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by Morna McDermott
6-2-2012 2:00pm
Since when does one singular textbook company makes all the educational decisions that highly trained and experienced teachers with PhD’s who earned their degree used to make? Teacher education has been regulated for decades in America by such institutions as State Departments of Education. But a state-by-state wave of round of educational redesign and legislation represents a corporate takeover of public schools and colleges for private profit.
This “education reform” tsunami is sweeping over American Kindergarten through 12the Grade education – in order to turn schools, and children, into profit centers for hedge-fund managers, educational entrepreneurs, and textbook companies – especially the textbook giant Pearson.
The center of the profit center? The “Teacher Professional Assessment “ (TPA). This assessment was developed by The American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and Stanford University. This new form of teacher preparation assessment – skills assessment -- is going national- fast.
Twenty-four participating states plus the District of Columbia now comprise the Teacher Performance Assessment Consortium , which includes representatives from state education agencies and more than 140 institutions of higher education. The economic machine behind it all? Recently, TPA forged an exclusive deal with Pearson.
According to Pearson’s own website:
Pearson will provide Stanford University with the assessment services to deliver the TPA nationally, …. Pearson will also provide services such as the recruitment, training and certification of all scorers, scoring for all submitted TPA responses, and the generation of all official score reports to candidates and institutions of record (i.e., standard boards, state agencies, Institutions of Higher Education, including alternative preparation pathways).
To support the operational and ongoing implementation of TPA nationally as a sustainable state level licensure assessment system after the 2011-12 field test, Pearson will charge an operational assessment fee to candidates for all states that formally adopt through legislation or regulation the TPA for licensure and/or accreditation.”
Pearson has made 45 billion already testing kindergarten through 12th grade in state tests to which many parents object. This new venture will swell Pearson’s stock portfolios even further – with our schools’ state revenues and assessment fees.
Accompanying this push to assess teachers – for money for Pearson – is a drive to create alternative routes from the traditional colleges of education, to teacher licensing. These alternative routes including the right-wing reformers’ darling, Teach for America (TFA). These new alternative routes are being boosted by corporate ‘education reformers’ gunning to eliminate the power of educational colleges.
This new state--by-state legislation forcing schools to adopt the corporate-funding curriculum called “Common Core” corporate required testing measures, and corporate new teacher evaluations, eliminates parents’ and students’ consumer choice. The TPA is aligned with “Common Core State Standards.” The economics of the “Common Core” curriculum are also profit-driven: substancenews.net/articles.php?page=3004, susanohanian.org, educationalchemy.org, atthechalkface.com and schoolsmatter.org. These bills funnel state taxpayer dollars for education over to Pearson as the sole provider of nearly all educational resources available to all the schools.
Is that a free market?
Barabra Madeloni is a lecturer at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst who objected to using Pearson’s TPA:“The attempt to impose a corporate sponsored standard assessment on … teachers is one more example of the corporatization of public education and the surveillance, silencing and demands for obedience that accompany it.”
She refused to use Pearson’s TPA this past spring. One result? The University of Massachussetts is not renewing her teaching contract for fall 2013.
But there are many more of us teachers out there, who support Madeloni’s position.
According to the anti-corporatizing of public education group United Opt Out (unitedoptout.com) “Just as new legislation is passed, as new educational mandates are set, Pearson is suddenly able to provide the legions of educators and school systems clamoring for some kind of answer with just the right product. How can this be? In recent years, this once relatively small publishing house turned itself into a massive provider of a range of educational products, from traditional print materials for the K-12 sector, higher education resources and technology solutions for public school systems. It is one thing to have various products to sell and to allow the marketplace to judge their success or failure. It is another matter to reorganize the rules so that Pearson products are all one needs to buy to satisfy a range of emerging Federal and State education mandates.”
Sir Michael Barber is the current Chief Education Advisor for Pearson. Barber is a powerful advocate for the free-market approach to education – which includes union-busting, and turning public schools into privately-run, profit-generating charters. Barber writes:
(In Britain) we've had 18 years of reform with a series of consistent threads: devolution of resources, strong accountability, setting standards, national tests and introduction of school inspection …; designing all the materials at the national level and training everybody in a cascade out; using the accountability system to publish results and school inspection to check that people were adopting better practices. Essentially it's about creating different forms of a quasi-market in public services, exploiting the power of choice, competition, transparency and incentives,….”
And Pearson and Barber are getting their way – now throughout America: in Chicago, in California, and throughout the nation. Through the tracking of value added data of students taught by these teacher candidates during and after they graduate can be directly traced back not only to the university but to individual professors.
This new legislation states “that prospective teachers couldn't graduate from these programs unless they demonstrated that they could actually boost student achievement” and that furthermore, “States that choose to participate in the program would have to designate state ‘authorizers,’ who would approve and oversee the academies.”
Transparency is demanded of teachers – but not of the education policy makers, with their incestuous ties to educational corporations. These influencers weave together a nearly impenetrable web of legislation and educational requirements, pumping profits by mandating more regulation for everyone else – and a monopoly of profit for themselves.
But there is hope. There is resistance afoot. For more information on how corporations are destroying public education and privatizing it, and how to fight the corporate takeover. Visit United Opt Out National at unitedoptout.com. Join the fight. We have called for a Boycott of Pearson products and services. We are organizing university faculty in solidarity with Barabara Madeloni, who are willing to resist selling out their profession through forced fealty to Pearson.
In New York, parents and teachers are holding a “field trip to the Pearson field tests” protest at the steps of Pearson on June 7th and are conducting a boycott of the Pearson field tests. See ednotesonline.blogspot.com for information about these New York events.
Morna McDermott has been an educator for over twenty years. She is an Associate Professor of Education and an Administrator for United Opt Out National.
jameshorn Cambridge, MA
In reflecting on the rise of the American university system in 1918, Thorsten Veblen wrote "It is always possible, of course, that this pre-eminence of intellectual enterprise in the civilization of the Western peoples is a transient episode; that it may eventually—perhaps even precipitately, with the next impending turn in the fortunes of this civilization—again be relegated to a secondary place in the scheme of things and become only an instrumentality in the service of some dominant aim or impulse, such as a vainglorious patriotism, or dynastic politics, or the breeding of a commercial aristocracy" (Chapter 1, para 18). Almost a hundred years later, that "breeding of a commercial aristocracy" has become a cancer in the heart and brain of American education, K-20, that is growing ever larger as it eats away its host. What is needed is radical treatment, by surgery, poisoning, burning, or any other means at our disposal to eliminate the disease before it is too late. One thing that this particular tumor hates is exposure to air and light, which has the effect of halting its spread. So thank you, Dr. McDermott, for bringing light to this cancer and for being the kind of public intellectual and academic leader that John Dewey and Thorsten Veblen would celebrate if they were alive today. I know there are some in academe who have given up on the fearless pursuit of truth and would rather view themselves and their colleagues as epistemological shoe salesmen, always at the ready to fit the customer with the whatever product lines are being marketed at the time. Don't be dissuaded in your mission or corralled by the cowards. Keep fighting the good fight for as long as our patient has breath. Let us never give up.
Posted on June 8th, 2012
redhawk7 Oxford, OH
Morna McDermott is a longtime friend and colleague. She stands by children, teachers, and public schools. One of the important fields for debate right now concerns the ends to which corporations will co-opt our work in schools, our work on on curriculum, our work on the day to day functions of the art of teaching. In Schools of Education, it seems particularly important for scholars to call our attention to events and entities that monopolize and ultimately surveille us. And it's important for us to resist the language of customer and consumer when referring to educational acts and settings. It's not organic, it's transactional. The debate then steers from what is important to consider, and that is the educational and human impact on learners and schools when power races to control knowledge, evaluation, choice, and freedom itself. Education professors have long been vocal on these subjects and not heard. It's time to be heard. I appreciate Morna's voice, intent, and motives. She hopes for stronger teaching, stronger schools, stronger schools of education, and a stronger democratic republic marked by equity, justice and freedom, which we all, ultimately, deserve and must work for... Tom Poetter, Oxford, Ohio
Posted on June 8th, 2012
Jesse The Walking Man Turner W Hartford, CT
I never like the terminology of learners as customers. Customers can be, and are sometimes cheated. Business thinks buyer beware is an appropriate way to handle cheating. We have an endless history of law cases involving customers being cheated as well. So I rather stay away from corporate terms like customers in education. I certainly would not want public schools saying child beware. I also have an issue with the concept of serving school systems as well. Parents of children with special needs have often felt at odds with what their local school system over services. So a university serving the needs of a school system might very well place them selves in the way of doing what is right for a child in favor of serving the school system. We have lawsuits against school systems in 50 states over denial f services to ESL and Special needs students. We have the same regarding the failure to desegregate schools. Any notion of service to a school system might very well place universities front and center in courtrooms in those cases. If anyone serves anyone it's should be children not universities, or school systems. Let’s all remember we may work for schools, or universities, history informs us that people have done some deceitful things to individuals to stay in the good graces of their employers. Obviously Dr. McDermott is not one of those. She recognizes education has a moral component to put children first. Something tells me at Pearson they put the bottom line first at their board meetings not children. You can bet your bottom last dollar that the moment any of this begins to not turn a profit Pearson will drop it. Let’s be honest the customer comes second in their world. Sadly sometimes this is true for both universities and school system as well. Children are not customers they are our future, and our future deserves something more than a customer-service provider relationship. We could use more people like Dr. McDermott who put children first. If more people do not start putting children first then that headstone may very well be the foreshadowing of things to come. Bravo Dr. McDermott for putting children first. Sincerely, Jesse The Walking man Turner Children Are More Than Test Scores (Facebook) Save Our School March National Steering Committee.
Posted on June 8th, 2012
susano Charlotte, VT
In our current era of university silence on the corporate crushing of public education, I applaud Morna McDermott's willingness to speak truth to power. I would only add that I think Stanford University should be taken to task as well as Pearson. Pearson is, after all, a for-profit corporation, answerable to stockholders. What is Stanford's excuse?
Posted on June 8th, 2012
slekar Tyrone, PA
Assuming that anybody is a "customer" in the endeavor that we call education creates a dichotomy of winners and losers. Whether it's 1 year or 50 years of experience in education once you have been lured into the business language and culture of education I'm afraid that your values have been compromised. This article had nothing to do with teacher education and relationships with local schools. To bring this issue to the comment section is evidence of a motive that seeks to undermine the author instead of debating why we (educators) are allowing a single corporate conglomerate to control what, how, when, where and why we teach? And we don't prepare teachers for schools as they are, we prepare them for how schools should be.
Posted on June 8th, 2012
SKrashen Malibu, CA
mehickey: “We exist to serve the school systems and to meet their needs--” What is a university for? In my view, universities are the only place where scholars can pursue truth by doing research with no immediate application. Society needs them. The history of science tells us that major breakthroughs with very important applications often come from purely theoretical research (eg Boolean Algebra, non-Euclidean Geometry). In other words, university professors can pursue theory, without application. Schools of education have a unique position: They need to do both theory and application at the same time, working on aspects of learning theory that show promise of improving instruction. The rest of the university has the luxury of doing “esoteric” research and analyses, but schools of education do not. Moreover, pedagogical suggestions made by school of education professionals must be consistent with both applied and theoretical research, a daunting constraint. Companies like Pearson are free to focus only on the immediate perceived needs of their customers, without regard to the results of applied or theoretical research, and they often work hard to create a market for their materials. Prof. McDermott has pointed out the dangers in this situation. Schools of education serve both the short and long-term needs of the school system; they increase our body of knowledge about learning, and have the knowledge to point out when private sector products and claims are inconsistent with what is known about learning. If schools of education exist only to serve the immediate perceived needs of the school systems, there is no reason have schools of education. Pearson has already demonstrated that they are willing to fulfill this role. Footnote: Education professors who do only esoteric research (theory only with no possible application) and who are not up-to-date with what is going on in classrooms are incompetent.
Posted on June 8th, 2012
irashor@comcast.net
Prof. Morna McDermott is absolutely right to question the role of corporate players like Pearson which are driving educational policy over the cliff via nonstop testing. The private sector cannot be the driver of public education policy b/c the pvt sector has a conflict of interest--it must derive large monetary profit from all its transactions with the schools. What the pvt sector comes up with has to satisfy first and foremost its profit-driven needs. The public schools and public colleges of America are not private enterprises. They are public goods, public treasures, public agencies to improve the social lot of the majority who use them. Students, teachers, schools, and colleges are not "customers." They are mutually dependent stakeholders in a grand preoccupation with making this society a more humane, more democratic, and more fair place for our children. Businesses are not driven by those needs, so their imposition of commercial rhetoric on public schools--calling them "customers"--undermines the purpose of our embattled education sector. In these past years, we witnessed how unaccountable, profit-driven businesses drove the greatest economy in the world off a cliff. The business sector should be questioned for its damage to America, not bowed down to. We educators owe Prof. McDermott a debt for calling out Pearson Inc. for what it is, a profiteer and privateer getting rich while our schools get poor. Dr. Ira Shor, Professor of Rhetoric/Composition, City University of NY Graduate Center
Posted on June 8th, 2012
mark naison Brooklyn, NY
The most dangerous idea floating around in academic today is the view that Universities provide "Customer Service." When I became an historian, I thought that I my responsibility was seeking truth and honoring the best traditions of my profession as embodied by the scholars that came before me. The idea that I would subject either of those ideals to pleasing customers negates the ideals of liberal education and leads to the corruption of our profession., Morna McDermott is a brilliant scholar who has the courage to speak truth to power. She calls our attention to how the extreme concentration of wealth in this society has the potential to corrupt our public education system and has done great damage already. Her prophetic voice should not only be applauded, it should be welcome by scholars and teachers throughout out Universities, even in graduate schools of education I will close by saying this, If any administrator at my university asked me to do "Customer Service" and treat my students as customers, they would rue the day they dared to address me that way. Scholars serve a higher power than university administrators, boards of trustees, and test companies. Morna McDermott is keeping a noble tradition alive and I applaud her courage and insight Mark D. Naison Professor of African American Studies and History Fordham University Founder and Principal Investigator. The Bronx African American History Project
Posted on June 7th, 2012
mornamcdermott Catonsville, MD
Dear mehickey, Today "over 400 parents and children protested Pearson’s field tests, which are intended to help design future tests. The company has a $32 million state contract to produce tests." (http://gothamschools.org/2012/06/07/brandishing-pineapples-parents-and-students-target-pearson/). Thousands of principals and superintendents all over the country are fighting back against new teacher evaluations and increase standardized student testing. If indeed public schools are the "customer" as you say (we might have a friendly debate about that over coffee at a later date :)) then they are telling us they need our support-in mind and spine, to stand up and protect them from the forces of corporate-reform. This article does not examine the merits or shortcomings of the Teacher Professional Assessment or whether or not it meets the needs of schools to prepare future teachers, but rather factually states TPA's relationship to a larger corporate power which many on the ground K-12 teachers and leaders feel powerless to fight. It is about how a specific corporate agenda is manipulating schools, teachers and students in such a way that force them to collude with their own demise. I have spent many many MANY hours in K-12 setting for these 20 years-never got away from that-and i can tell you what I hear from them on the front lines ---and I think they would want us to speak out for them on their behalf.
Posted on June 7th, 2012
mehickey Columbia, MD
Morna: I admire you in so many respects and acknowledge that you have been an educator for over twenty years. I have been an educator for almost 50 years and feel compelled to respond to your comments. Having served in public education for 36 years before coming to the University 12 years ago, I recall one of the significant moments in my school system leadership career when I had occasion to contact the Dean of the College of which both of us are a part and convey the concerns of many of my staff and principals that the College was not doing an adequate job of providing supervision for the intern teachers who were being sent to us. To the credit of the College, the Dean at that time came to us along with several of his key administrators and we worked the problem out. This had a profound effect on my perception of the College, its leadership, and their view of us as a CUSTOMER, and their view that it was their job to consider the needs of the customer, rather than telling us what those needs should be. Your response suggests to me that such an understanding--meeting the needs of the customer--has been lost somewhere in the void of research and theory, as we at the university level seek evermore esoteric findings about what the public education systems that we serve "really" need, as opposed to what they are telling us they need. Somehow we need to change the misdirection of our thinking. We exist to serve the school systems and to meet their needs--not to tell them what their needs are, particularly when many of our number here at the University haven't set foot in a classroom or a school on a regular basis in many years--or at all. If my tone seems harsh, it's harshness is not directed at you, but reflects my frustration that we seem to have lost sight of our mission and the vision that mission should drive. I admire you for making your thoughts on this vital topic known and I hope that we have the opportunity for the discussion that this matter deserves.
Posted on June 5th, 2012