Pearson Should Pay for Poor Performance
Today, Joe Nathan writes about widespread testing problems in Minnesota. Deborah Meier will respond on Thursday.
Because of massive, widespread problems with Minnesota's testing program, learning has been disrupted in the past two weeks for thousands of Minnesota students. The state's testing program has failed, repeatedly. Pearson has a two- year contract with the Minnesota Department worth $33.8 million.It's time for them to pay for their poor performance.
The Minnesota Department of Education says equipment failure and outside computer attacks on Pearson, the company hired to run our statewide tests, caused the problems. The problems became so bad that on April 21, Minnesota Commissioner of Education Brenda Casselliussuspended testing for April 22.
Josh Collins, MDE director of communications, told me: "We will not resume testing until all technical problems with the testing system are resolved." In the late afternoon April 22, MDE announced the testing would resume the next day. The announcement said Pearson had taken corrective actions and Pearson representatives assured MDE they are "confident that any similar service interruptions will be avoided for the remainder of the MCA testing window." MDE said it would extend the time allowed for MCA testing by two days.
But even after things were "fixed," districts reported problems. Last Sunday, the state's second largest daily paper, the St Paul Pioneer Press cited continuing problems.
Pearson should pay for its poor performance. I checked with more than 40 urban, suburban and rural districts and charters throughout the state. More than 90% reported major problems.
Milaca is a small, rural district. Superintendent Jerry Hansen's experience was repeated by many school leaders: "The conditions under which the tests were administered were varied and inconsistent from day to day, class to class, and student to student. Some students had to wait 20 to 40 minutes for the system to log them in, other students were dropped from testing when they used the Pearson-supplied calculator (requiring them to start the process over), some were told their data was not uploaded after they completed the exam (to highlight three examples)."
Here's what several other educators said:
-Jay Haugen, Farmington (suburban) superintendent, wrote: "Twice in the past week we experienced significant disruptions with MCA testing. Students (at all levels who were testing) already logged into the system were generally able to complete their tests, but schools were not able to get new sessions started. Because staff and students were uncertain as to when testing would resume they needed to wait a considerable time before we knew to cancel the morning's testing."
-Terry Moffatt, academic director of DaVinci Charter in suburban Blaine wrote: "While the department says the technical issues do not adversely affect testing, we disagree because we work very had to create the best possible testing environment and those environments have been disrupted to the detriment of students. When students have to stop in the middle of the test because it has shut down and wait to be restarted, it is frustrating, which obviously affects the testing environment."
-Dennis Peterson, superintendent in Minnetonka Schools (suburban), wrote: "We had many serious problems two years ago that affected our test scores, so last year we went back to using the paper version. It has been pretty good this year until today. MDE needs to get this all figured out Pearson Should Pay for Poor Performance - Bridging Differences - Education Week: