Journalist Owen Davis explains in this article how the giant British education publisher Pearson made a killing as American politicians went gaga for standardized testing.
it is important to bear in mind that annual standardized testing is neither necessary nor customary. No other nation requires every child in grades 3-8 to take standardized tests every year. The US didn’t do it either until after the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2001. NCLB was a bonanza for Pearson and other testing companies. They beefed up their lobbying operations to make sure that the testing industry was well protected in DC and in state capitols. One of the architects of NCLB, Sandy Kress, went home to Dallas and became a well-paid lobbyist for Pearson.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In this CASH & CARRY country, our young are FOR SALE.
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“And the company has prepared for the eventual shift from multiple choice from broader measures of school performance, such as school climate – a survey-based metric of students’ social and emotional wellbeing. ”
Patient surveys have been a disaster in health care. They’re one of the causes of the opioid epidemic. Health care provider’s were required to provide a measure for “patient satisfaction”. Turns out patients want a lot of pain meds and they rate providers who prescribe a lot of pain meds better than providers who don’t. Hence, healthcare providers gave the people what they wanted, and now a quarter of this county are addicted to pain pills. Turns out people want things they don’t need and shouldn’t have.
What if students seem to want a “climate” that isn’t really good for them? What then?
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Precisely.
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“Hence, healthcare providers gave the people what they wanted, and now a quarter of this county are addicted to pain pills. Turns out people want things they don’t need and shouldn’t have.”
No, people want to be relieved of pain, especially chronic pain. Your connecting patient health care surveys with the supposed huge pain med addiction just doesn’t cut it, Chiara. I’d have to see what the parameters for any study that says that. Please provide some links. Help me out. I just can’t believe your statement that 1/4 of this country’s population is addicted to pain pills.
While I have been unwittingly and unwillingly addicted to the pain med tramadol-took only as prescribed (it was just placed on the scheduled drug list last year) for 2-3 years it certainly relieved pain. But at the same time other side effects were happening to me that I really was unaware of-lethargy, lack of energy, a blase attitude, etc. . . .
I sit here and type while in quite a bit of pain waiting to get my lumbar cortisone injection that will help me get through two to three months, not pain free but bearable. I make sure I have a back up of percocets for like now when the shot wears off, but I try not to use them. The hassle of getting them bugs the hell out of me-when one is in pain one doesn’t want to have to do the run around.
Your diatribe against pain meds and those who need and use them is unwarranted. I hope you never have that need, because pain ain’t fun and downright sucks one’s energy at times worse than the pain meds.
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Thanks, Duane. While I am as alarmed as others at the problems of drug overuse and addiction, I have known people who have suffered with chronic pain — and I am far more terrified of the backlash that leaves those folks in permanent agony. We need a nuanced conversation, when it comes to prescription pain meds, one that addresses both the continued (illegitimate) use of prescription pain meds by those no longer in pain but who have become dependent (and need help) AND the continued (and often unmet) needs of people with chronic pain conditions who are now going untreated or undertreated due to the inability or unwillingness of doctors and policy makers to take chronic pain seriously. I have known people whose inability to find pain relief has led them to despair and suicide (and no — they weren’t addicted to anything when they died — they just couldn’t face pressing on in the face of unrelenting, withering pain that no one could — or would — treat).
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This is nice:
Kendall G Pace @KendallGPace 12h12 hours ago
30 minutes coming to every Austin ISD ES campus this week!
Apparently Austin public school students are getting recess back 🙂
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Under “personalized learning” we can stop paying Pearson so we can pay Gates for more horrible, no good, very bad testing.
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Pearson knew NCLB was coming and bought up testing companies in the U.S. before NCLB was passed.
“Pearson acquired Dorling Kindersley, the illustrated reference publisher and integrated it within Penguin, in March 2000 and then bought acquired National Computer Systems (NCS) in September 2000 so entering the educational assessment and school management systems market in the United States.”
And once NCLB was law, Pearson’s lobby sits went to work.
Report: Big education firms spend millions lobbying for pro-testing policies.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/30/report-big-education-firms-spend-millions-lobbying-for-pro-testing-policies/?utm_term=.ca4a2c19795a
How much and when did Pearson spend?
https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000036571
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Thanks for the info, Lloyd.
Ah the wonderful free market capitalism working its wonders, eh.
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It was not only the annual testing. I was a third grade teacher who taught for thirty years. When I retired two years ago there was the beginning of the year testing, the end of the first quarter testing, the mid year year testing, the third quarter testing, and then finally the end of the year testing! I am sure that all that testing and preparing for the testing materials made lots of money, but not for the students, the teachers or the schools.
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Hi Diane,
Everyone should read this article. But, skip over the education parts (sad to have to say) and focus on the business parts. Student boycotts and whole school boycotting, even if they do it in the thousands and hundreds respectively have no effect unless these boycotts are accompanied by a hit to cash flow. These boycotting schools need to not pay for tests they do not give, they need to demand cash back or credits against text book orders. Boycotts matter to the bottom line only. We teachers have to start seeing the test as a product, not a test. In NJ we have a test called Parcc. Parcc is a brand name just like Kleenex is. Our school boards and parents have to work to destroy the brand not the test over a few days of the school year. The big three will stop the aggresive penetration of the education space with “test” products when it is not profitable to have them in the portfolio.
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“Our school boards and parents have to work to destroy the brand not the test over a few days of the school year.”
No the tests need to be destroyed also, actually which brand makes no difference as they are all junk, yes every single standardized test that is given to students. And no, I’m not talking about standardized assays/surveys given by trained personnel for determining disabilities-totally different thing but all of the standardized tests that students now take.
When one starts with crap, e.g., standardized tests, one can only end up with crap results that are invalid and meaningless. If you do not realize just how onto-epistemologically “crappy” those standards and tests are may I suggest reading the most important educational writing of the last 50 years that shows all the errors and falsehoods and psychometric fudging involved in the standards and testing malpractice regime that renders any results and conclusions drawn from the results COMPLETELY INVALID. See: Noel Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine.
A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other words all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
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Next Generation Science Standards.
The scent of money.
Can Pearson be far behind?
Shoot, they’re ahead of the curve:
From the Pearson website:
“Pearson’s close association with
the key authors and architects
of the NGSS means that the spirit
of the initiative is embedded in all we do.”
http://www.pearsonschool.com/index.cfm?locator=PS27Sj
Approximately 20 states have adopted these new K to 12 science standards, including NY and California. Testing is not mandated, but more than likely.
My take:
NGSS – Future Fail On its Way!
The roadmap to disaster:
1) Write abstract, confusing, jargon saturated, skills-centric, content weak, K to 12 science standards
in your ivory tower.
2) Be sure that elementary standards are developmentally inappropriate by emphasizing abstract skill sets and omitting simple, concrete, straight forward, important content knowledge (facts and ideas)
3) Include the word “engineering” to satisfy the STEM worshippers, but take the generally accepted
meaning and twist it into a vague, nebulous, and essentially useless form
4) Provide little training and not nearly enough TIME for teachers to develop substantial science
programs. Be sure to include a fleet of clueless consultants to confuse and confound elementary
teachers while misrepresenting the fundamental goals of scientific literacy
5) Provide limited funding for science supplies, equipment, and facilities
6) Flood the market with crappy, canned science and engineering activities and projects – and even
worse, computer/online programs – all developed by non-teachers.
7) Write and administer abstract, confusing, jargon saturated, skills-centric, content weak, K to 12
science tests based on said standards (in your ivory tower).
NGSS is another Common Core-like disaster in the making; another “implementation” failure just waiting to happen. Like every new idea proposed by outsiders, they can look good on paper (although not so with NGSS) but there will NEVER, ever be sufficient TIME allotted to teachers to make them work with real kids in real classrooms. I see NGSS as a Trojan Horse filled with consultants, code writers, test developers, publishers, privatizers, and corporatists foaming at the mouth at yet another opportunity to pillage and plunder public school resources.
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Next Generation Science Standards for 6 year old children (grade 1):
Plan and conduct investigations to provide evidence that vibrating materials can make sound and that sound can make materials vibrate.
Make observations to construct an evidence-based account that objects can be seen only when illuminated.
Plan and conduct an investigation to determine the effect of placing objects made with different materials in the path of a beam of light.
Use tools and materials to design and build a device that uses light or sound to solve the problem of communicating over a distance.
Use materials to design a solution to a human problem by mimicking how plants and/or animals use their external parts to help them survive, grow, and meet their needs.
Read texts and use media to determine patterns in behavior of parents and offspring that help offspring survive.
Make observations to construct an evidence-based account that young plants and animals are like, but not exactly like, their parents.
Use observations of the sun, moon, and stars to describe patterns that can be predicted.
Make observations at different times of year to relate the amount of daylight to the time of year.
Ask questions, make observations, and gather information about a situation people want to change to define a simple problem that can be solved through the development of a new or improved object or tool.
Develop a simple sketch, drawing, or physical model to illustrate how the shape of an object helps it function as needed to solve a given problem.
Analyze data from tests of two objects designed to solve the same problem to compare the strengths and weaknesses of how each performs.
YES.
GRADE 1.
And in NYS – Testing begins at grades 2
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WHY?!
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The NGSS picture is slowly coming in to focus:
New, challenging science standards in grades K to 6.
A legion of elementary teachers mostly unfamiliar with science, technology, and engineering.
What’s an overwhelmed, over-worked first grade teacher to do?
Pearson (and many others) to the re$cue!!!!!
bring on the canned, cookie cutter projects
and on-line programs.
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We are still a priority school. Pearson continues to come every week to aid us. Though the two individual ladies are very nice, they really don’t pay much attention to what special needs kids really need. No one does. I am beginning not to care.
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