Lily Eskelsen Garc\u00eda is the president of the National Education Association, the largest teachers union in the United States. (It is in fact the largest union of any kind in the country.)\u00a0 In this post, she looks at current education reform efforts and calls for education companies to be transparent about what they are doing and how it is affecting young people.<\/p>\n
By\u00a0Lily Eskelsen Garc\u00eda<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a line in one of my favorite movies that reminds me of why it\u2019s important to say what we mean. In the \u201cThe Princess Bride,\u201d after misusing the word \u201cinconceivable\u201d several times, Vizzini, one of three outlaws who capture the princess, is challenged by his fellow kidnapper, Inigo, who tells him, \u201c\u2026you keep saying that word, I\u00a0do not think that means what you think it means.\u201d<\/p>\n
We know that when someone says \u201ceducation reform,\u201d it can mean any variety of things. \u00a0If you look at the sprawling edu-business sector, the meaning can be summed up by two\u00a0ideas: over-reliance and misuse of standardized testing, and the notion that for-profit corporations should run our school systems.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve seen figures ranging from $2 billion to $60 billion in terms of the worth of the U.S. testing market; the global market for\u00a0edu-business and for-profit schooling is in the\u00a0ball-park\u00a0of $4 trillion. The real profit margins may be shifting, but they are certainly growing and the opportunity costs\u2014the trade-offs made in service to expanding these profit margins are beyond measure.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m generally not a pessimist. Really, I\u2019m not. But there seems to be a growing correlation between the brightening profit forecasts for the testing industry and the growing alarm over the misuse and overreliance on standardized tests among parents, educators and advocates; the dollars invested in U.S. testing companies are fueling efforts that are hurting students here in the United States and throughout the developing world. I\u2019ll give you two examples of what I mean.<\/p>\n
Here in the United States, Pearson was recently called out<\/a> for concerns with how it was monitoring students\u2019 social media activity, relative to certain school exams. I am very concerned that, according to news reports, Pearson is mining information posted on social media, and matching it with students\u2019 private information that Pearson collects as a test provider. \u00a0Is student privacy being sacrificed for the sake of profits? \u00a0We don\u2019t know, but Pearson needs to come clean about everything it is doing with student information. All education companies do; Pearson is not the only company that does such monitoring.<\/p>\n Concerned parents, students, teachers, and school administrators need to know that this information is being used only for legitimate educational purposes, and not for commercial gain. \u00a0At a minimum, Pearson, and all other standardized test producers should agree to the Student Data Principles<\/a> for using and safeguarding students\u2019 personal information. These principles were developed and put forward by dozens of education organizations, including NEA.<\/p>\n The potential misuse of data is one of Pearson\u2019s most recent offenses in the United States, but the company\u2019s conduct abroad is raising other serious concerns. \u00a0Have you ever heard the term \u201cpay-as-you-learn?\u201d It is a business model that provides a student with access to school, only if the student has paid a daily fee to enter the doors on a given day. The model has been launched\u00a0in Ghana in the Omega Schools, funded by the\u00a0Pearson Affordable Learning Fund<\/a>. Touted as a \u201clow-fee\u201d and \u201clow-cost\u201d way to provide children in the developing world with an education, the\u00a0PERI Initiative<\/a>, a respected global research and networking initiative,\u00a0has looked into the\u00a0new initiative by Pearson<\/a>\u00a0and found that it is far from an opportunity for poor children. In developing countries this \u2018pay-as-you-learn\u2019 model can mean that small children themselves may have to work to afford to attend school and it can also mean that families may spend the bulk of their meager incomes to send just one child to school.\u00a0 It is a disturbing and growing trend and the potential profit for the testing industry is enormous. \u00a0Let me be very clear that while I\u2019m describing things that are happening in the developing world, American educators may well recognize some of these same conditions and ideas taking seed here in the United States.<\/p>\n These are just two examples of acts in the name of education reform.\u00a0 How did we get here and what are the seeds and conditions that make this possible? Well, there are several, including powerful corporations; a devalued teaching profession; a uniform school-in-a box approach, complete with a standardized script for teaching and learning; and an insatiable appetite for profits.\u00a0 Pasi Sahlberg, the Finnish scholar who is an expert on international education,\u00a0 once appropriately described this phenomenon as the Global Education Reform Movement<\/a> (GERM) and America is not the only nation stricken by this growing trend; we\u2019re witnessing the spread of new mutations across the globe.<\/p>\n Once when we said public education, we meant the greatest American ideal of all\u2014universal and free quality education for each and every student. \u00a0Public education has been the engine of our economy, the cradle of our democracy, and a model for the world. \u00a0It is still the greatest education idea we\u2019ve ever had, but we\u2019re seeing the twisting of its meaning and we must rededicate ourselves to restoring the ideals that focused first and foremost on people\u2014not on profits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lily Eskelsen Garc\u00eda is the president of the National Education Association, the largest teachers union in the United States. (It is in fact the largest union of any kind in the country.)\u00a0 In this post, she looks at current education … Continue reading