Pearson's Vision for the World
Mercedes Schneider recently directed the blogosphere's attention to a Pearson paper from February of 2014, "Impacts of the Digital Ocean on Education." If you're wondering just what Pearson (and by extension, the various government bodies that they own) envisions for our collective future, this document sheds plenty of light.
There are 44 pages, and I'm not going to address them all at once for a variety of reasons, not the leas of which is that the document is exceptionally depressing. Let's just look at the front end today.
The intro page lists the actual authors (we'll get to them another day), a paragraph "About Pearson" ("the world's leading learning company") and an introduction to the series. "Sir Michael Barber, on behalf of Pearson, is commissioning a series of independent, open, and practical publications containing new ideas and evidence about what works in education." Since both authors of this paper work for Pearson, I'm not sure what "independent" means in this context. There is also a Creative Commons license.
After acknowledgements and a table of contents, we arrive at the Foreword by Sir Michael Barber. If you don't know about Barber, you should. A top honcho at Pearson, he has also worked as head of global education practice at McKinsey and was an advisor to PM Tony Blair. Three Moms Against
There are 44 pages, and I'm not going to address them all at once for a variety of reasons, not the leas of which is that the document is exceptionally depressing. Let's just look at the front end today.
The intro page lists the actual authors (we'll get to them another day), a paragraph "About Pearson" ("the world's leading learning company") and an introduction to the series. "Sir Michael Barber, on behalf of Pearson, is commissioning a series of independent, open, and practical publications containing new ideas and evidence about what works in education." Since both authors of this paper work for Pearson, I'm not sure what "independent" means in this context. There is also a Creative Commons license.
After acknowledgements and a table of contents, we arrive at the Foreword by Sir Michael Barber. If you don't know about Barber, you should. A top honcho at Pearson, he has also worked as head of global education practice at McKinsey and was an advisor to PM Tony Blair. Three Moms Against
3-19-14 CURMUDGUCATION: Inauthentic Assessment
CURMUDGUCATION: Inauthentic Assessment: Inauthentic AssessmentOne more factor that highlights how artificial and inauthentic the current testing regimen has become is the proliferation of rules for proctors.Faced with the spreading realization of just how invalid the tests are, testmakers and state officials have issued a truckload of proctor leash laws.Some rules are no-brainers. "Don't eras