This interview with John Fallon, the CEO of Pearson, was conducted at the Aspen Ideas Festival, an event that is held annually and completely dominated by reformers and entrepreneurs.
Pearson has a responsibility to end educational inequities, he says.
Perhaps someone might explain to him that standardized tests are normed on a bell curve and the bell curve never closes. The bottom half is always populated by disproportionate numbers of children who are disadvantaged by poverty, by language, by disability.
Inequity is baked in to standardized tests. By design.
And, the states and districts that spend hundreds of millions to test children are diverting that money from teaching them.
Even worse, the tests are so secret that teachers and parents never learn about the strengths and weaknesses of individual children.
And that doesn’t even touch on the problems with the EdTPA and the GED.
Perhaps Mr. Fallon can tackle these problems.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Pearson cares about profit. All else is just window dressing.
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On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 10:02 AM, Diane Ravitchs blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: “This interview with John Fallon, the CEO of Pearson, > was conducted at the Aspen Ideas Festival, an event that is held annually > and completely dominated by reformers and entrepreneurs. Pearson has a > responsibility to end educational inequities, he sa” >
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>completely dominated by reformers and entrepreneurs
Accurate description, but it might be more precise to call them wealthy interests. Or ed profiteers.
Or, as Matt Taibbi once wrote about Goldman Sachs, those who seek to profit off of public schools are like “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”
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“Pearson has a responsibility to end educational inequities, he says.”
3rd time I’ve ever laughed while reading this blog
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Imagine if Pearson didn’t care?!
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We couldn’t be so lucky, Fred!
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Until a few weeks ago, David Koch’s photo was in Aspen Institute board member array. Many of Aspen’s education programs, e.g. Pahara Aspen, Senior Congressional Education Staff Network, etc. are funded by the Gates Foundation. Coincidentally, or not, Pearson and Microsoft have a deal to create products for Common Core and Bill Gates, co-owns a retailer that sells the product, schools-in-a-box.
The Gates Foundation funded the New Schools Venture Fund ($22 mil.), whose founder described NSVF, as having a goal “to develop charter brand management organizations that produce a diverse supply of different brands on a large scale.”
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The clapping you are hearing is me giving Ms. Ravitch a standing ovation!
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