In an article by Sharon Lurye , titled, Concerns rising over Pearson, the company behind PARCC and other tests, “…five million kids in the United States, including New Jersey, will take a new standardized test -  the PARCC [Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers Potential.] .

Pennsylvania will take a new certification test – the PAPA [Pre-service Academic Performance Assessment]  And thousands of men and women who never finished high school will be betting their futures on the results of a proficiency exam – the GED [General Educational Development].  

What do all these tests have in common? The company that administers them: Pearson.”

Pearson is a company responsible for many products and services for the education industry. In an article, D.C. Denison (2012), titled, “Textbook publishers prep for the e-future.” forecasted what is now current state of affairs.

“For most of the past six months, Vicky Shen, an editor at textbook publisher Pearson Education in Boston, has been living with a secret…Just a few blocks away in the Back Bay, Bethlam Forsa, executive vice president of global product development at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Inc. was working on the same undercover project.

Both were preparing electronic editions for last week’s launch of an initiative from Apple Inc. to put textbooks on its iPad tablets. In a recent biography, the computer maker’s cofounder Steve Jobs said the textbook business was “ripe for destruction,’’ but it turns out Apple wants Pearson and Houghton to be partners, not casualties of technology. ‘

Before Apple came along, Pearson Education, a division of global publishing giant Pearson PLC in London, already had hundreds of Web developers, user interface designers, and graphic artists producing digital textbooks and materials for a wide range of computers and smartphones. “

"As relayed by Sharon Lurye, there are directives being sent down from the US Department of Education to schools. “The [Department of Education] informed us that Pearson is monitoring all social media during PARCC testing. I have to say that I find that a bit disturbing...." – Watchung Hills superintendent Elizabeth Jewett, in an email sent to other superintendents.

There is much criticism of Pearson as relayed in the article by Jennifer Reingold, titled, Everybody hates Pearson ,  “The venerable publishing company is trying to reinvent itself for the Digital Age—­­in the most fraught, political, emotion-racked field there is: your children’s education. That’s stirring up a lot of anger.”

Pearson CEO John Fallon Photograph by Jason Larkin for Fortune Magazine

Jennifer Reingold further relays information from John Fallon, Pearson CEO John Fallon, “who succeeded longtime Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino in January 2013, is at the helm of an ambitious quest to reinvent the 171-year-old publishing company, best known for its ownership of the Financial Times and its international textbook business, as a “global learning services company.” The goal is not merely to build a more successful and sustainable business—an imperative as Pearson’s traditional print operations shrivel—but also to improve the lives of millions of people throughout the world. “It doesn’t matter to us whether our customers are hundreds of thousands of individual students and their parents in China, or thousands of school districts in America,” says Fallon. “What we’re trying to do is the same thing—to help improve learning outcomes.”

In regards to aspects of these standardized tests that they administered, Pearson took it as an opportunity to further its technological prowess.

Robo Graders

As stated in the article by, Les Perelman, titled, Flunk the robo-graders,  “PARCC, the consortium of states including Massachusetts that is developing assessments for the Common Core Curriculum, has contracted with Pearson Education, the same company that graded the notorious SAT essay, to grade the essay portions of the Common Core tests. Some students throughout Massachusetts just took the pilot test, which wasted precious school time on an exercise that will provide no feedback to students or to their schools.

It was, however, not wasted time for Pearson. The company is using these student essays to train its robo-grader to replace one of the two human readers grading the essay, although there are no published data on their effectiveness in correcting human readers.”

However, the question arises as to the accuracy and credibility to these results. As Les Perelman continues. “Unfortunately, the problem in evaluating these machines is the lack of transparency on the part of the private vendors and the researchers associated with them. None of the major testing companies allow easy access or open-ended demonstrations of their robo-graders. My requests to the testing companies to examine their products have largely gone unanswered. A Pearson vice president explained that I was denied access to test the product now being considered by PARCC because I wanted “to show why it doesn’t work.” I was able to obtain access to Vantage’s IntelliMetric only by buying its Home School Edition.” (Perelman, 2014)

The sign of the Pearson times to come can be illustrated in the article by Kalpana Pathak titled, Pearson India plans to be the largest education company by 2020  “ Pearson Education, the Indian arm of the London-listed Pearson, is on a global transformation journey graduating from its largely publishing business to expanding into school, higher education and vocational training.

As a global organization, we are trying to change from a company which is focused around product to one which is moving to digital and solutions. We want to focus around impacting learner outcomes and be accountable and answerable on the efficacy framework,” said Deepak Mehrotra, managing director, Pearson India.”

Standardization is a good thing in the sense that it unifies and establishes requirements, objectives, thresholds for achievement goals and curriculum. However, care must be taken as to how it is implemented, measured, monitored and enforced.   Privatization has been tricky in the educational industry with its successes and detrimental failures. In essence, Pearson controls so much of public education.

I favor it in educational environments, the higher educational arenas especially the online classrooms. Otherwise, what assurances are there then for the accreditation boards and other governing overseers for the quality and delivery of the education? What assurances are there then for the student to know that their class is covering what needs to be covered for their degree program?

There is a rapid increase is the usage of automation and AI technologies in the assessment and delivery processes especially in the online environment, but also there is the simultaneous gathering of learner analytics which will shed light on the directions we have, are and should be going. I think all of this new research and analysis we get from all this newly amassed data is important in aiding us in establishing a plateau and stabilization for these processes. I think these emerging direction, strategies and technologies are very good, However. we just need to refine and define them better.

The Triumph of David

Overall, we are in a fantastic era right now with history making, ground breaking evolutions and revolutions, that just need time and attention so as to stabilize workable, successful solutions. Maybe we just need to exercise a little bit of patience before we judge, criticize and leave behind.

References

Denison, D.C. (2012). Textbook publishers prep for the e-future, Retrieved from https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2012/01/26/textbook-publishers-prep-for-future/uh313qJKA3fhhWQlfkssIN/story.html

Lurye , S. (2015). Concerns rising over Pearson, the company behind PARCC and other tests. Retrieved from http://www.phillyvoice.com/concerns-rising-over-pearson/.

Pathak, K. (2015). Pearson India plans to be the largest education company by 2020. Retrieved from http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/pearson-india-plans-to-be-the-largest-education-company-by-2020-114123000317_1.html.

Pearson. (2016). Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). Retrieved from http://parcc.pearson.com/.

Pearson. (2015). Pre-service Academic Performance Assessment (PAPA). Retrieved from http://www.pa.nesinc.com/GetInfo.aspx?f=PA001_TestPage.html&c=Test%20Information&q=What%20is%20the%20cost%20of%20the%20test?&t=PA001&h=FindInfoTestFee

Pearson Vue (2016). GED Testing Service. Retrieved from https://home.pearsonvue.com/About-Pearson-VUE/Discover-Pearson-VUE/Pearson-VUE-businesses/GED-Testing-Service.aspx

Pearson Vue. (2015). Pennsylvania Educator Certification Tests (PECT). Retrieved from http://www.pearsonvue.com/pect/.

Perelman, L. (2014). Flunk The Robo-Graders, Retreived from https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/04/30/standardized-test-robo-graders-flunk/xYxc4fJPzDr42wlK6HETpO/story.html

Reingold, J. (2015). Everyone Hates Pearson. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2015/01/21/everybody-hates-pearson/. Video: http://for.tn/1E0vj3g