The New York Attorney General’s office launched an investigation this week into whether or not the education and testing of the state’s school children was sold to the highest bidder. A cloud of suspicion surrounds the Pearson Foundation, a nonprofit subsidiary of publicly traded Pearson Education Inc. (NYSE:PSO), the nation’s largest educational publisher and subject of a previous Crotty on Forbes column. The Pearson Foundation is being investigated for potentially lobbying state education officials improperly and footing the bill for those officials to take trips to numerous international locales
That’s it in a nutshell. This whole deal was the result of Pearson wining and dining state lawmakers and education officials. Now they will make the tests that break the teaching force.
Read the entire article here. It shows the national and even global reach of Pearson’s slimy tentacles.
Assailed Teacher 
This post might be worth a look as well–Academic research tied to any ideology you can sell.
http://btownerrant.com/2012/02/17/experts-serving-interests-academic-collusion-in-the-corporate-state/
Indeed. All of these “studies” in educational “research” are actually political tools that serve the elite that wish to destroy our schools.
We should try to see it as a “matter of fact”–a culture of elite managers using the tool of capital economy does not want to destroy schools; rather they want to “release” the resource. In a sense, they see students and funds for schools as a vein of coal they need to extract.
What will be interesting will be to see how the states/feds “release” us from any tax that goes to schools. If the market will save us we need our tax dollars released as well.
A little more to share: http://btownerrant.com/2012/02/20/competition-is-cultural-inbreeding/
I’m glad I have come across this post and this blog. My personal experiences as a high school board member trying to stop the standardized testing idiocy in Marin County and California. It is nothing short of child abuse.
Absolutely. That is all how these non-educators who want to “reform” the system know how to do.