“Learning isn’t a destination, starting and stopping at the classroom door. It’s a never-ending road of discovery and wonder that has the power to transform lives. Each learning moment builds character, shapes dreams, guides futures, and strengthens communities.” Those inspiring words and the accompanying video, Learning makes us, left me tingling like the ubiquitous ‘universal values’ Coke commercials.
Eventually, I snapped out of it –and realized that I’d been transported into the global world of British-based Pearson Education, the world’s largest learning and testing corporation, and drawn into its latest stratagem- the allure of 21st century creativity and social-emotional learning. The age of Personalized (or Pearsonalized) learning “at a distance” was upon us.
Globalization has completely reshaped education policy and practice, for better or worse. Whatever your natural ideological persuasion, it is now clear in early 2017 that the focus of K-12 education is on aligning state and provincial school systems with the high-technology economy and the instilling of workplace skills dressed-up as New Age ’21st century skills’ – disruptive innovation, creative thinking, competencies, and networked and co-operative forms of work.
The rise to dominance of “testopoly” from No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to the Common Core Standards assessment regime, and its Canadian variations, has made virtually everyone nervous, including legions of teachers and parents. Even those, like myself, who campaigned for Student Achievement Testing in the 1990s, are deeply disappointed with the meagre results in terms of improved teaching and student learning.
The biggest winner has been the learning corporation giants, led by Pearson PLC, who now control vast territories in the North American education sector. After building empires through business deals to digitalize textbooks and develop standardized tests with American and Canadian education authorities, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the company was again reinventing itself in response to the growing backlash against traditional testing and accountability.
Critics on the education left, most notably American education historian Diane Ravitch and BCTF research director Larry Kuehn, were among the first to flag and document the rise of Pearson Education, aptly dubbed “the many headed corporate hydra of education.” A June 2012 research report for the BCTF by Donald Gutstein succeeded in unmasking the hidden hand of Pearson in Canadian K-12 education, especially after its acquisition, in 2007, of PowerSchool and Chancery Software, the two leading computerized student information tracking systems.
More recently, New York journalist Owen Davis has amply demonstrated how Pearson “made a killing” on the whole American testing craze, including the Common Core Standards assessment program. It culminated in 2013, when Pearson won the U.S. contract to develop tests for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, as the only bidder.
When the pendulum started swinging back against testing from 2011 to 2013, Pearson PLC was on the firing line in the United States but remained relatively sheltered in Canada. From Texas to New York to California, state policy makers scaled back on standardized assessment programs, sparked by parent and student protests. In Canada, the Toronto-based People for Education lobby group, headed by veteran anti-tester Annie Kidder, saw an opening and began promoting “broader assessment” strategies encompassing “social-emotional learning” or SEL. Pearson bore the brunt of parent outrage over testing and lost several key state contracts, including the biggest in Texas, the birthplace of NCLB.
Beginning in 2012, Pearson PLC started to polish up its public image and to reinvent its core education services. Testing only represented 10 per cent of Pearson’s overall U.S. profits, but the federal policy shift represented by the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) tilted in the direction of reducing “unnecessary testing.” The company responded with a plan to shift from multiple-choice tests to “broader measures of school performance,” such as school climate, a survey-based SEL metric of students’ social and emotional well-being.
“For the past four years, Pearson’s Research & Innovation Network has been developing, implementing, and testing assessment innovations,” Vice President Kimberly O’Malley recently reported. This new Pearson PLC Plan is closely aligned with ESSA and looks mighty similar to the Canadian People for Education “Broader Measures” model being promoted by Annie Kidder and B.C. education consultant Charles Ungerleider. Whether standardized testing recedes or not, it’s abundantly clear that “testopoly” made Pearson and the dominance of the learning corporations is just entering a new phase.
How did Pearson and the learning corporations secure such control over, and influence in, public education systems? What’s behind the recent shift from core knowledge achievement testing to social-emotional learning? Is it even possible to measure social-emotional learning and can school systems afford the costs of labour-intensive “school improvement” models? Will the gains in student learning, however modest, in terms of mathematics and literacy, fade away under the new regime?
My opinion is Pearson Education will not succeed. It`s just an opinion, but…
Pearson has lost its soul and their strategy is about planning for the future but we don`t really know how the future will play out in education.
President-elect Donald Trump`s plans for one are to reduce testing and he doesn`t support Common Core. All that prep for Common Core and now it may be under the bus. Not easy for companies to find a successful journey.
Teachers will not be replaced and digitization is all fine and dandy but kids need multi-sensory instruction,hear,talk,discuss,write,then read on the internet the digitized materials.Teachers need to teach, show,arrange experiences and discuss.
I am no expert but I collect experiences from the field and the individuality of the teachers is still a major component of the student`s experience, one year we benefit and learn,the next we feel stifled by the change in teacher.It`s like life and we`ll never get to perfect,the key is to keep trying.
One place where pedagogy should rule versus talent is the K-3 marketplace. Students need to learn to read,spell and write and do arithmetic. Publishers should not sell things that have no basis in research for that age group,it causes tremendous damage.
I agree 100% with Jo Anne 😅 is this a 1st.
I agree, Jo Anne. Re: ” Teachers need to teach, show, arrange experiences, and discuss.” These are the core aspects of what teachers need to do well. A key question good teachers ask every day is, out of the myriad of possible experiences students can have in the classroom in any one teaching period, what do we choose that will, as a former colleague once said, give the most bang for the buck. Following that, we plan how to manage a discussion that will help students understand important aspects of the experiences, make connections, and organize what they learn. Digital and other forms of commercial packaged materials can not replace the thinking and skills of a good teacher; they can supplement usefully, if well-designed, but not replace. A knowledgeable, skillful teacher can select and use tools and programs as needed, as opposed to slavishly implementing programs and using tools with minimal understanding.
Quick anecdote: once, when discussing with school board math instructional leaders how my teacher candidates could work with host teachers to plan and teach math lessons using what the candidates had been learning, I was told by one instructional leader, that the candidates would not be free to discuss, plan with their host teachers, and then teach something they had come up with outside of a certain text books-based math program because the teachers at that time were “implementing ” said program package that had been recently purchased by the board, and they had been instructed to follow the teachers’ guide verbatim , lockstep. I was floored. I understand that if teachers have little teaching experience and knowledge of a subject, using a well-developed guide can be very helpful; however, it seemed to me at the time that the main goal of the instructional leader in this case, was to ensure that the implementation of the, no-doubt very costly, textbook program purchase went well, and therefore opportunities for teachers and candidates to discuss and use alternative approaches was to be limited.
I think things are different now in that board, but it seems that Pearson and other publishing companies continue to search for ways to be indispensable to teaching and capitalize on a lucrative market.
Much to agree with Jo-Anne.
As for testing I could cite (again) Jim Popham and Robert Linn who were experts in this for decades and who came to the conclusion that such testing had no +ve effect.
Instead I invite people to read
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/01/07/poet-i-cant-answer-questions-on-texas-standardized-tests-about-my-own-poems/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_1_na&utm_term=.6b4ffb3b8d4a
Thos reminds me of the computer assessment of works by Shakespeare which awarded him a mere pass
Sad to hear your account, Lynne
I have been saying for 30 years that there is no positive relationship between testing and achievement. None zip nada. There is sometimes a negative relationship in that testing has been shown to increase the dropout rate of marginalized students. University of Texas at Austin.
Vito Perrine former dean of the grad school of education at Harvard.
“Standardized testing does not tell us anything that we didn’t already know.”
Eg the poor kids do badly. STOP THE PRESSES!!!
Parrone *
John Myers favourite on testing and other sacred cows.
5 Big Ideas In Education That Don’t Work
http://flip.it/Aoy4Cj
Standardized testing has now become so prevalent in American schools that it has attracted madcap humorists. Back in May of 2015, John Oliver of Last Week Tonight (HBO) had a field day mocking the phenomenon:
Thanks to Max Cooke at CEA for tipping me off about this entertaining little satire.
USA just keep expanding privatization and testing to the point of self parody but they never move an inch up the PISA rankings.
Hint: there is no connection between testing privatization and achievement gains.
Somebody tell Betsy Devos.
As long as this economic polarization continues and accelerates, little that happens in schools from reformers or progressives will make much difference.
I suppose good schools can fight a rear guard action to mitigate decline but that may be it.
On a positive note I am beginning to feel that the Davos crowd are starting to notice that free trade deregulation privatization and tax cuts for the 1% are actually making things worse and leading to social political and economic turmoil.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/inequality-economy-united-states-233642
forgot link.
One of the great differences between progressives and corporate reformers is this.
Reformers believe that the sum total of individual choices leads to overall collective advancement.
Progressives believe that the selfish application of “what is good for my child” does not only does NOT lead to collective advancement, it actually inhibits collective (national) advancement.
We need to focus on what is the greatest good for all rather than what is best for each child thinking only of selfish individualism.
Interesting article!
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/management/how-for-profit-education-made-class-clowns-of-four-businesspeople/article33653033/?utm_source=Shared+Article+Sent+to+User&utm_medium=E-mail:+Newsletters+/+E-Blasts+/+etc.&utm_campaign=Shared+Web+Article+Links
Good article Jo Anne,
They inveriably have this brain wave that if you could just replace expensive teachers (70% of most board budgets) with technology there is enormous profit potential. They don’t get it that parents hate screen time and love art music physical ed and real human contact.
Told his tech was expensive Bill Gates just says – make classes bigger! Terry Moe just says – we can use tech to destroy the unions!
Report after report says elearning and MOOCS are failure.
Step right up…lose your shirt.
One friend put the conundrum in education to me in a very tight way recently.
If the question is:
1) what is best for my child
Or
2) what is best for the nation’s children
We are talking about two different and in most cases opposite sets of policies.
A fellow researchED blogger, Greg Ashman, has posted a very perceptive analysis of recent attempts to assess “soft skills” like resilience.
Here’s a link to the commentary: https://gregashman.wordpress.com/2017/02/01/the-fatal-flaw-in-attempts-to-assess-soft-skills/
Renowned education researcher Dylan Wiliam responded to Greg Ashman’s commentary on February 3, 2017 with his own take on the prevalence of “gaming the test” — and its impact on the validity of resilience assessments. Here’s his full comment, from Greg Ashman’s splendid blog, “Filling the Pail’:
In an earlier life, I was a senior research director at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, NJ. One of the research centers in the cluster that I led was the “Centre for New Constructs” and we had some of the world’s leading researchers in this field working on how to avoid the problem that Greg identifies (which researchers in this area usually describe as “gaming the test”—students giving socially desirable rather than honest answers). We never did figure out a way of getting round this problem, and I, for one, am fairly confident that we never will. The reason that maths tests work is because if you do not know how to solve the problem, you can’t fake it. This will always be a problem in the assessment of “non-cognitive” aspects of human performance. In this context, it is also worth noting that some of Angela Duckworth’s best known studies suffer from what statisticians call restriction of range. If you look at students at highly-selective institutions like West Point, then of course non-cognitive measures will account for more of the variation in final performance, because you have ensured that, on cognitive measures, all the candidates are almost identical. With the range of these variables found in the whole population, however, cognitive variables almost always have higher correlations with performance outcomes than do non-cognitive measures, even when students aren’t gaming the test. If students are gaming the test, then of course those who score higher on cognitive tests will be better at it, so much of the variation you think is due to the non-cognitive factors is actually just a difference in how smart test-takers are in figuring out what you want. Conversely, about one-third of the variation in IQ test scores is actually just perseverance. Some test-takers give up as soon as they hit a string of questions they can’t answer, while others persist. You might think that this might provide a way of assessing non-cognitive skills reliably—let’s just look at which students reach the end of the test, and which students give up. But as soon as students know this is what you are going to look at, they’ll make sure that every question has an answer.”