BOOK 'EM
Politico’s extensive investigation of publishing giant Pearson has unearthed the company’s questionable money-making practices at the expense of American students and taxpayers. For years, lax accountability measures have allowed Pearson to rake in the profits even when its programs and products failed. Schools and state legislatures are realizing the need to more closely scrutinize textbook companies before handing over their multi-million dollar reform dreams.
ALPHABET SOUP
Elsewhere in Pearson news, the Wall Street Journal chronicles the slow decline of the GED. Working in partnership with the nonprofit that administers the test, Pearson has dropped a huge sum developing a new, more complex assessment geared to today’s students and standards. But, as Fordham’s Chester Finn has argued, high school graduation exams shouldn't be set at the college-ready level. And neither should the GED. Not everyone who graduates from high school will—or should—go on to college.
GOOD CITIZENS
Indifferent social-studies pupils, beware! Utah may soon join its neighboring state of Arizona in requiring students to pass a citizenship test before graduating high school. Students would need to correctly pass seventy out of one hundred questions, a more difficult task than the six out of ten required to gain citizenship. The bill needs a final vote in the state Senate before advancing to the House.
DEPARTMENT OF BAD NEWS
Arkansas is the latest state to initiate a school-district takeover, and some worry that the new ESEA reauthorization will mean that there are more to follow. As Michael Petrilli has noted of recovery school districts (RSDs), overweening state power is by no means a panacea: “[Louisiana’s] RSD is one promising example in a country with fifty million students; it’s hardly dispositive. Neither is it a sure thing, as Michigan’s effort at replicating an RSD has demonstrated.”
