State Rep. Bo Mitchell of Nashville is questioning the wisdom of an emergency test-grading contract granted to Pearson for the grading of TNReady tests from this year.
According to WSMV:
“Pearson is no better than Measurement Inc.,” said Rep. Bo Mitchell, D-Nashville.
Mitchell, who has been critical of standardized testing, is not fully confident in Pearson.
“Just in the last week, they’ve lost another huge contract,” Mitchell said. “In the last few months, they’ve lost testing contracts with the state of Texas, state of New York and the state of Florida. So if they’re not producing for them, why are we to think that they will produce for us?”
He said the last minute moves are too costly for students, schools and the state.
Mitchell’s not the only one raising concerns about Pearson. According to the story:
The Washington Post recently profiled testing concerns with Pearson. It listed nearly 20 years of testing and scoring flaws that have caused the company to lose multi-million dollar contracts with schools in some cases.
It’s not clear how much value the state will receive for the $18.5 million contract as the grades 3-8 results will be incomplete (part II of testing was not completed) and the results are not anticipated until December, well past time to provide useful information for teachers and students.
In addition to this emergency contract, the state is also seeking a permanent vendor to develop and administer TNReady tests for the 2016-17 academic year.
More on TNReady:
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I fully support Rep. Mitchell on this. He is EXACTLY correct. We need to kick Pearson out of our state and our country. And YES they are every bit as bad as Measurement Inc if not worse. I say just end high stakes testing completely. It serves no good academic purpose beside a tool to get demoralize students, fire teachers and close down schools so we can open up more privatizes Charters that will eventually eliminate elected school boards and silence those pesky parents. But Rep. Mitchell is totally correct on this issue. End high stakes tests and don’t try to sneak in Competency Bases Assessments either (testing all day everyday). Let teachers create tests and exams like they used to do and we take the term grades and average them out for the final grade. That is all we need to do. The rest is only a source of data collection for the feds. NO TESTS. Let the teachers create and mark the tests at the end of each marking period and the average of those grades is the final grade for the year. BACK TO BASICS.