Standing Up to Pearson: Speaking Out, Sharing Stories, Growing Resistance

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Some of the 67 UMass students who said no to Pearson with Barbara Madeloni.

Education Radio has been following the developments of the University of Massachusetts student teacher resistance to the Pearson supported Teacher Performance Assessment. The attempt to impose a corporate sponsored standard assessment on pre-service teachers is one more example of the corporatization of public education and the surveillance, silencing and demands for obedience that accompany it. Following our report of March 24, Mike Winerip ran an article that brought the students’ resistance to readers of the New York Times. As we have shared on our blog, the response has been nothing short of astonishing as teachers, teacher educators, parents, students and community members from across the country contacted education radio producer Barbara Madeloni and the students to speak their support and share their own stories of the destructiveness of Pearson and problems with the Teacher Performance Assessment.

Rachel Hoogstraten, Alex Hoyo, Katie Smith, Danielle Nelson

Steven Cohen

In this week’s program, we speak with some of those supporters about why they felt compelled to contact Barbara, how Pearson and/or the TPA are impacting their lives, and how we might further this resistance. Judith Kocik, director of an adult education program and Kip Fonsh, school committee member and director of education for a county jail, explain the devastating impact of Pearson's purchase of the GED.  Parent and community member Alex Pirie talks about his delight that University students are taking a stand against corporatization of the University and teacher educator Steven Cohen, from Tufts University, helps us understand how contrary is the TPA to the needs of developing teachers. We also hear from Ginette Delandshire, from Indiana University Bloomington, who was involved in the first iteration of the teacher performance assessment, her critiques of it, and how these critiques have been ignored.  As well, we speak with some of the UMass students who engaged in the resistance about how they felt about the article, about the response to it, and about how this action will impact their work as teachers.

Alex Pirie

Ginette Delandshere

In developing this program, we discovered more detail about the menacing and destructive reach of the testing giant Pearson and its profiteering on the most marginalized and vulnerable of our community.  And we discovered a broad range of people who are articulate and angry about the neoliberal assault on public education.

The Reality of Virtual Schooling

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In this week's program, we explore the proliferation of virtual schools. Virtual schools offer on-line education to primary and secondary school students without the added expenses associated with brick and mortar structures and unionized teachers and support staff.  

We hear opinions on virtual schools from well-known education scholars Jonathon Kozol and Diane Ravitch. We investigate one such virtual school, the Massachusetts Virtual Academy in Greenfield, Massachusetts. We talk with the superintendent of schools, Susan Hollins, who was the driving force behind the opening of that school in 2010, and we also speak with two Greenfield School Committee members, Maryelen Calderwood and Andrew Blais, who opposed it. Finally, we turn to early childhood education scholar Nancy Carlsson-Paige, who talks about the vitally important social, emotional and cognitive needs of young children that are in danger of not being met by virtual schools.

We also explore K12 Inc., a for-profit publicly traded technology-based education company that touts itself as the largest provider of proprietary curriculum and online education programs for primary and secondary students in the United States. It is also one of the fastest growing operators of virtual charter schools worldwide. K-12 Inc. was founded in 1999 by Michael Milken and William J. Bennett, a former Reagan Secretary of Education and Bush senior drug czar.  We take some time to talk about the background of these men, along with several others involved with this company, as a means to expose the insidious nature of companies like K12 Inc. 

To learn more about virtual schools and about what you hear on this program, visit the following links:
Education According to Mike Milken by John Hechinger
Virtual Schools Expand Students' Network by Laura Insensee
Outsourcing Information: The Rise of Virtual Schools by Nancy Hanover
The Massachusetts Virtual Academy
Susan Ohanian on K-12

Pearson's Teacher Performance Assessment: Exposed!

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"From one educator to another, thank you for taking a stand!" 

In this weeks program, we listen to an episode we originally aired back in March about the development of a national Teacher Performance Assessment, driven by the testing giant, Pearson, Inc. Thanks to a recent story in the New York Times, this topic has gained new relevance and has opened up the discussion to a wider audience. Michael Winerip's article, "New Procedure for Teaching LicenseDraws Protest," appeared in the New York Times on Monday, May 7th. The story featured University of Massachusetts Amherst student teachers and instructors who are refusing to take part in the field test of a Teacher Performance Assessment being implemented by Pearson, Inc., a private company and the largest assessment and testing provider in the United States.

Both our program and the NYTimes article feature teacher educator, and Education Radio producer, Barbara Madeloni and her student teachers explaining what the TPA is and why they are resisting it. After our original broadcast, we heard from teachers and teacher educators from around the country who were also struggling with ways to resist. The article in the Times has, excitingly, further opened the discussion of the privatization of teacher training and resistance to this national audience. Since the story was published, we've received an incredible amount of feedback and comments that have affirmed the work of Barbara and her student teachers. This outcry of parents, teachers, activists and others who have contacted Barbara or commented on the article should remind us all that there are many out there who disagree with the current trend of privatizing public education. And that the act of teacher training cannot and should not be reduced to an assembly-line, Taylorist logic.

A sampling of comments from around the country that were sent to Barbara Madeloni, with identifying information removed, can be found after the jump...

Detracking for Education Equity: A Lecture by Carol Burris

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In this week's program we will be listening to a speech by Dr. Carol Corbett Burris about the negative impacts of tracking and the possibilities and opportunities that exist when schools detrack students.  This speech was delivered as part of the Simmons College/Beacon press Race, Education & Democracy Lectures on March 31, 2012. 

Beginning her career as a Spanish teacher Dr. Burris is now the principal of South Side High School in the Rockville Center School District in suburban Long Island, which has seen a staggering increases in student achievement and the near elimination of the achievement gap as a result of detracking.  Dr Burris received her PhD from Teachers College in 2003 where her award-winning dissertation detailed the positive effects seen on student achievement when her district began detracking math classes.

Dr. Burris recently made headlines with the Open Letter of Concern she co-authored with Wheatley school principal Sean Fenny protesting the use of evaluating teachers and principles by student test scores. As of today over 1400 New York state principals have signed this letter of resistance to neoliberal education reform.