One of the most common complaints that many teachers and principals make against education reformers is what they commonly refer to as the privatization of public education. It’s a phrase that can take on many different meanings and is often dismissed as little more than a conspiracy theory.Â
But federal and state governments spend billions annually on public education, and it’s not surprising that corporations see opportunities. Politico.com has an interesting investigative piece on the profits of Pearson, a British publishing company.
Roughly half of the company’s profits come from Pearson’s growth in the tumultuous US education market. From products and services ranging from online learning to the newer Common Core curriculum standards, Pearson is getting fat off of US taxpayers.
Maybe that doesn’t deserve much scrutiny, since Pearson is simply taking advantage of a capitalist system. But more troubling is how Pearson benefits from a group-think mentality among some law and policy makers. According to Politico, Pearson is getting contracts on non-competitive bids from Florida to Texas, and worse, the company isn’t penalized when it falls short of its objectives.
For instance, when Pearson was hired by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction to install a new student data system, Politico says, the job was so problematic that the state had to shell out extra millions to get the company to fix it.
And then there’s the question of Pearson’s access to students’ personal information and how that information is being used.
The crisis in public education, particularly in urban schools, has created a tidal wave of remedies that lawmakers are eager to implement: high-stakes testing, vouchers, merit pay for teachers, and lifting the cap on charter schools to name a few.
While some lawmakers including Governor Andrew Cuomo complain about the influence of teacher unions, we shouldn’t be naive. Companies like Pearson are pouring money into marketing and lobbying efforts to get their message out to lawmakers and expand their profits.
But are their products improving education outcomes?Â
This article appears in Feb 4-10, 2015.
This is what happens when education is no longer classroom based as it was when I started teaching in 1964.
In NYS, Pearson designs/sells the tests that are used to evaluate students and teachers, and makes sure that they are designed so that the majority of students fail. Pearson designs/sells the remedial materials and progress monitoring materials that districts are required to implement to “fix” the failure. Pearson designs/sells online resources that worried parents/teachers/districts use to help. It is a “fixed” system alright, and Pearson is the only winner. Follow the money, for money is “the root of all evil”. None of this has anything to do with improving education or benefiting kids.
Pearson also owns and operates the DATA system used by most districts including the RCSD to input APPR scores, etc, etc. We are all pawns in their game.
This is how the govt spends our money. Our money. Our money is being spent on a failed system . Our kids gain nothing. Then we look around and wonder who will fix this. Craziness abound.
Scors, that’s the liberal way. They don’t have real solutions. Their solutions always make the problems worse. And of course they always have the solution to the new problem too–raise taxes. Will the voters ever wake up?
Put a Republican in charge of the school district. Vote a Republican into the Mayors seat. Things WILL change for the better.
The problems at Rochester’s schools border on absurdity. It is beyond audacious for a company like Pearson to claim to be able to fix troubled urban schools with it’s online curriculum. Elected officials spend hundreds of millions of our dollars on these unproven programs. It’s hopeless.
Johnny: in order to do that, the GOP would have to bother to put forward candidates for school board, city council, and mayor. They don’t.