NJ, Pearson, and PARCC: Lies or ineptitude?
A legal analyst for the New Jersey education department told a legislative committee the other day that Pearson, the multi-billion British corporation that produces the PARCC tests, could protect its “intellectual property” rights in the test by searching out what students are posting about the test on social media sites. The only problem with what Patrician Morgan said it this: Pearson doesn’t own the tests or the test questions.
A few days earlier, The New York Times blog “Bits” reported that PARCC–a coalition of a dozen states that hired Pearson to develop the tests–had ordered Pearson to stop using a database of student information to search out the students. There is a problem with that, too–few, if any, people outside the PARCC coalition even knew Pearson, a private company, had access to such a database.
Someone is lying. Or obfuscating. And the pity is that, given how feckless the New Jersey Assembly Education Committee was the other day in drawing out information from the education department, most parents are left not knowing what was going on.
State Education Commissioner David Hespe, in a move of breathtaking cowardice, refused to show up to answer the committee’s questions. He had been asked to come to the meeting days before but somehow could not clear his calendar in time to address the uproar over the revelations in his site that Pearson was spying on the social media postings of New Jersey children. Pearson also didn’t show him. To plead a previous engagement was, pure and simple, a lie.
Instead, he sent a young lawyer, Patricia Morgan, who read from a script and then offered to answer questions, although it was clear she knew very little about the NJ, Pearson, and PARCC: Lies or ineptitude? | Bob Braun's Ledger:
