can share on the qualities of Google School?
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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