See the Talk out of School interview above, in which Akil Bello, testing expert and critic, discusses the Pearson contract for the SHSAT due to be voted on next month, at a cost of $17 million over five years. As he explains, the SHSAT is a very weird and controversial exam that has never been independently validated or assessed for racial or gender bias, and admits far fewer Black, Latino and female students. This year, just 4.5% of offers went to Black students, and 7.6% to Latino students, though the two groups make up 65% of NYC students.
Akil also discusses the move away from Regents state exams, the digital SAT, changes in test score optional colleges and diversity in their students populations. If you go to the Simplecast website, you can also check out more resources that critique the SHSAT and other high-stakes exams, including the Regents and the now digital SAT; We also talk about recent developments with test-score optional colleges and the change in diversity at higher ed institutions due to the Supreme Court decision disallowing Affirmative Action.
But here is a timeline showing that whatever your viewpoint on testing, Pearson is not to be trusted with any DOE contract:
In 2012, the state exam produced by Pearson featured the
infamous Pineapple
reading passage that made news nationwide, and years later even
featured on John Oliver’s HBO Show This Week tonight. (you can google
it; we broke the story first). The Pineapple became a symbol of everything
wrong about standardized testing. Worst thing was this reading passage had been
included for years on lots of other Pearson state exams, sparking criticisms by
students and teachers each time. The exam featured at least 30
other errors, with
faulty questions and problems with translation and scoring.
In 2013, Pearson state exams were too long, too difficult, full of ambiguous questions that made children cry. They also featured crass, commercial product placements as well as reading passages lifted off of Pearson textbooks that had been purchased and assigned to students elsewhere in the state but not NYC. According to Kathleen Porter Magee of the conservative Fordham Institute, Pearson was abusing its monopoly power in way that "threatens the validity of the English Language Arts (ELA) scores for thousands of New York students and raises serious questions about the overlap between Pearson's curriculum and assessment divisions."
Also in 2013, the Pearson Charitable Foundation paid $7.7 million fine after the State Attorney General
found they had broken state laws by generating business for the company.
Also in 2013, Pearson agreed to pay $75 million in damages plus costs to settle a lawsuit over price-fixing e-books.
Also in 2013, they were found to make mistakes in scoring the NYC Gifted and talented tests, not once but twice,
In 2015, it was discovered that Pearson was monitoring students’ social media who criticized their NJ state exams.
Here is a list of other Pearson problems through 2016.
In 2018, Pearson lax security practices led to one of the largest student data beaches in history of their AIMS web program between 2001 and 2016, and who were enrolled in 13,000 school and universities throughout the country. The breach involved probably millions of students including many in NY, whose data should have been long deleted because they no longer had contracts for the delivery of the program. The FBI alerted Pearson to the breach in March 2019, but they didn’t tell anyone, including the schools or the students till months later, July 31, 2019.
In 2021, Pearson was fined
$1M by the FEC for misleading investors about the
AIMs breach. [They should also have had to pay the families of the students' whose data was breached, as well as had all future contracts blocked by NY State for having violated the required timeline of reporting on the breach, but weren't.]
In
2020, Pearson was awarded a huge contract with DOE despite 34
investigations for discrimination against its employees on grounds of race,
disability, gender, age, etc. and many technical issues with erroneous
scoring, online service disruptions, the above breach, and more.
In 2021, a Pearson Middle
East textbooks was pulled in the UK for bias.
In 2023, the plans of hundreds of
international students to enroll in UK universities were derailed
after Pearson revoked some of their online English language exam results
following allegations of cheating, without giving students a
chance to appeal these decisions.
What makes DOE think that Pearson is capable of developing, scoring and administering and scoring a reliable exam -- even if you believe in the notion of high-stakes testing?
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